A Postmodern Love

Despite the title, the themes and events presented in this sojourn through contemporary relationships are tediously familiar. After a disastrous experience serving in Iraq and an unpleasant divorce, Los Angeles–based otolaryngologist Thomas Wilde is ready for a distraction. It arrives in the form of the beautiful but inscrutable Lana Fauves, who vacillates between damsel in distress and femme fatale. Thomas’s toxic obsession with Lana, which he sometimes believes is love, damages his finances, his medical practice (though he seems indifferent to his patients at best), and his other relationships, driving him to make increasingly destructive decisions. The story has much in common with 1940s noir films, including its shadowy, sparsely populated version of L.A. and its overall nihilism, but doesn’t add anything new to the genre. Clumsy depictions of antagonists and Thomas’s objectifying views of women make this a nonstarter for all but the most ardent and completist fans of philosophical noir. (Nov.)