Released this week on DVD: "Peter and Vandy"

Grade: C

A contemporary Manhattan romance gets the muddled-timeline treatment in Peter and Vandy, a sweet but unsatisfying tale of loving and leaving.

Written and directed by Jay DiPietro (adapting his 2002 play of the same name), the film opens as Vandy (Jess Weixler), an art gallery employee, is expressing her postcoital love for Peter (Jason Ritter), a terminally insecure architect. From there, a series of out-of-sequence encounters establishes the peaks and valleys of their relationship, an agonizingly hesitant affair distinguished by her passive aggression and his occasionally abusive neuroses.

Lovely to look at (Frank G. DeMarco's photography gives even the chilly New York City exteriors a romantic sheen) and beautifully acted, Peter and Vandy is often charming but also strenuous. The nonlinear structure (reminiscent of the recent (500) Days of Summer) and unrevealing dialogue too often holds us at arm's length, a puzzle to be solved without sufficient clues. When, briefly, the film opens up to embrace a second bickering couple (elegantly played by Tracie Thoms and Jesse L. Martin), the rush of energy is palpable: here at last are people willing to communicate in clear, declarative sentences.

Enriched by a soundtrack heavy with New York-based talent like the National and Animal Collective, Peter and Vandy is more a designer frame for actors than nourishing entertainment. Like the Chinese food the leads are always arguing over, the story leaves you hungry for more.