The
death of Stuart by drowning in a boating accident off the
Isle of Man serves as a catalyst for emotional flipflops
in Lawless Heart, a British film directed by Neil Hunter
and Tom Hunsinger with the tagline "We think we live
in a rational world . . . then we screw it up." The
principal characters arrive at Stuart's wake, which begins
the film. Several subsequent relationship paradoxes are
explained when film footage goes back in time, including
returns to the wake. Many surprises occur at mealtime in
a Maldon, Essex, town restaurant, Stuart's, which the dead
man evidently owned. Although Stuart was the lover of Nick
(played by Tom Hollander), the sympathy that he receives
from Charlie (played by Sukie Smith) awakens his latent
heterosexuality. Nick's father Dan (played by Bill Nighy),
the only homophobe in the film, meanwhile, carries on a
flirtation with Corinne (played by Clémentine Célarié),
the French woman who operates a florist shop around the
corner from the restaurant, unbeknownst to his wife Judy
(played by Ellie Haddinton), who becomes horny the very
night after he engages in anonymous sex with an entirely
different woman whom he picks up as she strolls down a
street in town. Nevertheless, Dan articulates many eloquent
questions in his conversations with Corinne; alas, there
are no answers. Tim (played by Douglas Henshall) suddenly
turns up at the wake after eight years away from Maldon.
Stuart's first lover, we are led to believe, Tim pursues
Leah (played by Josephine Butler), who in turn recently
broke up with his former buddy David (played by Stuart
Laing). However, the jigsaw puzzle about relationships,
solipsistically perceived in each segment of the film,
turns out to be nothing but a soap opera when we realize
that the only point of the story is that love-starved self-centered
people who seem afraid or incapable of deep commitments,
without understanding themselves, just as the filmmakers
have pretended that life is a myopic transition from birth
to death in a world that needs their help to overcome injustices
of all sorts. MH
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