Obviously borrowing the structure of a Robert Altman film, such as 1975's incomparable classic "Nashville" and 1993's "Short Cuts," "Playing by Heart" does not reach the overall ambitiousness of those two pictures, but is nicely done all the same.
Playing By Heart is the lite & cuddly flip-side of movies like Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Todd Solondz' Happiness.
Although Robert Altman, the premiere director for movies of this nature, is not credited as Carroll's mentor, "Playing By Heart" looks as though it were cloned from Altman's mosaic "Short Cuts."