MORLANG [] (two stars)
DUTCH TV director Tjebbo Penning makes his feature film debut with a postcard-pretty psychological drama that’s too moody and enigmatic for its own good.
Julius Morlang (Paul Freeman) is a sullen, gray-bearded artist who we first meet sharing an Irish idyll with his young lover, Ann (Susan Lynch), following the death of his wife, Ellen (Diana Kent).
Suddenly, mysterious, vaguely threatening messages begin to arrive, telling him not to feel guilty.
The film keeps jumping back and forth between the present and two years earlier when Morlang discovered his wife having an affair with a younger, hipper multimedia artist and, in dribs and drabs, details of the intervening events begin to emerge.
But Penning, who also co-wrote the script based on a real-life scandal from the Netherlands, tangles up his timeline so thoroughly that any suspense is strangled out of the story.
Running time: 94 minutes. Not rated (language, sex scenes). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth & Sixth avenues.