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“Hemingway’s Garden of Eden” just sounds wrong. It stars Mena Suvari, whose career peaked in 1999 after being roughly the fifth best thing in both “American Pie” and “American Beauty.” And the movie is based on Ernest Hemingway’s final, unfinished novel, a troubling proposition: would you buy an unfinished automobile or move into an unfinished house? Therefore it should come as no surprise that “Garden of Eden” is one of the year’s worst films. It’s underdeveloped, endless and lifeless. There’s no need to see it for confirmation. Trust me.

The film focuses on attractive Americans David (Jack Huston, part of the legendary film family) and Catherine Bourne (Suvari), Jazz Age newlyweds who tour the high-society haunts of Europe. David is a talented, working-class writer who is loved by book critics. Catherine is a rich beauty who hungers for control and, for some strange reason, can’t stop getting awful haircuts. Underneath their love lies a volatile mix of sex, resentment and money. Which threatens to explode when they meet a saucy Italian number (Caterina Murino of “Casino Royale”) who Catherine, not your typical homemaker, invites to their vacation home.

Sadly, nothing explodes or boils over or even simmers. “Garden of Eden” just sits still. Veteran director John Irvin and first-time screenwriter James Scott Linville haphazardly add class issues, power plays and daddy issues — the latter represented in a pointless flashback featuring Matthew Modine as a womanizing big-game hunter — in the hope that something will stick. As the film drags toward its merciful conclusion, it’s almost as if Irvin is stalling for time, hoping that he’ll find a reason to justify the production’s existence. He never does.

The film is a snoozefest of Merchant Ivory proportions, an endless loop of attractive, affluent people with fake problems having circular conversations about nothing significant. The characters are vehicles for the movie’s jumbled messages, meaning that nobody onscreen is relatable or remotely resembles a human being. It’s impossible to identify with anyone, and the actors’ lethargic performances suggest that they realize it’s useless to try. But, hey, at least they got to enjoy the exotic locales.

Moviegoers won’t find such benefits. The characters in “Garden of Eden” drink so much alcohol that it eventually becomes an affectation. For anyone unlucky enough to endure this hot mess, they may want to adapt that behavior as a survival tactic.

Rating: W