Carried Away

In this quietly beautiful drama about dispirited middle age inflamed by youth's torch, Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving play Midwestern schoolteachers going nowhere — not even to the altar — when he falls for a randy student (lissome Amy Locane). The film's Lolita hook could have been exploitative, but director Bruno Barreto (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) wisely takes the high road. Shot with a painter's eye for the grace of ordinary things and gorgeously transferred to video, Carried Away balances youth's fantasies against adulthood's mundaneness and courageously picks the latter. A-