Happiness Is a Warm Gun, one of the twenty-six contemporary and classic Swiss productions comprising Lincoln Center’s "The Middle of the World," is a fictionalized imagining of events leading to the deaths of Germany’s political-social superstar Petra Kelly and her unlikely companion Gert Bastian.

A darling to Europeans, Kelly resembled, say, Romy Schneider in that her image never fully translated to the U.S. Young, pretty and articulate, this peace activist and "Queen of Green" (the Green Party) attracted the Continent’s attention for her visibility and political stance and, frankly, also for her beauty-and-the-beast liaison with Bastian, a gun enthusiast and ex-army general. Their star was arguably setting by 1992, when the general inexplicably killed her while she slept and then turned the same weapon on himself.

Rumors flew, of the older man’s impotence, of despair and a mutual pact, of jealousies, but concrete evidence in the murder-suicide was never found. From this open mystery, filmmaker Thomas Imbach (in his feature-fiction debut), and fellow scripters Jürg Hassler and Peter Purtschert fashion their "Variation on a True Story."

Employing the technique of Ambrose Bierce’s "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," the fiction depicted takes place in Petra’s conscious mind, "waiting for Gerti" within the nano-instant between the explosion and the fatal bullet’s piercing her brain. In her flowered nightrobe, the woman instantaneously finds herself prone in a modernistic airport, while speeded-up planes taxi and take off. From here, in numerous sharp, very short takes, the story of "Peti" (Linda Olansky) and "Gerti" (Herbert Fritsch) is relived up to that final moment again.

At times, and inconsistently, the activist is for all purposes already dead, as indicated by the simple left-temple entry wound, yet at others the round hole disappears altogether, although in one take it is replaced by a circle of faint blister-like pimples. Infrequently, and towards the end, footage is inserted of the real Kelly and Bastian, perhaps to underscore the artificiality of both story and actors. Other scenes are literally left in the air, as for instance amorous dalliance between her and a dark young man or another in which Petra and her suddenly appearing grandmother push-scooter through an airport and then water each other down in the ladies’ room.

The significance of all this escapes me. Perhaps, as with anti-realist/naturalistic le symbolisme, things simply are but do not mean. But what in the world is to be made of such images as sunflowers and moving sidewalks and lush fields? Or of Petra naked in water or a ferny grotto? Or of the dark young man picking the wound to smear the bloody scab on a sheet tossed from a window? Or of hypodermics and food, banal contents of luggage, and surgical gloves? Is Bastian’s Derringer purposely double-short-barreled and phallic?

The relationship between Petra and her general-slash-political ally is superficial at best, harmfully degrading at worst. Though the film would suggest that the tragic dénouement is an act of deepest commitment – together in love, climbing a symbolic glacial ice-cave and all that – what it really depicts is a tired, ill-matched, bickering couple living the dregs of a sick union. Whether she is pregnant or not, or the dream-marriage real – she wants "ritual experience" for once – one cannot fathom the attraction here. While they say that Brando and Last Tango "really inspired [us] to go home and act it out," their brief, clothed couplings are joyless, unerotic and uncomfortable in tiny windowless rooms or empty theaters.

With no gesture toward her politics – Serge and a minute of detained asylum-seeking Cameroonians are irrelevant – the magic that was Petra Kelly never emerges. Incessant quick cuts, empty symbols and innuendo, jarring music by Sir Henry (II) and unappealing inarticulate characters belittle but cannot debunk this committed woman and her life’s work. Demeaning and unfair (because unanswerable), Imbach’s thesis (assuming there is one) does not rise above scabrous speculation. Worse, the film is confused and boring.

(Released by Bachim Films; not rated by MPAA.)