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"It's much easier living with a woman who feels loved."

John Curran's sober, difficult We Don't Live Here Anymore sends its characters through a wrenching exploration of the matrimonial lifestyle and comes back with a traditional, wholesome, deeply moral message. Thematically resembling a tamer Eyes Wide Shut, the film delves into the effects of marriage on the participants, tries to come up with the elements necessary to make it work year after year, and posits some reasons why it so often fails. Some of its characters look back fondly on the time when they hung on their spouses' every word, while others have forgotten; the film's question is whether it's possible to get that feeling back.

In the first scene, Jack (Mark Ruffalo) and Edith (Naomi Watts) leave their intimate soiree to stock up on beer. In Jack's SUV, they're suddenly all over each other; he asks whether they should stop, which is when it dawns on us that they're not husband and wife or even boyfriend and girlfriend -- that Jack's wife, Terry, and Edith's hubby, Hank, are back at Jack's house, and god only knows what they're doing.

It's clear that Jack and Edith are having a passionate affair, using each other to get what their marriage is not providing. Terry (Laura Dern), meanwhile, is left doing all the work in the fledgling relationship -- waiting at home for her husband to return, offering in vain to cook lobster for lunch when Jack would rather just eat Grape-Nuts and go meet Edith for a picnic, responding to his withering sarcasm with desperate, almost pleading sincerity. He rarely touches her, and when she compains about this, she finds herself having to apologize the following morning.

Hank, meanwhile, has a distressingly laid-back attitude about the whole marriage thing, casually flirting with his students, telling Jack to "love all the people you can." We get the feeling that he knows that his wife and best friend are having an affair and has few compunctions about this; nor does he hesitate to give Terry what she needs when the two of them are left alone. His novel receives a downpour of rejections from publishers, and he frets while his considerably more together wife receives large checks from her mother.

The film is striking in the way it evokes tension from ordinary conversations and relationship details. There is a scene where one of the characters lies down on a pillow which already has a suspicious impression on it, and my heart jumped to my throat. Late in the film, Curran skillyfully, if shamelessly, convinces the entire theater that one of the protagonists is about to do something devastating and irrevocable, and it's a testament to his screenplay that the action would somehow make sense and that the suspense is multidimensional (i.e. working in the context of the story rather than just the single frightening moment). Michael Convertino provides a terrific, understated orchestral score, the sort of musical accompaniment that makes us think anything can happen.

The emotional core of the film rests on the shoulders of Mark Ruffalo and Laura Dern, and the two actors vigorously dig into their meaty roles. Mark Ruffalo turns in one of his characteristically modest, naturalistic, powerful performances; every motion and inflection paints a portrait of a deeply troubled, tired person. Dern, whose character cries and throws fits, has more opportunities to show off, but Terry never gets lost in all the showy tricks the actress gets to pull. Krause and Watts are solid and steady in crucial supporting roles; the former is impressive in his first major big-screen role.

We Don't Live Here Anymore is edgy, challenging and "a downer," but its message is, in a way, reassuring: marriage requires sacrifice, and commitment, and consideration, and the relationships that survive have participants who are willing to put in the work. Those who try to coast get their comeuppance, and even those who are dedicated go through more than their fair share of heartbreak, but also, in the end, their just rewards. There are no easy answers here; all the affairs eventually come to light, and I'm not sure anyone even gets angry about the infidelity. That would be too easy, and faithfulness, in its literal sense, seems almost beside their point. What matters isn't the affair, but the why of the affair -- and what these people are going to do about it.