ROUNDUP REVIEW: LOGGERHEADS

Tim Kirkman's "Loggerheads," which is set in three North Carolina locales at millennium's end, is a delicate if somewhat soap-operatic Southern mood piece that occasionally clicks. Intertwining three stories set from about 1998 to 2000, it's a sad tale that revolves around anti-gay prejudice, Southern cultural isolation, and adoption laws that make it hard for adopted children and their birth parents to find each other. In "Loggerheads," loosely based on a real-life story, that becomes the stuff of pathos and tragedy.

Writer-director Kirkman weaves together, not always gracefully, three episodes focusing on three interconnected characters: a young, gay, HIV-infected man named Mark (Kip Pardue of "Remember the Titans"); his adoptive mother, Elizabeth (Tess Harper); and his birth mother, Grace (Bonnie Hunt), whom he's never met.

The stories and the people share a sense of isolation and melancholy. In the first, we see Mark, a drifter in his 20s, hanging out on the sandy shore of coastal Kure Beach, where he's gone because of his fondness for the loggerhead turtles that gather there - and where he meets a sympathetic motel owner, George (Michael Kelly), who puts him up and falls in love with him. In the second, set in Eden, N.C., a little later in time, we see the aftermath of the home environment that drove Mark away: Elizabeth's rigid marriage to a prosperous minister (Chris Sarandon) who's intolerant of homosexuality.

In the third story, set in Asheville, N.C., that excellent actress Hunt guides us steadily through what could be a minefield of sentimentality as she searches for her son, is frustrated by cold-hearted adoption officials and, finally, discovers Mark's fate. But if episodes two and three have a definite soapy tinge, despite strong efforts by Harper and Hunt, the beach town romance is subtler and more affecting. Since the chronological shifts are a bit hard to follow (despite different casts and radio broadcasts that keep placing us in either the Clinton or Bush administration), Kirkman might have been wiser to try a less tricky time structure. In any case, his cast saves him.

"Loggerheads" (2-1/2 stars) opens Friday at Landmark's Century Centre Theatre. Running time: 1:33. No MPAA rating (adult: partial nudity, implied sexuality, language and mature discussions).

- M.W.