Terrific performances by two veteran actors buoyWelcome to the Rileys, an entertaining and surprisingly quirky look at a dark subject. Doug and Lois Riley (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) have a home in Indianapolis, a set of engraved headstones already waiting for them in the local cemetery, and a marriage that's been crumbling since their daughter died in a car crash at age 15; Doug has found some solace in an affair with a waitress at a local diner, but even that proves to be a mixed blessing at best. On a business trip to New Orleans, he wanders into a strip club and meets Mallory (Kristen Stewart), a broke, foul-mouthed stripper-cum-prostitute who takes his carnal intentions for granted. But there aren't any--Doug wants a daughter, not a whore, and in a credibility-defying sequence of events, he immediately moves into her squalid apartment (paying her a hundred bucks a day for the privilege), decides to sell his plumbing supply business, and phones his wife to tell her he's not coming home "for a while." Lois's reaction? She piles into Doug's Cadillac and tools down to N'Awlins, informing her hubby that if he's living with Mallory (or Allison, or whatever her name is), then she will too. The struggle of parents trying to cope with the death of a child is not a fresh topic, but fromOrdinary Peoplein 1980 to much more recent films likeRabbit Hole,Creation, andThe Lovely Bones, it has usually been treated with a much heavier hand than the one wielded by director Jake Scott here; the scene in which Lois struggles to figure out the Caddy's many bells and whistles is played for laughs, and her encounter with a would-be suitor while en route to New Orleans, while poignant, is refreshingly unsentimental. Gandolfini (in a role that may be the furthest he's yet gotten from Tony Soprano) and Leo are excellent, and although Stewart seems to be trying just a bit too hard to distance herself from theTwilightfranchise, she's a young actress with a bright future.--Sam Graham