Noble efforts to turn plays into screenplays usually end up with too much play and not enough screen. But "Off the Map" is a reminder that it can be done beautifully, and Joan Ackermann is a fine example of why the playwright should always be given a crack at his or her stage-baby's film script.

Sam Elliott is Charley, a husband and father dealing with paralyzing depression, in "Off the Map." Click photo for larger image. 'Off the Map' Rating: PG-13 for mild sexual references Starring: Joan Allen, Valentina de Angelis, Sam Elliott, Jim True-Frost. Director: Campbell Scott.

It helps to have Taos, N.M., and the surrounding lands of enchantment for a visual and psychological backdrop, de-theatricalizing things yet wildly dramatic in itself. It helps even more to have a virtuoso quartet of actors -- headed by Joan Allen -- playing equally important characters equally well.

Three of them comprise the nonconformist Groden family, long isolated but happily self-sufficient in their rough-hewn desert home, far from even a road let alone a town. Earth mother Arlene (Allen) has an eccentricity or two (she likes to do her gardening in the nude) but devotedly nurtures the bodies and souls of husband Charley (Sam Elliott) and 11-year-old daughter Bo (Valentina de Angelis).

Bo is a pubescent live wire with an acquired sophistication to complement her acquired skills with a gun and bow-and-arrow. She has two burning desires -- a Mastercard and a conveyance out of New Mexico -- but one ongoing problem shared by her mother: Charley. The once vital father and husband is in a severe, near-catatonic depression and shows no sign of emerging from it.

Enter the fourth character -- or, rather, stumbles the fourth character -- in the most unlikely form: IRS agent William Gibbs (Jim True-Frost), cluelessly assigned to collect God knows how much in back taxes from the clueless Grodens (they've never filed). Exhausted from the cross-country ordeal of reaching them, William immediately gets sick and stays the night. The week. The month. The next three years. Bo falls in love with him. He falls in love with her mother -- and with art instead of audits.

One of many lovely things about "Off the Map" is that you're never quite sure if it's a comedy or tragedy at heart, or whether each successive scene will be comic or tragic. But you can be sure of director Campbell Scott's deft handling of mood and tempo either way, and the smooth integration of humor and pathos.

Allen is once again superbly real in a part as unpigeonholeable as Pat Nixon. Nice word, unpigeonholeable. It applies also to True-Frost's wonderful portrayal of the UN-real IRS agent, while young de Angelis -- a ninth-grader and a real discovery, in my opinion -- provides the imaginative joy and wonder of the tale. Its stage roots show through, now and then, in some artificially philosophical dialogue, but such defective moments are redeemed by the wry wisdom and intelligence of the writing overall.

Elliott's too-close-to-home depiction of depression -- those silent, unfathomable tears -- serve as the melancholy ostinato of a sad adagio.

"Have you ever been depressed?" Charley asks William.

"I've never not been depressed," he replies.

Don't get me wrong. "Off the Map" is not really about depression -- it's an antidote to it.