Wakefield

What if a dutiful husband and father of twin girls chose not to return home one evening, and found he preferred his new life? That's the question posed by this modern-day parable, in which Bryan Cranston brings brittle geniality - and a hint of ordinary madness - to suburban New York lawyer Howard Wakefield. After a chance altercation with a raccoon, he ends up sleeping above his own garage, prompting his perfect-seeming wife (Jennifer Garner) to report him as a missing person. Seasons change while Howard remains undetected in the loft, scavenging food, defecating into a bucket and spying on his old life. Adapted almost word-for-word from a New Yorker short story by EL Doctorow, Wakefield is a steady second film from screenwriter Robin Swicord, who wrote The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Memoirs of a Geisha, and directed 2007 drama The Jane Austen Book Club. It's prosaically told in first-person narration, with flashbacks for backstory that allow Garner to shine. If Howard is simply having a nervous breakdown, he inflates it into a cosmic reawakening, discovering he loves his wife more profoundly from a distance ("What is there about a family that is so sacrosanct?"). It's thought-provoking but easier to buy into on the page than on screen, with Wakefield himself coming across as borderline creepy.