World Traveler

Cal (Billy Crudup), is a man in his mid thirties, living in New York City, with a loving wife and a baby. But when he becomes frustrated with his family life, he follows his most immediate instincts--he gets in the car, and simply drives away. This straightforward yet shocking decision is the event that begins WORLD TRAVELER, in which Cal comes under the microscope of psychological observation. He embarks on a road trip that leads him down strange paths and introduces him to an eclectic cast of world-weary characters. Dulcie (Julianne Moore) is one of these people, an emotionally wounded woman who is desperately searching for her lost son. As Cal scans through memories of his family life, patched into the film through vivid flashbacks, he also absorbs his new, wholly unsettled, lost, listing life. Through his encounters on the road, and his conversations with the strange but fascinating Dulcie, he eventually finds a new perspective on his family life. Directed by Bart Freundlich, whose THE MYTH OF THE FINGERPRINTS carried a similar theme of looking at life with introspection through outsider's eyes, WORLD TRAVELER deftly uses the talents of both Crudup and Moore and allows them to propel the film into its nearly dreamlike crossroads between living life and just thinking about it.