Until the Night is a lust story.

Elizabeth (Kathleen Robertson) and Daniel (Michael T. Weiss) have the perfect early-married life. Elizabeth's is a rising star at work. Her husband Daniel, a once-celebrated actor, is always rearranging the house. They laugh. They bicker.

They hit a snag; He forgets to clean-up sometimes.

You may think, that is not very exciting. It's no big deal because that's everyday married stuff that could happen anywhere.

Then you learn that he also throws up all over the floor. It's one of those mysteries. He's not sick. You don't see him doing drugs. But do you care? Not really.

In Until The Night, writer and director Gregory Hatanaka is a backseat filmmaker. You feel his presence, but you don't see his reflection in the mirror.

The beginning sequence, with Elizabeth getting dressed, tells a lot about her anxiety, but you watch it knowing that Hatanaka plants the impression on you like a knife of a faux villain in an episode of Murder She Wrote.

Basically, Elizabeth is scared. Bored. She cannot admit to herself that she wasted three years of her life committing to a man who has a stunted personality.

She goes to work, wearing her letter-perfect outfits and designer glasses. She pretends to be OK.

Her husband stays home, hangs paintings and entertains, but you never really see the others. There are just faint reminders like extra place settings or muddy footprints across the floor.

Enter Robert (Norman Reedus): suddenly there are enough naked girls, sex scenes and infidelity to remind you that you are in Los Angeles for the next 72 minutes.

The DVD plot description says that Until The Night is a look at the secret lives of artists in Los Angeles. The story unfolds when Elizabeth encounters Robert, her ex-boyfriend, at a work party; they begin an affair that changes their lives forever.

I didn't really see that. Any of this could have happened in Ohio or Arkansas with a different set of wardrobe and makeup artists.

Elizabeth and Robert's affair is G-rated. When it's over, Elizabeth retreats to her husband, and Robert breaks up with his girlfriend. Robert has lots of weird dreams, and you wonder what will happen after the warm moments pass.

One of the film's problems is that you really don't know what happens because the film just stops. It's not one of those nail biting cliff hangers. The credits rolled, and left this viewer indifferent.

It's hard to say if the film suffers from bad acting or bad writing, but it's definitely one or the other, if not a combination of both.

Until the Night is like a series of chapters, shortcuts and mishaps with no real spine.

Robertson, Settle, Weiss and Reedus, are familiar names on B-movie screens. They star in movies but mostly have credits like CSI: Miami, Days of Our Lives and ER under their belts.

The film never really drives home a point except that there is a surplus of lust and not a lot of happiness found in Los Angeles, but maybe that is a bigger point. Maybe these sort of incidents are just part and parcel of the human condition.

I watched Until the Night twice to read between the lines, and I hit upon the same conclusion both times. Until the Night is better and more edgy than a Lifetime movie, but it lacks a cohesive narrative. It's almost like Hatanaka went broke, and he tried to make a story based on the footage he already shot. Better luck next time.

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