Sebastian Schipper as Simon in 3 (Strand Releasing)

It’s hard to put a fresh spin on infidelity dramas nowadays. Yet they are still effective, maybe one of the most shocking and gripping forms of drama when in the hands of a talented filmmaker. For a little while, at least, Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run and Perfume) pulls off a cool little twist to his tale of a trio of lovers. It might not be a completely original story, but then again this director hasn’t done something like this before either.

Hanna and Simon are a middle-class Berlin couple in their 40s, together since the early 1990s and on the verge of marriage. They both have comfortable jobs (she as a television reporter, he as an art installation designer), and they seem to be quite happy and very much in love. Curious then that they should meet the same man separately, Adam, a slightly younger genetic scientist.

First, Hanna’s affair with Adam seems to grow out of simple mutual likeability (their first tryst occurs while Simon is treated for testicular cancer—imagery of which one can’t shake off very easily). Naturally she hides it from the very vulnerable Simon, still on the mend. And then it’s Simon who meets Adam by chance at a swimming pool. And so it goes…

The ingredients of this story are enticing and also pregnant with possibilities, but Tykwer is interested more in showing off than being a full-on storyteller. This isn’t to say that when he has two characters (or more) in a room talking he can’t make it visually arresting. Frank Griebe’s dark shadows and compositions emphasize the characters’ physicality and warmness amid the transmutable (or questioning?) morality, and there are some scenes that crackle with masterful, dramatic tension.

But the same director of Run Lola Run can’t let go of trying to dazzle with visual pyrotechnics. Some of these flourishes are captivating. He makes a montage of passing time a little less dry than usual by having split-screens that float one on top of another as Simon/Adam, Simon/Sophie, and Sophie/Adam have sex and then continue on with their daily lives. Other times, like a dream Simon has of his teeth falling out, is oblique and just too weird. (Another instance, fairly early in the film where the three main characters are set against a completely white background like in The Matrix, goes nowhere, except to foreshadow the ending, which I’ll get to in a moment).

The actors are all fine—Sebastian Schipper, perhaps best of all, conveys a very strong vulnerability, particularly in his scenes with one of the doctors attending to Simon before his cancer surgery. Devid Striesow, as Adam, has an oddly alluring presence, despite being not conventionally handsome, and Sophie Rois has her best moment when Hannah comes to a quiet realization about her life while she appears on a talk show listening to a talking head go on about living “beyond the categories of recognition.”

I admire Tykwer’s daring attempts to give this bizarre love triangle a dramatic visual sense. However, when it comes to the main idea he’s going for, about breaking free of the rules of socialization (according to the press notes), I’m not sure what to make of it. The film isn’t as deep thematically as he might think it is, despite the occasional heady dialogue. If anything, his tics as a stylist get in the way of the more emotional moments of the story.

It all comes to a head with a profoundly odd ending. Without saying too much, it feels kind of complete as a story. The character have found resolution, and yet a) it’s not really wrapped up with anything close to an explanation as to why Simon and Hanna still feel the way they do about Adam, and b) it’s achieved with a final-shot-visual-metaphor that made me yell at the screen. Somehow Tykwer, who also pulled off a confounding, WTF ending with Perfume (massive inexplicable orgy, anyone?) tops himself here with something more operatic… and hollow.