Film review: Disconnect's contemporary setting masks ages-old concerns about relationships

Described by one American critic as Crash with smartphones, Henry Alex Rubin's Disconnect is thoroughly contemporary in its focus on the digital universe. But its chronicling of humanity's yearning to connect with others links back to E.M. Forster's 1910 novel, Howards End, and its "Only connect" line, and metaphysical poet John Donne's "no man is an island" observation, made in his seminal Meditation XVII.

It's easy for the audience to feel disconnected from what's going on in this ensemble drama-thriller, at least during the film's early stages. But after things settle down a bit, and its three main storylines become established, this many-stranded look at lives in cyberspace and "meatspace" starts to make sense and becomes engaging.

The most immediately eye-catching of the trio of tales involves naive Kyle (Max Thierot), an emotionally vulnerable cybersex worker who helps an ambitious television reporter with a news piece on underage online prostitution.

A second story about a former marine turned paper-pusher, Derek Hull (Alexander Skarsgard), and his wife, Cindy (Paula Patton), who are grieving over the loss of their young son, loses its way. Their characters become less sympathetic when they hunt down the man who brought them emotional distress.

The best of Disconnect's three sagas centres on a socially awkward teenager who is duped, by two mischievous classmates, into falling in love with a cyber creation. Worse, he accedes to "her" request to do something that makes him the laughing stock of the school.