The Fall is visually beautiful but emotionally empty.

This fever dream revolves around a suicidal silent film stunt man recuperating in a Los Angeles hospital. He befriends an injured immigrant girl, whom he entertains with an elaborate adventure tale that features Charles Darwin, a mysterious bandit, love, death and justice.

The Fall (2006) is both the story of the developing relationship and the imagined interpretation of the unfolding story.

The latter is a visual feast, a collection of unlikely sequences and scenes shot with a painterly eye. Similar in style to the director Tarsem's previous film, the deeply flawed The Cell , it never holds plot or character in very high regard, instead depending on surface beauty and the ability to deliver the unexpected to keep the viewer engaged.

Fortunately, the visuals, which include elephants swimming across an azure sea, battles among fantastic minarets and billowing banners snapping in slow motion, are in fact enough. Like a series of paintings in a gallery, they are appealing enough aesthetically to carry the audience.

The other half of this movie is less successful. Clearly more comfortable with the visual than the emotional, Tarsem never manages to coax sympathetic performances from his actors. His stunt man is drawn as callow and mean, even as the film stretches toward its denouement.

The little girl, who delivers her English lines phonetically, never seems to quite understand the story. Supporting roles are never developed, and their places in the narrative never seems clear.

In the end, the film most certainly will find an audience in fans attracted to the odd and unusual, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great film.