Adulterers' motives explored in 'We Don't Live Here'

By Jami Bernard
New York Daily News

WE DON'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE With Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern, Peter Krause. Director: John Curran. (1:43). Rated R: Language, nudity, sex.

But why, exactly, would you want to?

Two couples that are cheating on other, each with the other's spouse, find that the center doesn't hold in these depressing scenes from a marriage.

Not all adulterers are created equal, and here the point of view belongs mostly to Jack Linden (Mark Ruffalo), a rumpled literature professor. Jack is torn (but not really) between his own wife (Laura Dern) and his best friend's wife (Naomi Watts).

But the real puzzle is who Jack is or who he wants to be.

"How do you think we'll be caught?" asks Jack's lover, because the game of cheating is more exciting than the reality.

The more Jack dithers, the worse things get at home. Terry Linden (Dern) suspects but can't prove, and her anger erupts in alternating bursts of housecleaning and sloth, fury and wine-soaked passivity. When she finally accepts the advances of Hank Evans (Peter Krause), she feels maneuvered into it — yet she obligingly goes along with that gleaming-eyed game of revenge.

When aroused to anger, Terry also yells a lot. Ruffalo gets more screen time, but Dern gets more scream time. Her thin mouth pulls wide open with hatred. If Dern weren't such a fine actress, she could be an all-purpose movie psychotic.

In this adaptation of two Andre Dubus stories, adultery fills many needs, the least of which is sex. It's more of a high-stakes psychological game.

Director John Curran gives the actors lots of rope, perhaps too much.

Krause, of "Six Feet Under" and Broadway's "After the Fall," is the weakest. His Hank Evans, a slick writing teacher who can't bring himself to write, is downright distasteful (though Ruffalo's character is not far behind).

We know what kind of guy is Hank by the looks on the faces of his female students — which ones want to sleep with him, which ones have done it and regret it, and the one who doesn't want to but sees that her grade and self-esteem may suffer for it.

The two men are selfish and mean, but you wouldn't want to hang with any of these characters. They're about as much fun after hours as that other faculty foursome from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Except that there, the secrets and recriminations lead to catharsis.

With "We Don't Live Here Anymore," it's the audience that may want to leave and start a new life.