_Plays 1:15 p.m. Saturday and noon Sunday at Ragtag Small Theatre._

When told by her cinematographer Mary Jane Doherty that it was impossible to make a movie about love, filmmaker Lyda Kuth set out to do just that with “Love and Other Anxieties.”

Of course, the first thing you might ask is, _why_ is it supposed to be impossible? Well, I still don’t know, and I watched the film twice. After viewing Kuth’s documentary, focused on searching for the deeper ideas behind love, I think Doherty had a point. Rather than being about love, the film seemed to be about Kuth, the director and star, ruminating and ruminating and, yes, still ruminating over that question of love and what her film was about even when there were 20 minutes left. I don’t think it ever figured itself out.

Central theme aside, the dialogue was a sloppy, choppy mess of calculated clichés and awkward pauses that suggest that the director was trying to be deep, but it instead came off as just plain scripted. As the film progresses, the story becomes less and less one about general love and more of a very personal and awkward home video that maybe should have stayed on the shelf. You watch Kuth go from one set-like location to the next, talking to people who don’t really say much and brooding over her own marriage – only to insist that the video isn’t really about her. It’s like a film in denial. Kuth says it best in the title: anxiety is a big part of the experience. I was anxious, very anxious, for the end.