Neither love nor L.A. is a golden state. California soul or soul mates prove elusive In Search of Midnight Kiss. Writer-Director Alex Holdridge presents a Los Angeles seductively flat, matt and downbeat. Visually it is compellingly persuasive that we are convinced that as demi-protagonist Wilson (Scoot McNairy) says: ‘“Love comes to L.A. to die’”; and dreams too perhaps as Vivian (Sara Simmonds) journey suggests. The understated success of this film is in marking the overlap of the lives of a struggling screenwriter and actress, whose backdrop is Hollywood, is that it never feels like Hollywood – a frisson that extends beyond the lo-fi aesthetic.

Self-indulgently depressed and forlorn Wilson is cajoled out of his three-month inertia by his best friend Jacob (Brian McGuire) into posting a personal ad on Craig’s List. He liaises with Vivian, of whom we are initially sure is slightly unhinged. Their rambling date is in turn comic and tender, incorporating a case of mistaken libidinousness, a wild cowboy boyfriend and a remarkably descriptive stream-of-consciousness sadistic tirade, and an inappropriate object-of-desire that is all too inappropriately animate.

There is a familiarity to this film. There is a sense of Hal Hartley early 1990s work here (Simple Men, 1992; Amateur, 1994) that suggests a certain amount of quality but not making it quite as contemporaneous as it would like to be. The world-weariness is not new and not altogether convincing in protagonists as young as they are. The insights into life, love and sex border on angsty cliché. The film tries too hard to have memorable lines and apart from one gem from Jacob that dismisses self-consciousness about carrying condoms, the film has nothing new to say.

Last year’s ‘Two Days In Paris’ (Julie Delpy) was prettier and wittier but ‘In Search of a Midnight Kiss’ there is a sobering and satisfying unromantic conclusion to the affair; one that in a moment makes Vivian real and independent. This is a story of two neophytes drawn to each other in new city, but one that beyond the PhotoShop onanism, is a nice old-fashioned one.