One of the reviews about this film I read said that despite being a beautiful thing to look at it never finds its footing in pointless storytelling and lethargic pacing, and I couldn't agree more. It never gives you a sense of what it is and what it's saying, veering away every time you think it's going to take a direction and make a point.

Being about a young woman in Tokyo who falls in love with a Yakuza gangster and can only find sexual excitement in being bound, it could have incorporated an action aesthetic complete with gangland murders and gunfights or become a darker, nastier Fifty Shades of Grey with all the titillation you hope for if you're only there hoping to see Alexandra Daddario naked. It does neither, and the movie – much like the name – ends up lost.

Despite a couple of sex scenes there's nothing sexy about it, and for something that seems to be a suspenseful thriller on the surface there's nothing suspenseful or thrilling about it either. But it is handsomely made and shot, with a verite style and excellent location and design work, and with naturalistic performances and dialogue that's far grittier than anything we've seen from Daddario, who's mostly been cast as eye candy in blockbusters until this.

And she throws herself into the milieu beautifully – speaking, dressing, moving and emoting in ways that are perfectly suited to the moods and tones of the film, belying a much greater talent than we've seen in the past.

She plays Margaret, an American expat living in Tokyo who has a small group of friends in between working at a private college teaching young women to be flight attendants in English. Her boss is kind but firm and already seems to be losing patience with Margaret's spotty attendance thanks to her extracurricular private life – one that involves not just getting blind drunk with her friends but coaxing strangers into taking her to love hotels and tying her up, putting herself at considerable risk.

One day she crosses paths with Kazu (Takehiro Hira), a (more menacing) Christian Grey type with whom she's instantly smitten. He seems to feel the same, but admits he's betrothed to another woman, hurting Margaret but not putting her off pursuing her affair with him.

The rest of the story is just the pair of them – sometimes together and sometimes separately – doing things, none of which do anything to alleviate the meandering tone, an actual plot failing to converge and assert itself.

In one scene, he shows up at her work one day when she's preparing to enter the building, convincing her to get the train out to the country with him instead to some sacred temple where touching some sacred stone will cause some kind of spiritual rebirth. The movie treats the event as something pivotal to Margaret's journey, but as to what, you'll have no idea.

In other scenes her best drinking buddy abruptly tells her she's leaving Japan. In another she asks her Scottish friend to explain the cultural nomenclature of the word 'cunt'. Nothing that goes on has any impact beyond the scene it's in, and the whole thing ultimately never gets off the starting block.

She does seem to reach some kind of denouement when she convinces some creepy guy who's been following her to take her to a hotel. When he ties her up and calmly tells her he could kill her she first whispers, then cries for him to do it. 'What?' you'll think? She's lost her job and been evicted but she's suicidal for some reason? Or is it some weird sex thing?

If Daddario was some screen ingenue we'd never seen before this might be a calling card to a successful career, the kind of thing we've actually seen her in so far. But she deserves credit for the talent she displays here, one that's completely appropriate to the creative aesthetic. It's just a shame that creative aesthetic didn't have something stronger in it than character interaction.