The Center of the World is an exploration of one frontier of today’s sexual landscape. Written by Wang and the novelists Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt under the collective pseudonym Ellen Benjamin Wong, The Center of the World at times feels a bit too much like an exercise in filmmaking, albeit a sexy and interesting exercise.

Unlike Smoke, the previous collaboration between Wang and Auster, which felt random and accidental in a very pleasing way, The Center of the World feels very calculated. Despite an abundance of steamy footage juiced up with a sensual soundtrack, the moral of the story is very chilly without being vengeful or desperately final and obvious.

The Center of the World has been released unrated because the MPAA would have given the film an NC-17 rating. The movie is intended for adults, but unlike recent films that have been released unrated, the adult content here is sexual. Some of that content isn’t terribly enticing (more of it is), but there are no drugs or violence thrown in to confuse things.

Richard is a young man with lots of money earned by spending hours in front of his computer screen. He is exhausted, bored, still grieving the death of his father and, probably because he rarely leaves the glow of his computer screen, lacking the social skills needed to develop a real

relationship. He’s basically a nice guy, but a guy who has bought the myth that he can have everything so completely that he seems truly baffled by his stubborn lack of satisfaction. Richard is played with a charming sweetness by Peter Sarsgaard. This role is so different from the psychopath he played in Boys Don’t Cry it took me nearly half the film to place where I’d seen him before though he looks very much the same.

Florence supports what she believes is her true calling, riot grrrrl drummer, by working in a strip club. She’s in it for the money, but she isn’t amoral or completely unfeeling. She’s also not as physically phony as most women playing this role in life and on film. She doesn’t have the usual fakes: nails, bad blond hair with the roots showing and surgical enhancements. She has plenty of skills, social and otherwise. Florence is played by Molly Parker who excels at making believable her character’s see-sawing between regular girl next door during the day and super vamp at night .

The Center of the World tells the story of Richard and Florence out of sequence. When we meet them, they are checking in to a very nice suite in Las Vegas. Though they are clearly “together,” they are also clearly uncomfortable. As the movie progresses, we learn that they are in Las Vegas after coming to a very specific agreement. She will spend the weekend with him in Las Vegas satisfying his various fantasies for $10,000.

Their agreement is carefully considered. We see them talking about it, and the final contract is formal. The final negotiations happen by e-mail, and they are very specific. But, of course, just because you negotiate a contract, doesn’t mean it will work. Once Richard and Florence are in Las Vegas, things get complicated. They like each other, and The Center of the World is very ambiguous about what “liking” and “loving” mean to these two and questions how much of either is possible for them.

The Center of the World has annoyed many critics who often are extremely generous to half-baked independents that display bit of ambition or eccentricity. They have little sympathy with some of the film’s shortcomings, but even if you stipulate to all of them — that the territory is familiar, that we never learn much about what motivates or informs either character, that its tone is too “literary” and “arty” — The Center of the World is still more entertaining and intriguing by half than some of the slight films that get the benefit of their doubts. There is also a lot of argument about what the film is really about. Is it about illusion, artifice, money, sex, power, commerce, the numbness and emptiness that can take over when these elements are commingled, or all of the above?