Love.net was Bulgaria’s top-grossing film of 2011, and cleaned up at that country’s version of the Oscars, with first-time feature filmmaker Ilian Djevelekov picking up the best-director award. Presumably there wasn’t a lot of competition; Bulgaria isn’t a noted cinematic powerhouse, and Love.netis, by any standards, a pretty lacklustre effort.

The light drama explores the ways lonely people connect through the Internet, but it doesn’t offer any especially profound revelations. We’re told that journalist Andrey (Zahary Baharov) is writing a series of stories about online dating, but we’re not shown what’s in those articles. We do know that he has developed an in-the-flesh relationship with an unreasonably hot prostitute (Playboy cover girl Dilyana Popova) whose off-screen life seems to consist of sitting around her apartment waiting for him to show up. Is he in love.net with her? Maybe, although he never says so, and his ability to supress any trace of emotion is Buster Keaton–esque.

Equally stoic is Andrey’s brother Filip (Hristo Shopov, who pestered Jesus as Pontius Pilate in The Passion of the Christ). A successful surgeon, Filip has grown apart from his wife (Lilia Maraviglia) and has turned to arranging hook-ups online. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for the guy, since at no point is he shown as anything other than a self-serving d-bag, but at least we know why his wife is moping around all the time.

With disparate plotlines that don’t link up in any meaningful way and characters that we’re given no reason to care about, Love.net might make you wish you’d spent 109 minutes browsing the profiles on Plenty of Fish instead.

Love.net screens on Monday (December 2) at 6:30 p.m.