Movie Nation

Sordid, slow and stupid, “True to the Game 2” is a drug-trade sequel to the 2017 thriller about falling in love with a drug dealer and paying the price.

An opening scene shoot-out and a trio of coordinated brawls in the finale are little compensation for the tedium in between.

Vivica A. Fox returns as Shoog, streetwise tough gangster who leads Bria (Iyana Halley) in a revenge hijacking of a drug shipment intended for drug boss Jerrell (Andra Fuller).

Poor Jerrell figured he was done with drug dealer Quadir’s minions after taking him out in the first film. He hadn’t counted on the dead drug dealer’s family.

The haul? “A meal ticket,” which is a cool million in cocaine-and-cash-speak.

“It’s gonna be an early Christmas in the (Philly) hood!” Shoog figures.

Gena (Erica Peeples) buried Quadir, finished grad school and is now a workaholic at a New York fashion webzine. She lives large — larger than any mere online mag writer could manage. Yes, she has drug money backing up her lifestyle.

But that bloody shootout that opens the picture has Jerrell and his minions — one played by model and former “Hot Felon” Jeremy Meeks — hunting high and low for those who hit him. That sends Saleem (Meeks) into Quadir’s memorial service and Jerrell off on a hunt for Gena, who decides to drive her Range Rover to California to do an assignment on an LA cannabis king.

That’ll eat up the two week vacation her borderline-harassing boss forces her to take.

The middle acts — full of asking around, intrigues, costume changes and little that animates the plot even if, in theory, scenes do advance it (sort of) — stop “2” dead in its tracks.

We lose track of the hardened anchor of all this, Fox, and dwell on the bar hopping, drinks, kidnappings, threats and what have you that it takes to get Jerrell and his man Saleem closer to their quarry.

Meeks lands one good thug line, announced to a prisoner he’s slapping around in the trunk of his ride.

“STOP! You gonna KILL me?”

“You in the trunk. You already dead.”

The only chuckles are in the memorial service, where Faith Evans sings and Quadir’s mom talks about what “a good boy, a good MAN” her son was.

He was a DRUG dealer. But sure.

All this violence — in New York, Philly and LA — has people in the center of the action “on edge.”

“It’s Philly. People are BORN on edge.”

Love V.A. Fox, but when you leave her out, you’re not being “True to the Game.”

The acting is uneven, the action not awful but not great either (some of the stage punches are obvious) and the ending a total cheat.

Aside from that…

MPA Rating: R for violence, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and drug content

Cast: Vivica A. Fox, Erica Peeples, Andra Fuller, Jeremy Meeks, Iyana Halley, Rotimi, Tamar Braxton

Credits. Directed by Jamal Hill, script by Preston A. Whitmore II, based on a novel by Teri Woods. An Imani Media Group release.

Running time: 1:33

It begins and ends as an elegy, a somber remembrance of past times and personal loss set against a spare, plaintive plucked-guitar score.

The story has a seething villain and climaxes in a fine, melodramatic fury.

But “Let It Go” is a thriller best-appreciated for its trio of tour de force performances — for Diane Lane and Kevin Costner’s understated Western American couple that’s so familiar and lived-in that their most powerful moments are wordless, and for Great Brit Lesley Manville’s furious, uncompromising North Dakota matriarch.

This intimate Western odyssey marks a return to form for writer-director Thomas Bezucha, years removed from his first break, the Montana-set “Big Eden” and from his break out “The Family Stone.” Adapting Larry Watson’s novel, he tells a story of family, loss, guilt and a seemingly irrational over-reach, a grandmother longing to raise and protect her grandson.

Because we’ve seen Margaret monopolize the child, dismissive of the boy’s mother even when her daughter-in-law (Kayli Carter), son (Ryan Bruce) and their newborn were living with them. But son James dies, Lorna remarries and little Jimmy (Otto and Bran Hornung) is suddenly removed from their lives, abruptly off to “live with his parents.”

