A lot of men cry in The Man Who Cried, but perhaps the most telling fact about writer-director Sally Potter's embarrassing arthouse spectacle is that it's never quite clear to whom the title is referring. Could it be Oleg Yankovsky, the long-lost father of Russian Jew Christina Ricci, who abandons his daughter for America in 1927? What about Johnny Depp, the smoldering Gypsy on a Harlequin white horse, who apparently fled the set of Chocolat to seduce the young heroine in Paris? Or maybe it's Europe, the metaphorical "man," driven to collective tears by the ravages of WWII? Whatever the case, it's surprising to learn that The Man Who Cried was based on an original screenplay, because with its transparent characterization and abrupt narrative hiccups, Potter appears to be adapting the abridged book-on-tape version of an epic war novel. Working on a minimal budget with ace cinematographer Sacha Vierny, Potter (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) retrofits war-torn Europe in a beautifully lacquered sheen that recalls a studio melodrama from the Golden Age of Hollywood. But rather than bring the period to life, the old-fashioned texture has the effect of embalming history in nostalgia, sealing it off in a hermetic capsule until it has no immediacy or emotional resonance. If Potter lacks the conviction to fill in the many storytelling gaps, she doesn't get any help from Ricci, who plays a passive outsider with indifference bordering on contempt, as if she's getting ready to roll her eyes after every take. (When she smiles, she looks about as happy as Divine at the end of Pink Flamingos.) Her quest to reunite with her father meets with unexpected detours and religious persecution at every turn, first when her village is burned down in provincial Russia and later when she's swept under a wave of anti-Semitism. After growing up in a foster home in London, Ricci joins a musical troupe in Paris, where she befriends a flamboyant Russian dancer (a hammy Cate Blanchett) and sings in the chorus for an egomaniacal opera star (a hammier John Turturro). As the Germans march closer to Paris, she falls in love with the quiet and mysterious Depp, who identifies with her sense of foreignness. Miscast in every major role, the five lead actors struggle with a mishmash of questionable accents and stock characters inherited from romance novels or backstage musicals. Consequently, Ricci's ambling quest to reach America seems wound up in empty artifice, as if the only way she can reach her father is to travel through the maze-like set of a really bad movie. In a colorful Hollywood production, that kind of phoniness can be transformed into an exhilarating form of escapism. In a self-serious arthouse film, it's poison.