This maudlin slice of strife finds a reckless widower (Peter Gallagher) hosting a family gathering exactly two years after his wife passed away on her 35th birthday. Still mourning, he steals away each night to frolic in the Nantucket surf with his beloved's breezy ghost (Michelle Pfeiffer). Needless to say, this comforting ritual threatens to ruin him when his brother and sister-in-law (Bruce Altman and Kathy Baker), their mousy friend (Wendy Crewson), his teen daughter (Claire Danes), and her ripe-for-the-plucking pal (Laurie Fortier) discover his fantasy life.

The film's attempts to explore love and loss immediately curdle into melodramatic mush. Dense with psychospeak, the script reduces the adults to yapping shells of dysfunction and the teens to precocious plot devices responsible for the grown-ups' enlightenment. With Pfeiffer working her natural luminescence as Casper the Friendly Coping Mechanism, the film begs comparison to that sappy beyond-the-grave romance, Ghost. Tedious and grating, Gillian makes its predecessor's sensual spin of the pottery wheel almost entertaining. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.