Starring: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling (I)

3 out of 10 stars

What if you set up a mystery but gave out no clues? Then you'd have something like Stay, an obtuse, opaque mystery that lets its viewers in on the game far, far too late. Kind of a psychological thriller, kind of a supernatural tale, it takes a very lovely cast and gives them very little to do. With its industrialized sets, snazzy editing, sleek cinematography, and well-groomed extras all lit exquisitely, it resembles less of a movie and more of a Madonna video. Actually, make that a bad Madonna video; Stay is so empty and devoid of coherence, up until its last ten minutes, that it seems to be begging for an up-tempo dance song on the soundtrack to give it some meaning. And when you can't get any meaning, any emotional depth, any anything from a cast that includes Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Ryan Gosling, Bob Hoskins, Janeane Garofalo, and Kate Burton, you know you are in trouble. In fact, if you looked up the meaning of the word "squandering" you'd probably find a picture of Stay's movie poster.

Mixing up a little bit of The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, Mulholland Drive and anything you might yank out of a grab bag of Hitchcockian tricks, Stay ostensibly focuses on Dr. Sam Foster (McGregor), an earnest psychiatrist with a consistently furrowed brow and strangely short pants that ride somewhat endearingly above his ankles. Taking over for an ill colleague (Garofalo), he's saddled with the case of troubled college student Henry Lethem (Gosling), who professes that he's constantly hearing voices - oh, and that he's going to kill himself in three days' time. Trying to unlock the mysteries of Henry's psyche, Sam embarks on a quest that's part mind game and part unintelligible board game; he moves from space to space, but the end destination is a big question mark. (It's kind of like playing Clue, but not knowing if there's an actual murder to be solved.) Tantalizingly, hints as to what's up are dropped everywhere - the editing seems to imply time and space are fluid in Sam's landscape, all buildings and rooms are a mix of modern sleek and 50s-style accoutrements, and Sam's girlfriend Lila (Watts) keeps espousing factoids about suicide vs. living and art vs. death. Things get really strange when Sam meets Henry's mom (Burton), who has a strange head wound, and Henry swears that Sam's blind friend (Hoskins) is his dad - no really, dude, he's my dad!

Because there's not even a hint as to what exactly is going on, Stay turns very boring very quickly, and not even its talented cast can save it. The script, by acclaimed novelist David Benioff, is full of cryptic one-liners that could have come from either Buddhism for Dummies or Psychosis Made Easy, and director Marc Forster seems more intent on catching the gleam from various doors and counters than from his actors. His handling of some of the interpersonal relationships is rather effective - McGregor and Watts are somber but appealing soul mates, and conversely, Hoskins and McGregor play off one another with a sly humor - but tie everything together Forster does not. Well, he kind of does in the last few minutes of the film, where everything that's come before is finally given context, but too many mysteries and strange details are left unexplained. It carries a certain effective emotional heft, but by then, it's too little much too late.

Though the entire cast - down to small parts filled in by Jessica Hecht and B.D. Wong, among others - is fairly able, there are only two true bright spots that shine through in Stay. One is a young actress named Elizabeth Reaser, who as the improbably named Athena gives her two scenes a charisma and magnetism that would make you believe the troubled Sam finds her the only salvation in his troubled life. (And seen in play rehearsals, she makes an especially fetching Ophelia.) The other is the luminous Watts, who aside from a certain recent sequel, can seem to do no wrong these days. Her Lila starts out as a typical recovered-suicide, but she brings an emotional weight lacking in the rest of the movie to her enigmatic pronouncements. And in the final part of the movie, she's absolutely breathtaking and beautiful. I can't say anything more without giving the central premise away, but Watts - almost - makes Stay worth staying for.