The characters in Andrew Bujalski's stable of unenthused meanderers are at once unabashedly talky and frustratingly reticent. We get an idea of what they are talking about but, partially because of Bujalski's deftly perplexing editing scheme, the pulp has been removed, as has the action. Verbs and adjectives remain; the nouns have been obliterated.

This is still true in his latest film, the curiously titled Beeswax, but something has changed. Correctly pegged as a mix between Cassavettes imagery and Rohmer dialogue, Bujalski seems calmer and more assured of his own tone with his third feature; he also continues to have a surpassingly fascinating ability with non-professional actors. Set in a chunk of suburban Austin, Texas, the film saves the crux of its most prominent plotlines (a tentative lawsuit and a trip to teach in Nairobi) for the seconds before the movie ends. Focused on twins Jeannie and Laura, played by real-life, non-professional-actor twins Tilly and Maggie Hatcher, Bujalski has decidedly sided with his Rohmer sensibilities, his camera subdued and his dialogue more observant.

Wheelchair-bound, Jeannie runs a vintage clothes shop called Storytime with a gaggle of misfits, including an annoying pro-gay-rights pixie named Corrine. Jeannie has a business partner who might be suing her, but much of the dispute is left in ellipsis. Her upright sister is introduced post-fornication, in the middle of possibly dumping her mustached, bald-headed lover. Jeannie has a boyfriend, or rather a not-boyfriend, named Merrill (Alex Karpovsky), who is taking the Bar Exam but who can't even find the sense to broker a deal between Jeannie and her mother's friend to buy out half of Storytime.

As Merrill says of a tryst with Jeannie, Beeswax is different but familiar. Many of the scenes play more as instances, clips of stories left untold. An excruciating meeting with Merrill's friend from rehab is matched by the creepy stoner friend of the twins that insists Laura listen to a song that makes him cry and, later, tell Jeannie that he has a crush on her. There's an enveloping intimacy built into these interactions which never proceeds to catharsis but rather hangs like one of the characters' elongated monosyllabic utterances.

Bujalski's last film, Mutual Appreciation, roamed around a disaffected love triangle; Beeswax is even less pointed about its central triptych. Was Merrill's decision not to play soccer with Laura really about studying or an attempt at staving off temptation? Their conversation on Jeannie's bed concerning a lamp spirit is even more abashed thanks to Merrill's ghost message: "Don't go to Kenya." Bujalski has become less indebted to his patented awkwardness and more resilient in his dialectic form, some of his final exchanges registering as sweet even.

Early in the film, a lawyer tells Jeannie that she likes to know about backgrounds and relationships. The joke is that Bujalski's characters' pasts are written in invisible ink.



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