Delicate, intelligent and honest.

A compelling family melodrama somewhat in the manner of late John Cassavetes or early Robert Altman...the film combines high production values, terrific acting and a distinctively American lyricism in a combination you hardly ever see these days.

Alan, who Mr. Sachs has said was based on his own father, is a great character - passionate, complicated, bursting with life. Those words also describe Mr. Torn's performance.

Director Ira Sachs moves to the rhythms of his native Memphis, teasing emotional resonance out of geography.

The song may be somewhat familiar, but Sach gets understated performances from his entire cast and finds interesting harmonies as they play out their clashing duets.

Investing a lot of time on each corner of his three-sided character piece, director Ira Sachs (who co-wrote the film with Michael Rohatyn) has created a film as dramatically intense as it is opaque.

This is still powerful, undiluted stuff -- a jolt of backwoods moonshine whiskey injected into the veins of the atrophied American relationship drama.

Sachs has pulled off a film of inferences and intimations, thanks largely to the casting of accomplished actors.

Rip Torn gives his best performance in years.

A slow seduction.

I despised the character of Alan James so sincerely that I had to haul back at one point to remind myself that, hey, I've met Rip Torn and he's a nice guy and he's only acting.

A muted but nicely observed study of a Russian woman's gradual estrangement from her domineering Memphis music-legend husband.

It's Korzun's film, and she is in complete control of her character, never divulging too much of the haunted woman under the studied facade of American hotsiness.

A drab, minor-key melodrama.