A period tale of forbidden love between two women trying to navigate the injustices and humiliations of a patriarchal society? December’s “Ammonite” struggled to provide a reason to stick with its lethargic storytelling, but “The World to Come” has a more interesting take on roughly the same situation of secret lovers in tight corsets. An adaptation of a Jim Shepard short story (he co-scripts with Ron Hansen), the feature offers an impressively forbidding location for its odyssey into the needs of the human heart. It’s the winter season in 19th century New York, giving director Mona Fastvold a bleak, freezing backdrop for a study of warming hearts, following Shepard’s poeticism to deliver a somber study of an impeded relationship that’s fueled by acts of personal expression. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com