by MARK SLUTSKY

If you can get over the terrible title, Lawless Heart, the second feature from writer-directors Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger (Boyfriends), is a pretty good movie. It’s one of those overlapping-storyline movies about a group of interrelated characters, with the gimmick being that every half hour or so the movie rewinds and starts the movie again from another character’s perspective.

As these films so often go, the three main characters are brought together in a British seaside town by the death of a friend (David Coffey) who has apparently died in a boating accident, though the exact details are never revealed. Bill Nighy plays Coffey’s brother-in-law, a family man and farmer who suspects that he’s depressed, though he’s not really sure how to figure this out for certain. Nighy meets a French florist (Clémentine Célarié) and they initiate a tentative, illicit flirtation, which causes him a lot of guilt.

We then jump back in time to follow Tom Hollander, Coffey’s bereaved lover. He too seems to be having a hard time getting a handle on his emotions, and he too enters into an unhealthy friendship with a woman, (played by Sukie Smith), though he feels he’s betraying Coffey and his own sexuality. Finally, the last strand of the film focuses on a prodigal-son-slacker type (Douglas Henshall) who’s just returning to the town after eight years of travelling, and who quickly falls for a local lady (Josephine Butler) who has problems of her own.

Lawless Heart is deliberately elliptical about the characters and the lives they’ve lived up to this point, which is actually a nice touch—even by the end, you still feel like there’s more to learn about them. But it takes the slice-of-life thing a little too far in spots. The first story, for instance, never builds to a satisfying resolution, or even to a good moment that pulls it all together. The movie could use a little more spark; some scenes are really flat, and you wish everyone would just get on with it. But overall, there’s some enjoyment to be found in this talky drama.

Lawless Heart opens Friday, May 23

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