Margaret wordlessly packs a bag, loads the station wagon and sits, ramrod straight, until George comes home and gets a clue. He says what we’re thinking.

“What the hell, Margaret?”

They’re off on a late-winter trek through eastern Montana and into western North Dakota, where the second husband’s Weboy clan holds sway. Asking questions about them tell retired sheriff George more than he wants to know.

“You let it be known you’re looking for a Weboy, they’ll find YOU.”

Finding Bill (Jeffrey Donovan of “Burn Notice”) and the ranch matriarch, Blanche (Manville, of “Maleficent” and “The Crown”) leads to tense, brittle conversational stand-offs — Margaret’s pasted-on smile not covering George’s I-know-what’s-coming glower.

Bezucha takes his time getting to that meeting, sharing a little of the Margaret/George backstory, filling in the sad blanks of their son’s death with flashbacks. The pre-Interstate vistas are filled with Patsy Cline and fundamentalists on the crackling AM radio on their ’58 Chevy Nomad wagon, and not-quite-bickering as George scolds Margaret for her doggedness and naivete.

Their stops along the way start with Margaret’s grinning, disarming chatter — “beating around the bush” as she promises to not beat-around-the-bush — and devolve into the old lawman’s blunt “bad cop” questioning.

They even stumble across a Native teen (Booboo Stewart), with hints of the horrors of the Bismarck “Indian School” he escaped.

But meeting the Weboys turns this mournful journey into what the movies long ago nicknamed “A Mexican Standoff.” The music changes from guitar to Thriller Strings and we wonder how we or Margaret or anyone, for that matter, could make the case for the kid without an eruption of violence.

Manville’s Blanche is all cruel, regal bluster, putting her “guests” on notice they’re on her turf. “Anyone knows me knows I can’t be insulted,” she drawls, but we know and George and Margaret know that she can.

Lane’s Margaret shows her mettle without having to proclaim it, but her abrupt way of turning off the sweet smile and the “beating around the bush” suggest she’s absorbed some of George’s wariness and impatience.

And Costner, the Western American Master, lets us see George’s submission to the will of “this woman I married by can’t figure,” and his age. The experience means the mind is willing, even if the body’s lost its fastball.

Some of the characters’ changes in mood and approach seem abrupt. Surely any of the leads would lay on the disarming honey just a little longer before flashing their respective talons. But they all have a hint of George’s sense of fate that’s in play.

Once the Blackledges undertook this quest, there was no pleasant way for it to play out.

The finale is over-the-top and melodramatic, Old West and Old Fashioned in its own way.

But “Let Him Go” is a real showcase for fine talent — veteran villain Donovan included — and a nicely-blended mix of sentiment, sadness and the violence that we know, as well as any character on the screen does, is coming.

MPA Rating: R for violence

Cast: Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Lesley Manville, Jeffrey Donovan, Kayli Carter, Will Brittain and Booboo Stewart.

Credits: Written and directed by Thomas Bezucha, based on a Larry Watson novel. A Focus Features release

Running time: 1:54

In the title role of Tatsushi Ohmori‘s “Mother,” Masami Nagasawa gives us one of the great screen monsters of recent memory.

Her Akiko Misumi is a Japanese “Mommy Dearest” — cruel, callous, self-absorbed, violent and still enough of a hot mess to appeal to any man who crosses her field of vision.

When we meet her she’s manic, grabbing her little boy for a day of playing hooky from primary school. When we last see her she’s dead-eyed and pitiless, her life of selfish narcissism and emotional brutality doesn’t phase her as she lacks a conscience.

A social worker (Kaho) is the epitome of Japanese good manners and understatement when she describes Akiko as “incapable.” We’ve seen what she did to her son, Suhei, played as a child by Sho Gunji and as an older teen by Daiken Okudaira.

“Mother” invites the viewer to play a grueling waiting game, its suspense stemming from the viewer’s growing desire to see the boy stand up to the woman who has made him cadge cash off relatives, steal, take beatings from abusive boyfriends and lie in blackmail schemes.

