When fledgling entrepreneur Casim (Yaqub) and music teacher Roisin (Birthistle) hit the right note, little do they realise the discord it will cause in their lives.

For all the trappings of a businessman-on-the-make - Golf GTi and grandiose schemes for a nightclub - Casim is still very much rooted in family and faith.

He is devoted to his mother and respects his corner shopkeeper father, who came through the horrors of Indian partition to forge a new life in Glasgow.

One the other hand, the carefree Roisin lives an uncomplicated life to the full and, as a bonus, is offered a full-time place as a teacher in her Catholic school.

However, Casim has a secret - he is betrothed to a cousin in Pakistan, a fact he only makes known to Roisin during a last-minute break to Spain.

When he breaks off the engagement and moves out of the family home, it would seem he and the unfettered Roisin can start a serious relationship.

However, prejudice rears its head in her world when the Catholic Church forbids her to keep teaching at the school while still (just about) married and living with Casim.

Less cartoonish than East Is East, which occupies similar territory, director Loach has again summoned his mercurial skills to draw out performances of poignant delicacy.

After the constant barrage of bombastic lecturing about the failings of the Muslim world, it's refreshing to see the issues addressed at a personal level.

Despite the broad Glaswegian accents, there's a world for many Scottish Muslims where arranged marriages and smothering family binds are still the way things are done.

And it's also instructive to see that the modern Catholic Church is capable of regressing to knee-jerk dogma in a complex world where compromise is an essential.

Subtler and less polemical than previous work, this sees Loach gently deal with genuine emotions against a background where the phrase 'culture clash' is a gross over-simplification.

There's no hard-done by scallies or exploited Manc underclasses... just a couple trying to make sense of a set of religious circumstances they've been born into.

Tim Evans