For a while it seems the troubling resemblance of Paul Bettany to Richard Gephardt will undo whatever grace and magic director Thaddeus O’Sullivan can muster to make The Heart of Me overcome its formulaic story and terrible title (The Echoing Grove, the title of the Rosamond Lehmann novel it’s based on, isn’t much better). But by the time Bettany walks through the blitzed streets of London, defeated and transcendent, he’s put in one of the more affecting performances of the year. In a thankless role, yet: Rickie Masters is a weakling, a starchy 1934 London businessman repressed by his icy wife, Madeline (Olivia Williams), seduced by Madeline’s Sally Bowles–ish sister, Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter), and irresolute when integrity matters most. A familiar triangle, it’s brought to life by Gyula Pados’s ink-and-sepia photography and O’Sullivan’s fluid chronology, which skips from pre-war to post-war periods in a subtle round that diminishes suspense but intensifies inevitability. And by the performances: Williams irredeemable as the shrew, Bonham Carter exasperating as the flibbertigibbet, and Bettany heartbreaking as the unremarkable man with a vain faith in the power of love over transience and conformity. (96 minutes)