Gus Van Sant’s latest film Restless is a bittersweet romance about Enoch (Harry Hopper), who has an obsession with death, and Annabel (Mia Wasikowska), who is dying of cancer. Enoch’s hobbies include drawing chalk outlines of himself while lying on the road and attending other people’s funerals, and it is at funerals that he meets Annabel.

Death permeates Restless and is continually referenced, with varying effects. At times it can be heavy handed. Annabel, despite her condition, provides the respite; she is beautifully alive, perhaps unrealistically so. Wasikowska’s performance is by far the best in the film, and she steals most of the scenes, notably when Annabel and Enoch visit the woods on Halloween. Their relationship at this point is strong, existing in a cinematic pseudo-reality, which works because it cannot last forever.

Unfortunately, they deviate from the plan and there is conflict before Annabel even has the chance to die. There is nothing insincere about the romance, which makes the forced drama more frustrating. The film is undoubtedly at its best when it is kept simple. But it jerks and twists around until the audience inevitably lose patience with it. Enoch is unfortunately childish, and while it is understandable that he struggles to come to terms with the impending death of his new-found love, the way he reacts to it makes it difficult to sympathise with.

The minor characters are underused; the touching relationship between Annabel and her sister, Elizabeth (Schuyler Fisk), is never allowed to fully develop. The best scene in the film is dedicated to it, but little else. One character who is developed, to a point of perhaps unsurprising irritation, is a kamikaze ghost, Hiroshi (Ryo Kase). He is curiously intrusive for a ghost, particularly towards the end, and, like a lot of ghosts, he is inconsistently tangible.

The ending sums up the film’s major problems. It has the chance to delve back into the relationship at its heart and give it a meaningful swansong, but it feebly dodges the climax it has been crying out for. At the very end, it has nothing at all to say.