By Dan Loughry

The Dying Gaul

The Dying Gaul is an impeccably acted, elegantly directed psychological thriller. Craig Lucas' maiden film bathes the frame in soft light courtesy of cinematographer Bobby Bukowski while the director paces his actors through the angular tableaux of David Hockney's Los Angeles. Yet what's exhilarating about The Dying Gaul isn't its conscious design or meticulous plot. It's how none of its characters are either innocent or monstrous, and how each, in turn, becomes worthy of our conflicted interests.

Film executive Jeffrey (Campbell Scott) offers Robert (Peter Sarsgaard) a million dollars for The Dying Gaul, an autobiographical script about Robert's dead lover, but he wants one small change: The male lovers must become man and woman. Robert agrees out of necessity, but with a gnawing regret over the memory of his companion. While working on the project, Robert becomes a fixture in Jeffrey's Malibu home, friends with his agreeable wife Elaine (Patricia Clarkson), and, ultimately, the object of revenge when she discovers, skillfully, that the men are having an affair.

Most thrillers give the audience a surrogate, a character to worry over and root for. The Dying Gaul gives us none; or, more accurately, three. Lucas keeps our sympathies in constant rotation, though never to the detriment of the other characters, each embodied so fully by the three leads that there are no concessions to antiquated notions of morality. Even when Lucas loses his footing at the very end, it's a blip, a small indiscretion. Robert, Jeffrey, and Elaine are equally wrong, equally right. They all triumph; they all suffer. Without ever truly realizing it, they are fighting -- internally, and amongst themselves -- for their lives.

Loggerheads

Loggerheads -- a calm, powerful narrative debut from Tim Kirkman -- links six characters set in different times in North Carolina. The film deals with the potential hot-button issues of religious intolerance, adoption, and AIDS. Kirkman's previous films were documentaries; here, he uses his non-fiction skills to ground divergent viewpoints.

The plot is as follows: 1999, Kure Beach; Mark, an HIV-positive drifter, befriends George, the manager of a beach motel; 2000, Eden; Elizabeth, a conservative minister's wife, comes to terms with the estrangement of their gay son; 2001, Ashville; a divorcee searches for the son she gave up for adoption in her teens. Kirkman considers his characters both fairly and empathetically. Since we aren't concerned with the narrative interconnections (they're quickly obvious), our focus is drawn to the foibles of human behavior.

The cast is uniformly excellent. Kip Pardue is attractive and mysterious as Mark, a drifter at Kure Beach studying the mating habits of sea turtles. Bonnie Hunt wrings shades of regret from her birth mother Grace. Tess Harper's ice blue eyes pierce the repressive conventions of Elizabeth, a model wife rebelling surreptitiously. In the trickiest role as the minister, Chris Sarandon lets us see the damning control it takes to be righteous. And Michael Kelly as George -- initially rebuffing Mark when he offers himself in return for an act of kindness -- brings unexpected depth to his portrayal of an average gay man's quiet life outside the circuit-axis of NY/SF/LA.

I hate to use the pejorative "small," but too much praise can ruin a film as restrained as Loggerheads. Its refusal to oversell fraught situations makes it seem aimless, but it's crafted and tough, right down to those metaphorical turtles of the title who hazardously return each year to Kure Beach to give birth and instill in their offspring an eternal sense of home.

Where the Truth Lies

Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies is an observation on the nature of celebrity and celebrity journalism -- the Rashomon-like tale of 1950's comedy duo Lanny Morris and Vince Collins (Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth, respectively) modeled on Martin and Lewis. The action shifts between the team's heyday and the early '70s, after their popularity's waned. A young writer (Alison Lohman), with her own ties to their past, investigates the cold case murder of a woman who, 15 years prior, was found dead in the comics' hotel suite.

The film earns its ironical title by using not one, but two unreliable narrators -- the ambitious writer, Karen O'Connor, and the showbiz sleazebag Lanny Morris. There are double-crosses, macguffins, and red herrings galore. Egoyan gamely tries to recreate the heightened tension of Sirk-period

melodramas, but the effect is flattened: in part, by Mychael Danna's obtrusive score, and, more damagingly, by the miscasting of two key roles.

Kevin Bacon -- a fine team player (Mystic River) or a good show on his own (The Woodsman) -- is a bust as Morris. Lanny's always making strange faces, desperate to please and antagonize an audience. Yet Bacon never grabs hold of the role; he's such a consummate actor that the inner life of a hack eludes him. He makes his own strange faces at the camera from working too hard.

But Bacon's a survivor who'll outlast this mess. More troublesome is Alison Lohman -- a talented up-and-comer whose foul performance boils down to one salient detail: She's too young for the scheming, immoral writer. She's too dewy-eyed for a hardnosed bitch. The performance makes her seem inept, a bad actress you'd never want to watch again. Truth is, that would be a tragedy far deeper than anything that happens in this movie.