Directed by Claire Denis. Starring Vincent Lindon and Chiara Mastroianni. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

A moral puzzle more than it is a movie, Bastards luxuriates in unadulterated sin without having anything particularly profound to say about the bad behaviour we all seem to enjoy watching.

With usual collaborators cowriter Jean-Pol Fargeau and cinematographer Agnès Godard, veteran director Claire Denis (Chocolat, Beau Travail ) undertakes a tale that’s original only to the degree of nastiness it achieves in the end, and the perversely circuitous path it takes to get there.

Stingy with clues, the film fixes on middle-aged Marco Silvestri (Vincent Lindon), a testy tanker captain who jumps ship when his brother-in-law commits suicide. Marco’s sister (Julie Bataille) is falling apart just as her shoe business is collapsing, and his niece (Something in the Air’s Lola Créton) is found wandering the streets of Paris, bleeding and naked except for a pair of designer heels.

An abrupt fellow who scarcely seems to know who’s doing what to whom, and why, Marco rents an apartment in the same posh building where a snaky business poobah (Michel Subor) resides with his long-time mistress (Chiara Mastroianni) and their little boy (Yann Antoine Bizette). He’s instantly drawn to the mysterious woman, who shares his passion for smoking on balconies and shtupping in the hallway while the babysitter—well, I’m still not sure about that part.

High-def video allows Denis to lurk in deep shadows, but even when daylight arrives, the characters (played by actors familiar from her other movies) are mostly seen in intense close-ups that cut them off from others. This telescopic disconnect keeps the sense of dread ratcheted high even as it alienates viewers from people who, let’s face it, weren’t too appealing from far away. Men here are certainly bastards, the women compliant at best. But these figures aren’t emblematic of social currents unique to our time; they’re just fictional inventions, so why is it so important for us to judge them?