Ahh, the sordid tales of suburbia. Kate Winslet gives an Oscar nominated performance as a housewife that has an affair with a househusband played by Patrick Wilson. Jennifer Connelly plays Wilson’s wife and also gives an outstanding performance as a woman who is career-driven and focused on supporting her husband and son. That is the meat and potatoes of the A-plot. The B-plot focuses on a recently paroled sex offender that is constantly being harassed by his upper-middle class neighbors.

This movie seemed like two movies smashed into one. It seemed like each of the story-lines were too weak to make a movie on their own so they were just smashed together. Amidst this very bipolar and somewhat confusing story is a mysterious narrator who apparently has nothing to do with the story, except to let you in on the thoughts of the characters in real time. Think Royal Tenenbaums, without the chapter cues.

This movie wasn’t bad, but it was a little schizophrenic. The acting was stellar by all, even the supporting cast; I especially loved the group of housewives that Winslet’s character hung out with. The movie is sold as an entanglement of separate lives in white suburban America, but to me, there weren’t any knots, only laces loosely draped over each other.