What happens at the end of Revolutionary Road?

The argument that breaks everything

By the final act, the Wheelers' plan to escape suburban misery by moving to Paris has collapsed. Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) has accepted a promotion at the job he's always hated. April (Kate Winslet) is pregnant with their third child — and sees the baby as the final lock on a life she finds unbearable. Abortion was illegal in every US state in the mid-1950s.

Their last argument is devastating. Frank, cornered and lashing out, tells April he wishes she'd aborted the pregnancy. April runs into the woods, alone.

The morning after

The next day, April is eerily calm. She cooks Frank breakfast, smiles, tells him she loves him. Everything he wants to hear. Then she calls her neighbour Milly (Kathryn Hahn), who's watching the children, and chokes out what sounds like a goodbye.

She performs the abortion herself. It goes wrong. By the time Frank gets home, April is bleeding out. She dies in hospital.

Was it suicide?

The film — and Richard Yates' 1961 novel — leaves this deliberately unresolved:

• Frank's first reaction — he tells their friend Shep point-blank that she killed herself.
• Frank's second thought — he later reconsiders, imagining April's practical reasoning: she hid the syringe because she didn't want questions, which implies she expected to survive.

Director Sam Mendes called April a "truly heroic character" — the only person in the story who admits to wanting something she doesn't have.

Whether her death was desperation, defiance, or miscalculation is left for the audience to carry out of the cinema.

The final scene

Frank moves to New York City and becomes a quiet, devoted father — tears in his eyes as he watches his children on a playground. The neighbours gossip. Then comes the film's cruellest moment: Helen Givings (Kathy Bates) sits with her husband Howard, complaining about how unpleasant the Wheelers always were.

Mid-sentence, Howard reaches for his hearing aid and turns it off.