Amateurishly staged and unevenly acted, microbudget indie L.A. Superheroes is an indulgent, mishmashed immigrant/fringe-dweller‘s drama in which a couple artistically inclined Los Angelenos struggle to stay afloat (and in the country). Co-directed by multi-hyphenates Yelena Popovic and Alexandros Potter, from what they claim to be a collection of true-life stories witnessed firsthand, this dramatically impotent film serves as ample further evidence that, absent a unifying aesthetic and an artistic hand on the tiller, a camera simply turned back upon “real life” does not a compelling movie make.

Helena (Popovic) is a thirtysomething model who, after her work visa expired, apparently never got around to getting her paperwork in order. She has a wildly terrible manager, Angie (Catherine Carlen), who in addition to borrowing money from her client to make her car payment, also advises her to get a forged passport so she can go to Paris and do this big gig that’ll magically solve all her problems. Helena’s acting class friend, Auto (Alexander Zisiades), is a struggling musician who gets by delivering pizzas, though that doesn’t much seem to quell the rage he has toward the Los Angeles dating scene. After Helena secures a phony birth certificate through a contact of another friend, Sunny (T.J. Castronovo), things go sideways, and she becomes convinced she’s in danger for her life.

Weirdly titled, L.A. Superheroes unfolds in a series of languorously staged vignettes surrounding the fallout of this passport dilemma, but Short Cuts this isn’t. It aims for what is ostensibly a seriocomic tone (Auto’s advice to Helena before entering a potentially dangerous situation is to take a rock and not get shot in the face), but apart from a scene in which a woman feigns an injury in Runyon Canyon to catch the eye of a potential suitor, there’s nothing particularly amusing, clever or insightful about its eye and ear for random detail, and there’s additionally no compelling forward momentum, plot-wise. Helena’s husband gets quickly shunted off to the side, robbing the movie of at least the potential for some greater interpersonal dramatic friction.

Though it does feature a bit of decent music, L.A. Superheroes is shot through with nonsense — full of other tangents that never go anywhere. In theory Helena is also a would-be actress (hence the acting class), but the script attaches no particular aspiration or energy to her plight; indeed, there’s an extended sequence where an old New York friend shows up, invites her to dinner and then harangues her, reminding her that she in fact knows the director of “the year’s biggest movie,” Scumbag Club. Oh yeah, Helena realizes with a shrug… there’s that. Then it’s never really addressed again, leaving a viewer only their own glorious imagination in daydreaming up that fictitious hit. For more information on the film, click here to visit its website. (Simeon Productions, unrated, 78 minutes)