Patrick Stettner’s The Night Listener, based on a novel by Armistead Maupin, seems to fit right in with the current climate of fabrication, hoax and plagiarism of news, biography, history and research -- dramatized, toyed with, and obscenely exploited in such films as Shattered Glass, Brothers of the Head and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things.  Not all viewers may find this thriller-mystery resolved, but it works very well despite some inconsistencies and the screen difficulty of phone conversations.

Tension builds, the audience is kept guessing to the end (and beyond), things are not blatantly spelled out. Specific reference is made to Psycho, but behind such box-office affairs, however, there is another level, too smoothly wrapped up perhaps, but related to issues of Blowup, The Conversation and Blow Out. All four concern the individual interpretive nature of perception and, excepting the De Palma homage, feature unhappily vacuous men who fear loveless solitude but live vicariously in imagination.

Yet another screenwritten version (Stettner, Maupin and Terry Anderson) of an author’s take on purportedly true happenings, the film is open-ended but benefits from the natural introduction here and there of respectable alternatives. There are oversights in the refreshing eighty-two R-rated minutes -- a limping escape from an unfamiliar hospital, a waitress’ (Becky Ann Baker) payphone call, a cattle-prod redneck cop (Joel Marsh Garland) easily berated the next moment, a two-storey house emptied overnight, and brief misleading snips of a heavy chain, hunting photograph, and a woman giving water to a coughing child -- though the story is clever enough to incorporate such and more.

More than the sexually abused, fragile AIDS-racked teen Pete (Rory Culkin), his adoptive mother Donna D. Logand (Toni Collette) is at the heart of the mystery part of it, symbolically blind yet seeing, filled with lonely desperation and -- like the son she claims to protect -- furious obscenity, and, suggested in kaleidoscope opening credits, possibly split into different persons as well.

Nevertheless, for all the compelling blue-toned mystery, the piece belongs to Robin Williams, here muting his usual mawkishness as WNYH-New York radio “Noone at Night” 12-2 am writer-reader of stories and gay advocate Gabriel Noone. Professionally and personally in shambles, he is way behind at work, feeling abandoned by his much younger HIV-positive former partner of eight years (Bobby Cannavale, as Jess), absentminded with practical bookkeeper and friend Anna (a subdued Sandra Oh), on the usual thin ice with his vigorous testy father (John Cullum), and afraid that he is growing “ancient,” rudderless, alone.

On the entreaties of worried friend and editor Ashe (Joe Morton), he reads, and is intrigued by, Donna’s over-the-transom, i.e., unsolicited, account of her boy’s unbelievably plagued life. Drawn into mother and son’s world through telephone and answering-machine correspondence, he seeks, in Jess’ opinion, the child he has long wished for. In spite of evasions and cancellations, Gabe travels to Christmastime Montgomery, Wisconsin, to find that the mystery family of two is not easy to locate even in such a small town. Donna proves difficult to get around, the boy impossible.

SPOILER ALERT

Sam Spade to Brigid O’Shaugnnessy, finally angry Gabe spits out that “you’re good” but comes to realize that he and she are not all that far apart. Having “heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,” unlike Job he is destined never to catch sight of the object of affection. But he does see his own redemption, even as Jess reminds him that “the best thing about you -- always was -- you’ve got a big heart.”

(Released by Miramax Films and rated "R" for language and some disquieting sexual content.)