"Return" is a showpiece for the actress Linda Cardellini, who plays Kelli, a soldier just getting back to Ohio from a tour of duty and trying to resume her life as a factory worker and wife and mother. The experience of the film is highly fragmented, at times logy, occasionally compelling, but always quiet, understated, free of movieish artificiality or hysterics. It's the lack of a prefabricated arc and easy resolution that gives it its lingering effect.
