Happy Birthday Tony reads the botched cake served by Tom and Ramina to their dinner guests, and in a moment of frustration Tom (Michael Shannon) chops off the end of the cursive lettering to leave his own name. The couple may soon be moving from New York to Los Angeles so that Ramina (Azita Ghanizada) can attend graduate school; this leaves Tom uncertain who he really is and vulnerable to the charms of his former lover, Alice (Rachel Weisz), when she turns up after 15 years to reveal she’s been roaming the country under a series of false identities. Writer-director Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace) gives Shannon a chance to shine as a character more pedestrian than the ones he usually plays, though the story is a little too thesis driven to build any dramatic momentum. Kathy Bates and Danny Glover turn up for a brief sequence in which Alice persuades Tom to impersonate a doctor; after that the movie loses steam rapidly.
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