SNIFF notes 4: mysterious ways

Program 5, Sunday’s 1 p.m. feature film, was a mystery titled “Outpatient.” It stars Justin Kirk as Morris, a disturbed guy who, through his novel, works out the fantasies that have tormented him since childhood.

Those same torments, by the way, earned him a stay in a mental facility, where he begins therapy with a young woman doctor (Catherine Kellner). It is through the doctor’s help that Morris begins to see the truth around him.

Kirk is good. (He was, by the way, the blind boyfriend in the 1997 film “Love! Valour! Compassion!”) , but the film has problems. Among them: Seattle writer-director Alec Carlin telegraphs an important character almost from the first (think: bad wig), Morris is too weird to ever attract the attention (much less affection) of a tough “dancer” named Raven (Claudia Mason), and the theme of an abused young boy’s past being played out in flashback has been done to death. Carlin just asks us to accept too much on good faith, and that seldom works with any kind of art

Still, hearing Patsy Cline crooning her hit song “Back In Baby’s Arms” was a nice touch.