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...is like dancing about architecture.” That’s a rather zen insight, and the original title of Playing by Heart, an ensemble romance of sorts from writer/director Willard Carroll (who did the 1990 horror film Runestone, of all things -- don’t ever think people can’t change)that seeks to look at love through five-and-a-half or six separate -- but, you begin to suspect, not unrelated -- relationships:
Meredith (Gillian Anderson) is a theatre and commercial director unsure about abandoning her lengthy romantic isolation, following a woefully unfortunate marriage, to get involved with Trent (Jon Stewart), who at 38 is tired of dating and wants a relationship. Paul (Sean Connery) and Hannah (Gena Rowlands) find their golden years unsettled by both his life-threatening illness and the lingering repercussions of an affair he had 25 years earlier. Roger (Anthony Edwards) and Gracie (Madeline Stowe) are cheating together on their respective mates in an unfettered, purely sexual fling. Joan (Angelina Jolie) is becoming obsessed with Keenan (Ryan Phillipe, who’s good but needs pretty soon to take a less brooding part than in all his films so far), he harboring some deep-seated reason of his own to avoid emotional contact. Mildred (Ellen Burstyn, the only actress to win a Tony and an Oscar in the same year, finally getting good roles again) flies to Chicago to comfort her son Mark (Jay Mohr, now showing up in almost as many indie films as Christina Ricci), who is dying of AIDS, and, finally accepting his homosexuality at this lamentably late hour, share a “new spirit of frankness -- it’s oddly cleansing.” Meanwhile, Hugh (Dennis Quaid) is apparently a pathological liar who cruises bars, trolling for sympathy with fabricated tragedies -- except he never actually goes home with anyone.
Despite a couple common, and maybe overused, elements, each of these episodes is compelling, and pleasantly original. All the characters sometimes say things that sound pretentious or manufactured, until you think back on some of the stupid things you’ve said yourself when trying to make sense of love, thereby proving the film’s opening observation. As a bonus, Playing by Heart is also rewarding to watch as little hints -- a repeated phrase here, a one-sided telephone conversation there -- point toward possible intersection.
Think of it as a mystery in which nobody gets killed. B+
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