(2006) The past can't be changed, but the future's a different story, says the hopeful narrator (Leon Vitali), reminding me of a voice I've heard on PBS programs, at the conclusion of this intense, complex, tragicomic film from director Todd Field, who co-wrote the adapted screenplay with the novel's author, Tom Perrotta. Each of the characters harbors fantasies; some of them act on their secret desires.

In East Wyndham, Mass., in the company of three typical suburban mothers with their children in the park, where she also brings her daughter Lucy, Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), a PhD in English lit just out of her reach, has been surreptitiously observing their behavior, when a handsome man enters with his son on his shoulders. Referring to him as the "Prom King," Mary Ann, Theresa, and Cheryl dare Sarah to get his phone number.

In conversation at the swing set, Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson) introduces himself and his little boy Araon: "You're the first person here to ever talk to me." Listening to him confess unembarrassedly his failures to pass the bar exam - for which he's supposed to be studying for a third take while his beautiful wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a documentary-filmmaker, brings home the bacon - Sarah, referring to the three mothers, tells him: "You're a big character in their fantasy lives." She then decides to freak out their audience by asking Brad first to give her a hug and then a kiss.

Afterward Brad feels no shame or guilt, intones the narrator (who could be providing commentary for one of Kathy's documentaries), but a profound disorientation as if abducted and then released by aliens. Outside the library in the evening where Brad sits reading, Larry Hedges (Noah Emmerich) stops his van, inviting Brad to join him. A former cop spearheading solo the Committee for Concerned Parents, Larry's become obsessed with harassing a pervert, Ronnie J. McGorvey (Jackie Earle Haley), recently released from prison after serving time for an indecent-exposure conviction, living nearby in his mother's house; he introduces Brad, who'd played quarterback in college, to his Guardians night-league football team.

At home Sarah accidentally enters her husband (Gregg Edelmann) Richard's home office to find him wearing a woman's briefs pulled over his face while masturbating to images of Slutty Kay on his computer screen; she purchases a new red one-piece bathing suit for taking Lucy to the public swimming pool where she, as expected, finds Brad and Aaron, beginning a satisfying ritual of getting acquainted: "The most fun Sarah had had in years."

Parents with young children are vulnerable to extramarital affairs because they don't have sex enough together. Initially though she desired Brad's touch, Sarah wants to preserve the innocence of their friendship. While talking about her latest film project (interviewing a boy whose father was killed in Iraq) Kathy tells Brad that trying new things makes one feel more alive, unwittingly expressing his own sense of exhilaration of being with Sarah and again throwing passes on the gridiron.

Only a mother, May McGorvey (Phyllis Somerville), could love a son like Ronnie, suffering from a psychosexual disorder, urging him to find a girlfriend his own age. When Larry with Brad, who has mentioned Ronnie's appearance (wearing fins, facemask, and snorkel) at the town's swimming pool, pounds on her door, demanding to see Ronnie, May calls him a "bully" and confronts him with his own past that cost him his position with the police force.

After her older friend Jean has made repeated invitations for her to attend an all-women's book-discussion group, Sarah acquiesces with Flaubert's Madam Bovary up for consideration. What's wrong with a little spice of romance in one's life? One participant adamantly thinks of the principal character as nothing more than a slut: "She had a choice not to cheat on her husband." Urged to offer her own perspective, Sarah defends Emma, the wife of Dr Charles Bovary, as a proto-feminist for having become trapped in a marriage with the wrong man and then struggling - "something beautiful, even heroic" in her "hunger for an alternate" role in life - refusing "to accept unhappiness." But did she really believe, asks the more critical reader, her lover would go off with her?

Sarah suggests to Brad that instead of his taking the bar exam, they get away together for the two days he's supposed to be taking the test; she gets Jean to baby-sit for Lucy since Richard is away on business. But why does Jean act disgusted with Sarah when she offers to pay for taking care of Lucy? (Friendship has no price, or has Jean discovered something disturbing during Sarah's absence?)

Following his mother's advice and placement of a personal ad, Ronnie, too, goes on a date with Sheila, who says, "You seem like a nice person." (Perverts simply lack the social skill of not exposing themselves in public.)

Of course, unintended consequences result from irrational expectations. Why else would Brad try skateboarding with some teenagers on his way to see Sarah, waiting for him at night with Lucy in the park? East Wyndham's hospital's emergency room has a busy night.

The location of perversion lies according to one's moral compass; I tend to be less sanguine than the film's narrator since these characters have lost their bearings.

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Copyright © 2008 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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