Revolutionary Road

Frank and April Wheeler are a bright young couple who bought a house on Revolutionary Road expecting a larger life than the one they now lead. April proposes they sell up and move to Paris, where Frank could find himself and she would support them, but a pregnancy, a promotion, and mutual resentment erode the plan. As the escape recedes, their evenings turn to argument, affairs, and a quiet cruelty that leaves both stranded.

The film is a study of how a shared fantasy can hold a marriage together and then destroy it once reality intrudes, and of the way the only character judged insane, a former mathematician, names the emptiness the others cannot admit. It offers a clinician much to consider about idealisation, disavowal, and the defensive uses of the couple. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2009 and is based on the novel Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.