And even though Tatsushi (“Every Day a Good Day”) never heard the English expression “too much of a good thing” in drawing this story out over years with a running time north of two hours, his villainess rarely loses our interest or our eagerness to see her pay for her crimes.

“Mother” is a story of co-dependency and loyalty, of lives lived on the street and promise squandered because of an impulsive, martyred mother who A) has a gambling problem, B) ruthlessly uses men, including her little boy, and C) has the idea that her children are hers “to raise as I see fit” (in Japanese, with English subtitles).

Shuhei can never shake her, never defy her. Not after she ditches him at seven to run off with a new thug, Ryo (Sadao Abe), on a drinking/gambling binge. Not after she and Ryo use Shuhei to blackmail the hapless civil servant she talked into “watching” the boy while she left him for her latest misadventure.

Shuhei is who she sends to beg for money off her sister and parents. Shuhei, as a teen, is the one with a job she talks into getting advances from his boss.

We need only one scene to establish Akiko’s addiction. Her eyes glaze over when playing a pachinko (slot) machine. We never see her win, never see her pay a bill. It’s all-consuming, and the boy she brought into the world is just here to facilitate her habit.

There’s wailing and shouting in her encounters with her distraught and had-enough family. And there’s violence as Ryo enters and leaves their lives, slapping around Mother and the little boy who can’t protect her as he does.

It’s not giving anything away to say that a second child enters this world of flophouses and sleeping on the street, when they hit bottom. Akiko’s lack of self-control extends to all things, even the unfiltered insults she rains upon her boy when ordering him to skip school and babysit, or anything else she can command.

Through it all, Masami lets us see the instant calculating, the in-the-moment impulsiveness, with narrowing of the eyes when she sends the boy in search of the next need she orders him to fulfill.

Tatsushi’s storytelling is deliberate and slow, showing us the agonizing days an abandoned child spends eating uncooked noodles because Mother didn’t pay the gas bill, playing video games until the moment the power’s cut off, because guess what?

It gets to be too much after a while, and Tatsushi’s ending is drawn-out, downbeat and deliberately unsatisfying. But every Japanese filmmaker knows that not every monster movie ends up with Godzilla blown up and sinking into the sea.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, much of it against children

Cast: Masami Nagasawa, Sho Gunji, Daiken Okudaira, Sadao Abe, Halo Asada

Credits: Directed by Tatsushi Ohmori, script by Takehiko Minato and Tatsushi Ohmori. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:06

Today’s assignment, class, is compare-and-contrast “Come Play,” now in theaters, with “Noise in the Middle,” now streaming.

They’re both thrillers about haunted children. Their shared hook? Both the kids are autistic.

“Come Play” has a name cast and a few decent chills. But for my money, “Noise in the Middle” has a better villain, a more interesting kid and a better grasp of (movie) ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder).

Veteran character actor John Mese is a difference maker here. He plays a Seattle divorce attorney always on the edge of seething. We meet this impatient, short-tempered dad as he’s taking his daughter Emmy (Faye Hostetter) to Canada, turning down the chance to put her in “a home” to take a chance on an experimental treatment for her disorder.

“It’s what Sarah wanted,” Richard says. And Sarah’s wishes are important, because she died just a few weeks ago. A friend’s lent him his three story modernist mansion near the clinic trying this magnetic brain scan therapy.

Testy Richard’s about to get a crash-course in autism. Nurse Zandra (Juliette Jeffers, quite good) picks up on the fact that Richard was never that involved in his moaning, rocking and wandering-off-prone daughter’s care. She doesn’t have to hear him bark “Emmy, I don’t have TIME for this” more than once.

Dr, Helmond (Jim Holmes) explains the “communications disorder” nature of autism, that Emmy is “always saying something” even though she can’t yet speak. “We just have to hear it,” to “sort out the noise in the middle” between her efforts to communicate and Richard’s inability to hear it.

Richard, sweating a case-gone-wrong back at the office, dosing himself with whisky and Xanax, quickly regrets his decision to not commit his child. And Emmy, just starting to learn the text-to-talk phone app that will bridge their gap, has something alarming to tell him.

