Manhattan can be the best and worst place in the world—sometimes simultaneously—depending upon your frame of mind in the moment. At once the center of the universe, a shoulder-to-shoulder throng of commuters, tourists and culture overload, it can envelop or expel, embrace or abandon, invigorate or disconnect from its utter expanse.

In Heights, a new ensemble drama charting the life trajectories of several New Yorkers during the course of a single day, the city itself comes to dazzling life, even while the lives of its fledgling and elite artisans come crashing down in a tangle of ennui, adultery and crisscrossed sexual identities.

The first thing we’re reminded of is how vibrant, sexy and contemporary Glenn Close arrives here, aged before her time by Hollywood and returning to the sexy, modern Manhattanite that made her a big star in 1987’s Fatal Attraction. As decorated stage and screen diva Diana Lee, teaching acting courses at Julliard while performing a revival of Macbeth on Broadway, reconciling an unfaithful husband and indulging a brief interest in a promising young actor (Jesse Bradford), Close ignites Heights as a cosmopolitan society maven whose stellar professional success masks an empty backstage marriage.

At the center of Heights is Diana’s twenty-something daughter Isabel (a good-hearted Elizabeth Banks, recalling Parker Posey), an aspiring photojournalist still a novice in her craft and love life, engaged to frustrated exec Jonathan (model-worthy James Marsden), harboring obvious secrets and a complacency that’s left them both numb. Gay actor Alec (pretty Bradford) shares the same apartment building and possibly more, and by fate auditions for Diana, who takes a shine more to his naiveté than talent. Then there’s the matter of a sensational magazine profile on a Herb Ritts-like fashion photographer renowned as much for his erotic lensing as for his sexual conquests.

Heights takes its time joining these threads and though we can see rather early and clearly just how the links will join, there’s certain pleasure seeing the plot-light narrative snap into place, even if its big revelations don’t amount to much. It’s not all that deep or revealing, but then Heights, so stylishly shot in cool metro blues and greens, widescreen compositions and the dramatically effective split screen courtesy of cinematographer Jim Denault, isn’t really concerned with complex plotting. Instead, it captures a state of mind—a sort of post 9/11, swallowed-up contemporary malaise plaguing young city dwellers caught in an urban hustle of concrete and dangling dreams, happiness just out of reach and tenuous relationships with tangling threads.

This is one sleek, attractive film courtesy of its edgy, youthful stars—Banks’ wholesome comeliness, Marsden’s simmering (and telegraphed) duality and Bradford’s tender longing. But it’s also one that carries a satisfying heft on the backs of its veterans—flamboyant Close as well as Eric Bogosian as a philandering director, George Segal as a Rabbi with a lone voice of reason and Isabella Rossellini in a single scene as a chic Vanity Fair editor.

Director Chris Terrio expertly mounts the glossy, high style, theatrical milieu of society and stage, examining the real and imagined, the masks we wear in love and war and the artificial passion channeled to the stage but muted when life’s real drama unfolds. In a killer piece of writing and performance, Diana addresses a Julliard drama class on the subject, skewering our contemporary disconnection from our core. Passion in today’s world, Heights claims, has been replaced by the tepid, "tap-water" neuroses, where the revelation of adultery produces little more than a few tears in a "Starbucks soy-latte." In an effective scene of irony, she finds herself confronted with a real-life revelation and cries silently, even precisely.

Heights is an effective mood piece on urban melancholy that takes pains to show how isolating modern city life—and love—can be. And then it doubles-back into something almost touching, with one main character’s revealing admission: "I don’t care what you want, anymore."

It’s a small, critical piece of liberation. Just like the film.