Henry Fool is Hartley's epic. His latest film clocks in at a quarter past two hours, covers almost eight years in a low-income New York family's life, and touches on a grand theme: the intersection of art and celebrity. It's also a low comedy: It opens with one of the leading men vomiting on a girl's bare behind, and it features a key scene in which the other leading man proposes to his girlfriend while in the throes of explosive diarrhea. All this is surely part of the vision.

The title character (played by Thomas Jay Ryan) is a lowlife with delusions of grandeur. Having spent time in prison for making time with a minor (who swore she was 18), Henry emerges with a notebook full of scribblings that he calls "his confession," and with a determination not to let the real world keep him from pursuing his art. He takes up residence in the basement of a bizarre nuclear family--suicidal mother Mary Grim (Maria Porter), her slutty daughter Fay (Parker Posey), and her emotionally stunted garbageman son, Simon (James Urbaniak).

Henry's detachment from life and his passion for literature fascinate Simon, so Simon starts a notebook of his own, containing a long, profane poem. Henry encourages Simon to get the poem published, but no publisher is interested, just the gaggle of teenage girls who hang out at the local coffee shop. One of the girls posts the poem on the Internet, and Simon becomes an overnight sensation, galvanizing America's youth and scandalizing America's tastemakers.

Hartley's interest in the farcical elements of his story is minimal. As with all of his films, Henry Fool adopts a bemused attitude toward the behavior of humans in bizarre situations. This distinctive, "Hartley-esque" tone is funny at times, but it becomes frustrating that Hartley is persistently unwilling to portray genuine passion, or to advance a classifiable point of view toward his characters. With the exception of Simon, who's a blank, everyone in Henry Fool is a poseur. But Hartley doesn't seem to be making a point about poseurs, or the perception of art, or indeed about anything. He's merely using the illusion of thematic depth to spruce up what is fundamentally a too-laid-back character comedy.

If Henry Fool succeeds at all, it's because of Hartley's uncanny knack for creating a distinct community onscreen. His luckless band of vacant losers tends to grow on you, and I found myself wanting to see how their little drama played out. But I also found myself wishing that Hartley would make the effort to bring some order to their chaotic lives, to assign some significance to their story. Unfortunately, that's not Hartley's game--he's too cool to care.