Intriguing lives intersect in 'Lawless Heart'

LAWLESS HEART

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Dan Bill Nighy

Nick Tom Hollander

Tim Douglas Henshall

Corrine Clementine Celarie

David Stuart Laing

Leah Josephine Butler

Judy Ellie Haddington

Charlie Sukie Smith

Darren Dominic Hall

Stuart David Coffey

Fine Line presents a film written and directed by Tom Hunsingerand Neil Hunter. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated R (for strongsexuality/nudity and language). Opening today at Pipers Alley,Evanston CineArts 6.

'The Lawless Heart" begins with a funeral, which, like allfunerals, assembles people who may not often see one another but havepersonal connections--old, new, hidden and potential. The dead man,named Stuart, ran a restaurant on the Isle of Man, off the Britishcoast. To his funeral come Nick, who was his lover; Dan, who was hisbrother-in-law, and Tim, a childhood friend who has been long absentfrom the village.

The film opens with the reception after the funeral. We meet thecharacters and get to know them a little, we think, and we hear thekinds of profundities and resolutions which people utter whenreminded of the possibility of their own deaths. The conversation isbright and quick, the people are likable, and at the end of theafternoon they go their various ways.

It's then that the film, written and directed by Tom Hunsinger andNeil Hunter, reveals its own hidden connections. It follows the threemen, one after another, in sequences which take place at the sametime but change their meaning depending on the point of view, so thatthe sight of a man crouching out of sight behind a car makes perfectsense, or no sense at all, depending on what you know about why he isdoing it.

Nick (Tom Hollander) helped Stuart run the restaurant, and ifStuart had left a will, we learn, he would have left the business tohis lover. But he left no will. Stuart's sister Judy thereforeinherits the business, but discusses with her husband Dan thepossibility of giving it to Nick anyway.

Nick, meanwhile, discovers that the long-lost friend Tim (DouglasHenshall) is broke and homeless, and lets him stay in the house heshared with Stuart. Tim moves in, drinks too much and throws a party.The next morning Nick finds a girl named Charlie (Sukie Smith) in hisbed, and she wants to know if they had sex. She had sex, all right,but not with the gay Nick--who throws out Tim but begins a friendshipwith Charlie that leads, to his own amazement, to them having sexafter all. Judy discovers this heterosexual excursion by herbrother's lover and takes it as a reason (or an excuse) to keep therestaurant for herself.

Meanwhile, her husband Dan follows up on an intriguingconversation he had at the funeral with Corrine (Clementine Celarie),a French woman who lives in the town, thinks he is single and boldlyinvites him to dinner. Will he accept? The way that he handleshimself on the crucial night is true, funny and ultimately ironic.

These intrigues and others are all interconnected, as we graduallyunderstand. "The Lawless Heart" is an exercise in interlockingnarratives, in which the same scene means first one thing and thenanother, the more we know about it. But it isn't simply an exercise;the characters are full-bodied and authentic, capable of surprisingthemselves, and their dialogue is written with a good ear for howsmart people try to be truthful and secretive at the same time.

We discover, for example, that the reason Tim threw his apparentlysenseless party at Nick's was to create a place to which he couldinvite Leah (Josephine Butler), who he met at the funeral. What Timdoesn't know is that his brother David had an unhappy affair withLeah. Tim is in love with Leah himself, or thinks he is, and theoutcome of this liaison is one that none of the three could haveanticipated.

My description of the plot no doubt makes it sound like a jigsawpuzzle, and yet it's surprising how clear all these relationshipsbecome when we're actually seeing and hearing the characters. They'reso well-drawn, so clear in their needs and fears, that we get drawninto the plot just as we might get drawn into the intrigues of a realvillage; the movie watches its characters like a nosy neighbor,changing its view as more information surfaces.

The purpose of the movie is perhaps to show us, in a quietlyamusing way, that while we travel down our own lifelines, seeingeverything from our own points of view, we hardly suspect the secretsof the lives we intersect with. We tend to think people exist when weare with them, but stay on hold the rest of the time. Our lives goforward--but so, "The Lawless Heart" reminds us, do theirs.