“If you do a film about the Holocaust,” Kate Winslet reckoned in Extras, “you’re guaranteed an Oscar.” Or, try a prestigious lit-flic🍸k with the leads from the Biggest Movie Of All Time and an Oscar-blessed director.

That’s the cynical jab. In reality, Sam Mendes’ adaptation of Richard Yates’ ’61 novel at least strikes out🌠 for antiromantic waters. Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play Frank and April Wheeler, lovers-turned spouses and parents.

This time they’re not doomed by iceberg but shored up in the suburbs. Frank enjoys dips in the secretarial pool at a job he hates. April plays
housewife🀅 but she’s no actress. Plans to mo💧ve to Paris rejuvenate them, but will the ’burbs let go?

There’s plenty to admire here. DiCaprio and Winslet channel much nuance into their home-based hell. Mendes’ level-headed helming is best at pinpointing the brutality of banality, while Roger Deakins’ lush cinem🦄atography stylises 👍suburbia as a lavish velvet coffin for its residents.

Quality work, then. But, impeccable as it is, th🥀ere’s something a bit over-determined about Road. Casualties of Justin Haythe’s subtext-stuffed script include Michael Shannon, whose truth-spouting loony turn is strong but marred by the plot-device characterisation.

The relentless score rarely stops goading, either. And while the suffocatingly perfect staging see✨ms made to match a study in feelings stifled, it still whiffs of overdeliberation.

And so we’re left with a film much like the ’burbs: ෴a seem𓂃ingly sure and respectable thing, without enough room for life to seep in.

Kevin Harley