“Mom here.”

All those giggling kid noises, the skittering up stairs in the night? There are ghosts around, so there’s nothing for it but to talk to the crystals-and-astrology shop owner (Tom Konkle, fun) and figure out what’s afoot and what to do about it.

The frights come from simple effects — nightmare sequences, “Mom” (Tara Buck), glimpsed in a mirror. An evil future incarnation of ill-tempered Dad is in there, too. They’re not big jolts, although the movie does manage suspense in making us fear for Emmy, and fear what Dad might be pushed into doing by the spirits in the house.

While this film makes more of an effort to explain the disorder, the autistic characters “break character” here and there with excessive eye contact, and in the case of “Come Play,” a need to turn its victim into a brilliant child who has agency in his fate thanks to a lot of magical movie thinking.

Both films should have made more of an effort to show the terror as the autistic child experiences it. Because as neither thriller wholly comes off, that shared lapse seems the most obvious way both fall short.

Emmy’s peril, which she cannot fully articulate, should have more of the focus. Making it all about Dad’s credulous acceptance of “spirits” and ghosts, and his breakdown under the strain, just isn’t as interesting, no matter how much seething he does in the process.

MPA Rating: MPA Rating: unrated, violence, drug and alcohol abuse

Cast: John Mese, Faye Hostetter, Juliette Jeffers, Tara Buck and Tom Konkle.

Credits: Directed by Marcus McCollum, script by Glen Kannon and Marcus McCollum A Terror Films release.

Running time: 1:32

The formula goes way back before “Airplane” or even its antecedent, “Kentucky Fried Movie.” Scholars trace it back to 1941’s “Hellzapoppin,” a farcical musical that made the transition from Broadway to the big screen pretty much intact.

Unfortunately (for you), that formula is alliterative. Random, rapid fire running gags and randy retorts, delivered in a comedic blur over 90 minutes.

That’s what the creators of Canadian Christmas farce “Cup of Cheer” were going for. Co-writers Jake Horowitz (he also directed) and Andy Lewis throw a whole lot of laugh-lines on the soundtrack, mostly neglecting sight gags and slapstick, and hope enough of them land for this to come off.

They don’t and it doesn’t. But there are a few chortles as they jingle all the way through the holiday.

It’s a “How do we save Christmas” comedy starring Storm Steeson and Alexander Oliver. She’s Mary Nice Lady and he’s Chris Mast. Subtle. And that’s as subtle as it gets.

Mary is an aspiring magazine writer reporting a feature on a small town during the holidays. He’s inherited Grandma’s Cup of Cheer, a Canadian hot cocoa institution in Snowy Heightsville Falls, which changes names every time someone mentions it.

They “meet cute,” and testily.

“I look forward to never seeing you again!”

Oh yeah? Well “not seeing each other ever again would be too soon to…not see each other ever again.”

“You and your big city double-negatives!”

What’s more, “You’re only ‘small town hot.'”

“I’d rather be small-town ‘hot’ than low-budget Christmas movie leading man material!”

At her magazine, Mary claimed to be from Snowy Heights. Or Falls. Or Heightsville Falls. Probably not. But once there, she sees the impending closure of Cup of Cheer as her feature story — which won’t make print until what, two months after Christmas? Never mind.

Mary, in makeup that would pass muster at any Noh Theatre in ancient Japan, gets sized-up by every single “friendly” small town person she meets.

“You young Aryan Princess, you!” “Oh. You’ a lesbian. Most folks in the big city are!”

There’s a “town’s racially diverse cop” (Steve Kasan) and the local foul-mouthed busybody (Helly Chester).

She wisely counsels Chris that “Love is always right under your nose,” running her finger under his nose as if to wipe it — then sucking on that finger. She also marvels that this Christmas is breaking out in “wholesome white dudes from all over.”

One is a time-traveling red-coated British royal from the past who goes by “Authuh” (Jacob Hogan), another the farting fellow (Shawn Vincent) with serious intestinal distress who wants to close the Cup of Cheer.

