Rent The Ice Storm (1997)

Cold, Controlled, and Better Than Most - The Ice Storm review by griggs

Ang Lee sets this one in Connecticut in 1973 — feelings were optional that year, it appears swingers parties weren't.

The Ice Storm follows two families sleepwalking through the same street, everyone frozen solid on top and cracking underneath, like a fridge nobody's defrosted in a decade. Kevin Kline plays the dad having an affair less out of passion than boredom management, showing up to his own marriage like it's a meeting he forgot to cancel. Joan Allen matches him scene for scene without raising her voice once — she can say more with a look than most actors manage in a monologue. The teenagers — Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood — are just as clumsy about intimacy as their parents, which is either sad or oddly comforting, I can't quite decide.

This is Lee at his most controlled, and it shows: the whole late-nineties suburban-misery genre, American Beauty included, is basically working from his blueprint, just shoutier and less patient about it.

The middle stretch loses a little steam, but by the final act the storm outside and the freeze inside line up perfectly. Cold, controlled, and better than most films that try twice as hard.

Family Drama That Cuts Into American Privilege - The Ice Storm review by GI

Here is a relationship drama, a coming of age drama, a social introspective all rolled into a scathing vision of American privilege. Set in the early 1970s this follows the dysfunctional, bored and hypocrisy of two families where sexual repression dominates their dull lives. The Hood family of Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen) is one of deceit, as Ben is having an affair with Janey (Sigourney Weaver) of the Carver family. The two families are friends although this weak connection highlights that hypocritical need for social interaction that is entirely based on lies. The Hood's children, Paul (Tobey Maguire) and Wendy (Christina Ricci), are exploring sexual awakenings to various degrees with Wendy, experimenting with both the Carver children (Elijah Wood & Adam Hann-Byrd). Drugs and alcohol blending into their world of jealousies and confusion. Into this melting pot of angst the adults lie to one another, are lured to a swingers party, with various highly charged results, whilst the their children interact behind their backs with tragic results. The climax occurring during the titular ice storm. This is an interesting and convoluted drama, very well written, and a sharp condemnation of that strata of American east coast society that hides it's falseness behind money, religion and status. An interesting film that holds a relevance today.