Reviewed - 13 conversations about one thing: Some ways into this wearing compendium of things people just don't say, after it has been established that the theme is facing up to the consequences of our actions, Dr Walker (John Turturro), a physics professor who dresses like a movie physics professor, lectures his class on the subject of entropy.

Nothing can reverse the decay that pervades the universe, Walker explains. To re-enforce his point he writes the word "irreversible" on the board in block capitals.

Later, while explaining cause and effect to a student, Walker toys with a Newton's Cradle on his desk. A shiny, silver ball swings, hits the pack and causes another to dart upwards.

Elsewhere, a lawyer, played by the partly ambulatory showroom dummy that is Matthew McConaughey, makes the mistake of claiming to be spectacularly happy. A depressed man at the bar (Alan Arkin) tells him a story - people are constantly telling strangers stories here - about a doomed colleague whose fatal mistake was opening himself up to contentment. The lawyer knocks over a young woman on his way home and his life turns into compost (it rots, it decays, it succumbs irreversibly to entropy).

You wouldn't get away with this sort of writing on Neighbours, but preposterously theatrical monologues, teeth-grindingly clunky foreshadowing and broad caricatures of the bourgeoisie are the stock and trade of a certain class of American independent film-making. They are all here.

There are certainly some good performances in Jill Sprecher's film - decent actors will, of course, crawl through effluent to deliver speeches this long - and there are one or two moments where real emotion breaks through the artifice. Readers tolerant of Neil La Bute's puzzlingly lauded social comedies may quite enjoy the misanthropic tone of the darker of Sprecher's interlocked stories.

But, really, some of this dialogue would shame a sulky teenage goth. On being told one of his students wants to be a doctor so as he can "help people", Walker replies: "How? By keeping them alive today so you can prolong their misery until tomorrow?"

Nobody understands me! I'm going to my room!