“Suburban life. So much is the same week after week. Who hasn’t had the impulse to put their life on hold for a moment? Just vanish completely,” says Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston) in the first trailer for Robin Swicord’s “Wakefield.” The businessman takes his daydreaming one huge step forward by deciding not to go home to his wife (Jennifer Garner) and teenage daughters after a late night at work. Instead, he retreats to the attic of the family’s garage. He camps there, watching his loved ones — and the police — deal with the aftermath of his unexplained absence.

“I never left my family,” Howard claims. “I left myself. Unshackled, I’ll become the Howard Wakefield I was meant to be.”

An adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s 2008 short story of the same name, “Wakefield” marks Swicord’s second feature credit as a director. She previously helmed 2007’s “The Jane Austen Book Club.” She penned both screenplays. In 2009 Swicord received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Her other writing credits include “Little Women,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and “The Promise.” The latter, a love triangle set during the final days of the Ottoman Empire, hits theaters tomorrow, April 21.

When we asked Swicord what she’d like people to think about after watching “Wakefield,” she said, “I’d love for people to find themselves crowded with a variety of competing thoughts, along the lines of, ‘Where will this story go from here?’; ‘What was going on, on her side of the story?’; ‘Could I ever forgive him?’; ‘Could I ever do what he did? And what do I think would happen if I did?’; ‘Could this man have changed as much, without doing something as drastic?’; and ‘What does it take to reclaim yourself? What has to be sacrificed?’”

“Wakefield” made its world premiere at Telluride last year and hits theaters May 19.