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Almost all of Stephen Belber’s Match (2014) takes place in one apartment - primarily, in one room. It’s a three-character machine, the center of which is Tobi (Patrick Stewart), a Juilliard ballet instructor with a passion for knitting and saving his fingernail clippings. He’s lived a social life in the public eye, has performed all around the world, and now finds himself avoiding social situations to decompress in the quaint, luxurious solitude of his beautiful apartment.

Early in the film, his routine is interrupted by married couple Lisa (Carla Gugino) and Mike (Matthew Lillard), who travel from Seattle to interview Tobi under the guise of collecting input for a dissertation about the history of dance. Their facade soon slips, however, and Tobi discovers the true nature of their visit is to interrogate him about his sexual associations during the 1960s, which may have rendered him Mike’s father. What follows is over an hour of revelations and catechisms about life, commitment, responsibility, and art.

The character of Tobi is an impressive wealth of emotion. He’s regretful about some of the decisions he’s made yet feels no remorse for pursuing his passions and living the way he wished. He shows moments of effortless whimsy, sublime vulnerability, incredible guilt and emotional pressure, and sharp rage. These various aspects of his character are drawn out through confrontations with Mike, a lascivious, hotheaded police officer with a maddening list of complexes and violent tendencies, and Lisa, a concentrated, empathetic woman whose strong sense of commitment quietly suffers under the weight of her husband’s neglect. When these three characters’ inner troubles collide into one melting pot, explosive things happen on screen.

But are those explosive moments the most captivating scenes, or do we get more entrenched in the nuanced fallout of the volcanic heights and in the charming capriciousness of the surrounding down-time?

Stewart is more than capable of showcasing convincing rage and terror. As Mike hounds Tobi about parentage with increasing intensity, his interview peaks in shouting, broken glass, and Mike rape-scrubbing his mouth with a DNA swab. It’s possible to feel for Mike, a man who grew up feeling as though his father denied responsibility as a parent, but not in that moment. When he storms out of the apartment after the attack, the film continues with only Tobi and Lisa. Lisa reveals herself to be the sexually-repressed, wounded wife of a man who’s only a shell of the person she fell in love with. Tobi finds it in himself to nurse her emotions back to health despite her deception.

The film’s shouting matches and violent outbursts are great - expectedly well-performed by Stewart and surprisingly credible from Lillard, who’s made most of his career out of Scooby Doo installments and idiotic bro-types but aptly taps into the pathos of his character here. But the film really endears in the scenes that kick off the story, when Stewart still believes he’s being interviewed for academic purposes, and in the latter half of the film between Tobi and Lisa alone.

Tobi’s behavior in the initial interview is one of bonhomie. He’s jovial, instantly likable, inexplicably fixated on party mix, full of quirks, and excited about smoking hash. Later, it’s made clear that Tobi’s earlier behavior is the defense mechanism of a terribly lonely and gentle man. He comes clean to Lisa about what he believes is the truth and admits decades of inner conflict over feeling guilty about the fact he doesn’t feel guilty for ignoring his alleged son. The two actors’ performances absolutely dance with one another as their stage-performance training culminates in a very organic connection.

As Mike D’Angelo writes for The AV Club, “Their lengthy pas de deux is so relaxed and affecting that it’s a bit of a bummer when Mike returns for a final confrontation.”

“Drama is driven by conflict,” D’Angelo continues, “but in [Match] it’s the calm between the storms that captivates.”

Mike does return at the end, but the finale benefits from new scenes written by Belber for the film version of Match, which inject depth into the second act. The film’s scenes of calm interaction and down-tempo drama are the heart of the film’s charm.