Robert Benton's Feast of Love is not a perfect film. The man behind triumphs such as Kramer vs. Kramer and Nobody's Fool doesn't quite reach the brass ring this time. This multi-tangential story of three couples dealing with all of love's miseries, heartbreaks, mysteries and triumphs is nowhere near as affecting as it could have been. Yet the picture bathes in emotional truth. While certain aspects don't necessarily work overall, this is one tale almost impossible not to appreciate.

The film begins with former university professor and writer Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman). Harry and his wife Esther (Jane Alexander) are struggling with a past tragedy, the one-time academic now seemingly content to wander around their sleepy college town and observe the comings and goings of the people around him. That includes coffee shop owner Bradley (Greg Kinnear) and his employee bright-eyed young Oscar (Toby Hemingway), both men entering new relationships to varying degrees of success.

First off, this is the best Kinnear has ever been in a film. I loved his Academy Award-nominated turn in As Good as it Gets as much as the next girl but he is almost revelatory here. It is a pity this picture didn't meet with greater box office (or critical) acclaim because I think he's just as good as the majority (Javier Bardem excluded) of this year's Oscar nominees for Supporting Actor. I loved him in this, and every time Benton turned proceedings over his way Feast of Love soared like I am sure the veteran filmmaker dreamt it would.

The rest is an unfortunate hodgepodge desperately reaching for a consistent tone unfortunately just outside of its reach. While the intimately layered (and graphically sexual) newfound love between Oscar and free spirit Chloe (a surprisingly good Alexa Davalos) feels genuine and true, a segment involving an affair between Bradley's girlfriend Diana (a one-note Radha Mitchell) and her married lover David (Billy Burke) goes nowhere beyond the boringly routine. I also had major problems with the short-shrift given to his first wife Kathryn (Selma Blair), her sudden coming out of the closet a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment if I've ever seen one.

Complaints aside, when Feast of Love works it works beautifully. The first tender bedroom touches between Oscar and Chloe, a late-night confrontation between Harry and a vengeful drunken father (Fred Ward), Bradley clutching a new canine friend for dear life as if every fiber of his being depended on it; these scenes and more speak to the confounding and intoxicating enigma called love in ways both delightful and profound. Almost in spite of the annoying clichés and banalities, writer Allison Burnett (Resurrecting the Champ), adapting from Charles Baxter's acclaimed novel, insists on throwing in, Benton and company slowly morph the film into an (albeit disheveled) intimately pleasurable joy. For me, that's enough to recommend a rental any day.

The DVD presentation of Feast of Love is solid if unspectacular. There are featurettes on the casting, the adaptation and about love itself, the actors blushing multiple times whenever they're asked about shooting the numerous highly explicit sex scenes. There is a polite and relatively easygoing audio commentary from Benton, but he's prone to such long pauses you almost have to wonder if he forgot he was supposed to be talking about the movie and was instead watching it again himself. There is also a pointless music video featuring a band called The Cary Brothers whom I've never heard of and, based on this song, probably never going to hear from again.