MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Truly, Madly’ Appealingly Weepy

In the enjoyably askew new British film “Truly, Madly, Deeply,” (selected theaters) Juliet Stevenson plays Nina, a woman whose live-in lover, a cellist played by Alan Rickman, has recently kicked the bucket. We see her in the throes of her misery: alone in her mouse-infested flat, at her therapist’s, with her friends, at work. She floods the screen with her tears.

Then Rickman’s Jamie shows up in her living room, ghostly yet corporeal, and ready to romp. This provokes more of Nina’s tears: in fact, she spends most of the movie quite damp. By the time she settles into her new unreal reality, another gent (Michael Maloney), this time a living one, has his eye on her. A social worker for the mentally disadvantaged, he first catches Nina’s eye by breaking up a restaurant brawl with an improvised magic act. This guy has Free Spirit stamped on his forehead, and it’s not long before Nina finds herself torn between two lovers.

Since it’s never clear whether the new Jamie exists entirely in Nina’s mind, the possibilities for a Polanski-like psychodrama are ever present. But writer-director Anthony Minghella is after something quite different; he’s trying for the poetry of the mundane, and what he ends up with is not quite poetry and not quite mundane, either. It’s a more straightforward and graceless attempt at the kind of magical realism that the Scottish director Bill Forsyth (“Local Hero”) is so adept at. Minghella hasn’t really worked out the plot’s fantasy/reality elements--he doesn’t seem to care. What he cares about is achieving a kind of generic tone of life affirmation. With her new love, Nina is supposed to learn at last how to let go of her old one. (The film is unrated; occasional strong language.)

One of the film’s little jokes is that Nina’s grand passion, when he finally re-materializes, is something of a drag on her life. In the process of rejuvenating her, he closes off her emotional possibilities. The couple’s pouting and squalling and teasing and nursery rhyming at first resemble the cooing of lovebirds, but Nina tires of it. The movie is about how she recognizes when it’s time to move on.

This British take on love and the great beyond is a more civilized entertainment than a Hollywood blunderbuss like “Ghost,” with its wraparound yearnings and cheesy special effects. Once past her initial shock, not only does Nina seem unfazed by Alan’s presence; Alan doesn’t seem particularly fazed by being back on terra firma either. It’s all very upright and reassuring, but it might be more fun if it wasn’t supposed to also teach us a lesson about coping with despair. Juliet’s odyssey is signposted with “significance.”

One of the pitfalls of this approach is that Alan Rickman, one of the great modern movie villains, is made to act like a homey, cranky good guy. (He must have been made a cellist so that we could hear Bach on the soundtrack, for that tony effect.) Rickman was amazing onstage as the smarmy-elegant lover in “Les Liaisons Dangeureuses,” and some of his deft eroticism in that role would have done wonders here.

But then that’s not the sort of wonder that Anthony Minghella wants. Introducing a sexual spark into this dry hayloft would have set the whole shebang ablaze. The point of this film seems to be that wholesomeness is a sign of maturity, and it partially cancels out the performers. Juliet Stevenson breaks through anyway. She has a charged core, like Judy Davis, and she makes you root for her passage to happiness.

‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’

Juliet Stevenson: Nina

Alan Rickman: Jamie

Bill Paterson: Sandy

Michael Maloney: Mark

A Samuel Goldwyn Co. release. Director Anthony Minghella. Producer Robert Cooper. Executive producer Mark Shivas. Screenplay Anthony Minghella. Cinematographer Remi Adefarasin. Editor John Stothart. Costumes James Keast. Music Barbara Pheloung. Production design Barbara Gasnold. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

MPAA-rated Unrated. Occasional strong language.