Revolutionary Road is a kind of a feel-bad movie about lost dreams and disillusionment in 1950s America.

It's stunning.

The movie is intense and stylized, and bristling with great performances.

It also appears to be a love letter of sorts from director Sam Mendes to his wife, Kate Winslet -- she's that good here -- but that's probably another story.

Revolutionary Road is the story of Frank and April Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio and Winslet), an enviable young couple living in the suburbs of Connecticut. Kathy Bates enters the story as their real-estate agent and friend; she has a son (Michael Shannon) who has been in a psychiatric institution.

The Wheelers, we learn, have an ambition to lead lives that matter, and they say so.

Their friends and neighbours regard them as something special.

Frank has a mundane office job. His heart isn't really in it. Still, he doesn't exactly stand out in the sea of men in their grey flannel suits that pours out of the commuter trains in the city every morning.

And April is dismayed to find herself tucked away in the suburbs after years in the city. But while she's raising their two children, she protects her dream of an interesting life, led with passion and poetry.

April's burning desire to avoid an ordinary life is strong enough for two -- her passion carries Frank along with her, especially when she hits upon the idea of moving the family to Paris.

Frank can stop working, she reckons. She'll support the whole family with an office job in the American consulate. It will be so exciting. They and the children will all learn to speak French. Frank can pursue an artist's life if he wants to.

Their friends are shocked and jealous. Their neighbours, Milly and Shep (Kathryn Hahn and David Harbour) talk about the move to Paris, and in their responses are all the compromises that Frank and April hope to avoid.

Too bad Frank and April are subject to the same domestic minutiae as everyone else.

Their plans go awry.

The experience of seeing Revolutionary Road is more like being at a play than a movie. For all the blockbuster trimmings, the movie is very much character driven; it's based on the 1961 bestselling novel by Richard Yates.

The story concerns the roots of many contemporary social movements and it should be required reading for anyone who buys the nostalgia notion that America in the 1950s was the perfect time and place to be alive.

It's a bit of a cheat, by the way, that Revolutionary Road is the much-heralded film reunion of DiCaprio, Winslet and Bates, last seen together braving the icy waters of the North Atlantic in Titanic.

The two films could not be more different.

Fortunately.

(This film is rated 14-A)
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