This Is Where We Live

Beautifully acted by the largely unknown cast, This is Where We Live is as reticent as its characters, its emotions emerging as much from what’s unsaid as expressed. Its admirably understated approach infuses what could have been an all too predictable, feel good drama with an intriguing complexity.

For all its sure-handed sense of place, its occasional grace notes of loss, grief and misery, This is Where We Live fails to seize and break our hearts, keeping its glum characters at arm’s length and doling out “hope” in tiny, cloying teaspoon-size servings.

Often threatening sentimentality yet never quite sinking into it, Josh Barrett and Marc Menchaca's This Is Where We Live benefits from the good taste of the filmmakers, whose appetite for understatement ensures that the picture maintains dramatic effectiveness and only rarely lurches into histrionics.

Though the developing bond between the two men — one of whom is virtually nonverbal — is credible and even touching, the storytelling is too oblique to reel you in.