Filth and Wisdom

Can’t resist: Does Madonna’s coherency-challenged, surprisingly boring feature-film debut have something to do with her divorce? Certainly it makes her and soon-to-be-ex-husband and fellow filmmaker Guy Ritchie, whose tricks she sometimes borrows, seem by comparison like Orson freaking Welles. Maybe he preferred to do without any favors. There’s no wisdom in this script, co-written by the director (apparently when she was, like, 16) and Dan Cadan; unfortunately, there isn’t any real filth either. The vague, attitudinizing plot involves a handful of gently sinful Bohemian London flatmates: the mildly skuzzy, creatively mustachioed Eugene Hutz (that Borat-esque Ukranian dude from Everything Is Illuminated and the lead singer of the gypsy punk band Gogol Bordello, whose music barely helps here) as an S&M worker; Vicky McClure as a socially conscious pharmacist who also happens to steal pills; Holly Weston as a ballerina who becomes a pole dancer; and Richard E. Flynn as some sort of blind, sad, pseudo-profound professor. It’s warm-hearted, at least.