Given the patriarchal nature of the movie business, it’s no surprise that the older-man/younger-lover scenario has always been popular. Lately, though, the proliferation of such films has gotten pathological. Recent weeks have seen the release of L.I.E., Our Lady of the Assassins, Life As a House, and Don’t Say a Word, films of varying worth and sexual preferences but all venturing into the vaguely taboo frontier where paternal affection verges on incestuous suggestion.

In her debut feature film, Chicago Hope actress Christine Lahti takes on this loaded premise with mini–Helen Hunt and flavor-of-the-month ingénue Leelee Sobieski, who invokes the Winona Ryder of Heathers as alienated goth girl Jennifer, a virgin who writes death-obsessed poetry illustrated with her own blood and sports multiple piercings and tattoos. Compelled to find a job in the mall, she develops an unlikely attraction to Randall (a sardonic, but increasingly whiny Albert Brooks), the manager of a stuffy men’s store, and their May/December, punk-rock/Bobby Darin relationship sparks wit and heat. Too much so, and in trying to avoid the messy implications of a relationship between a 17-year-old virgin and a 49-year-old divorcé, the film fizzles. Lahti falls back on her TV background (the screenplay is the first from TV writer Jill Franklyn), and what starts out as a chipper version of Ghost World turns into a variation on the mawkish Autumn in New York.