(Ed Blum):

Ewan McGregor, Gina McKee, Sophie Okonedo, Holly Aird, Hugh Bonneville, Eileen Atkins, Andrew Lincoln Running time: 92 mins DON'T be put off by the title. London's Hamstead Heath where this is set might be famous for unseemly casual dalliances, but the encounters here are of a more cerebral kind. It's an ensemble piece that weaves together the candid conversations about love and relationships between different couples on a summer's day. And it's disarmingly unpretentious, at turns surprising and poignant, and it steers clear of cliche. A Shortcuts of the heart if you will.

Shot on a micro-budget, writer/director team Aschlin Ditta and Ed Blum prove that if you get the script right, the rest will fall into place. An elderly couple discuss love after 40 years; a couple intensely in love agree to divorce, unable to figure out why they can't live together.

Conversations take place at comical crosspurposes; lies are exposed and confusing truths revealed.

Ewan McGregor's gay financier promises his partner he will give up casual sex if they adopt a child, while Sophie Okonedo gives a remarkably complex performance as a woman being chatted up by a stranger, five minutes after being dumped. She is fraught, cutting, vulnerable, sexy and confused, and all in the twitch of an eyebrow. She burns up the screen, capturing entirely the emotional essence of the film.

Scenes of a Sexual Naturemakes Little Children's examination of relationships seem overblown and hysterical. What will be even more interesting is to see what Ditta and Blum can come up with next . . . provided they get the money and scale to match their talent and ambition.