Asperger’s romance (and high time, too, after Tourette’s, Alzheimer’s, etc., have had a whirl at romance) about a socially handicapped astronomy buff and his pretty upstairs new neighbor, an aspiring children’s writer, in a New York apartment house. Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne, the afflicted and the normal respectively, play their parts with tremendous detail and concentration, and even though Dancy’s details are the more ostentatious (the blindman’s lack of eye contact, the panic attacks, the tantrums, the nonstop spiels), Byrne more than holds her own through ordinary human warmth and engagement. It’s a standoff as well in suppression of native accents, English and Australian, his and hers. The romantic element is not too gooey, notwithstanding the do-it-yourself home planetarium or the raccoon communion in Central Park, and is helpfully counterbalanced by some prosaic family business (Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving, as Byrne’s concerned parents). Beautiful atmospheric drifty snowfall at, or just prior to, the climax. Written and directed by Max Mayer. (2009) — Duncan Shepherd
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