The world of Revolutionary Road is familiar territory to director Sam Mendes who tackled the staid and static hopelessness of suburbia in his very first film American Beauty. Working backwards with this movie, he takes us back to the suburb’s golden age in 1950s America and the presumption that not everything was as a picture perfect as it seemed. Following along the same path of revisiting old times, the film is also the first time that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have been paired together again since they took that fateful voyage on the doomed ocean-liner no one ever heard of.

But in Revolutionary Road, they’re just the Wheelers: Frank and April. Through briefs hints we see the two of them falling puppy dog in love with each other through long glances and slow dances. They both agree that they’re not going to end up like “everyone else,” struggling to find meaning in a meaningless life. What I found interesting, first blush, was how the romantic drive of the Wheelers to live a life less ordinary seemed to mirror Jack and Rose’s semi-idealized notions of living a life free of societal and social norms in Titanic. What’s interesting in Road is that this notion of idealism and the worthiness of its pursuit is somewhat stained by realistic expectations.

Mere seconds after we’re introduced to aspiring actress April and aspiring know-not-what Frank, we flash-forward to years later when April bombs in community theatre of all things. The practiced calm of the couple erupts into a full on vitriolic brawl along the side of the freeway as they drive home from the performance. The next day the calm returns and Frank goes back to the job he hates and begins an affair with a secretary, while April stays home and realizes that despite proclamations to the contrary, they are just like everyone else in their posh suburban neighbourhood.

The solution to April becomes obvious, and she proposes to Frank the idea of doing what they always intended and move the entire family off to Paris to live as cynical American ex-Pats. The idea restores the spark to Wheeler’s relationship as they once again feel the satisfying sense that they alone know the score of what’s entailed to survive in this suburban nightmare. The trouble is that this façade, if it is a façade, begins to collapse when April become pregnant and Frank is offered a promotion at work that he can’t refuse. I use “façade” not in a facetious sense, but because I truly wonder to what extent Paris delayed the inevitable fracturing of this marriage and how much was a truly a sense of loss at the opportunity.

What I like about this film id that the answers don’t come easy. Perhaps April’s point that the soul-crushing cost of life in so-called suburban splendour is too high for any price, and maybe Frank has a point that it was just irresponsible for people with a family to just moth ball a life for chasing a dream. Perhaps there is a point in your life when the pursuits of youth must take a back seat to more immediate concerns, or maybe that’s a form of surrender that everyone wants to perceive as mere acceptance. Or perhaps it’s best to live like the “disturbed” John Givings (the superb Michael Shannon) and just fire from the hip and come at life for all its cynical value.

In the end, the chemistry of DiCaprio and Winslet holds out as the no-holds barred free for all of love gone wrong in the Wheelers is as palpable as the doe-eyed fling between Jack and Rose in Titanic. Say what you want about that movie, but its two leads made it for better or for worse. In Revolutionary Road, they’re grown-up, complex and riddled with guilt and lost innocence. The acting is sometimes a little too staged and theatrical, but that’s the school Mendes comes from and I respect it, and there really only a couple of times that fact is glaring. Certainly though, I found it at least more provocative than Winslet’s other Oscar drama The Reader, but at least she finally got her Oscar in any case. Now if we can only get Leo one these kids will be set for life. Ah, happy endings.