Product Description

Nominated for 5 Academy Awards(R) including Best Picture (2001), this universally acclaimed film features Academy Award-winners Sissy Spacek (Best Actress 1980, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, 1980) and Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress 1992, MY COUSIN VINNIE), and Academy Award-nominee Tom Wilkinson (Best Actor, IN THE BEDROOM, 2001). When young Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) becomes romantically involved with an older single mother (Tomei), his parents (Spacek and Wilkinson) are concerned. But when the relationship takes a sudden and tragic turn, the Fowlers are forced to confront the harsh reality of their situation and the inescapable consequences of their actions. An uncommonly suspenseful and disturbing film powered by a remarkable cast, IN THE BEDROOM has been hailed by critics everywhere as one of the year's finest motion pictures.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21541 in DVD
• Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
• Released on: 2002-08-13
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 130 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
When a film with such emotional resonance and visual poise as In the Bedroom makes it to the screen, it seems an unexpected gift meant to remind us of the medium's possibility for sensitivity and epiphany. First-time director Todd Field, who adapted the film from a story by Andre Dubus with screenwriter Rob Festinger, quietly observes the loss, rage, and inexorable desire for revenge that follows the murder of a 21-year-old son. The film opens with Frank (Nick Stahl), back from college for the summer, taking up with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a slightly older, sexually alluring woman with two boys and an estranged husband prone to violence. It is the tender portrayal of love between Frank and his parents, even as Frank and Natalie's relationship reveals the prejudices of all involved, that makes the subsequent anguish of the film so acute. Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), middle-class denizens of a Maine lobster town where everyone knows each other, toil through weeks of devastation and blame following Frank's murder before their outrage obliterates all else. Field's exact handling of jealousy, class division, and grief is abetted by career-highlight performances from Wilkinson and Spacek. In the Bedroom is, along with You Can Count On Me, one of the best American dramas to grace the new millennium so far. --Fionn Meade

From The New Yorker
In Camden, Maine, a twenty-one-year-old college student, Frank (Nick Stahl), is having a headlong summer affair with a local woman, Natalie (Marisa Tomei), who has two little boys. Natalie is separated from her husband (William Mapother), the loutish scion of a prominent local family. When the husband kills his rival, Frank's hypercivilized parents (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek) begin to consider vengeance as a way of saving themselves from destroying each other. This Sophoclean tale, fleshed out from an intriguing, elliptical short story by Andre Dubus, draws its strength from minute observation of settings, moods, and manners in Camden and from a gradual tightening of the winch. Much of it is very quiet (the first-time director, Todd Field, is an actor and a photographer) but when it explodes, the violence, both verbal and physical, actually means something. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker