Forget the actual story — most people are going to be caught off guard by the sales pitch.

This weekend, there’s a film showing at Film Forum that is six hours long (divided into two three hour programs) and has been purchased by numerous broadcasters who plan to air it as a miniseries. The film is about a woman seeking greater insight into what it means to be a modern female.

Arriving as it does mid-summer, one has to wonder whether city audiences want to hand over that much time (and twice the cost of the average movie) to take the plunge in Jennifer Fox’s “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman.”

I, for one, have always been as skeptical of films that push the three-hour threshold — there have been far too many brilliant 90-minute films to tolerate works that balloon to 240, 300, or in this case, nearly 360 minutes — as I have been of television miniseries that are presented as theatrical marathons.

Form must fit function, and though TV projects have often made glorious transitions to the movie screen — led by retrospective screenings of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 10-part “The Decalogue,” Michael Apted’s epic “Up” series, and Marco Tullio Giordana’s four-hour, generation-spanning political drama “The Best of Youth” — “Flying” struggles in the movie theater environment, its six hours stitched together to minimizing effect. I divided the marathon into two chunks — a two-hour sitting and a four-hour sitting — and I was surprised to realize that I enjoyed the film’s third hour the most precisely because I had a gap of time between chapters. I had the opportunity, as any television viewer will, to wander away from the work, to ponder Ms. Fox’s life and struggles, and to return to “Flying” eager to see how closely her decisions about love, family, and tradition related to my own thoughts about her film.

In hindsight, this seems to be precisely why Ms. Fox, not only the film’s primary subject but also its director and narrator, has divided her story in this fashion, distilling months of her life and dozens of journeys to foreign countries into six distinct chapters, each with a different theme . Taken separately , each chapter offers a captivating look at what it means to be a “free” woman, liberated from the shackles that Ms. Fox says restricted her mother and so many other baby boomers, and cast adrift from the conventional notions of family, marriage, and femininity.

Taken together, many of Ms. Fox’s ideas and conclusions, both in terms of raw dialogue and broader themes, repeat throughout the chapters. For one, Ms. Fox recalls her childhood, and how she knew from a young age that she craved to be seen by her father as one of the boys because “boys could do anything.” Her mother was confined and often verbally abused, so Ms. Fox naturally came to view marriage as something of a trap. Her reaction was to grow up “free,” pursuing lovers only out of pleasure, avoiding monogamous commitments, and detesting the thought of having children (she says her mother never seemed to stop having children).

Yet in her early 40s, as an upper class Manhattanite , Ms. Fox begins “Flying” between places and suitors, her independence suddenly morphing into confusion. She has two men in her life whom she loves . One is an available, seemingly perfect man to whom she refuses to commit, and the other is an unavailable married man for whom she relentlessly pines. As each man weaves in and out of her life, Ms. Fox falls repeatedly into despair, which she seems to admit she brought upon herself for refusing to commit. Soon after, visits to her doctor reveal that she is pregnant, then that she has miscarried. Suddenly, Ms. Fox is surprised by her overwhelming desire for a child, and by how this impulse contradicts her worldview.

At its worst, Ms. Fox’s film, already scheduled to appear next year on the Sundance Channel, feels indulgent, bloated, and meandering, as if every single random thought and meaningless event has made its way to the screen. But we are also invited to see her most intimate moments and most powerful epiphanies, and they are undoubtedly powerful. In the fourth and fifth chapters, the camera captures Ms. Fox in a series of life-defining moments, including her decision to end a relationship, her anguish over a lost chance at motherhood, and her discussions with women in Cambodia and other countries as she comes to understand that her struggles in Manhattan, while taxing, don’t compare to the barbaric treatment of women around the world.

Whether it’s discussing masturbation with these women, or sex with her Western friends, much of the power of “Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman” is found when Ms. Fox turns the camera away from herself. She talks to sex slaves and draws out their personal stories of pain; she talks to a strong woman in India who has turned her back to the outdated notion of arranged marriages and founded a grassroots political organization. These anecdotes and experiences from women around the world lend a greater significance to Ms. Fox’s “ordinary” American life. They are compelling moments, ones that require thought and reflection — and they shouldn’t be forced into a single sitting.

Through July 17 (209 W. Houston St., between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street, 212-727-8110).