Consider it a good sign if an independent film unites the quality of star talent we find in Willard Carroll's Playing by Heart. Usually, when a handful of skilled actors are willing to sign on with a novice writer/director like Carroll, we can count on the fact that the film will offer strong characters backed by a fresh script.

Though not entirely original in style or concept, Heart's thoughtful patchwork of love stories proved strong enough to assemble an impressive cast. Reminiscent of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, the film offers glimpses into the love lives of a dozen people strewn across Los Angeles. What distinguishes Carroll's film is its almost peculiar sense of optimism.

Most recognizable, Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands play Paul and Hannah, a married couple on the brink of celebrating their 40 years together. The two live in a state of bittersweet equilibrium, bickering with casual familiarity. When confronted with Paul's mortality, their focus changes surprisingly from what remains of their future to shadows in their past.

While the older couple straightens things out, others struggle with relationships of their own. Mildred (Ellen Burstyn) grows closer to her AIDS-stricken son (Jay Mohr) than she has ever felt comfortable with another human being. Meanwhile, sharp, self-reliant Meredith (Gillian Anderson) tries to convince herself that her life has no room for romance when the man of her dreams (Jon Stewart) literally knocks her flat on her ass.

Somewhere across town, Hugh (Dennis Quaid) cruises from bar to bar, curiously stretching pickup lines to a pathetic new level of hyperbole, while Gracie (Madeleine Stowe) enjoys a sex life with no commitments. On the rebound, loud-mouthed punkster Joan (Angelina Jolie) falls for a soft-spoken, blue-haired club regular named Keenan (Ryan Phillippe, doing penance for 54). The young pair sparks the film's most unique relationship.

These aren't characters who stutter helplessly when asked to describe their feelings. As the film progresses, each of the couples must find a way to transform their emotions and concerns into words, a challenge as daunting as "dancing about architecture" (the film's original title). Thanks to a well-written script, the assortment of lovers handle the topic with disconcerting ease. Taken together, their distinctive philosophies provide a refreshing surface portrait of love itself.

I'm a sucker for films in which an assortment of disparate characters gradually gravitate together. When handled correctly, as in Atom Egoyan's Exotica, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Red and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, filmmakers reward their viewers with a sense of structure and purpose, reassuring us that no detail was wasted. But when treated carelessly (see 2 Days in the Valley), overly ambitious, under-imaginative directors confuse their audiences with excessively complex threads which seem to come together too neatly in the end.

Playing by Heart falls somewhere between the two extremes. At the film's climax, Carroll reveals the shared quality that unifies the different stories. The connection, which I won't reveal here, offers an unnervingly convenient sense of closure. Throughout the film, each of the stories follows its own trajectory, all equally interesting. Knowing what links them serves only one of the couples, and leaves us wondering why they need have anything in common.

Carroll works around one of Hollywood's most unforgivable oversights, its reluctance to release short films. Curiously compelled to stretch even the weakest plots to at least 90 minutes, mainstream movies often seem disappointingly lightweight. Virtually every melodramatic romance to screen in the past year would have played better at half its length. Yet business conventions dictate that we squirm in our seats as we watch a single bloated story far longer than necessary.

The virtue of Playing by Heart lies in Carroll's determination not to inflate any of the vignettes to feature length. Instead, he weaves them together like a series of unrelated short films, united loosely to fit the unfortunate Hollywood pattern.

Last-minute contrivances aside, Heart proves a worthy reminder of everything we take for granted in our relationships, a film so genuine, it should leave even the most romantically-intolerant audience members feeling recharged.