Ask the average American who Todd Field is and most will probably answer, "He the lady who make the cookies, right?"  Very few people can connect the name with acting, and an even smaller percentage can identify a role Field has played (he was Nick Nightingale in Eyes Wide Shut).  But before any of us could get used to the guy in front of the camera, Field has jumped behind it, co-writing (with Robert Festinger) and directing one of the year's best-acted films.

Set in Camden, Maine, the focus of In the Bedroom is Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl, The Thin Red Line), a bright young man spending the summer at his parents' home before he heads off to graduate school for architecture.  Frank lands two things while he's in Camden – lobster (he gets a gig as a fisherman – the film's title is a reference to a lobster trap) and Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei, Happy Accidents), a thirty-something single mother of two with an extremely jealous and potentially violent ex named Richard (Tom Cruise's cousin, William Mapother).

Frank's folks - physician Matt (Tom Wilkinson, Black Knight) and high school choir teacher Ruth (Sissy Spacek, The Straight Story) – are understandably apprehensive about the older Natalie, concerned their son might consider abandoning grad school plans to play daddy to someone else's kids (there is also a leeriness about the kids having their new father figure torn away from them if he does return to school, so Matt and Ruth aren't totally self-centered).  And Matt's tongue-in-the-lap stares at Natalie's skimpy summer dresses make Ruth dislike the girl even more.

Now things gets a little tricky.  Something awful happens about 40 minutes into Bedroom, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say what it is.  If I do, there's the chance some people will be pissed off at me for spoiling an essential plot point, but if I don't, there isn't a lot left to write about, since there are still 90 minutes of the film left that deal with the effects of this incident. Even if you haven't heard about the "shocking" event that occurs, you'll be able to figure out something really bad is going to happen because Bedroom is practically dripping with dread from opening credits.

What does happen causes an incredible amount of guilt and grief, and it's all handled terrifically by Wilkinson, Spacek and, most surprisingly, Tomei, who logs her best performance to date (even better than that mess that won her the Academy Award).  Each should be in the hunt for this year's Oscar race, with the two former talents having a better chance at landing nominations with the usual aggressive push from Miramax (they both won a Special Jury Award at Sundance earlier this year).

People often complain about the lack of decent roles for women in film, but Bedroom puts this myth to rest in two ways:  It has two great female performances, but it also demonstrates it's not about the roles as much as it is about the direction.  Field, like many other actors-turned-directors, elicits great work from everyone in this film (including Mapother, who had previously exhibited about as much non-nepotistic talent as Clint Howard). Bedroom is a performance-driven film, which is a good thing, because the picture's pace is a little too leisurely and could have easily been much shorter (it's one unfortunate but typical downside from the actor-turned-director thing).

Field, who has previously directed a number of shorts (including a Sundance winner) says Bedroom (or at least its last act) is based on a 1991 short story called “Killings” written by the late Andre Dubus, to whom the film is dedicated.  His direction reminded me of two recent Oscar nominees:  Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me (because of its lack of emotional money shots most bigger films would showcase) and Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (because of the guilt, grief and lingering dread).

2:10 –

for some violence and language