Hartley's gallery of indecisive but intelligent characters includes an ex-convict who sets the town talking about what his crime might have been ("The Unbelievable Truth" 1989); a literature professor who spends most of a semester on one paragraph of Dostoyevsky (the PBS project "Surviving Desire" 1992); a manic, bitter electronics whiz who carries a hand-grenade in his pocket ("Trust" 1990); two very different brothers who search for their long-missing radical father ("Simple Men" 1992); and an amnesiac who enlists the aid of a former nun to help him discover his past ("Amateur" 1994).
Some critics have accused the director of making the same film again and again. With "Flirt" (1995), he did just that, depicting three love stories (including one homosexual) utilizing the same dialogue and structure. Moving from New York to Berlin to Tokyo, Hartley examines the essence of love refracted through different characters with ultimately the same results. A flirtatious lover brings about the destruction of his or her own beauty. "Henry Fool" (1997) has been lauded as his best film to date, reiterating his themes of reinvention and the serendipitous experiences that reconstitute relationships.