Author and radio host Gabriel Noone lives in a world of imagination, spinning out semiautobiographical tales for night-owl listeners on a syndicated talk radio program. He shades the truth in his monologues to polish the stories and to ease the sting of uncomfortable realities. His relationship with his longtime boyfriend Jess is failing, and Gabriel's father regards his middle-aged gay son with the bemusement of a farmer who has delivered a two-headed calf.

In "The Night Listener," Gabriel is pulled out of his funk after his publisher passes along a riveting manuscript about a sexually abused 14-year-old boy, written by the victim himself. When young Pete Logand calls him, Gabriel is impressed by his sharp mind, moved by the boy's determination to turn suffering into art, and inspired by his courage in the face of the sexually transmitted diseases that are undermining his health. Gabriel forges a close phone friendship with Pete and Donna, the social worker who adopted him.

Soon Gabriel is a long-distance provider and caregiver, sending Pete presents and fondly awaiting his calls. Jess, however, finds holes in Pete's story and warns Gabriel not to romanticize this virtual relationship with a stranger. To banish his growing doubts, Gabriel makes an unannounced trip to rural Wisconsin to meet Donna and Pete.

The story takes a disturbing turn as his efforts to test the authenticity of their stories draws Gabriel into a threatening arena where appearances can be dangerously deceiving. The film, coming on the heels of the unmasking of memoirist James Frey as a fraud and reclusive punk novelist JT LeRoy as a fabrication, makes provocative observations about the permeable boundary between literature and deceit.

Robin Williams delivers a striking performance as Gabriel, a man holding overwhelming loneliness at bay through a relationship that exists largely in his own imagination. Williams is attentive to every facet of Gabriel's complex personality, doing the kind of work that makes you forgive him for participating in so many slipshod comedies.

As Donna, Toni Collette is every bit his match, a mysterious woman, powerfully protective of her fragile charge. Patrick Stettner's direction is coolly menacing and economical.

"The Night Listener" has flaws, particularly a double ending that raises more questions than it resolves, but it conjures a haunting mood of anxiety that settles around you like a shroud.

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