Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko. In English, French, Spanish, and Italian with English subtitles. Rated PG.

In this virtually plot-free tale of doomed affairs and the people who whisper about them, The Tree of Life maker Terrence Malick gives us artful tableaux, images aplenty of sun-dappled nature, and the constant sputter of mumbled voice-overs, with regret and reminiscence resembling Catholic confession more than private thought.

The main confessor here is a gorgeous Parisienne (Quantum of Solace’s Ukraine-born Olga Kurylenko) who travels with a square-jawed American (Ben Affleck) and her 10-year-old daughter (Tatiana Chiline) to less-than-entrancing Oklahoma. He studies nasty oil-industry effects while our transplants marvel at the sterile splendour of American supermarkets.

After much twirling, teasing, and compulsive goofing around, the couple starts fighting. The hard-to-read guy eventually hooks up with a former flame (Rachel McAdams) with a nice ranch. They pose among the horses and, later, frolic with some bison. Elsewhere, a Spanish-speaking priest (Javier Bardem) tends to Oklahoma’s most wretched, and he looks less happy than them.

We never go beneath the surface, partially because the film’s languorous montages have ponderous classical music in the place of real-time dialogue. A rare exception finds another woman (Romina Mondello) suddenly hectoring our expat in Italian—which she answers in French. Quirky, yes, but just part of the parade of indulgent acting-class rituals.

The eccentric filmmaker’s super-stylized approach worked better in his previous films, set largely in the past. This quasi-spiritual inwardness contrasts well with the physicality of, say, Native Americans encountering Europeans in The New World, or soldiers preparing for battle in The Thin Red Line. But now the golden-hour haze parts to reveal that Malick must tackle Big Ideas because he’s incapable of dramatizing small ones. There are some sweet epiphanies, but this Wonder mostly suggests a child’s contemplation of what it will be like to get old and then look back at being a grownup.