“He’s my ex,” Mary confesses. Yes, and his name’s “Mai Ex.”

Mary’s constantly wondering “What would my dead parents do?” Authuh tries to be helpful by showing off his marksmanship/hunting skills.

“I’ve procured dinner! I hope you like ‘child.'”

And on and on it goes, over 90 minutes of film, maybe 30 minutes of one-liners that land. But as Mary laments, that’s par for the course due to “unsolicited recaps of your life” and “the needs of the story and the characters’ relationship arcs.”

It’s all cheerfully cheesy with the occasional off-color crack, a whole lot of jokes that don’t land, and a cast that’s not-quite-amusing-enough to remind us that Leslie “Airplane/Naked Gun” Nielsen was the Best Canadian at this kind of comedy. And he’s long gone.

MPA Rating: unrated, profanity, sexual innuendo, drug humor

Cast: Storm Steenson, Alexander Oliver, Liam Marshall, Jacob Morgan, Helly Chester, Braden Barrie and Shawn Vincent.

Credits: Directed by Jake Horowitz, script by Jake Horowitz, Andy Lewis. An IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:35

“His House” is a high-minded horror film, a ghost story/witch movie with a message.

If it’s not as edge-of-your-seat frightening and involving as “Get Out,” its elevated intentions still put it in the same conversation.

It’s as current as a headline and as hot as a political hot button allows. And as the film plays out against the backdrop of the trauma of emigrating from a war-torn homeland, the cost in lives, morality and sanity, it manages to “both sides” this controversial issue.

We see what immigrants go through to get “here.” And we see the cost children pay on that journey.

Rial and Bol went through hell to get here, “here” being the UK. Local bureaucrats may not be granting them their most fervent dream, but “bail as asylum seekers” will do, “a home of our choosing” while their case is being considered is as close to the finish line as they could hope.

Because we’ve seen the race that got them here. In a quick, impressionistic montage, first-time feature director Remi Weekes shows Bol (Sope Dirisu) toting daughter Nyagak (Malaika Wakoli-Abigada) across the Sudanese desert, the over-crowded boat that sinks as they cross the Mediterranean, the screams and the horror on face of Rial (Winmi Mosaku) was they lose the child in the chop.

Now, the functionary (Matt Smith of “Doctor Who”) who shows them around a dilapidated, buggy and smelly apartment enthuses that “a new beginning starts with a single step,” and takes Bol’s firm declaration of “We’re NOT going back” as “that’s the spirit.”

All they need to do is be on their best behavior, check in once a week and “fit in.”

Bol resolves to do just that. Rial is resisting. English pleasantries fall on her deaf ears, conversations with strangers take on the darkest passages of the memoir of their journey.

“We’re not like them,” she tells her husband. They don’t belong here. They should go home.

And that flat? It’s not just the upkeep and amenities that give them the creeps. There are noises in the walls, voices, flashes of the little girl who drowned on their way here. Both hear the voices, both hallucinate.

Bol starts haunting the local home improvement store, buying hammers, pry bars and box cutters. The wallpaper comes down, then the drywall. What is IN there?

One clever bit, him grabbing at the wiring, yanking until it leads to seaweed which turns out to be tangled in Nyagak’s doll, which a hand reaches from inside the wall to yank back.

Rial seems resigned to all this, a hard, knowing woman with an answer. There’s an “apeth,” a witch. And it’s followed them all the way from Sudan, egged on by the terror of their night crossing of the sea that went so wrong.

The hallucinations crop up at odd times and tend to reflect the growing cracks in their marriage. She wants to eat on the floor, with their fingers, as in the old country, to speak in Dinka, their native tongue.

“ENGLISH!” he barks. “Next time, let’s try the TABLE.” But all she gets out of using a knife and fork is the “taste” of the “metal.”

It’s not close to being the scariest movie you’ve seen this year. But the political/immigration subtext, the grim cause-and-effect of their haunting and a pretty good twist or two make “His House” a haunted British council flat tale well worth checking out.

