From frame one, writer/director Rebecca Miller's new film aims for the high-minded rafters: a strident environmentalist (the spooky-thin Daniel Day-Lewis, sporting a Scots accent and what appears to be the Apple Dumpling Gang's old duds) and his rather-too-devoted teenage daughter are the last isolated remnants of a once proudly self-sufficient island commune. With salivating developers and health emergencies swiftly approaching on the horizon, the pair is forced to deal with the long-fused consequences of their hippie-dippy lifestyle. This core father-daughter relationship is certainly a loaded one, and to its credit, the narrative doesn't shy away from the basic squickiness of the scenario. The problems chiefly arise in the delivery. Miller (daughter of Arthur) deals her cards large, and with a perversely admirable shamelessness; pretentious as it may be, you've just got to respect a filmmaker with the chutzpah to juxtapose a young girl's deflowering with a snake being set loose in the house.

Thankfully, her assembled cast (including brief turns by the always welcome Catherine Keener and Jena Malone) possesses a considerably more subtle touch: Day-Lewis, especially, delivers an infuriating, fascinating combo platter of constantly warring self-righteousness and humility. The performances may ultimately not be able to conquer the overpowering artiness of Miller's approach, but they do manage to render it somewhat less airless. A shame, really: The press notes indicate that the director has been cultivating this project for more than a decade, and the care devoted to maintaining a slippery ethical slope throughout indicates, at the very least, a fierce intelligence behind the camera. Unfortunately, the final results feel like an idea locked up in its creator's head for too long, where each and every detail becomes overly fraught with meaning. For a film about the last dying gasps of flower power, it could stand to be a little less heavy.