Severe weather is a heavy metaphor for the sexual revolution, but a good one. While the grownups come to terms with the new rules of conduct, their children are enjoying the relaxed morals. Ben's 16-year-old son Paul (Tobey McGuire) is in New York, trying to drug his best friend so that he can make time with a girl they both like; and his daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) is playing "show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine" with the Carver boys next door. Yet, adult or child, enlightened or repressed, when they step outside, they're all reduced to slipping around, trying to find their balance.

The Ice Storm is a slow, quiet film, almost devoid of plot. Lee's focus, drawn from James Schamus' script, is on details of time and place. Observant filmgoers will find the real story between the bed-hopping and the scant lines of dialogue. (The only character who likes to talk is Kline, who seems to think he can keep his family together with positive thoughts.) The story is in the look of pining for lost youth on Joan Allen's face, and in the mixture of arousal, jealousy, and desperation on the faces at the key party. It's also in Paul's insights into the dynamics of the Fantastic Four, and the meaning of their adventures in the Negative Zone (read: the '70s).

The story Lee tells is similar to his Sense and Sensibility and Eat Drink Man Woman--it's about the importance of manners and codes of behavior in society. The Ice Storm has some puckish fun with the spectacle of this chilly Connecticut suburb trying to embrace sexual liberation, but mostly Lee hones in on the sadness at the center of these lives that suddenly seem so empty.