Grief over the loss of a loved one is something that the movies have explored with frequency lately, yielding mixed results that range from the unshielded, raw-nerve emotions of In the Bedroom to the calculated, polished Hollywood uplift of Moonlight Mile. But in a new independent film about grieving for the loss of a beloved spouse, the act comes as a thundering belly-flop into all out emotional paralysis, manifesting itself in some of the most absurdly ridiculous and alienating behavior to grace the cinema in quite some time. berof character development, deliberately king in dramatic momentum and filled with puzzling behavior, that the pain of sitting through it is undoubtedly about as close to the bd emotional state of its unhinged protagonist as one might care to

Love, Liza, a self indulgent new treacle directed by Todd Louiso explores the days of a young widower lamenting the very recent suicide of his wife. It's a film so bereft of character development, deliberately lakcing in dramatic momentum and filled with puzzling behavior, that the pain of sitting through it is undoubtedly about as close to baffled emotional state of its unhinged protagonist as one might care to get.

The film opens three weeks after computer programmer Wilson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has lost his wife Liza to an apparent suicide. When we first meet him, he's locked up in a dark apartment, nearly incapacitated by grief, and the film takes pains to show us that his apparent withdrawal from normal life has been severe and dramatic. He cries fitfully. He sits around the dark house slurring what little speech he makes. He walks around in grungy underwear looking at photos from the past. He cries some more.

When he finally does return to the workplace, amidst overly caring and uncomfortable co-workers, a bout of pent-up emotion manifests itself in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. His boss recommends that he take a brief vacation, and despite the urgings of his confused mother-in-law (Kathy Bates, showing typical command), he carries around a suicide letter, unopened, for the duration of the film, afraid of what wife Liza could have written in her final hours.

He spends the entire film with no character arc or development, most of it, unbelievably, sitting in the dark, sniffing gas as an apparent suicide attempt, flying model planes, disrupting a model boat competition, sniffing more gas, driving around aimlessly, and otherwise drooling, crying and/or breaking down. At one point, it appears that a new boss (Stephen Tobolowsky) finds him a good fit for a new position, and we're left wondering why based on the bizarre behavior exhibited in his meetings with the man.

There are the endless scenes of him walking to a service station and filling up gas cans, going home and sniffing them. And then he develops a fascination with, oddly, gas-powered model planes, an activity which seems so dull and occupies so much running time that it becomes a full-fledged subplot. And then there's an embarrassing scene where he throws a fit in a restaurant that won't allow him to use the phone book. On and on it goes, one absurd, overacted moment after the other, Wilson in a stupor one moment, manic the next.

When the dreaded suicide letter is finally opened and read (aloud, so the audience can hear it), it contains a few cliché sentences that are so forgettable you can't understand how the film could have been named after them.

One underwritten and over-performed character after another appears, including the obnoxious brother (Jack Kehler) of a sensitive co-worker (Sarah Koskoff) harboring a crush on Wilson. If these supporting characters come off a little dim and off-center, Wilson is a full-fledged lunatic whose motivations in the film have very little resemblance to any grieving process I've ever seen. One is left to wonder just how mentally healthy he was before she actually did it, and can also understand just why she might have wanted out after having to live with a man so bizarre.

I like Philip Seymour Hoffman immensely and usually find his wacky energy enervating and particularly fresh. But Hoffman's performance in this film needs to be seen to be believed. His Wilson is so unlikable and so given to bizarre emotional outbursts, insane behavior and strange mood shifts that one would only deduce that though this purports to be a study of a bereaved husband, it's actually a study of a mentally-ill bereaved husband.

In Love, Liza, Hoffman lets it all hang out, so much so that you wish he'd put some of it back in. He makes Wilson into such a sniveling, emotionally distanced and incomprehensible character that the audience is left with just about nothing to identify with or care about. For much of the film, he wanders around aimlessly from one scene to the next, and the film seems about as unsure where it's going as he does.

Kathy Bates does what she can with her few scenes, but she's pretty much there to be a confused and concerned voice of reason. One has to wonder what an actress of her caliber is doing is such an empty role. In one outrageous character turn, she's terribly concerned about Wilson's whereabouts and frantically tries to discover where he might be. When he finally returns home, instead of finding her waiting on his doorstep, he finds his house completely empty, as if he's been robbed, with absolutely nothing left inside. It later turns out that Bates has single-handedly stolen everything in the house - and put it in her basement! Why, I have no idea.

These type of strange inconsistencies can in no way get by on the idea that grieving people behave in weird ways that no one can understand, and are unpredictable to the rest of us. And I want to make it clear that I have no doubt people are crippled and paralyzed by grief, and that for many it's a matter of retreating to a different place, disappearing into another realm or suffering from a breakdown that renders them all but helpless. But in a film like this, there needs to be something for an audience to grab onto - whether it is a likable character, motivation, plot or dramatic tension.

Love, Liza is no sensitive examination of a young man putting his life back together after a tragedy. It supplies one emotional state for its duration - wacky behavior due to emotional shutdown - and not much else. There are no shadings, depths or levels to Wilson, nothing is revealed about who he might have been before the tragedy that might show us how low he's sunken. He begins and ends the film in just about the same place. The film has very little shape or variance in tone, and even less truth, heart or intelligence.

I'm giving Love, Liza one star because I have to believe the hearts of the actors and director were in the right place. But there's next to nothing on the screen that's enlightening or moving, or has anything resonant to say about coming to terms with loss and moving forward with life. There's just a self-indulgent parade of absurd, morose behavior that hasn't been shaped into anything remotely compelling as narrative. If I'm wrong and Love, Liza is what grieving really looks like, I'm not embarrassed to say I'll take the grief as feel-good cathartic uplift of Moonlight Mile any day.