“Obselidia,” a compendium of indie clichés.

Reviewed at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. One of this year's festival bumpers -- the 2010 Sundance motto being "This is the renewed rebellion" -- pokes fun of a "The Player"-style pitch for an indie feature that's part "Royal Tenenbaums," part "Donnie Darko," half LSD flashback, a family film about people who "don't even know they're a family," with an Alan Alda-type crotchety grandpa with a substance abuse problem. Then this pitch gets ripped up in favor of new, fresh storytelling! Like "Obselidia," the debut feature of one Diane Bell, a movie so packed with that very type of Sundancey cliché that you could almost imagine the plot and characters being crowd-sourced, Mad Libs style, at a Park City bar: Eccentric loner: How about George (Aussie actor Michael Piccirilli), an inert Los Angeles librarian with a vague James Franco/Guy Pearce resemblance whose hobby is compiling an encyclopedia of obsolete things?...

Reviewed at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

One of this year’s festival bumpers — the 2010 Sundance motto being “This is the renewed rebellion” — pokes fun of a “The Player”-style pitch for an indie feature that’s part “Royal Tenenbaums,” part “Donnie Darko,” half LSD flashback, a family film about people who “don’t even know they’re a family,” with an Alan Alda-type crotchety grandpa with a substance abuse problem. Then this pitch gets ripped up in favor of new, fresh storytelling! Like “Obselidia,” the debut feature of one Diane Bell, a movie so packed with that very type of Sundancey cliché that you could almost imagine the plot and characters being crowd-sourced, Mad Libs style, at a Park City bar:

Eccentric loner: How about George (Aussie actor Michael Piccirilli), an inert Los Angeles librarian with a vague James Franco/Guy Pearce resemblance whose hobby is compiling an encyclopedia of obsolete things? Among these he counts love, which, he claims is “just a protein.” Will he reconsider? Of course, once he meets his…

Manic pixie dream girl: Sophie (Gaynor Howe), who works as a silent film projectionist, latches onto George after he comes to interview her (on an outdated VHS camcorder, natch) for his project, showing up at his doorstep and cajoling him out on a date despite his resistance. Before you know it, they’re off on a…

Road trip: To Death Valley, where they camp and visit a climate change expert who lives alone in a trailer tending bees. Will one of the characters hang out the car’s sunroof, arms outspread, as they drive? Maybe so. All the better to shake off that…

Unearned melancholy: And how! It’s unclear as to what, exactly, has made George so mopey, but Sophie suffers from what she calls “nowstalgia,” a tendency to experience nostalgia for things even as they happen. Later, stricken by the scientist’s insistence that humanity will be wiped out by 2100, she weeps, “The world’s going to end, we’re all going to die, and I haven’t really started living my life yet.”

There’s a heartbreaking gap in “Obselidia” between the film itself and the guilelessly chosen references it throws out like a high schooler who’s studied up on what he thinks are the right bands, books and movies to impress a college girl he just met. George and Sophie visit Zabriskie Point and wander through the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and Sophie admits that her last relationship didn’t work out because her boyfriend didn’t like foreign or black and white films. “I just don’t know if I can be with someone who won’t watch ‘Au Hasard Balthazar,’” she confesses.

If I heard someone say that in real life, I would be overcome by an urge to punch that person in the face. Fortunately for me, no one in “Obselidia” bears a resemblance, even in a stylized sense, to any conceivable flesh and blood human being.

“Obselidia” does not yet have U.S. distribution.