Playing by Heart

Eleven people in Los Angeles. A forty-year marriage shakes over the husband's old affair, a mother learns how to talk to her dying son, two people who meet in a club get to know each other by stalling. The strands run separately and converge at a single table at the end. Willard Carroll wrote and directed. The cast includes Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Angelina Jolie, Ryan Phillippe, Dennis Quaid, Gillian Anderson, Jon Stewart, Ellen Burstyn and Madeleine Stowe. The film was first called Dancing About Architecture, after the old line that talking about love is like dancing about architecture. The studio changed it, fearing confusion with Dancing at Lughnasa, released the same year. Jolie drew the most attention; this was the year before Girl, Interrupted and the first part built around her. Quaid's compulsive liar, sliding into strangers' lives, is the film's riskiest idea and deliberately uncomfortable. Who it is for: viewers who like the talky multi-strand dramas of the nineties. Who it is not for: anyone who will find every thread tied off excessive; the ending is very tidy.