Book of Love [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Book of Love focuses on the tiny stories, the little moments in life where an expression or an action can have enormous and profound significance, whether it's a sight of a fifteen-year-old's swim-toned abs as he pulls of a sweatshirt, a young, impressionable student staring wide-eyed at her teacher, or the look of longing on a woman's face as ponders committing adultery while her husband sleeps in a hammock in the back yard.

High-school history teacher David Walker (Simon Baker) and his events-planner wife Elaine (Frances O'Connor) appear to have the perfect life - a lovely house, good jobs, and a close marriage. We first meet them when they are participating in the intimate routines of every day life - he is going to the toilet, and she is checking out her figure in the mirror. They're an attractive couple, but while she's kept a hard body through yoga, he's gone a little soft around the middle-too little exercise and too much ice cream. Their lives have reached that point where passion is slowly being replaced by contentment; they're still in love but their marriage has shifted and they now know each other so well that a slight touch or look will suffice.

One hot summer day they decide to drop into the local ice cream shop where they meet the 15-year-old Chet (Gregory Smith). Chet, a champion swimmer, possesses a hormone driven sexually aggressive worldliness that seems to capture them both. It doesn't take long for the couple to take an instant liking to him. Elaine initially feels sorry for the boy, his mother is dead, his father works all the time and he is somewhat isolated at school. But Elaine is also subliminally attracted to him, and she underhandedly decides to take him under her wing.

Discovering that he's never been out of New Jersey - he's never even been on a plane - the couple asks him to a Manhattan nightclub to watch a friend sing, and then invite him to dinner at their home. After making some tentative plans to take him to Disney world, the three settle down to a candle lit dinner. Despite his age, Elaine serves the boy several glasses of wine. While David is in a drunken asleep, Chet tries to kiss Elaine.

At first she rebuffs him but he comes by the next day and she immediately gives into the passions that have so sadly begun to dwindle in her marriage. David is shattered when he finds about the indiscretion, his reaction a strange mixture of part titillation and part anger. However, he manages to pull it all together and decides to keep his promise to Chet by paying for them all to go to Disney World.

The pleasure of this film is watching the subtle changes that take place between Elaine and David. The affair precipitates many hidden agendas and ultimately rocks the already deceptively fragile marriage: David wants to start a family with Elaine, but Elaine is far more concerned with maintaining her girlish, trim figure; one night she even tells David "lets have children in about ten years time." But David's paternal instincts are unleashed when he is asked by a lesbian friend to become her sperm donor. He's initially hesitant, but later on in the movie, he seems to warm to the idea.

The problem is that Elaine views Chet, as some kind of equal when in actuality he's not. He may be rapaciously horny, but he has no real life experience behind him. He's eager to be initiated into the world of adults, but Elaine makes a grave miscalculation when she decides to sleep with him. Not only is she in danger of being arrested, but also she's remarkably naive to think that the dalliance won't have devastating emotional consequences for her marriage.

Writer director Alan Brown makes some sharp observations about married life, human relationships, and how seemingly well-ordered lives can quietly implode almost over night. The three central performances are terrific, and it's interesting to see Australians Simon Baker and Francis O'Connor taking on such emotionally complex roles in the USA. The attractive Baker is terrific as Dave, an affable, likeable and perceptive man who tries drastically to repress the hurt, bitterness, and ugly emotions that lurk beneath his placid exterior.

Dave is worried about his entry into middle age, constantly checking his love handles out in the mirror and trying to control his surroundings with little habits like correcting the grammar of those around him. O'Connor realistically portrays a woman who is 28 and is in no hurry to give up her youth; she's remarkably honest about her desires, and has the courage to actually "own" her indiscretions. And Gregory Smith as Chet does a great job of showing how far a hormonally driven teenager will go to satisfy his desires.

The film opens and closes with a Cambodian girl working on a loom. Perhaps this symbolizes how our lives are intertwined and entangled, and although it's a nice touch it comes across as a bit too conceptual and self-consciously arty. However, Book of Love has a subtle emotional impact that gradually creeps up on you, and stays long after the movie has finished. Viewers, will for sometime, probably find themselves questioning the motivations of the various characters and pondering the unhappy and rather bittersweet resolution to the story. Mike Leonard April 05.