MPA Rating: TV-14, violence, horrific images, death

Cast: Sope Dirisu, Wunmi Mosaku, Malaika Wakoli-Abigaba and Matt Smith.

Credits: Written and directed by Remi Weekes, story by Felicity Evans and Tony Venables. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

This one jumps the gun on the season by debuting Friday. And yes, this is a “red band” trailer.

Sophia Loren, grand dame of the Italian and international cinema, has a fine star vehicle built around her in “The Life Ahead,” a sentimental drama tailor-made for her by her son, director and co-writer Edoardo Ponti.

The earthiness that was always a part of her appeal, the flashes of fire, spark this battle of co-dependent battle of wills between a very old woman close to losing her grasp on reality and the angry, wayward orphan who could slip into a life of crime if her influence on him doesn’t “take.:

In “Life” (premiering 11-13 on Netflix), the 80something Loren plays an age-appropriate Holocaust survivor who has taken in foundlings her whole life, talked into one last orphan to raise — for a price, of course.

Momo (dazzling newcomer Ibrahima Gueye) narrates our story, and he meets Madame Rosa (Loren) in the market. He snatches her purse.

All “Mohamed” wants is the chance to impress the low-rent Neopolitan mobster (Massimiliano Rossi) who might throw a little work his way. Momo can’t be more than eleven or so, but as a Senegalese orphan in a strange land, he figures the streets are his future. So he’d better polish his hustle.

Dr. Coen (Renato Carpentieri) has taken on the role of guardian, via the state. But the kid is up to no good. The good doctor, recognizing the antiques that the kid stole, gambles on an intervention. If only his old friend Rosa, already keeping a Romanian Jewish immigrant boy and baby-sitting a transgender sex worker’s (Abil Zamora) toddler, would take Momo in.

AFTER he apologizes and returns the stolen candlesticks, of course.

“SCUuuuuuza,” Momo purrs, insincerely. “Apology NOT accepted,” she barks (in Italian with English subtitles).

But if the doctor pays her enough, she’ll change her mind about “the brat.” Momo has to get along with the other kids, stay out of trouble and never call her to her face what he does to the other kids — “Cagna,” “the Bitch.”

The kid narrates this story intermittently, and he picks up on what an odd duck Rosa is. She zones out from time to time. She has a locked room she likes to sit in in the rough-hewn basement of their old apartment building. “Down there, I feel safe.”

And she has numbers tattooed on her arm, which the kid wonders about.

The script, based on an old Romain Gary novel, sets up a tug of war over Momo’s future, and his mortal soul. There are worse drug dealers to be stuck with than Ruspo (Rossi), who puts him on the street, selling. The idea of a “fatherly” street criminal seems almost Dickensian.

Dr. Coen’s not in the picture as much, so Rosa walks Momo down to an old friend’s shop. Hamil (Babak Karimi) is just the fellow to instruct a young Muslim on the difference between right and wrong, and how to grow up to be a proper Muslim man. And nobody turns Rosa down.

“Your eyes and voice sing the song of deceit,” he complains, before agreeing to take the kid, who “didn’t even know I was Muslim.”

Testy Rosa, who frets over the kid’s behavior when she isn’t getting lost, sitting dazed in the rain or flashing back to (we assume) the traumas of her childhood, is the other “role model” in the kid’s life. But she’s the one who needs him as much as he needs her.

Young Gueye sneers and sulks through much of his performance as Momo. He fights every good thing that might worm its way into his life. But the simple purchase of a bike, or losing himself in his jams on his headphones, makes him exultant.

There’s a fantasy element to the film, an African child dreaming of the lion on a rug that Hamil has made. Add that to the desperate cross-Mediterranean migration into Europe (glimpsed), the Muslim kid taken in by Jews, the transgender Lola and the boy’s introduction to the drug trade and “The Life Ahead” can seem as if it’s checking off boxes meant to clutter up a fairly simple story.

