Love is a many splendored -- and multifaceted -- thing in director Robert Benton's latest film, "Feast of Love," set to open nationwide Sept. 28.

"I think people too often, when they see films about love, confuse love with romance," said Benton during a recent stop at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham. "And this is about love -- tragic love, comic love, old love, young love, [parental] love. ... It's about those connections we make in our lives that cause us to think about someone else more than ourselves, to have affection, to put other people in some way at the center of our lives."

Based on a novel by Michigan author Charles Baxter, "Feast of Love" features an ensemble cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell and Jane Alexander. Their lives intertwine at a coffee shop in a close-knit Oregon town, a change from the Ann Arbor setting in Baxter's book.

"Feast of Love" also features Southfield native Selma Blair in a critical role.

"This was the most beautiful script I've ever read," Blair said in a prepared statement. "And then with Robert Benton directing it, saying yes was just a given. I would have done anything to get to say a line in this movie, to get to watch this cast of people working together."