Torn between father and son

Laura (Dina Korzun), a Russian woman with a young son, has been transported to America as the live-in lover of Michael, a temperamental country music impresario (Rip Torn) from Memphis.

He is coming to the end of a career full of honours, but is as wary of marriage as he is of an off-key recording session. His own son (Darren E Burrows) has an awkward relationship with him as well as a failing marriage, and an increasing attraction to Dad's girl.

Ira Sachs's second feature - his first was Delta in 1997 - is deliberately slow-paced and sparely written, trying for intimate detail rather than broad brushstrokes. Its chief distinction is a performance from Korzun that is mesmerising.

Her portrait is positively Garboesque in its capacity to do a great deal with very little. Laura guesses that her elderly lover is not above affairs, but she also knows that her life is several times better than it could have been back home.

She is content with affection rather than love until Michael's son comes along. But then her whole world collapses when the swashbuckling impresario makes a public proposal of marriage.

Forty Shades of Blue won't please everyone. It may be too elliptical for some and too slow. But, for me, Sachs has encapsulated the country music scene with a truthful sense of its rough, tough sentiment as well as its good ol' boy lack of sophistication.

I'm not sure I believe in the ending of this intriguing story. But I won't spoil it for you. Suffice to say Rip Torn shows that he is one of the best and most underrated actors in American cinema and Korzun is extraordinary. Sachs has made enough space for an outstanding actress to show us a subtlety of expression that sometimes takes the breath away.

As the director puts it himself, he has turned his camera 'towards a character who often gets overlooked: a woman on the arm of a powerful man, who usually stays on the periphery'.

Forty Shades Of Blue
Cert: 15