A bedroom thriller: a summer romance turns tragic, raising questions of justice and vengeance. In the Bedroom is that rare film that explores moral issues while providing thrills

Todd Field's brilliant directorial debut, In the Bedroom, not only is intelligently written, beautifully filmed and well-acted; it manages to be both a sensitive drama about love and loss and a gripping thriller. That Field seamlessly splices together an affecting portrait of ordinary people in emotional crisis with a gothic tale of murder and revenge should earn him an Oscar nomination, although the film's considered pace and dark ending will limit its audience appeal.

Based on a story by the late Andre Dubus, In the Bedroom focuses on the Fowlers, an upper-middle-class family living on the coast of Maine. Matt (Tom Wilkinson), a general practitioner, and Ruth (Sissy Spacek), a music teacher, are concerned that their son has become too involved with an older woman. Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) was supposed to spend his summer vacation working on a lobster boat while applying to graduate schools; instead, he has fallen for Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a vivacious mother of two boys who is separated from her hot-tempered husband, Richard (William Mapother).

Field, who lives in Maine, has a genuine feel for the place and people of his story. The early scenes between Matt and Ruth, who want to treat Frank as an adult yet worry about youthful misjudgment, economically evoke the plight of parents in the modern world, their genial New England stoicism at odds with liberal values. Remarkably, this first-time director, who cowrote the screenplay with Rob Festinger, sustains the right balance between such tender exchanges and more menacing developments throughout the film's 130 minutes.

It won't give away too much to reveal that the idyllic romance between Frank and Natalie is horribly interrupted by Richard, or that a sickening act of violence forever alters the lives of the Fowlers and their friends. Matt and Ruth settle into a numb routine as they struggle to accept their fate, scenes dissolving into scenes like tears in the rain. A movie that began in hope and innocence becomes a study in grief and resilience, a meditation on acts and their consequences.

In the Bedroom takes its title from the lobsterman's term for two crustaceans caught in one trap -- the female will claw apart the male. Field is clever enough to pull off this conceit without compromising his cinematic vision; that is to say, he plays with this and a number of other motifs but never loses sight of his story. In their sorrow, for example, the Fowlers turn smiles into sinister gestures: Ruth is haunted by Richard's caustic smirk; Matt cannot escape the sense of dread he discovers too late in Natalie's erogenous grin. These moments of recognition strike the characters, and the audience, with the narrative force of a Joycean epiphany.

Field's excellent script and direction are augmented by a cast that rises to the material. Wilkinson is superb, as is Spacek, unsurprising since she turned in an outstanding performance in another chilling New England drama, Affliction. Stahl plays Frank with the perfect combination of naivete and superciliousness, and Mapother imbues Richard, scion of a wealthy canning family, with that arrogant foppishness immediately recognizable as spoiled brat. Tomei's accent unfortunately evokes Brooklyn more than Bangor, but she lends Natalie enough vulnerability and coquettishness to make her appealing and parlous.

An actor (Ruby in Paradise, Eyes Wide Shut) before turning to direction, Field wisely chose Dubus as the basis for his first film. "He rejected the post-modernist cynicism of his contemporaries in favor of a realistic confrontation of timeless moral problems," the filmmaker has said of the writer. "His stories are rooted in New England middle-class milieus and in the explorations of the ties that either strengthen or vitiate human relationships." The statement equally applies to Field's own work, a welcome addition to American cinema badly in need of timeless moral confrontation.

In the Bedroom premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, where Spacek and Wilkinson received a Special Jury Prize for their performances. It opens in New York City and Los Angeles on Nov. 23 and nationally in late December.

REX ROBERTS IS THE NEW YORK CORRESPONDENT FOR Insight MAGAZINE

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