Lulu On The Bridge is the sort of movie that gives art films a bad name. Embodying much of what people dislike about tastefully upscale movies—from leaden, molasses-slow pacing to cryptic and esoteric symbolism—Lulu On The Bridge squanders a terrific cast (Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino, Vanessa Redgrave, Gina Gershon, Willem Dafoe, and Mandy Patinkin, as well as cameos by Stockard Channing, David Byrne, Don Byron, and Lou Reed) on a script that wouldn't pass muster as a student film. Hard-working actor Keitel stars as an unhappy jazz musician whose life changes after he's shot by a crazed gunman (fellow quality-control-impaired workaholic Kevin Corrigan) in a posh nightclub. After recuperating from the attack, Keitel falls in love with a waitress/actress (Sorvino) with a little help from a glowing, levitating stone he finds on the body of a dead man. But this glowing stone—which behaves in a fashion not unlike the dressed-up crab from Simply Irresistible—soon brings complications, leading to a lot of pretentious, fairly unbearable metaphysics and many scenes in which people stare mournfully at one another. Written and directed by novelist Paul Auster, whose previous film work includes the far more enjoyable Smoke and Blue In The Face, Lulu On The Bridge assembles a great cast and gives it nothing to do but speak its lines slowly and deliberately while looking appropriately sorrowful. A strangely familiar twist ending would be a whole lot more bearable if it didn't follow so closely on the heels of 95 minutes of tedium.