Anchor and Hope

There is nothing grand about Anchor and Hope. It is only that which is extraordinarily difficult to make: a simply well-executed film.

Even if it does occasionally threaten to outstay its welcome with a 111-minute running time, the deeply engaging performances and that freeing and uninhibited Spanish flavour which Marques-Marcet brings to his English-language debut, means it’s the kind of world you really don’t mind lingering in.

For all its little issues, “Anchor and Hope” is tremendously aided by three fine performances.

As predictable as their tale may be, Chaplin, Tena and Verdaguer serve their characters well, with the former and latter particularly impressing with the material.

Too often, viewers just have to take a movie love story’s word for it that its characters actually belong together. Not so in Carlos Marques-Marcet’s loose, observant Anchor and Hope.

The talk turns toward the tedious and the jokes, the situations and the romantic longing never draw us in. The viewer isn’t so much a part of the story as a bystander, curious and occasionally titillated, but rarely moved.

There’s a potentially smart and sexy lesbian dramedy at the heart of “Anchor and Hope” that gets lost amid idiosyncratic filmmaking and a lack of narrative discipline.