IT IS 1973. The Watergate scandal is reaching its climax and the Sixties free-love revolution has come to the suburbs. At the centre of the film are the Hoods, a comfortably-off East Coast family dealing with what seem like regular white middle class problems. In particular, Ben (Kevin Kline) and Elena (Joan Allen) have lost the fire in their marriage, and therapy has not helped. It also becomes clear from the edgy mood of a long, smokey dinner party scene with their neighbours, Jim and Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver), that their malaise is infectious.

However, this is no dull domestic saga. Where the "The Ice Storm" is so absorbing is in its depiction of the inner tensions caused when the sexual revolution rubs up against a traditional value system. Even the local cleric is not immune. Just when you think the dialogue threatens to become ordinary, a jagged line or unexpected look throws your preconceptions askew.

Then there are the children. "The Ice Storm" is as much about the gulf between adult and child worlds. The eldest one, Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire), is your typical pot-smoking college kid who has an unrequited crush on his rich female class mate. His 14 year-old sister, Wendy (Christina Ricci), is playing "I'll show you mine..." games with the gifted teenager next door, Mikey Carver (Elijah Wood). The fourth and youngest child Sandy Carver (Adam Hann-Byrd), a strange boy who mutilates his toys, has a crush on young Wendy. The adults however don't get their kids. The kids refer to their parents as "parental units" or not at all. But, their lives over-lap more than they care to admit and more than is initially apparent to the viewer.

It should have been clear from the vivid opening scene, a train frozen to the railway tracks, that "The Ice Storm" is more than just observational satire. Lee is a director who speaks volumes in images. The ice that frosts the train windows, hardens in jagged lumps off the overhead cable and cements the steel wheels, is an enduring one. In the film, ice becomes beautiful, fascinating and deathly at once. The ice storm hitting the East Coast, causes power failures, creates tension in the narrative and resonates as a metaphor for the interactions between the various characters - the chilly silences that freeze out husband from wife, husband and lover or father and child. If that sounds like a glib connection, don't worry: director Ang Lee, who you may remember directed "Sense and Sensibility" and "Eat Drink Man Woman", is too shrewd and subtle to fall into that trap. His direction is delicate, compassionate and yet powerful.

Lee also brings out the best in his cast. In "The Ice Storm" our perceptions of characters are constantly thawing, melting and reshaping. Kevin Kline, as the cheating husband and tongue-tied father, manages to inspire a remarkable mixture of emotions; Sigourney Weaver as his lover does a good job as his glam lover, listless and distant; Joan Allen gives a powerful performance as the cheated wife struggling with the inner turmoil of her husband's affair; and the childrens' performances are all excellent.

"The Ice Storm" reeks of the Seventies, in its fashions and mores. But its message, that sexual liberation aint all that hunky dory after all, extends far beyond this one era in time.