YOU’LL FALL FOR THESE SWEET DREAMERS

Hearts Beat Loud (12A) Verdict: A real charmer The Escape (15A) Verdict: Poignant, well-observed drama

HERE is a pair of absorbing films about family dynamics and much else besides.

Hearts Beat Loud is a charmer, a really sweet, mellow movie about a record-shop owner in Brooklyn, Frank (nicely played by a lugubrious, oyster-eyed Nick Offerman), whose only daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons, also splendid), is about to head off to college to study medicine.

Frank fancies his landlady (Toni Collette) but her reluctant rent hike is forcing him out of business, while his elderly mum (Blythe Danner) keeps getting arrested for shop-lifting.

He drowns his sorrows with his barowning friend (Ted Danson, in a knowing throwback to the TV sitcom Cheers) but gets most solace from making music with Sam, a talented singer.

After he uploads their lovely song Hearts Beat Loud to the music-streaming service Spotify, they start getting interest from record companies.

A gently irresponsible dreamer and romantic behind his grizzled features, Frank wants to build on this. But Sam, much as she loves her dad, is determined to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor, despite another temptation to stay in the form of her girlfriend (Sasha Lane, from American Honey).

Without very much happening, writer-director Brett Haley keeps it all ticking along very engagingly.

THE Escape takes place much closer to home, in suburban Kent, where Gemma Arterton’s Tara, mother of two young children, is increasingly unhappy with her lot.

Her husband Mark (Dominic Cooper) insists on his conjugal rights practically every day, and isn’t bright or empathetic enough to understand why her daily regimen of sex, supermarket shopping, school pick-ups, scrubbing and scouring might be getting her down.

Nor does she get much sympathy from her mother (Frances Barber), who considers Tara’s life much more privileged than her own. ‘You’ve got ’im . . . you’ve got a conservatory!’

Writer-director Dominic Savage’s sad story unfolds a little like Shirley Valentine without the laughs; it could almost be a training video for relationship counsellors.

But Arterton is terrific, and utterly convincing in a part that has an element of ‘there but for the grace of God’.

The bulk of the story unfolds in her own home town of Gravesend, and one scene is shot in her actual mother’s back garden.

After Tara takes off to find herself in Paris, the film gets slightly bogged down in cliche, not to mention a relentlessly plaintive pianoand-violins score. But mostly it is a wellobserved drama, in which Arterton excels.