Review: Jack Goes Boating (12A) ***

But Connie is odd. She’s a victim – damaged goods. Diffident Jack perseveres and their hesitant relationship becomes a little more concrete – just as Clyde’s marriage with unfaithful wife Lucy starts its final disintegration.

A tight four-hander based on the stage play by Robert Glaudini, Jack Goes Boating is transferred to the screen with the same intimacy that made the theatre production such a hit. Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega return as Jack, Clyde and Lucy; newcomer Amy Ryan joins as Connie.

Hoffman’s cinematic directorial debut – he has done a vast amount in the theatre – is a slow-burning comedy drama that is also laced with frustration, regret, anger and sadness.

If it occasionally tips into Edward Albee/Virginia Woolf territory, then it does so with a nod to that excoriating classic of recrimination and deceit.

The frustration is given life by Ortiz, who is inexorably driven to make an epic statement on his marriage by forcing his wife into a confrontation. All Jack (and Connie) can do is watch and despair.

The action builds to a surreal bedroom scene and then onward to an apocalyptic dinner party that combines drink, drugs and bad cooking.

Hoffman and Ortiz have been theatre collaborators for years and theirs is a perfect partnership built on trust and mutual respect.

Jack Goes Boating is a modest drama but one that resonates with believability and truth.