FILM - London

People break up all the time. However, they don’t usually sniff cocaine off Van Gogh paintings in an upscale New York loft while speaking the most intellectually dense dialogue this side of “Dawson’s Creek.” They do in “London,” which, despite trying to be a very realistic and grittily shot film, winds up looking more like an urban fantasy than anything plausible or remotely emotional.

Syd, played a little too well by Chris Evans, is trying to woo back London, played by Jessica Biel, although her body double could’ve handled the “acting.” His plan involves going, uninvited, to her going-away party and holing up in a bathroom, shooting coke and getting philosophical with Bateman, a friend-of-a-friend and his supplier. Jason Statham, who plays Bateman, goes way over the top, but he’s still so suave and cool that he makes it work. Syd’s plan, on the other hand, works about as well as the movie: poorly. If writer/director Hunter Richards wanted to make a philosophical film like “Waking Life,” he should’ve stayed away from the coke himself.

If you get rid of the hokey romance-gone-bad plot, there are some great scenes in the bathroom, most of which use snappy flashbacks and a few quirky camera angles to relate humorous anecdotes. That’s right: the anecdotal asides are more cinematically impressive and memorable than the plot itself. “London” is such a pretentious thinking film that the visual aids, funny on their own, help the mind’s medicine go down. Of course, none of that helps to alleviate the bigger symptom: all the preachy overtones. Yes, “I’d rather regret something I have done than something I was too scared to do,” is a great line; when characters keep rephrasing it, it becomes as cheesy as a catchphrase. That may work for the way in which Hunter Richards neatly resolves his plot, an inconclusively solid “Lost in Translation”-type affair, but it just makes “London” into an artsy, angst-y breakup film. If that’s what you’re into—stick with cocaine and stare at a wall; that’s liable to have an equal effect.