Love, Brooklyn is a deeply frustrating movie, the kind that leaves you scratching your head at how it goes so wrong. Directed by Rachael Abigail Holderv with a Barry Jenkins-esque sensitivity to the filmmaking, the film stars Andre Holland as one of those writers you find frequently in arthouse dramas, especially at a place like Sundance. He plays Roger, a journalist who has been assigned to write an essay on the changing landscape of Brooklyn, a place he claims to love. Roger never actually feels like someone who thinks all that deeply about the topic, and everything about the assignment rings hollow. Unfortunately, this is a problem for every aspect of the movie as it tries to untangle a love triangle between three Brooklynites we learn next to nothing about.

Roger, this journalist who doesn’t actually write anything but can afford to go out drinking every night, is best friends with Casey (Nicole Beharie), owner of a struggling art gallery due to construction in her rapidly gentrified neighborhood. Roger and Casey share a romantic past, and its easy the chemistry between them. They speak in a language only they can understand; they know one another’s jokes. They feel like they should still be together and we can’t help but wonder why they’re not. He invites her stick around at the bar for a while longer, but when she declines he heads over to the home of Nicole (DeWanda Wise), a single mom and widower that he’s been having casual flings with on a regular basis. Afterwards, she makes it a point to tell him that she is not his girlfriend. It’s clear that she’s not ready for anything serious, but when her young daughter starts asking to spend time with Roger, too, the matter gets complicated.

The film struggles to make sense of the contours of these relationships. Roger and Casey make the most sense. The seem so effortless when together. Things are a bit messy between Roger and Nicole, as she grapples with grief and her daughter’s needs, while he considers whether he wants to be a father figure. The film finds him bouncing around between the two; kickin’ it like homes with Casey but spendign evenings with Nicole. The two women know of one another, and both seem to sense the awkwardness of the situation better than Roger, who is a complete dope. Maybe that’s too harsh, but his indecisiveness is irritating and illogical.

It didn’t have to be that way, though, if Zimmerman’s screenplay were more thorough. Few details are revealed about Roger and Casey’s past together, other than she was unhappy. But that doesn’t make sense given how well they get along and how much they lean on one another for support. Beharie does her best to breathe life into an underwritten role. She brightens things up, giving Casey funny voices and quirky sayings, which Roger reciprocates because they’re both a little bit strange, as they both freely admit.  Wise is also saddled with a thin role that demands Nicole be whatever the plot needs her to be in the moment. None of it feels very natural. It’s unbelievable that Holland’s Roger would be so desirable to both of these strong women. But what does he actually do other than ride around on his bike, smoke weed, drink coffee with his married pal (Roy Wood Jr.), and make all of the wrong decisions?

Love, Brooklyn is exec-produced by Steven Soderbergh, who worked with Holland on various projects incuding Showtime’s The Knick. Soderbergh’s influence can be felt in the film’s gradual pacing, sure, but also by the presence of Soderbergh’s Singani liquor, conveniently one of Roger’s favorites. It’s hard to get a grapple on what this movie is supposed to be, because little that it does has any real impact. It doesn’t work as a love story, and if you’re meant to believe the title, it’s also meant to be some kind of love letter to Brooklyn, but that love is confined to coffee shops, yellow cabs, and the occasional park where there may or may not be an ice cream stand.