This second feature from the filmmaking team of Tom Hunsinger and Neil Hunter is every bit as intimate and gently haunting as their first, a low-budget ensemble piece called Boyfriends. Now, with a larger canvas and seasoned actors, Hunsinger and Hunter ply their craft with the confidence one expects from much-older fellow Brits Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.

Set in Essex, the story follows the impact of one man’s death on his lover/business partner, Nick (the excellent Tom Hollander), his taciturn, restless brother-in-law, Dan (Bill Nighy, funny and laconic), and a cousin, Tim, who arrives home serendipitously the day of the funeral after a bohemian decade abroad (Angels and Insects’ Doug Henshall in a giddy, many-layered portrayal). Unfolding in three segments, the narrative offers each character’s widely divergent perspective. Such a device can feel precious or smug; but Hunter and Hunsinger never reveal too much, and the gradually emerging picture of people’s foibles and fears, as it emerges from a stellar cast (with fine turns from Clémentine Célarié and Sukie Smith), evokes the rhythms of real life, real grief, and those surreal epiphanies that always arrive too late. A simple and utterly charming film, Lawless Heart left me feeling as if I’d lived with these characters for at least a month. (86 minutes)