"Late Bloomers," With William Hurt and Isabella Rossellini Inside "Late Bloomers," a tonally wobbly romantic comedy about the indignities of aging, is a somber marital drama struggling to get out. Much of the lurking gravity is etched on the attractive faces of its two stars, William Hurt, 62, and Isabella Rossellini, 59, who play Adam and Mary, a couple married 30 years experiencing the pangs of late middle age. In the opening scene Adam, a successful architect, is awarded a gold medal for career achievement. Later in the film he bitterly remarks that he didn't realize it was a tombstone. Adam, known for designing airports, is so offended when offered the chance to create a luxury nursing home complex that he turns it down even though his firm needs the money. "I don't want to design storage for hordes of incontinent zombies," he huffs. It is one of the saltier one-liners from a movie in which Mary's eccentric mother, Nora (Doreen Mantle), observing her two great-grandchildren, remarks, "I don't know which I hate more, future suits or future sluts." The screenplay, written by the director, Julie Gavras (daughter of Costa-Gavras), with Olivier Dazat, doesn't sustain that level of icy wit. The writing lacks the solidity of Ms. Gavras's politically engaged debut, "Blame It on Fidel." Mary panics when she has an episode of forgetfulness and is tested for Alzheimer's. Exercise is prescribed, but when she joins an aqua aerobics class, she flails embarrassingly. Her solution to anxiety about signs of decrepitude and looming mortality is to go overboard and buy an adjustable bed, railings for the bathtub and a large-button telephone. Adam, threatened by these changes, which she bullies him to accept, loses patience and begins sleeping in his office. He also starts an affair with Maya (Arta Dobroshi), an architectural assistant. He is not amused when a close friend who has had several body parts replaced says, "I don't know whether I'm the Six Million Dollar Man or the Son of Frankenstein." In a performance that is much deeper than the rest of the movie, Mr. Hurt allows Adam's anger and fear to leak out of his electric blue eyes, which are frequently on the brink of tears. He locates the despair that grips men when they are forced for the first time to confront the betrayal of their aging bodies. Mary's humiliations include finding herself increasingly invisible to the opposite sex (although she has a discreet fling), having strangers on the bus offer their seats to her, and enduring the condescension of a young female executive when she applies for a job doing volunteer work. As more characters, including the couple's three children - the stolid, humorless James (Aidan McArdle); the detached Giulia (Kate Ashfield); and the carefree 20-year-old Benjamin (Luke Treadaway) - enter the picture, "Late Bloomers" loses its narrative thread and becomes so choppy that you have the sense that it was butchered during the editing process. What remains is the skeleton of a story that leads to an abrupt, icky-cute ending. Adding to the confusion is an abrasively jolly musical soundtrack whose function is to streamline everything in the direction of a television sitcom. At least there isn't a laugh track. Late Bloomers Directed by Julie Gavras; written by Ms. Gavras and Olivier Dazat; director of photography, Nathalie Durand; edited by Pierre Haberer; music by Sodi Marciszewer; production design by Eve Stewart; costumes by Marianne Agertoft; produced by Sylvie Pialat and Bertrand Faivre; released by Olive Films. At the Cinema Village, 22 East 12th Street, Greenwich Village. WITH: William Hurt (Adam), Isabella Rossellini (Mary), Doreen Mantle (Nora), Kate Ashfield (Giulia), Aidan McArdle (James), Arta Dobroshi (Maya), Luke Treadaway (Benjamin), Leslie Phillips (Leo), Hugo Speer (Peter), Joanna Lumley (Charlotte) and Simon Callow (Richard).