THE POETIC TITLE is the best thing about this film from England's Cinema 1, which one gathers is a kind of UK equivalent of HBO, an English movie channel that makes some original movies of its own. But there's never any allusion to the title's source in the film.

The second-best thing is the locale, which if my perspicuity serves is the ancient city of Bath, England. I knew it wasn't London because it's hilly, but why they missed a chance to make the film more interesting by owning up to the locales is a puzzlement. At least it would deserve a thumb up as travelogue if we knew where we were travelling..

This is another play on the time-worn theme of a homosexual parent wanting to gain custody of a child, with the complication thrown in that the child is being abused by his other parent's live in ("straight") sex partner. The performances by the father and his gay lover, and especially the child, are solid, and the courtroom testimony about how gay lovers meet and what they do together is informative if less than compelling. But a description of what homosexuals do in bed by the mother's boyfriend to the nine-year-old child is patently offensive; psychological child abuse in the service of movie making, which is more real and therefore more despicable than the play-acted, described-but-not-shown physical abuse.

This is better than the typical made-for-TV American network movie; about on par with typical HBO movies. It might be worth an early-bird or matinee bargain admission, but, with the possible exception of persons caught up in parallel personal quests, is much too thin to merit an evening's entertainment outing and expense.