the young & the restless; Two boys experience growing pains in A Home at the End of the World, while a beautiful girl loses her way in Maria Full of Grace.(movies)(Movie Review)

Colin Farrell's bad-boy image wasn't exactly contradicted by his hilarious recent work as a thug in the raffish comedy Intermission. So it piques one's curiosity to see him star in A Home at the End of the World as a man who's practically an angel. Based on a 1990 Michael Cunningham novel and directed by Michael Mayer, who oversaw Broadway's Thoroughly Modern Millie, this intimate drama traces the friendship of two boys from late-sixties and seventies suburban Ohio, a time of deep singer-songwriter ballads, through eighties New York, a time of wistful New Wave. Bobby (Farrell) is a gentle space cadet, and an orphan ever since a series of tragedies destroyed his family. Jonathan (Dallas Roberts) is bright and blessed with the nurturing parents (Mom is played by Sissy Spacek) that Bobby lacks. Jonathan is also gay, and Bobby is-well, something of a conundrum. As boys, the two are lovers. When Bobby follows Jonathan to Manhattan, he ends up fathering a child with Jonathan's kooky roommate (a loose, lovable Robin Wright Penn, displaying a jazzy gift for comedy). To help raise the child, the trio eventually move to a house upstate. But Jonathan starts to show signs of AIDS-and then there's that looming question of who Bobby is deep down, and whom he really loves. Bobby's built-in ambiguity makes him seem at times ...