There is a short story by Anton Chekhov titled, “The Lady With the Dog.” It is the story of a brief adulterous affair at a seaside resort, in which very little is said, very little happens, and nothing is resolved, yet is the history of a grand passion. In 1960, the director Iosif Kheifits translated this story to the screen, creating one of the masterpieces of Soviet cinema, a film of little dialogue and less action. But through a faithful adherence to Chekhov’s tone and restraint, Kheifits created one of the most beautiful and affecting portraits of a love affair ever put to film.Would that Arthur Allan Seidelman and Richard Alfieri had the same faith and respect for their material.

“The Sisters,”directed by Mr. Seidelman, is taken from the play of the same name by Mr. Alfieri and based on Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.” The drama of the Prozoroff family has been updated and set in a contemporary college town, with Charleston, S.C., standing in for Moscow as the lodestar of frustrated desire and longing. In what turns out to be an effective and witty choice, the milieu of the play has been transplanted to academia, the academe posing as an excellent substitute for the time-heavy, aimless, and essentially upper-middle-class life of the 19th-century officer corps in a provincial garrison town.

Instead of the family’s home, the action now takes place primarily in one of the buildings of the university, a grand mansion that houses a faculty lounge, whose rich, dark furnishings give off an appropriate air of affluent paralysis. The characters have almost the same names as in the original, and the plot vaguely mimics it, but the rest of the film stands so much in contrast to Chekhov’s oeuvre that watching it provides an illuminating insight into Chekhov’s skill and technique, if only by omission.

Masha, or in this case Marcia, has devolved from a slightly morbid figure of barely suppressed hysteria to an outright histrionic basket case, and the transforming of her husband from schoolteacher to psychiatrist seems to have provided the impetus for most of the dialogue to deteriorate to a near nonstop torrent of pop analysis and psychobabble. Olga becomes a closeted lesbian; Irene, a crystal methamphetamine addict. Add to this a drug overdose, sexual abuse, and a lot of screaming, and before long the true value of Chekhov’s capacity for restraint begins to show itself.

The mania the characters have for constantly analyzing themselves and each other, finding more and more profound and complicated truths to explain their wounded psyche and family dynamics, effectively obscures the essential tragedy of the Prozoroff sisters. Unable to define their distress or understand why their lives are so bereft of meaning, they could only express a vague, ill-defined desire to work, and the assurance that the ultimate panacea would be their move to Moscow. Given self-awareness, this central construct or symbol in the play no longer makes sense.

To explain Marcia’s distress as the result of sexual abuse or to attribute Irene’s moments of insight to the successful navigation of a 12-step program is to betray utterly Chekhov’s assertion of the ambiguity and complexity of human life and his insistence that it is in the quiet currents of ordinary conversation that great despair is expressed or great hope alluded to.

The cast of “The Sisters,” however, is excellent. Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Erika Christensen interact well with each other and certainly convey the intensity of sisterly relations. Chris O’Donnell does a nice if uninspired turn as Irene’s suitor, and it is refreshing to watch Eric McCormack in a straight role as the abrasive ill-tempered, and eventually murderous Sokol. If its provenance is unknown or disregarded, then “The Sisters” is a well-acted if intense drama of family dynamics; as inspired by, related to, or adapted from Chekhov it is an unremitting mess.