Diana (Glenn Close) teaches acting and a renown theatrical director. Her daughter Isabel (Elizabeth Banks) is a wedding photographer. She's getting married to lawyer Jonathan (James Marsden). She encounters an ex Mark who suggests a compelling oversea job. Peter is assigned to contact art photographer Benjamin's exes for an exhibit. Joanathan is one of those in his pictures. Alec (Jesse Bradford) auditions for Diana.

Chris Terrio tries directing. It's not visually exciting. There is a nice interconnection to the stories. Glenn Close is a powerful presence. The stories play out nicely but it does need more intensity.

Diana (Glenn Close) is a drama teacher who daughter Isabel (Elizabeth Banks is getting married. She's going to marry Jonathan (James Marsden) but she's not sure if it's what she should do. Her ex Mark (Matt Davis) offers her a job that might be a way out. Actor Alec (Jesse Bradford) auditions for Diana and she becomes attracted to him. And photographer Benjamin Moore is having a show...and all hell will break loose. Got all that?

Multi-character drama seriously offers nothing new plot-wise but it's well-written and acted by a great cast. Close leads the way and is superb followed closely by Banks. Even Marsden, Bradford and Davis are good--and I've never really liked any of them. Well-directed with good use of Rufus Wainwright music. There's also a very passionate gay kiss. But seriously...I've seen this all before. These plots have been done in other movies. Still it's worth catching for the acting alone. Recommended.

This film begins with the Glenn Close character, a famous actress who could be Close herself, giving a master class in Shakespeare to a bunch of Juilliard acting students, in which she laments the lack of passion she sees in their performances and, more broadly, in the world she inhabits. Which is a fitting, and ironic, prologue for a movie that looks at the ennui of urban lives and the emotional earthquakes that disrupt them. This is a contemporary New York character-driven drama, but it reminds me of a 1970s movie -- in a good way. There are slightly retro split screens, long-lens conversations like mid-period Woody Allen movies, and a sense of lightness in the directing style that never becomes slickness. It's also refreshing to see an independent film that doesn't completely deteriorate in the third act -- it's almost become taboo to tell a story that is satisfying in the world of independent film, because it's seen as a concession to Hollywood. But this manages to do it in a convincing way without selling out to the forces of cheesiness or convention.