In The Bedroom

Directed with scarcely believable assurance and authority by first-timer Todd Field, and featuring a cast of predominantly no-namers, In The Bedroom’s breathlessly dramatic (though sombre and largely silent) chain of events spins out well over the two-hour mark while seeming to zip by in the blinking of an eye. And while Tom Wilkinson is unlikely to have been top of anyone’s Best Actor shortlist this time last year, this extraordinary performance might just do it.

On the surface, In The Bedroom is an unremarkable generic melodrama with a very straightforward storyline: smalltown Maine college-boy Frank Fowler (Stahl) is in a relationship with older woman and single parent Natalie Strout (Tomei). This is massively to the disapproval of his self-professed ‘liberal’ mother (Spacek) and, less so, his father (Wilkinson): a demonically overbearing Spacek whines and moans round-the-clock about how this will all end in tears, to Frank’s annoyance and increasing unconcern. Meanwhile, Tomei’s ex, a deeply unpleasant booze-drenched brute (Mapother) hovers menacingly in the background...

Deafeningly dramatic when required, but so attendant to subtle character details that it could be an Ang Lee film in its quieter moments, In The Bedroom unfolds at a stately, majestic pace, yet with an edgy, ominous undercurrent throughout that recalls the earlier stages of Terence Malick’s Badlands. Spacek, a veteran of that masterpiece, is in typically excellent form as the not-so-silently-fuming mother, but it’s the practically-unknown Tom Wilkinson (The Full Monty, Essex Boys) who truly steals the honours with a fiercely human, deeply sympathetic performance which ups in intensity with each passing minute.