A willfully muted chamber piece, The Time Being is a curious thing. Centering mostly around a struggling artist (Wes Bentley) and his mysterious new benefactor (Frank Langella), the film touches on themes of loneliness, family and social need, but doesn’t sketch out its characters in interesting or dynamic enough fashion to ever blossom into anything more than a meditative curio.

If it resolutely lacks any sort of cathartic roundhouse kick, The Time Being is never really outright boring mainly because co-writer Nenad Cican-Sain is also a disciplined director, and also oversees a beguiling if austere technical package that hints at roiled inner landscapes the screenplay proper doesn’t much address. What The Time Being lacks is something to stand in starker contrast to its spartan aesthetic. As written, Bentley’s character isn’t the most proactive, but the actor also plays him in a blank-faced manner that makes him seem divorced from any rooting interest in his own life, almost as if he’s trying to out-sublimate Langella. This is, needless to say, not a winning strategy. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. In addition to its theatrical dates, The Time Being is also currently available across VOD platforms. (Tribeca Film, unrated, 88 minutes)