The title of this review says there are amazing performances, which is perhaps a lie. The performances are definitely strong, but it's Laura Dern who really packs a bigger punch than the other three. She has perhaps the meatiest material and she knocks it out of the park, she's powerful and sad and heartbreaking to watch, while at the same time very flawed. Dern should feel proud of stealing this film away. Watts and Ruffalo are good, but Krause seems to be half asleep during this. I guess it doesn't help that he has the least amount of screen time, but there could have been something to latch on to in his portrayal. As it is there's nothing. Strong film though.

English professor Jack (Ruffalo) is married to slobby Terry (Dern) and carruying on with his friend's foxy wife Edith (Watts). Edith's husband, failed novelist Hank (Krause), is carrying on with Terry and, apparently, half of New England. It's a right old carry on.This one's been sold as a "provocative drama", but it's really just a souped-up soap opera with pretensions to artistic importance. There are few searing insights here, save for an aside to the kids that "Grown ups fight - especially married ones".Clunking symbolism abounds; from a tangled, primordial forest surrounding the college campus in which Jack and Edith play Adam and Eve ("Easy, sailor!" gasps Watts' Edith hilariously, while she's penetrated against a tree), to animal-themed wallpaper and Watts' hushed revelation that we're all little more than "gorillas in a zoo licking it off our hands". Tell, don't show, is their watchword.In mitigation, the ensemble cast are mostly sound, given the limitations of their material. Ruffalo's the model of a prematurely-induced mid-life crisis; whether deliberately picking fights to hasten a relationship's demise (a process applied with precisely the opposite aim in Edward Albee's sharper 1966 film Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), or taking perverse delight in the ins-and-outs of Terry's adulterous tit-for-tat tryst, thus assuaging his own guilt.Dern's wronged housewife is a sight to behold, if not exactly savour, her face contorted almost beyond recognition into a mask of pain. Krause, too, impresses in his first major screen role as a self-absorbed pleasure-seeker and deliverer of platitudes who breezily informs Jack to "love all the people you can", utterly oblivious to the hurt he leaves behind.Yet these are all characters in search of a decent screenplay. "Looks like it's going to snow", murmurs Dern toward the maddeningly ambivalent climax, and it's typical of the script, and of its delivery, that you can practically see the actors sight reading off their portentous autocues.

This is a masterwork. Laura Dern's performance was really stunning. Not all actresses can reach that kind of performance. Naomi Watts' performance was also amazing. All of the performances but specially those two.So, We Don't Live Here Anymore is a serious movie about love and adultery, right?, unfaithful. This is a work made with subtleness, with passion, with great artistry. This is a deep reflection of love, of how real couples have real problems. In the films of this kind (romance, I mean) the life is always pink, you know? It's always represented in pink. But, as 'Closer', this movie takes a deep look into love, relationships, into real life.At some point, the movie feels a little slow. But the characters and the dialogues are so amazingly real that you don't feel that this is fiction. This was very misunderstood by the Academy Awards. And by the critics. But, there are times where people don't know when they're watching a good movie. This is a movie of people of open criterion, I mean, liberal people, not the kind of people that are scared of all things. Verdict: Oscar-worthy picture. My awards for this movie would be: Best Picture, Best Director (John Curran, OMG! He made an excellent work), Best Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Actrees (Laura Dern), Best Supporting Actrees (Naomi Watts) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based From Another Material (Larry Gross, based upon the short stories: 'We Don't Live Here Anymore and 'Adultery by Andre Dubus). And by the way it's not a B- movie. FLAWLESS.***** out of *****

totally awesome film...i think everybody should watch it, it's so realistic...you can feel the chemistry between the four of them!!! dern as devoted yet fragile housewife matched by rufallo uncertainty, while watts as the seductive one just so excellent with capital E and matched by krauss vulnerability. it's just like an ordinary daily live when you watch it that just don't feel like watching movie...maybe the reality could be compared to "a home at the end of the world" truly it's so rare to find a film with all the right chemistry and a reality that's so true...my advice is you should watch this movie at whatever cost...you won't regret a thing