This Taiwanese release offers up plenty of sex and drugs, but there's very little rock and roll to go along with it. Moving along at a glacial place featuring a group of unlikable characters moping around, sitting through this release is often a test of patience that's not going to many people outside of the beret and birkenstock wearing hardcore arthouse crowd.

Help Me Eros is a semi-autobiographical tale of the film's writer and director, Lee Kang-Sheng, who also stars as the protagonist, Jie. Jie has lost all of his money in bad stock trades and now spends his days squatting in his foreclosed condo, growing and smoking weed while having casual sex with a series of pretty girls. But the sex and drugs aren't enough to cover up his depression, so he turns to calling a suicide helpline, where he begins to fall for one of the operators, Chyi (Jane Liao).

Probably Help Me Eros' biggest problem is the character of Jie. It's certainly not a prerequisite for characters in movies to be likeable to be compelling -- in fact, many of the greatest on-screen performances over the years have been actors portraying assholes -- but Jie is so selfish and mopey, most audience members will want to slap him in the face, instead of wanting to see what happens next.

There are some positives to Help Me Eros. Some of the cinematography is nicely done and the eye candy of the female leads was appreciated. But you can't expect an audience to sit for ninety-plus minutes only by the power of the images. There has to be something, anything, beyond that to draw people into the proceedings and make them become invested in the characters. Sadly, Help Me Eros is yet another overdrawn arthouse picture that seems to forget that simple cinematic fact.

RATING: 4