Quiet City is a slight film, but it's so pure and precise and honest that it takes on stature beyond its actual size. As a work of art, it makes a big noise indeed.

In place of Before Sunrise's verbal fireworks, the aptly named Quiet City offers something more like linguistic sparklers -- modest, yes, but charming all the same.

Callow, self-centered, often infuriatingly inarticulate but filled with possibility; Katz and leads, who improvised much of their own dialogue, capture the contradictions with enough fragile charm that it's hard not to wish them well.