Even adultery has morality to it.

The blistering adultery drama We Don’t Live Here Anymore, featuring a stellar Laura Dern as a discarded wife trapped in a destructive marriage, is a fiercely intelligent depiction of marital disharmony that ranks as one of the most incisive portraits of marriage torn asunder since Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf almost three decades ago. Based on two short stories by Andre Dubus III and expertly adapted by screenwriter Larry Gross and director John Curran, We Don’t Live Here Anymore is a daring and deep, at times almost unbearably claustrophobic study of shifting marital power struggles afflicting a pair of New England couples.

The story involves two thirty-something couples and long-time best friends: Terry (Dern) and Jack (Mark Ruffalo), and Edith (Naomi Watts) and Hank (Peter Krause). On the surface they’re much the same—both men are college professors, while both women are caregivers to the children and appear to have no professional dispositions. They are both in marriages that are disintegrating—one silently, the other as an all out daily war.

The film wastes no time is both setting up the strengths of the relations between all four and the weaknesses between the individuals. Terry and Jack seem less successful than Edith and Hank, frequently plunging into violent arguments. Upscale Hank and Edith have a more studied, removed relationship with no passion left to summon such rage, both consumed by politeness and avoidance.

Fueled by his wife’s rages and one too many over-the-edge arguments, disillusioned Jack is revitalized by his sexual relationship with Edith. Everything about wife Terry irks him, not the least of which her neglect of the household and children. Indeed, their domain is a scattered mess in contrast to the contemporary serenity of Jack and Edith’s home. Edith, by contrast, is demure, reserved and belongs to his Alpha-male, competitive best friend, Hank. Hank’s got a wandering eye as well, and it eventually falls on neglected Terry, who’s enraged to be encouraged by husband Jack to explore Hank’s desires. Jack’s turned on by the possibility of his own wife’s infidelity as a guilt-relieving antidote to his own dilemma. Both couples have children who wear the scars of the confused "adult nonsense," Jack explains at a critical juncture.

The film so effectively evokes the feeling of how long-term relationships can trap you into cycles that you know are wrong but, as Jack puts it, just can’t help living out. On and on the routine goes, with argument after argument, Terry’s attempted make-ups and Jack’s secret liaisons, until revelation brings reality down on top of them.

When things eventually come to light, the film sidesteps clichés and histrionics, and becomes moving in its messy conclusion.

It’s an intimate and painful chamber piece, loaded with simmering tension, intense wordplay and sexual manipulation. It’s also an excellent study of what can happen to a marriage when no one is looking.

The film deservedly won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.