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Sometimes it takes a whole movie to get to a wonderful last line. But for that last line to truly be wonderful, the whole movie before it has a job to do. So it\u2019s a pleasure to report that actor-turned-filmmaker Matthew Shear<\/a>, with his debut feature \u201cFantasy Life,\u201d shows a facility for finessing a meal that lands the last bite. A modest yet amusingly spiky round trip from Manhattan to Martha\u2019s Vineyard, it has the trappings of a rom-com but a trickier soulfulness about its unlikely connection.<\/p>\n Shear, with a resting face that seems halfway to panic attack, plays Sam, whose free-floating anxiety is enough to make him faint in public after getting laid off. He also gets squeamish confessing his darkest self-hating thoughts to his avuncular, heard-it-all psychoanalyst (a perfect Judd Hirsch<\/a>). When an offer from his shrink\u2019s wife (Andrea Martin) to babysit their three granddaughters elicits an impulsive yes \u2014 \u201cWe know your parents,\u201d she says cheerily to Sam, pushing aside any nagging ethical quandaries \u2014 Sam finds himself in the fancy brownstone of successful musician David (Alessandra Nivola) and withdrawn, out-of-work actor Dianne (Amanda Peet).<\/p>\n Before long, an ill-suited rebound gig for quick cash turns into full-time manny-ing, but also a growing affection between Sam and Dianne as fellow depressives who recognize in each other a kindred, semi-broken spirit of past promise and present unease. Sam\u2019s a 30-something law school dropout reduced to a position he knows he\u2019s inherently ill-suited for. Dianne, a onetime star with a flatlined career and on the wrong side of 50, toggles between worrying she\u2019ll never act again and ambivalence about even trying. It\u2019s a medicated but functioning limbo that Peet, in one of her best roles, conveys without the slightest trace of pity but with a coursing, wryly emotional intelligence that always reveals the sadness fueling it.<\/p>\n