I expected it to have a dinner scene like the one in <August: Osage County> but it was more like a collection of sharp cold broken ice shards that melt slowly. The distant characters with their seemingly boring suburban lives burst and exploded into passion, compassion, tears, and death when an ice storm arrived and everything became frozen and still. I wonder whether it felt easy for Ang Lee to tap into the waspy Connecticut suburban dysfunction thanks to his familiarity with repressive East Asian family culture.