mawkishness

“You must release what you hold dear, or so I fear, but it’s beyond me,” he sings on “Beyond Me,” a track that transcends its initial piano-driven mawkishness as it builds toward a stirring, distortion-kissed chorus.

Together with Lafosse’s intimate direction and the film’s lack of a score, this helps “The Restless” avoid any mawkishness that might have come from its premise.

But it’s Fraser’s smart, humane, vulnerable performance that too often seems trapped, in this case by a film whose mawkishness so oppressively weighs him down.

All that signaling serves to diminish the impact of a not unanticipated “shock” denouement that strives for poignancy but ultimately flirts with mawkishness.

Of course, as a Briton, I am aware of the narrow line, often overstepped, between whimsy and mawkishness.