A ham-fisted Demi Moore (who expresses nervousness by broadly waving cigarettes) stars as Marie, a woman who has a small problem with reality. Whenever she falls asleep, she awakens half a world away with another identity. Half of the time she is Marie, an expatriate American widow living with her two young daughters in rural Provençe, France. Her life offers little in the way of thrills, but she occasionally pens book reviews for the New York Times (yeah, right) and hangs out with her nosy but well-meaning best friend Jessie (Sinéad Cusack, Stealing Beauty). How she can afford such picturesque real estate is never explained, but her existence seems pleasant even if her love life is nonexistent.

When Marie falls asleep, she awakens as the similarly romantically challenged Marty, a tough literary agent who has stunted artistic ambitions. Her apartment has ballet shoes and a bust of the woman she believes is herself in a dream. For someone who has a ritzy office and a pricey New York apartment, Marty has copious spare time. For all of her ambition, she still finds enough space in her schedule to see a sarcastic psychiatrist (Peter Riegert) and start flirting with Aaron, a gruff but friendly accountant (William Fichtner, Go). Meanwhile, Marie starts a relationship with William (Time Code's Stellan Skarsgård), a writer whose book she once panned. When Marie/Marty finally tells her beaux about their dream rivals, Aaron finds it mildly intriguing, but William gets jealous.

Curiously, neither story ever really comes to life, and the eventual link between them is a contrived and ill-conceived letdown. While Passion of Mind is directed by Alain Berliner (the Belgian filmmaker who made Ma vie en rose), it has more in common with screenwriter-producer Ron Bass' last film, the listless adaptation of Snow Falling Cedars. In both movies, gorgeous scenery dwarfs the sketchy characters. Berliner's camera glides through the New York skyline and eventually settles on a boat carrying Marty and Aaron under the Brooklyn Bridge. This graceful aerial shot looks impressive, but it tells us little about the characters. While Fichtner and Skarsgård are quite good, neither has any chemistry with Moore, making neither dream relationship convincing. None of Berliner's montages are enlightening either (these include a needless computer-enhanced transition sequence). Eventually, however, his technical tricks seem liberating because they save us from having to hear some of the lifeless chatter ("Do you know what he is? He's the chance to love again," advises Jessie).