C+

James Gandolfini spent a great deal of time around strippers when he played the proprietor of the Bada Bing, but he treats one far differently as Doug, the protagonist of “Welcome to the Rileys.” A law-abiding fellow, Doug’s an Indianapolis businessman who takes an incredibly protective stance toward a young dancer-slash-hooker he encounters while at a convention in New Orleans. In fact, he adopts such a fatherly attitude toward the girl that he sells his business to stay in the Big Easy and altruistically help her change her life for the better, virtually abandoning his wife of thirty years in the process.

As it happens, there’s a psychological reason behind his action. His wife Lois (Melissa Leo) is an agoraphobe who hasn’t left their house since the death of their teen daughter in an auto accident years before. And while the couple still love one another, they’ve not been physically close for a long time, leading Doug to have a lengthy affair with a waitress at the pancake house he regularly patronizes after his weekly poker game. He invites her to go to New Orleans with him, but just before his planned departure the woman dies of a sudden heart attack.

Doug’s thus in emotional turmoil when he reaches Louisiana, and when he’s accosted by Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an aggressive young pole danger in a seedy bar, his paternal instinct kicks in. After an uncomfortable initial contact—she concludes that he’s a cop—they connect and he winds up taking her back to her shabby place and staying the night—platonically, it must be noted. And he decides to remain to fix up the place and encourage the girl—a teen runaway escaping a painful past—to clean up her act.

It’s obvious that Doug’s grief over the loss of his daughter is what’s driving him to adopt this virtual surrogate. But writer Ken Hixon balances the plot about him and Mallory with the concurrent one about Lois, who, when Doug informs her of his decision to stay in New Orleans, overcomes the agoraphobia that’s kept her in seclusion since her daughter’s death to drive down to New Orleans and find her husband. Her meeting with Mallory brings the film to a head, since it’s revealed that she feels a particular guilt over her daughter’s death.

This is a tale that’s ostensibly about ordinary people, but it strains credulity at every turn, and director Jake Scott (the son of Ridley) accentuates the implausibility by adopting a very deliberate—some would say plodding—pace and allowing for many digressive grace notes (like a conversation between Lois and another customer at a roadside diner that’s meant to pinpoint her transformation but, however nicely done, seems extraneous). His approach was doubtlessly intended to avoid turning the piece into melodrama, but the lack of energy merely imposes an overly serious tone on what remains soapoperatic material, however well intentioned.

But the film does provide the stars with an opportunity to explore facets of character unlike the ones they usually portray. Gandolfini has moments of gruffness, but mostly he’s an image of quiet grief and dogged determination, while Leo’s almost unrecognizable as his reserved, mousy wife; both seem to relish their solo moments, but are especially affecting in their third-act scenes together, where a real sense of affection shines through. Stewart sheds the morose gloom of her Bella in the “Twilight” series, but overcompensates by overdoing the facial tics and grimaces here.

With its no-gloss production, “Welcome to the Rileys” is visually a fairly typical independent product, not unappealing but certainly not glamorous. That somehow suits a movie that tries to turn an inherently melodramatic tale into a serious study of middle-class grief, but doesn’t succeed despite the acting talent on hand.