This Year's Crying Game?
'In the Bedroom' is tragic family drama at its best

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In the Bedroom, opening this weekend (in major markets since November) has already won two things: a boatload of awards, and buzz that compares it to past indie-award winners like The Crying Game, in that no critic wants to say anything about it, for fear of revealing the plot's twists and turns.

It's been called everything from a morality tale to a revenge drama to a crime story.

Since even the trailer is guilty of revealing too much, this is a movie that really ought to be viewed in its opening weekend - before somebody can spoil it for you.

Simply put, it's actually a family drama. Make that a tortured, tragic family drama.

The trailer poses it as more of a thriller, but that's not entirely accurate.

In it, Spacek plays smalltown Maine wife and mother, Ruth Fowler - a chorus teacher and native New Yorker, married to a doctor, Matt (Tom Wilkinson).

Their son Frank (Nick Stahl) comes home from college and becomes the talk of the town due to his involvement with an older single mother, Natalie (played by Marisa Tomei).

Director Todd Field (better known as an actor; he was Nick Nightingale in Eyes Wide Shut) credits the 1991 Andre Dubus story, Killings, as the foundation for the last act of the movie.

The New York Film Critics' Circle has already proclaimed Sissy Spacek best actress and Tom Wilkinson best actor. LA's Film Critics Association has lauded it as best picture (along with Spacek, again, as best actress). And Spacek and Wilkinson took the special jury prize at Sundance. The Golden Globes (long considered an Oscar predictor) has already weighed in with a best picture nomination, best actress nomination for Spacek, and best supporting actress nomination for Marisa Tomei.