AT work as the man ager of a suit-and- tie (ugh!) restaurant in Portland, Ore., Sylvia is the model of propriety and elegance — just watch her talk four guys into buying a super-expensive bottle of wine.
But in her private life, she’s a holy terror — a masochistic nymphomaniac. As such, she sleeps with a number of men, then slices her thigh with a sharp rock as a sort of penance.
Sylvia, played by an often naked Charlize Theron, is one of the people whose stories trickle forth in “The Burning Plain,” the directing debut of Guillermo Arriaga, the scripter of such highly rated films as “Babel” and “Amores Perros.”
He also wrote this one, although he’ll probably wish he hadn’t.
The script goes back and forth in time (as much as a generation) and place (Oregon, New Mexico, Mexico) as it tells multiple, seemingly unconnected tales. (One concerns a sex-hungry mother of four, portrayed by Kim Basinger.)
That fractured structure worked well for Arriaga in his scripts for other directors. Here the characters aren’t compelling enough to ask viewers to give their brains a workout to determine exactly what’s going on.
Running time: 111 minutes. Rated R (sex, nudity, violence). At the Sunshine and the Beekman.— V.A. Musetto