Lee (Catherine Keener) is a war correspondent, now in Sicily. She has just had a major ordeal in Libya, of which we find out the details later. She is physically bruised with a fractured jaw and broken ribs. She pops pain killers and looks at a photo of a girl holding her dead brother. She is emotionally distressed and grief stricken and has yet to move on. She hints that she was raped by her jerky reactions and "too many men."

While in Sicily she meets a Tunisian refugee (Hafsia Herzi) and wants to help her. She needs an abortion and wants to go to France. Islamic refugees don't feel welcomed, and rightly so.

That is pretty much it. We find out more of what happened in Libya, which while sad wasn't a barn burner as Ben Kinsley remarks, "These things happen" in his cameo. There are scenes in which little to nothing happens, and long real time pauses. This is not an action film, and not a lot of drama. It is a look at character of a gritty war photographer overwhelmed with what life throws at her, yet she manages.

Catherine Keener did a convincing job in what was little more than a one woman play. The slow painful drama which drags on is clearly not a film for everyone. Indeed, this is more of the type of film critics will praise while many folks may find a waste of time.

Parental Guide: F-bomb. Brief sex, brief nudity behind glass (Alessandra Librio)

The protagonist here obviously has PTSD, or something very similar. Despite it being difficult to garner sympathy for her, she's often almost rude, imperious, a little selfish, you quickly know the reason why, and that why becomes even clearer the more you watch. She also has an irritating sense of entitlement, or perhaps in her grief she's unconsciously looking to be challenged or caught out. That's a difficult line to walk. She's also a tourist. It's as a concerned tourist perhaps that she attaches herself to another person likely also with PTSD, and more problems than that. That's when the film begins to make sense, when it finds a raison d'être beyond an interesting character study. Ships in the night, or the other side of love? This is definitely an arthouse indie film, but it has some technical aspects that make it worth the watch. One is the Directors ability to follow a character at shoulder level for some distance, as if the audience has become a companion. And then there is the use of background blur, which is also interesting. And the players themselves are superbly acted. War Story deserves a lot more than its low score I noticed just before I wrote this.

Imagine, if you will, Catherine Keener bending over a sink for whatever reason. Imagine a mournful solo cello noodling away on the soundtrack. Now imagine Catherine Keener snapping photos of Sicily (which, it turns out, is a sh*thole) or of various fashionably grungy Middle Eastern types. Minimalist synthesizer noise on the soundtrack. Now she's back at the sink. Now taking snapshots. Ear-splitting vocal on the track. Now the sink.

Regarding the spoiler alert: there is no plot. That's the spoiler.

Regarding the music: we all love music, right? I love music, too. But the music on the soundtrack made me want to run twin power drills into my ears.