reeltime

If you like all things vintage, as I do, you’ll find a lot of visual appeal in “Revolutionary Road ,” the new film Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as Frank and April Wheeler. The Wheelers live in Manhattan when they first meet, but once they tie the knot they make the inevitable move to a comfortable Connecticut home and have a couple of kids. Frank works at a respectable job in the city, and on the surface all seems well. But the claustrophobia of living the American dream proves too much for the pair, and the wear and tear of lost dreams and stunted ambitions takes its toll. We’ve seen this take on suburban life in other films, notably “Far From Heaven, ” “The Ice Storm ” and especially in “American Beauty ,”  another movie by “Revolutionary Road director” Sam Mendes. Like the other nostalgia-soaked films before it, “Revolutionary Road” shows us people whose lives are going to hell while the world they live in looks great — imagine Ozzie and Harriet with a Vicodin problem. The clothes, the cars and the furnishings are vintage eye candy — sort of a guilty pleasure to take in as you watch the Wheelers’ lives rot.

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