Food for Thought

The deceptively simple story follows married food critics Gabe (Dennis Quaid) and Karen (Andie MacDowell), who find their idyllic suburban New England world shaken when their closest pals, Tom (Greg Kinnear) and Beth (Toni Collette), decide to divorce. Over the course of seven meaty scenes, we feel the profound emotional fallout of the split for each of these four characters.

The quartet of actors jells magnificently. As foodies who use their culinary obsession to avoid chewing over important issues facing their marriage, Quaid and MacDowell artfully flesh out their characters, avoiding the danger of turning them into yuppie-couple stereotypes. Quaid allows glimmers of Gabe's vicarious fascination with Tom's newfound sexual liberty to peek through his primal loyalty to his wife. MacDowell can seem stiff in certain roles (such as ''Green Card''), but here she makes the judgmental Karen feel like a more mature version of her repressed character in the seminal 1989 indie drama ''sex, lies, and videotape.'' (The fact that both actors recently endured marital breakups adds resonance to their performances.)

Aussie native Collette does a flawless American accent without the listen-to-me-I'm-doing-a-flawless-American-accent showiness of her overrated, Oscar-nominated turn in 1999's ''The Sixth Sense.'' She locates the deep insecurities lurking beneath Beth's kooky-artiste exterior and weeps with an unsettling conviction.

Then there's Kinnear. What an impressive actor this guy has turned out to be. Without losing his sly comic timing, the ex-''Talk Soup'' smart-ass continues to display ever-subtler shades of smarm. He makes you see how Tom can honestly believe his self-righteous assertion that his affair with a much younger woman was actually ''a cry for help.'' (''Were your cries detectable by human ears, or just by the dogs in the neighborhood?'' Beth bitterly spits back.)

Margulies adds a few minor ingredients to the mix. We briefly see Tom and Beth's kids, rather than just hear them from offstage as in the play, and that only enhances the situation's poignance.

Director Norman Jewison, an old hand at putting acclaimed plays on screen (''A Soldier's Story,'' ''Agnes of God''), wisely doesn't try to dress up the material with a lot of fancy camera movements. Like other filmmakers of a certain age who've recently returned to TV -- namely Mike Nichols (HBO's ''Wit'') and Sidney Lumet (A&E's ''100 Centre Street'') -- Jewison is a skilled craftsman who knows how to tailor his approach for each project. In fact, ''Dinner'' couldn't differ more from his last film, the unjustly indicted boxing docudrama ''The Hurricane.''

Jewison receives considerable assistance from the Coen brothers' resident director of photography, Oscar nominee Roger Deakins (''O Brother, Where Art Thou?''). The DP gives Gabe and Karen's home a seductively burnished sheen and suffuses a 1988 flashback to the foursome's first vacation to Martha's Vineyard with the golden glow of nostalgia. Dave Grusin's tasteful piano-jazz score smoothly sets the mood -- it's the background music to the dinner parties of their lives. Nearly every detail of the production feels right, from the tempting dishes of food stylist Maelle Deshutter to the book MacDowell reads during the '88 flashback, Tom Wolfe's ''The Bonfire of the Vanities.'' The only false notes come when Quaid warbles ''I'm in the Mood for Love'' over the closing credits.

In the end, the play's the thing. ''You never know what couples are like when they're alone,'' Gabe says. That's just one of Margulies' many plainspoken yet universally true observations. Astringently witty and ultimately heart-shattering, ''Dinner With Friends'' is an expertly prepared gourmet feast in a world of TV dinners.