Ah, if this film had just been about 30 minutes shorter...or maybe if it had felt a bit shorter I would be giving it a full throated “huzzah!” Samantha Morton, one of the greatest actors now walking the planet, is Claire Barney a depressed yet cheerful meter maid. (I know they don’t call them that anymore) She takes care of her ailing mother, played by Teri Garr, and they live in a small apartment. She’s, as one would imagine of Morton, perfect at playing this particular oddball recluse, because she always seems to be the innocent outsider, living on the fringes and wondering how she got there.

After she, again the nice one, gets run down by some abusive car jerk, she happens to meet her tempermental opposite, Jay, played with geeky rage by Jason Patric, another one of my favorites. Jay also has no life as evidenced by his fondness for “sex” with internet “actresses.” Somewhat inexplicably, however, he has a son. And we’re off on the madcap romance between this strange couple.

The Director, Cecilia Miniucchi, a protege of the groundbreaking Italian woman director Lina Wertmuller is playing on the multiple meanings of “expired”. Meters, relationships, people and how it all fits together. And it is in this context that once Morton is called upon to relate strangely to a corpse, as she did to a bit better effect in Morvern Callar, a few years back.

Additionally, Miniucchi’s exploration of the lives and work of two very differently odd and isolated people is fascinating. But in this situation the action and situations eventually almost grind to a halt and there is little place left for the characters to go. Presumably these walled off characters, Claire and Jay, have inner lives that will bubble up to the surface and allow them to play off of each other. In this situation, however, not enough happens so that there is a vast gaping middle.

But that’s about my only criticism of the film. It’s outright brilliant for about the first half and the cinematographer is an absolute genius. Zoran Popovic takes every convention for shooting Hollywood style and opens it wide up. Instead of the wide shot followed by alternating back and forth “over the shoulder” closeups during conversations between Claire and Jay, the camera is fluid -- smoothly floating back and forth between them. It’s not jarring and pointlessly “real” handheld, but an organic movement that gives a a feeling that we are in that space, watching them from very nearby. Thus we have a very simple, beautifully photographed, brilliantly acted and strange romance -- well worth contemplating in an age where relationship movies involving adults are tepid, overly romanticized fantasies at best.

Opens June 27, 2008 in Los Angeles.

Written and directed by Cecilia Miniucchi; director of photography, Zoran Popovic; mu-sic by Jeffrey Coulter; edited by Anne Goursaud and Fritz Feick; produced by Jeffrey Coulter and Fred Roos. Released by MCR Releasing. Running time: 106 minutes.

With:Samantha Morton (Claire Barney), Jason Patric (Jay Caswell), Illeana Douglas (Wilma) and Teri Garr (Mother Barney/Aunt Tilde).