If you enjoy discovering the independent cinematic gems that won’t receive the media hype and slather of, say, the next Ben Affleck mega-movie comeback, then you might want to check out Assisted Living. Todd (played by Michael Bonsignore) is an aloof janitor at an old-age home where he smokes pot and half-heartedly plods about his business. When he does engage with the home dwellers, it’s largely for his own stoner amusement, such as when he plays a representative of heaven who telephones the residents with the inside scoop on the afterlife. In these scenes, the elders reveal a touching vulnerability as the prank becomes something piquant and philosophical. (A woman asks, "Do people have sex in heaven?" "Yeah," Todd says, "but the bodies don’t get in the way." A man asks, "If you die in heaven, do you go to extra heaven?" Todd assures him it’s so.)

The heart of the narrative involves Todd’s relationship with Mrs. Pearlman (Maggie Riley), a flower-hatted Alzheimer’s patient who has grown attached to Todd, and worries about his bloodshot eyes, commenting how they "always look hurt." She entertains ever-deepening fantasies: that she will leave the home; that she will meet her son in Australia; that Todd is her son. And the janitor, a bit more soulful than we initially expected, attempts moving if impulsive gestures of comfort for this woman who is slipping into a world of stasis.

The movie is the debut work of Elliot Greenebaum (producer, director and scriptwriter) and the close-ups he intersperses throughout the scenes achieve a rare, unsettling intimacy. When the home’s staff workers are interviewed in documentary-style segments, the camera cuts to the clients — gnarled hands, vacant eyes, a slash of a mouth grappling for air. Well-crafted and warmly haunting, Greenebaum sustains his film without smothering his subjects in pathos.

For more information, visit the movie’s website.