Coming together again

The phrase “talk solutions” emblazons the van that phone lineman Billy -- boyish, glum and in his early 30s -- drives through the drab suburbs of the Irish midlands. The cruel irony of that marketing tagline is as pointedly aching as everything in “Eden,” a drama built upon the pained silences of an unraveling marriage.

Billy (Aidan Kelly) listens in on conversations while repairing lines, but conversation with his wife, Breda (Eileen Walsh), is one of the intimacies he flees. Leaving her alone each night with their two kids, he downs pints and nurses a foolish fascination with a friend’s daughter. Breda, meanwhile, resolves to reignite the embers with a 10th anniversary date, suggesting that they meet at a bar after separate pub crawls.

The high-pressure night unfolds with sharp tension, culminating in events that are melodramatic yet believable. The heightened intercutting of those events, however, reflects the film’s key weakness. Director Declan Recks underlines every emotion, every brooding pause, working against the spare dialogue with fancy-footwork camera moves and an insistent score.

But he can’t deplete the power of the two central performances. Walsh and Kelly are the embodiment of domestic despair, fumbling to find their way back into the light. Having once saved a child from drowning, Billy clings to his moment of heroism as if it’s the only thing keeping him afloat. Breda, as smart as she is, nonetheless pins hopes of marital renewal on a purple dress.

That garment figures in a fantasy she tearfully shares with a friend -- one of several scenes that feel like excuses for monologues. Adapting his play, Eugene O’Brien opens it up with secondary characters, but “Eden” never entirely shakes off its roots as a two-hander.

-- Sheri Linden

“Eden.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes. Exclusively at Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 281-8223.

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Their love lives in tough environs

Novelist and filmmaker Shamim Sarif ended her recent and impressive “The World Unseen” wondering whether it would ever be possible for two Indian women living in rural South Africa at the advent of apartheid in the early ‘50s to fulfill their mutual attraction to each other. In her sensual, witty and elegant “I Can’t Think Straight,” Sarif’s heroines, played by “World Unseen” stars Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth, face serious religious obstacles to their love, but the time is the present and the principal setting London.

In these films, Sarif, adapting her own material, reveals herself to be a natural screen storyteller, creating a gallery of memorable characters.

Sheth’s Leyla is dutifully working for her insurance salesman father (Dalip Tahil) when her boyfriend introduces her to his friend Tala (Ray), the daughter of a Jordanian tycoon. Tala, a Christian Arab, and Leyla, a Muslim, are immediately drawn to each other.

As the characters discover how challenging it is to be true to themselves, Sarif is as observant of their inner conflicts as she is of the worlds in which they live. In exploring the eternal conflict between love and duty in a fresh, provocative way, Sarif demonstrates that she is a filmmaker of exceptional promise.

-- Kevin Thomas

“I Can’t Think Straight.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexual content. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (323) 848-3500.

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A look at a great host of yesteryear

Restaurateur Toots Shor gets an overdue documentary close-up courtesy of his granddaughter, director Kristi Jacobson, in the enjoyable, well-assembled “Toots.”

Structured around Shor’s lively appearances on such classic television shows as “This Is Your Life” and Edward R. Murrow’s “Person to Person,” as well as a candid filmed interview with a young Mike Wallace, “Toots” chronicles the rise and fall of the poor, Philadelphia-born street fighter who ended up hosting America’s most famous entertainers, athletes, politicians and gangsters throughout the 1940s and ‘50s at Toots Shor’s Restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.

Jacobson has compiled impressive newsreel and archival footage, along with terrific vintage photos, to provide a thrilling glimpse of New York City at its most playful and glamorous. Interviews with such Shor friends and observers as newsmen Wallace and Walter Cronkite, writers Gay Talese and Nick Pileggi, and former New York jocks Frank Gifford, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra offer insight into the gruff, hard-drinking saloonkeeper and the exciting world they inhabited.

Though the film slows once it hits the mid-1960s, when Shor, broke and stymied by the fast-changing times, became more anachronism than elder statesman, it remains a vivid portrait of a bygone era.

-- Gary Goldstein

“Toots.” MPAA Rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 24 minutes. Exclusively at the Downtown Independent Theater, 251 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-1033.