Keith Kupferer in Ghostlight (Luke Dyra/IFCFilms)

There is an old cliché among theater people that all actors have, at least once, fallen in love with their scene partners. I don’t know how true it is, but the idea is simple: that the given text, and its pull on the imagination, can come to have an outsize effect on one’s life. Professional actors are perhaps used to it, those with less experience might be in for a shock.

Ghostlight features a construction worker who finds himself in the latter position. Dan (Keith Kupferer), and his family are going through a tough time whose specifics we do not immediately learn. His daughter, Daisy (Katherine Mallen Kupferer), has been suspended from high school, and then grounded, for pushing a teacher. She seems intent on cleverly antagonizing her parents whenever she can, and only reluctantly agrees to go to therapy. Dan and his wife, Sharon (Tara Mallen), are preparing for a lawsuit involving a family member that he seems to want more than she does, and their relations as a family are tense, always on the brink of explosive arguments.

Dan ends up doing some work outside the rehearsal space of a community theater group, where local actress Rita (Dolly de Leon) angrily asks him to quiet down his work with the jackhammer. After a while of observing him, she invites him to join a production of Romeo and Juliet. He resists at first, then, seeking a way out of turmoil at home, he accepts the invitation. He begins by playing Lord Capulet, but, due to some shuffling of the cast, he ends up playing Romeo, opposite Rita. Dan has never acted before, and is not even familiar with the story of the play.

This is indeed a film where the story begins to influence the life of its principal character, but it does so in a very unpredictable way. He does not, as one might think (and as his daughter and wife briefly suspect), have an affair with Rita, mistaking himself for Romeo. Instead, it is his struggle to empathize with Romeo at all that dictates his emotional journey, for it reminds him of the circumstances in which his teenage son died. Thus, the ability of his family to heal, at least partially, hinges on his ability to really see and understand Shakespeare’s famous star-crossed lover.

I will admit that the healing power of art—and this is certainly a film that seeks to show us just that—is a subject that I struggle with, as it seems to lend itself to Hallmark platitudes, easy life lessons, and an overall simplicity of outlook that seems childish. I suppose you could accuse this drama of all of the above (though the platitudes are actually very few). There are also a few overly convenient turns of plot and a few details that strain believability. I would have bought it easily if Dan had never heard of Cymbeline, but Romeo and Juliet? That’s like saying you haven’t heard of the Bible.

I’d also be lying if I said that, in spite of all that, this movie didn’t work on me. This is, to some degree, due to unsuspecting turns in the writing. The story unfolds slowly, and each new revelation is well timed and poignant. Mercifully, we are not forced to watch a scenario where Dan’s wife and daughter suspect him of cheating for the entire running time, nor the one that easily exonerates him for his mistakes. The characters are all drawn with empathy and are often surprising (Rita punches someone in the face at one point), and are so damn earnest that it’s hard not to let yourself be taken along for the ride.

Yet Ghostlight is also, above all, a small and subtle triumph of acting. Certainly, each principal actor brings emotion, backstory, and point of view to life with skill, becoming more affecting as the film goes on. Even more so, the community theater troop is rendered remarkably. They are not supposed to be good actors of Shakespeare, yet they are supposed to be moved and engaged by what they’re doing. The whole cast manages to pull off both aspects believably. As such, this film has a distinct flavor, almost like Waiting for Guffman, but without condescension. In the camaraderie, the enthusiasm for exercises, and the endearing excitement they bring to their chosen task, we are indeed able to feel how special this community theater production is for the audience in this small town and the members of the cast.

So, if I began this film rolling my eyes a little, I finished watching it with a few tears rolling down my cheeks. It defied my expectations.