Léa Seydoux in Diary of a Chambermaid (Cohen Media Group)

Unsexy sex, bizarre humor meant to offset cruelty, and a heroine who is frustratingly hard to pin down: the latest remake of Diary of a Chambermaid may leave you shrugging at a missed opportunity. Benoît Jacquot’s take on the French classic novel by Octave Mirbeau and Luis Bu?uel’s 1964 film starring Jeanne Moreau risks being written off by hard core cineastes, but even those unfamiliar with the original material may feel a little let down by the film’s wavering focus.

Current international it-femme Léa Seydoux stars as the chambermaid Célestine, who, after barbed exchanges with the grim head of her placement office, is forced to leave 1900 Paris for a post in the sticks, serving a disagreeable couple. Flashbacks reveal how Célestine has arrived at this underwhelming career point. One employer has sacked her for witnessing—and daring to titter at—a public sexual humiliation. An encounter with a dying young master ended in tragedy (and an act of amour played for grotesque shock value). Célestine’s now stuck in a stuffy bourgeois household with a brittle mistress, who loves to run her ragged, a leering master who makes buffoonish passes, and a taciturn manservant named Joseph (haggard, haunted-looking Vincent Lindon) watching her with devious designs of his own.

The plot thickens, occludes, and curdles. In a benign looking hamlet, we stumble across abortion, pimping, twisted small-town gossip, unlikely seductions thwarted and achieved, and a bubbling sewer of anti-Semitism. A man even kills a beloved pet ferret on a whim. So much is going on in this film, but why does it seem so empty?

The problem is that the themes it explores don’t quite gel, and none of the blows it launches completely connect. The master-servant relationship subjects Célestine to the whims of sexual predators and petty sadists, but you’d be stretching it to call Diary a film about feminism, class, or even about power. Denunciations of hypocrisy make their points but lack bite. Secondary storylines and characters, some ominous and some silly, poke their noses over the transom and then vanish.

Finally, we can’t figure out what kind of young woman Célestine really is. Followed by a smitten camera, Seydoux’s face combines a Mary Cassatt apple-cheeked purity with the sullen roughness of a young Kate Moss. For all the camera’s lingering over Seydoux’s radiant good looks, more broadly played characters end up capturing our attention because her character’s motivations are glossed over and underexplored. Célestine is saucy and sassy, yet she can turn into a sweetheart on a centime. But her brief vulnerable moments come out of nowhere, and an irresistible attraction to Joseph that will lead Célestine into a promise of darkness and sin does not feel believable—forget irresistible.

Like a journal kept by someone you don’t know, Diary of a Chambermaid is full of detail, description, and events. It’s trying to make sense of what they mean that’s challenging.