Appearances

Di Caprio plays Frank Wheeler, in this drama directed by Sam Mendes, based on the book by Richard Yates. It’s 1955. Frank and April Wheeler live in the Connecticut suburbs with two young children. Frank commutes to New York City where he works in an office job while April stays at home as a housewife. But they’re not happy. April suggests that they move to Paris. April’s plan: she would be the breadwinner, getting a lucrative secretarial job, while Frank would have free time to find himself and whatever his passion. Initially skeptical, Frank ultimately agrees to April’s plan. When circumstances change around the Wheelers, April decides she will do whatever she has to to get herself out of her unhappy existence. Co-starring Kate Winslet and Christopher Fitzgerald.

And it really captured, certainly, Post-Industrial Revolution America where a lot of the American value systems were being formed; that iconic imagery of a man’s role in a household and a woman’s role in the household. Here are two people trying desperately to break free of that and hold on to some individualism in that very contained world.