Austin Chick’s sad, funny and extremely assured first feature, xx/xy is about as New York a film as it is possible to be, driven by a powerhouse performance from You Can Count on Me star Mark Ruffalo, and never getting further from Manhattan than Shelter Island. But, since its premiere at Sundance in January, it’s been getting a lot of attention and has now begun to register with studio executives in Hollywood. Did this surprise him?

“I think they responded to what the essence of the movie is: to the questions it raises about commitment and relationships,” says Chick, after a moment’s hesitation. “I think it’s about what it means to grow, to move into your late 20s/early 30s; what it takes to be responsibly involved in a relationship; and what commitment means,” he continues. “It explores the idea that every relationship is, in some sense, a compromise - and that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

xx/xy is about three New York college students - the college is even identified: Sarah Lawrence, which Chick himself attended - who have a three-way relationship which is simultaneously intense and playful, with freedom being the keyword and passion far outweighing commitment. Then, some 10 years later, they meet up again. Sexual experimenter Thea (Kathleen Robinson) has settled into a ‘normal’ heterosexual marriage. But the unresolved relationship between Coles (Ruffalo) and Sam, played by Australian newcomer Maya Stange, plays havoc with their seemingly settled lives.

It’s a very simple conceit, but played with such conviction and delicacy that it is a kind of Big Chill for a generation that thought it had escaped all those hang-ups. It is also gorgeously shot by German cinematographer Uta Briesewitz - an achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact that the production upgraded from digital video to 35mm at the last moment. And the music - ranging from grungy early nineties tracks to cool noughties trip-hop from Massive Attack refugees The Insects - is terrific.

Chick understandably denies that the film is a fictionalised account of his own student years. “I’m not the Coles’ character,” he says. “But I went to Sarah Lawrence for about two years around that time, so it’s a world that I know. None of those characters is necessarily based on any specific person, but they are types of people I feel familiar with.”

Chick did indeed attend Sarah Lawrence - a school which, as he points out, “is so liberal, they don’t have majors” - in the mid-nineties. It is one of the most expensive colleges in the US, and Chick, who decided to study “something in Fine Arts”, was on a scholarship for which he suddenly became ineligible. Unable to afford the fees and pretty dissatisfied with his studies anyway, he went travelling, ending up in Nepal.

The Himalayas are famed for bringing out the spiritual side in western travellers. But for Chick, they provoked a quite different realisation. “For some reason, I decided I wanted to do film,” he says. “I think one of the things that led me to leave school - other than the cost - was the fact that I was sort of turned off by how insular and academic the New York art scene was, and it wasn’t something that I felt I really wanted to be part of. I wanted to do something that was a visual art but that was more acceptable - had more structure to it. And, even though I grew up in New Hampshire and people just weren’t film-makers - it was not a viable career - film seemed like the most sensible place to go.”