Films about women have been getting lots of notice of late, what with all those Oscar nominations for The Hours, Chicago, and Far from Heaven. But what about films by women? Jill Sprecher’s Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Lisa Cholodenko’s upcoming Laurel Canyon, and Rose Troche’s The Safety of Objects quietly undermine conventional expectations and maintain the credibility of independent filmmaking. Troche (Go Fish) has expanded her range with this adaptation of short stories by A.M. Homes: she offers a skewed, unpredictable, compassionate study of the interconnection of human frailties and passions.

At the center of the film’s minuet of four messed-up suburban families is Paul Gold (Joshua Jackson), even though (or perhaps because) he’s comatose, an accident victim hooked up to life support and tended by his mother Esther (Glenn Close in one of her best performances). The line-up also includes Paul’s sister Julie (Jessica Campbell), next-door neighbor and struggling single mom Annette (the brilliant and ubiquitous Patricia Clarkson), local handyman Randy (Timothy Olyphant), and neighbor Jim Train (Dermot Mulroney), a lawyer who recently lost his job and has become increasingly deranged. Using judicious flashbacks and an exquisite eye for detail (Paul is just one of the objects offering safety in the film), Troche performs a task similar to Robert Altman’s in Short Cuts and Ang Lee’s in The Ice Storm but with an ineffable sensibility of her own. (121 minutes)