"Revolutionary Road" * (out of four): Affected, overwrought misstep from director Sam Mendes tracks the brutal disintegration of a 50s-era suburban couple in high style and higher melodrama.

In the late 40s, Frank and April Wheeler meet across a crowded room. They chat, they laugh, they dance... then it's 1955 and they have two kids and a home on the titular suburban road in upstate New York. So opens "Revolutionary Road", a startlingly overwrought misstep from director Sam Mendes. Two minutes into the film, the couple (played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, reuniting for the first time since a little movie called "Titanic") have already fallen in and out of love, as is evidenced by a vicious argument on the side of a country road. This row is the first of many, since the film is essentially a catalogue of their relationship's disintegration. We never see them click, we never see them fall in love (with the exception of a few perfunctory flashbacks). They meet, and then they simply hate each other. For two hours.

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