‘Harvey’ makes the most of his chance

It’s as if you’ve stumbled into a storefront gallery with some low-slung jazz playing quietly in the background. The images are mostly solitary ones -- a man here, a woman there. Even in crowds they seem isolated. There is stillness and a sadness in these people -- bare memories of what being with someone feels like lingering around the edges. You wish them a happy ending.

And that is the effect of “Last Chance Harvey,” writer-director Joel Hopkins’ meditation on loneliness and love coming at a time in life when you might think those chances have all played out. Just about everything works in this small and surprisingly hopeful film, with beautifully attenuated performances by Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, who slip into the characters Hopkins has sewn for them like an old sweater.

The story nestled inside “Last Chance Harvey” is neither unfamiliar nor uncommon. Life is generally good, but the years chip away at onetime dreams; relationships fail or never quite happen; days are framed by a series of compromises big and small.

Like a lot of his late-middle-aged compatriots, Harvey -- that would be Hoffman -- has long since come to terms with the notion of falling short. In the case of career, it’s writing jingles for TV commercials, his hopes of being a jazz musician long since packed away. “Were you any good?” he’s asked at one point. “Not good enough,” he replies.

Still, the job is something to hold onto, but Harvey finds even that in jeopardy as he heads to London for his daughter’s marriage -- his having fractured and died years ago. His relationship with daughter Susan (Liane Balaban) hasn’t turned out as he’d planned either. There are, simply put, any number of last chances facing Harvey as he boards the plane.

Life for Kate, played by Thompson, is waning too. In her 40s and still single -- “my situation” is how her mother (Eileen Atkins) refers to it -- she spends her days in data collection at Heathrow Airport, asking other people about what we can only guess are their far more interesting lives.

But mostly Kate’s time is spent trying to cope with regrets as events conspire to loosen her increasingly tenuous hold on the notion that her life will somehow turn out differently. Kate’s upper lip may be stiff, but in Thompson’s good hands every blow is quietly recorded -- in the sag in her shoulders, the deep breath taken on the sly, the tears that she wills not to fall. Thompson lets us witness Kate’s pain without pity, a neat trick indeed.

Hopkins takes his time getting Kate and Harvey together, moving seamlessly between their separate humiliations -- hers on a blind date, among other numerous smaller slights, his at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, where Susan has opted to have her stepfather give her away. The power in these moments, whether painful or comical or both, comes from their ordinary everydayness rather than cruel intentions.

When the couple finally does meet, really meet (there’s a chance encounter and a missed connection early on), most of what happens unfolds as they walk the streets of a sleek glass-and-steel London -- like the once wood-and-stone city, Harvey and Kate are trying to refashion something new.

In between meandering conversations, love begins to bloom. The usually verbal Hoffman makes great use of silence and restraint, patient in unexpected moments, standing back to allow Kate time to feel. There are other fine turns, especially Atkins as Kate’s concerned and smothering mother, but the film, really, is carried ever so gently on the shoulders of Thompson and Hoffman (shoulders that have rightfully borne the weight of multiple Oscars).

Though it might be tempting to think of “Last Chance Harvey” as an AARP variation on Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise,” that would give short shrift to the film Hopkins has given us, more measured in its storytelling than Linklater, who feeds in the most exquisite of ways the cinema verite voyeur in all of us.

This is the 38-year-old Hopkins’ second movie, and the themes that began in his first, 2001’s “Jump Tomorrow,” flow through it, although guided by a far more confident hand. “Jump” caught Thompson’s eye and the two talked -- a conversation that led Hopkins to write the role of Kate for the actress. There were hints of what a teaming of Thompson and Hoffman might look like in 2006’s “Stranger Than Fiction.” Within a few short scenes, they anchored each other, creating a balance, an organic rightness, that made you hunger for more. It is a promise largely realized in “Last Chance Harvey.” And while there are some false notes along the way, when Kate asks, “Shall we walk?,” follow Harvey’s lead and say yes.

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betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

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‘Last Chance Harvey’

MPAA rating: PG-13 for brief strong language.

Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes.

Playing: In limited release in these L.A. area theaters: Pacific’s the Grove, Laemmle’s Monica, the Landmark and ArcLight Sherman Oaks.