What gets off to a promising start curdles quickly in writer/director Harry Sinclair’s feature-film debut. Set on a new Zealand dairy farm, this romantic tale skims the cream of Aboriginal superstition and South American magical realism to create a frothy but just palatable concoction. Lucinda (the affecting Danielle Cormack) is newly married to Rob (hunk-o-rama Karl Urban), and though their sex life is steamy, she wonders whether the romance is already gone — he seems to dote too much on his cows. An unsettling car accident involving an old woman seems to trigger strange behavior in Lucinda; she sells off Rob's dairy herd and starts toting around a suitcase full of baby booties. He doesn’t get her neurosis and turns to her best friend; she doesn’t accept his anger and seeks out the village wise woman.

Although I enjoyed the film’s dreamy texture (think early Jane Campion), trancy soundtrack, and madcap humor (Rob’s agoraphobic dog is a silly gag that never gets old), Sinclair does not seem able to reconcile the script’s byzantine tangents with what his characters ought to be doing, saying, and thinking. That’s not magical realism, it’s just sophomoric writing. And though Cormack and Urban are both very good, their performances do not quite transcend Sinclair’s often baffling story line. Got plot?