Revolutionary Road

THE agony of heartbreak and separation is transferred seamlessly to the silver screen here.
No light relief, no escapism, just two hours of a bitter relationship gone drastically wrong.
But if you can stand the tension, you’ll find a really engaging film here with great performances from the leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
Reunited on screen for the first time since Titantic in 1997, the pair are electric. It makes you wonder why they weren’t brought together again sooner.
In fact, the film is almost as if Titanic’s Jack and Rose both survived the ill-fated voyage and 10 years later, their marriage is failing.

With Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, you don’t really see why Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) are drifting apart, you just see the twisted aftermath.
There is also a wonderful, humourous, transparency to the story as the mentally ill character John Givings (brilliantly portrayed by Michael Shannon) continues to say what everyone else is thinking.
Kate Winslet is incredible here, chain smoking and always looking on the verge of a breakdown, while DiCaprio’s character Frank tries to ride the wave of the post-war optimism of his 1950s America.
Both feel caged by domestic life and want to make a change by living in Paris...but the real message here is that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.
Obviously the strength of a film like this is that we can all relate to it. There are only a few of us who can claim to have had flawless relationships and we all know the impact when they go wrong.