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Throughout most of this dreary U.S. indie, Dave is an unhappy denizen of New York who rides his bicycle a lot and struggles with marriage problems. He longs to have an affair -- to experience, just once, what he has been missing. As a vexed-about-sex male heading toward a full-blown crisis, Dave is really cursed as a character when it's revealed that he's a film professor.

Unfortunately, the audience is doomed to experience another movie expressly about sex that barely gets past lecherous male friends talking about it. The feature debut of writer-director and part-time professor Douglas Morse, "The Adulterer" bowed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and it has one ironclad thing going for it: a title that might look irresistible on a marquee or videotape box to undemanding customers.

Things brighten up for Dave (Chris Diamantopoulos) when he's with two unmarried women who test his reluctance to really go through with cheating on his wife, Kim (Alice Ripley). She wants a kid and is understandably upset when Dave's wavering outlook toward their relationship becomes apparent. What she doesn't know is that tall and exotic Gabriella (Anna-Louise Plowman) has chatted and flirted with professor Dave a few times after the latter's illuminating lectures on such subjects as the sexual symbolism in "Star Wars".

But when he's out cycling and gets a flat, Dave meets the fun-loving, forthright Julie (Lainie Ventura). Soon he's wooing her with revealing conversations as they pedal to Coney Island. Alas, besides stacking the deck with attractive women that any red-blooded male would swoon over, "Adulterer" goes way over the top in its portrayal of Dave's male sexist friends, including Aaron (Jeremy Kushnier), a man so promiscuous that he's ever at the ready with smutty tales, from scoring with amputees to attending orgies.

Never sure of what direction to go in or tone to commit to, the screenplay has Dave joining Aaron and insufferable sex expert Monroe (Anthony Giangrande) -- whose line to Dave about him "needing to be raped" is seriously not funny -- for a trip to a men's retreat run by Erik Todd Feder).

For a stretch, Dave finds a new thing to believe in and becomes a leader of a similar group in the city. Meanwhile, he and Gabriella get close, but it's with Julie that Dave lives up to the title. Despite this long-expected development, the movie then rushes into exactly the happy ending that one expects from the first.

Canadian stage actors Diamantopoulos and Kushnier give energetic but predictable performances. The female characters, including Ventura's athletic Julie and Ripley's beleaguered wife, are more believable, but the performers are cornered into caricatures as shopworn as the men's.

THE ADULTERER

Grandfather Pictures

Screenwriter-director: Douglas Morse

Producer: Ryan Baxter

Executive producer: Marianna Cooper

Director of photography: Timothy Naylor

Art director: Carey Christie

Editor: David Kuther

Music: Dag Gabrielsen

Color/stereo

Cast:

Dave: Chris Diamantopoulos

Kim: Alice Ripley

Aaron: Jeremy Kushnier

Julie: Lainie Ventura

Gabriella: Anna-Louise Plowman

Monroe: Anthony Giangrande

Erik: Todd Feder

Running time -- 84 minutes

No MPAA rating...