To paraphrase Lincoln, "God must have loved common looking people--he made so many of them." In The Yellow Handkerchief, a refreshingly dimensional four-character ensemble piece, Maria Bello (The Cooler) is the latest beautiful movie star stretching credibility by playing a commoner, in this case a standoffish business woman named May who hasn't related to a man for some time and seems to like it that way. Putting her before the cameras with little-to-no makeup and baggy, monotone clothes tells us that the filmmakers realized the problem of casting her in the part. They don't quite pull it off, but luckily, Bello's fine performance manages to do what her clothes and make-up can't. Besides, the movie needs a level of desirability to balance against Kristen Stewart (New Moon) in the parallel story line. To her husband Brett Hanson (William Hurt), on the day he gets released from a six-year stint in prison for an accident he didn't cause, May is all he can think about. But it's been a long time, and he worries about whether his marital status still stands. His anxieties are inducing a flood of flashbacks, and he decides to travel back to New Orleans and find his wife. His first act as a free man is to make his way on foot to the nearest town to pick up a meal and catch a bus. But, wait, there's a plot turn. Outside the cafe, he observes a small teenage drama playing out between a good looking guy and two very luscious females vying for his favor. When it looks like the blond is winning, the black-haired one, Martine (Stewart), comes raging into the restaurant in a hissy fit, spewing teenage rage like a leak at Chernobyl. At this moment, Gordy (Eddie Redmayne, The Other Boleyn Girl), a somewhat goofy backwoods type, glides into the parking lot in his convertible, saying hello to blondie. Though Gordy's kinda dorky, his immediate virtue for Martine is that she can use him to make a point with the guy who just rejected her. Alpha female that she is, she more or less hijacks Gordy for the afternoon. He sees it as the kind of luck you only see in dreams and movies. For protection, Martine invites the laconic Brett, who fascinates her, to join them. Our romantic ex-con accepts, and we're into a Louisiana road movie with Cajun undertones. Brett's story plays out in memory flashbacks which show us how he met May, how their first kiss turned into a sour rejection, how they came back together and got hitched, how an accident and a distorted sense of blame separated them. Based on a 1971 story by Pete Hamill, the title derives from Brett's cautionary nature. Not wanting to face an in-the-flesh rejection by May after not seeing her for a considerable time, in an exchange of letters from prison, he asked her to hang a yellow handkerchief outside the house if she wants him to cross her threshold. If there's no hanging handkerchief, he's plumb out of luck. If this stretches logic just a tad, don't blame me. The journey turns into an expedition of the soul for Brett and a coming-of-age for two teenagers who started out as polar opposites. Martine's trust in Brett as a proxy for a father who is distant and unengaged, is touching if misdirected, and Brett proves worthy of her affection by being the first to let her in on the fact that she has a real problem with making decisions. Director Udayan Prasad (Opa!) chose Maria Bello as the older of two romantic babes in this story despite an inherent sensuality that, contrary to her image in the story, makes her a male magnet. But what qualifies her for the part is her aptititude for the tough, no-nonsense, cranky character. She gets us past the supposition that her natural state is loneliness. But the film is more than how an older guy resists the sexpot. After a run-in with cops that exposes that he's an ex-con, Brett opens himself up to his young traveling companions. When the shock wears off, the trio of misfits bond. Everyone grows up a little here. What screenwriter Erin Dignam and director Prasad have extracted from this double pairing is unexpected chemistry and a formula that finds emotional milestones. Cinematographer Chris Menges adds his notes of texture to the raw feelings rising to the surface in Louisiana backroads. And, despite the one question about the casting, there's enough inspiration in the tank for character delineation and a soulful ride.