But Gueye is a magnetic presence at the heart of it, and Loren lends it all the grace notes it leads, confronting the boy, sadly relating the story of her personal experience of the Holocaust and giving the kid the perspective to make better choices.

“It’s when you give up hope that good things happen,” she promises. Not that he buys that.

Pairing Loren up with a child with this much spark, acting-up and acting-out, proves to be a winning formula for the film. And whatever Momo has to look forward to in his “Life Ahead,” young Mr. Gueye will someday be able to tell his children that he got to work with a genuine screen legend in his very first feature film. And that he held his own.

MPA Rating: PG-13 for thematic content, drug material involving minors, some sexual material and language

Cast: Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Renato Carpentieri, Babak Karimi, Massimiliano Rossi

Credits: Directed by Edoardo Ponti, script by Ugo Chiti, Edoardo Ponti and Fabio Natale, based on the Romain Gary novel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Coming next year. No doubt after a full length trailer has been whipped up in addition to this taunting teaser.

“Roobha” is a Canadian drama that gives a transgender romance and its fallout a South Asian touch, set as it is among Toronto’s Tamil community. It poetically folds Hindu myth into a story of self-discovery, “coming out” and finding oneself and love, a journey that is a rocky road indeed in Levin M. Sivan’s film.

Anthony has gambled everything on owning a neighborhood bar, the Music Box. But it’s failing, as is his health. He’s ignoring doctor’s orders about smoking and drinking, two hazards of his profession. But he’s meeting his obligations to his wife and two children, even as he lies to them about how things are.

Roobha is the name of an attractive sex worker who comes in to the otherwise quiet bar with her “sisters” after hours. There’s chemistry and a tentative flirtation between bartender and umbrella drink fan.

Does Roobha think Anthony knows? Does Anthony know to look for the Adam’s Apple give-away? For that matter, does he know how Roobha keeps a cheap motel roof over her head?

Sivam’s film, based on a story pitched by “Anthony” (Jesuthasan Antonythasan of “A Private War”), turns in on itself, avoiding a non-linear narrative. We follow Anthony’s domestic situation — his wife (Thenuka Kantharajah) is making plans, making noise about selling the house and the bar and move back to where they were happier and debt-free — suburban Stouffville. We see his doctor visit, his brooding through clouds of cigarette smoke.

And we pick up on his attraction to Roobha.

But to her family, in an earlier spot in the timeline, Roobha is Gokul (Amrit Sandhu), who has returned from running away to Mumbai with the dream of teaching dance.

“What kind of a man teaches dance?” Gokul’s mother wants to know. Caught trying on a sister’s clothes, Gokul’s father wants to know “What kind of man does this?”

Both are plainly rhetorical questions. It’s hard for any parent, even an immigrant from a culture where transgender people are shunned, to be that naive, or that deep in denial.

When Gokul’s mother begs her child to not have surgery because “I want my son,” she can’t express much surprise when Gokul reminds her “You never HAD a son.”

The story’s poetic touches come from Anthony’s youthful dalliance in poetry (in Tamil, untranslated), something his wife reminds him of in front of his children. Falling for Roobha awakens the poet in him.

And then there’s the story Roobha frames the film with in voice over, the Hindu myth of Bahuchara Mata, who catches her husband dressing as a woman, cavorting in the woods, and whacks off his genitals in response.

This sort of “coming out” story has been around long enough to have its soap operatic screen tropes — the bullying, the gay bashing beating by “customers,” the “Big Reveal” to the lover who hasn’t seen “The Crying Game.”

That said, it’s still a most engrossing variation on well-worn LGBT themes, with two sympathetic performances at its heart to carry it off.

MPA Rating: unrated, violence, explicit sex, alcohol, smoking, profanity

Cast: Jesuthasan Antonythasan, Amrit Sandhu, Thenuka Kantharajah, Sornalingam Vairamuthu

Credits: Written and directed by Lenin M. Sivam, based on a story by Jesuthasan Antonythasan. An IndieCan release.

Running time: 1:32