The location looks like it could be any Midwest town with a medium sized high school. It is winter, there is snow on the ground, the band is practicing outside for the halftime show of the next football game. We hear what sounds like a gunshot, we don't know from where. The students hear it too. Is it a school shooting?
Then the movie flashes back a couple of weeks and is told in a linear manner, up and then past that point where we hear a shot. The first thing we figure out is there don't seem to be any "faithful" couples. At least we don't see them. The ones we see are fooling around with spouses of friends.
I suppose the best summary is a "slice of life" in a small community, and for the high school kids it is part of their coming of age.
Kate Beckinsale is Annie Marchand, she works in a restaurant and is separated from her husband. They have a small daughter. It seems he has had some emotional issues, received treatment, but still behaves like the kind of guy most people don't want to be around. He is a social misfit, often saying or doing exactly what shouldn't be said or done in the situation. Meanwhile Annie is secretly carrying on with a married man, while her husband seeks to reunite the family.
Sam Rockwell is the husband, Glenn Marchand, and he plays the part very well.
Separate from all this another family is having domestic problems.
Michael Angarano (of 'Sky High' fame) is teenager Arthur Parkinson. He plays trombone, not very well, in the high school band. Seems his mom and dad aren't getting along very well, dad leaves home for a while. Meanwhile Arthur gets to be friends with a new girl at school, Olivia Thirlby as Lila Raybern, and they become young lovers. Interesting dynamic, when his mother one morning realizes he and his girl had spent a night together, she doesn't scold him at all, in fact expresses some amount of envy that he is getting some and she isn't.
Anyway, as well-made and as well-acted as this movie is, when it was over I didn't feel good. I had just witnessed train wrecks where no one comes out of it in good shape. Had I known what all was going to transpire I would not have taken the time to see it. Not my kind of "entertainment", but I grant that some viewers will like it a lot.
MAJOR SPOILERS: As Annie and Glenn are jockeying for position in the strained relationship, Annie wakes up from an unplanned afternoon nap and finds the small daughter missing. The town has everyone, even early dismissed school kids, begin looking for her in a 4-mile radius. Arthur, who as a kid had Annie as a babysitter, found the girl, dead at the edge of a frozen pond. This of course further strained relationships and Glenn went to Annie's house with a shotgun and shells, he waited for her, shot and killed her. Later, as he was driving away in his truck and realizing his life was essentially over, stopped and shot himself through the mouth and brain with piston. As the movie ends we see everyone else in the town just going on with their lives.
Then the movie flashes back a couple of weeks and is told in a linear manner, up and then past that point where we hear a shot. The first thing we figure out is there don't seem to be any "faithful" couples. At least we don't see them. The ones we see are fooling around with spouses of friends.
I suppose the best summary is a "slice of life" in a small community, and for the high school kids it is part of their coming of age.
Kate Beckinsale is Annie Marchand, she works in a restaurant and is separated from her husband. They have a small daughter. It seems he has had some emotional issues, received treatment, but still behaves like the kind of guy most people don't want to be around. He is a social misfit, often saying or doing exactly what shouldn't be said or done in the situation. Meanwhile Annie is secretly carrying on with a married man, while her husband seeks to reunite the family.
Sam Rockwell is the husband, Glenn Marchand, and he plays the part very well.
Separate from all this another family is having domestic problems.
Michael Angarano (of 'Sky High' fame) is teenager Arthur Parkinson. He plays trombone, not very well, in the high school band. Seems his mom and dad aren't getting along very well, dad leaves home for a while. Meanwhile Arthur gets to be friends with a new girl at school, Olivia Thirlby as Lila Raybern, and they become young lovers. Interesting dynamic, when his mother one morning realizes he and his girl had spent a night together, she doesn't scold him at all, in fact expresses some amount of envy that he is getting some and she isn't.
Anyway, as well-made and as well-acted as this movie is, when it was over I didn't feel good. I had just witnessed train wrecks where no one comes out of it in good shape. Had I known what all was going to transpire I would not have taken the time to see it. Not my kind of "entertainment", but I grant that some viewers will like it a lot.
MAJOR SPOILERS: As Annie and Glenn are jockeying for position in the strained relationship, Annie wakes up from an unplanned afternoon nap and finds the small daughter missing. The town has everyone, even early dismissed school kids, begin looking for her in a 4-mile radius. Arthur, who as a kid had Annie as a babysitter, found the girl, dead at the edge of a frozen pond. This of course further strained relationships and Glenn went to Annie's house with a shotgun and shells, he waited for her, shot and killed her. Later, as he was driving away in his truck and realizing his life was essentially over, stopped and shot himself through the mouth and brain with piston. As the movie ends we see everyone else in the town just going on with their lives.