The Song of Sway Lake

In short, it's a mess -- an often lovely, atmospheric throwback with some clear personal flourishes, but a mess nonetheless.

The problem is that there's not much of a story to be enfolded by this atmosphere - or at least nothing that's compelling.

The attractiveness of the scenery, and a quiet, dignified performance by Ms. Peña in what could now be her last movie appearance, wind up being the main redeeming values here.

A clunky, lurching affair populated by barely sketched individuals who seem to be competing for a most-intolerable prize...

"The Song of Sway Lake" is full of good ideas that never quite coalesce into an actual movie.

Filmmaker Gold might have been better off keeping a tight focus on the sparring interchanges between Ollie and his grandmother, for what they tell us about past and present.

With scenes going from detective noir, to romance, to thriller, to dry comedy drama and then back again, it all becomes tiring, without a strong enough emotional depth to the characters to warrant much of the ruminative aspect

Between its music and its mood, there should be enough here to sway audiences into giving it the benefit of the doubt.

The movie seems lost in its own haze of ethereal confusion.

There's a grating fairy tale vibe to the film, especially when Ollie and Nikolai's motivations are narrated through an almost "once upon a time" tone.

Despite the beauty of the imagery, The Song of Sway Lake is a film that conflates that artsy, impressionistic cinematography with profoundly deep and emotional storytelling, as if one can turn the correlation into a kind of causation.

"The Song of Sway Lake" is hardly what you'd call a satisfying movie.