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In this loose adaptation of two Andre Dubus short stories, four repugnant souls wallow in the depravity of their miserable marriages like pigs in shit. Jack (Mark Ruffalo) and Hank (Six Feet Under’s Peter Krause) are literature instructors at a low-end college somewhere in rustic New England. Hank is the more prolific, getting published in the New Yorker; meanwhile, the two men take turns screwing each other’s wives. It’s a hateful existence that, fueled by alcohol, spirals into chaos, and as usual, it’s the children who pay the price. Todd Field made a fine film, In the Bedroom, from Dubus’s story "Killings," but here director John Curran and writer Larry Gross don’t seem to care where their characters have been or where they’re going. All they’re concerned with is the domino effect stemming from some "carnivorous fucking," as Jack puts it. Which is too bad, because the performers are up for the challenge, especially the women: Laura Dern as Jack’s fraught, desperate wife and a doe-ish Naomi Watts, whose sensuality seems to take on celestial qualities. (101 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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