Passion of Mind : psychological drama. Starring Demi Moore, Stellan Skarsgaard, William Fichtner, Peter Riegert, Sinead Cusack and Joss Ackland. Cinematography by Eduardo Serra. Written by Ron Bass and David Field. Directed by Alain Berliner. Rated PG-13. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.

The name of director Alain Berliner (Ma Vie en Rose) might lead you to think Passion of Mind, a new film now unreeling at local art houses, is better than it actually is.  But its pretensions are all on its glossy surface. It’s only a frustrating and glib romance that toys with the mystique of the supernatural and the Doppelgänger, but winds up merely playing with audience expectations. It’s a combination of a Twilight Zone episode and a Harlequin romance for wannabe highbrows. And even they might not like it.

Demi Moore, here more ambitious this time out, plays a woman leading a double life: Marie, a lovely widowed mother of two living the American expatriate’s existence in the sun-splashed South of France while writing book reviews for the New York Times; and Marti, a single woman, hustling through the cold canyons of New York as head of a hotshot literary agency.

How does she pack so much activity into her day? Because each of these worlds is the dream world to the other. While she sleeps in France, she’s hustling book deals in New York. While she sleeps in New York, she’s pining away among the Provenance vineyards, raising her daughters and having heart-to-hearts with her mysterious best friend Jessie (Sinead Cusack).

The trouble is which world is real and which is the dream?  To help her untie this knot, she also has two psychiatrists: Dr. Langer (Joss Ackland), representing the European/Freudian contingent and, in this corner,  Dr. Peters (Peter Riegert) representing the American get up and go side of things. Each argues persuasively for their respective realities.

The pressure to decide which is which quickens when she meets two men, one from each world.  William (Stellan Skarsgard) a fellow ex-pat living in the South of France and a novelist whose work Marie once trashed.  And Aaron, a Big Apple business manager to one of Marti’s literary clients. Both men fall in love with her, leading her to realize that she can’t have it both ways. To give herself to one means giving herself over to that world and losing the other completely.

Passion of Mind states its problem right in the first frame, with no build-up or sense of mystery. Marie/Marti baldly tells us she can’t make up her mind what is real and what’s not, which leaves the film with no place to go dramatically.  We spend (or more likely waste) our time hopping back and forth between New York and Provenance. Provenance, visually at least, is more appealing. Both William and Aaron are impossibly worthy and patient, a middlebrow feminist fantasy of the Alpha male, except here it’s from the pens of two men, Ron Bass and David Field, which gives the film a vaguely patronizing feel.  It does all our thinking for us.

In short Marie/Marti’s inner conflict is boring.  Beyond deciding which world she wants to live in, there’s nothing at stake.  Blame can be nailed squarely on the banal script.  The story’s metaphorical and suspenseful possibilities are deleted in favor of ho-hum Me Decade pop psychology.

Passion of Mind is all about making peace with your past. It does turn out that one of these worlds is only a dream, the kind of middle-brow logical resolution that always disappoints me, (with the exception of The Wizard of Oz) because of how it dissolves the dream world before the film’s even over. When a movie plays the “it’s only a dream/a man behind the curtain” trick it’s simultaneously saying, “It’s only a movie” But the “reality” feels phony and contrived. In a movie, ghosts should always be real.

It never even teases us with the idea that both worlds might be equally real, which would present all sorts of perils. (Supposing, for example, Marti decides to fly to France to confront Marie. Or one of the lovers tries to interfere with the other relationship.). Instead it settles for “There’s no place like now” and leaves it at that. This makes no sense, because of how it allows Marie/Marti to conveniently block out her past. Just the right and obvious question from one of the psychiatrists would have ended the movie quickly and mercifully. Both shrinks should have their licenses revoked.

Performances are adequate, considering the soupy thinness of the script. Sinead Cusack, as Jessie, fares the worst, due the banality of much of her dialogue (“It’s your chance for love!” she says, as though reading out of an Oprah book selection).  Frichtner as Aaron the New York accountant, looks like he might have some sort of treacherous secret, but interest dies out as soon as it’s clear he’s as blandly sensitive and concerned as the mildly more mercurial William is.

As for Demi Moore in her dual role, she tries but she’s quite in over her head.  Like her ex Bruce Willis, she seems to want to alternate serious roles with her more box-office splashy roles like G.I. Jane. Unfortunately for her, she’s not a deep enough actor and her reputation won’t get any better with material like this. Marie in France is pretty much like Marti in New York. She has no depth or fire for such a role. It’s almost as though the script was flattened out for her.

That leaves only Eduardo Serra’s cinematography to enjoy.  He gives both the New York and Provenance setting their own appealing distinct color schemes: Provenance sunny and autumnal, New York brassy blue neon and then starts blending them as the film creeps towards its climax. Unfortunately, it’s all for naught.