The Ice Storm
Cast
Kevin Kline .... Ben Hood
Joan Allen .... Elena Hood
Sigourney Weaver .... Janey Carver
Tobey Maguire .... Paul Hood
Christina Ricci .... Wendy Hood
Elijah Wood .... Mikey Carver
Henry Czerny .... George Clair
Jamey Sheridan .... Jim Carver
Katie Holmes .... Libbets Casey
Allison Janney .... Dot Halford
Glenn Fitzgerald .... Neil Conrad
David Krumholtz .... Francis Davenport
Michael Cumpsty .... Philip Edwards
Adam Hann-Byrd .... Sandy Carver
Director: Ang Lee
Written by: James Schamus
Theatrical Release Date: 27 September 1997 (US)
Plot
It’s November 1973 in New Canaan, Connecticut. Watergate has caught up with Richard Nixon. The Beatles are recording solo albums. Wife-swapping has come to the suburbs. And, the Hood family is skidding out of control.
Ben Hood is trying to bed his mistress, next-door neighbor Janey Carver, who seems oddly uninterested. Ben’s wife, Elena, is reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Human Sexual Response and losing patience with her husband’s clumsy lies. Young Wendy Hood is finding new games to play with the boys next door, Mikey Carver and his little brother Sandy.
The day after Thanksgiving, the Hoods’ son Paul escapes to the city to pursue an alluring rich girl from his prep school, and Ben and Elena attend a cocktail party which turns out to be a "key party": a wife-swapping lottery at the end of the evening for couples who dare or just don’t care anymore.
As night falls and the members of the family embark on their separate sexual odysseys, the worst ice storm in thirty years hits the coast. The events of that night -- by turns ribald, comic and tragic -- will bring the Hood family face-to-face with one another for the first time when they meet again, in the cold early light of the morning after the ice storm has passed.
Synopsis from Fox Searchlight