Lotus Eaters

Even though the handsome black-and-white lensing is no substitute for a compelling story, it helps, infusing the skin-deep sketches of emotional enervation with aesthetic energy - for a while.

Lotus Eaters wants desperately to be a portrait of the beautiful and the damned, with its tale of West London rich kids doing drugs and shagging each other, but it's more like a spectacle of the spoiled and annoying.

Overflows with underdeveloped characters and plotlines.

Like its characters, Lotus Eaters is a visual treat-and emotionally vapid.

Maddeningly shallow-maybe that's the point-but McGuinness does have talent.

The free spirit-ness of its characters is certainly mirrored in the film's aesthetic playfulness, but the initial glimmer of Fassbinder-esque expression quickly veers toward Xavier Dolan-grade affectation.

A combination of image, character, and sound suddenly blends nicely together in the second half to become an intoxicating metaphor.

Sadly, there's a fatalism to the entire narrative that veers into outright melodramatic scolding in the movie's final images.

A lazily directed, flabby look at a group of young, too-rich Londoners whose lives are so miserable you'll be tempted to give up your money and move to an ashram or monastery.

Fascinating black and white photography cannot make up for the lack of energy in this dreamscape of human misery.