Colin Nutley's Under The Sun, another in an ongoing series of questionable nominees for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, opens with Rolf Lassgård, an oafish farmer in sun-touched provincial Sweden, placing a help-wanted ad better fit for the personals. It reads: "Lonely farmer, 39, own car. Seeks young lady housekeeper. Photograph appreciated." In truth, it should read more like, "Lonely, middle-aged, illiterate virgin seeks young, willing, attractive Kim Novak lookalike to clean up dilapidated farmhouse, give erotic instructions in ways of love. Motivation not encouraged." With a mysterious lack of irony or anything approaching hard realism, Under The Sun accepts this impossible scenario at face value, like someone who believes all the Penthouse "Forum" letters are true. But even on a prurient level, Nutley lacks the conviction to follow through on the lurid premise, opting instead for the sort of plodding arthouse tastefulness that invariably seduces the Academy. Set arbitrarily in the summer of '56, the film details Lassgård's mundane routine on the family farm, which his mother bequeathed to him after her death nine years earlier. His inability to read or write makes him dangerously reliant on his squirrelly younger friend Johan Widerberg, a former sailor and part-time gravedigger who owes Lassgård a sizable debt. When Lassgård's ad attracts the impossibly beautiful and kindhearted Helena Bergström, Widerberg grows jealous of their sudden intimacy and tries to sabotage their relationship. In any other movie, the introduction of an elegant seductress from the city into a rural setting would indicate trouble, but F.W. Murnau's Sunrise this isn't. While Bergström does have a secret from her past that partially explains her actions, it takes a grueling eternity for the other shoe to drop. In the downtime, Nutley ekes out all the pastoral eroticism he can without quite crossing into made-for-cable soft-core. Moments of pre-Code raciness such as Lassgård teaching his new hire how to milk a cow or having his prize stallion put out to stud soon give way to full-on Zalman King love scenes in a barn leaking with rainwater. It's hard to tell what Nutley had in mind with Under The Sun, but, given the film's languorous two-hour length, audiences will have plenty of time to think about it. Or, more likely, to think about something else entirely.