Three sides of one coin

It’s the little things that mean a lot in “Lawless Heart.” A woman’s scarf. A bowl of sugar. A corkscrew. Such everyday items usually merit little more than a passing glance, either on film or in real life. But here, by virtue of their very ordinariness, they factor notably in the dramatic goings-on, like background pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that are necessary to complete the whole picture.

“Things like a bowl of sugar and a scarf assume enormous significance in the way the film has been crafted,” notes Tom Hollander, who co-stars in the British film. “They assume the significance of the skyscraper in ‘The Towering Inferno.’ ”

The story told in “Lawless Heart,” which opens Friday, is revealed from the separate perspectives of three people: one, a disaffected spouse, the second a gay man who has lost his lover and is struggling with grief issues; the third a free spirit at loose ends. Sound familiar? Well, if you’re thinking “The Hours,” think again. For one thing, this film is about men, not women. “Lawless Heart” is a bittersweet tale that takes place over the course of a few days in a small English seaside village. The hours that pass are depicted three times, as the film unfolds like a triptych, with the same series of events shown each time via a different character’s experiences and reactions.

The ordinary objects on notable view appear tangentially, yet by the time the film has ended, they’ve woven together into a cohesive narrative tapestry. But they don’t ultimately add up to some big dramatic climax. Unlike other films which offer multiple points of view, such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Rashomon,” there’s no mystery to be solved, no murderous confrontation at the eleventh hour. Rather, a series of life’s day-to-day moments -- some neutral, others pleasing or painful -- subtly inform and influence one another.

“I like that small objects have meaning,” says Neil Hunter, who co-wrote and co-directed “Lawless Heart” with Tom Hunsinger. “But it’s emotional things rather than some big plot point. Everything begins to accumulate meaning, but it doesn’t have to be heavy-handed. We worked really hard to keep a lot of those moments playful and light.”

“Lawless Heart” begins (all three times) after the funeral of Stuart, a young restaurant owner who has died in a boating accident. The segments are seen through the eyes of his lover, Nick (Hollander), brother-in-law Dan (Bill Nighy) and long-lost friend Tim (Douglas Henshall). Each man finds himself at a crossroads, with unexpected results. In Nick’s case, he takes the first steps toward recovering from the loss of Stuart via a tentative relationship with Charlie, who, as it happens, is a woman. Dan is tempted toward an extramarital affair with a sensuous French florist. And Tim, who fled his stifling hometown eight years earlier, considers putting down roots for the first time in his adult life after hooking up with an attractive shopgirl.

Each section was filmed in a different style, to reflect the distinct sensibilities of the lead characters. Nick’s story was shot with static cameras, illustrating a character trapped in his grief, not knowing what to do next with his life.

When the focus was on Dan, the cameras were mounted on tracks and dollies, to show his confusion and indecision, Hunter explains.

For Tim, the filmmakers wanted a somewhat edgier style, so that segment was shot using a hand-held camera.

“It’s about the way the things we do have an impact on other people that we’re not necessarily aware of,” says Hunter, from his home in London. “That’s the point of the structure. The way people’s lives intersect has ripples in other people’s lives that they can’t see but the audience does.”

Hollander agrees. “You’ve got three people who discover they want to make some change in their lives,” he says during a recent interview in Los Angeles. “They pursue individual paths that don’t necessarily work, but they come through it in the end. I think it’s brilliantly about the confusion of people’s lives, the comedy of people’s little desires and miseries and hopes.”

Hunter and Hunsinger have collaborated for more than a decade -- their first film, “Boyfriends,” was released in 1996. They developed the script for “Lawless Heart” through improvisation with actors. A few, including Nighy, ended up in the final production. Their division of labor during the writing process is fairly balanced, but when the cameras start to roll, Hunter is in charge of the technical elements of direction, and Hunsinger works with the cast.

When they started working together, Hunter recalls, “I didn’t know how to talk to actors. There’s a sort of special language there, and it wasn’t a language I knew.”

Hunsinger had been an actor (he also teaches acting), so it seemed natural that he should take on that responsibility. “Tom rehearses the actors; I’m not there generally -- and then they come on set. Usually, that works out fine, because our partnership wouldn’t work if we didn’t agree on the sort of acting we like and the performances we like.”

For those scenes in “Lawless Heart” where events repeat from sequence to sequence, the different versions were shot one right after another. “I often didn’t know what was going on,” admits Hollander. “But Neil and Tom knew exactly what they were doing. They worked so long on the script, they knew just how they were going to shoot it. So really, it was just a question of the actors not getting in the way.”

Much of “Lawless Heart” was shot in Essex, where Hunter grew up. (Hunsinger is originally from Kansas but has lived in England for 25 years.) With a $3 million budget, it helped that the farmhouse that serves as Nighy’s house is actually Hunter’s childhood home, where his family still lives.

After opening in England last year, the “Lawless Heart” screenplay won a British Independent Film Award and earned favorable reviews earlier this year when it opened in New York. Hunter is understandably delighted.

“I think it’s an honest film,” he says. “Critics see a lot of films, don’t they, and they get a bit tired with formulas. We wanted to make an honest film that felt a bit like life.”