The big story out of Sundance this year was the flourishing of a new breed of Southern cinema. These were “films about the South by Southerners,” as festival bigwig Geoff Gilmore put it, and four of them – an unprecedented number – vied for prizes and distribution deals in the prestigious Dramatic Competition section.

Buzzing the loudest was “Hustle and Flow,” the dubious saga of a Memphis pimp trying to break into hip-hop. Playing to better notices, if much less hype, was Jim Morrison’s “Junebug,” a sensitive, small-scale drama about a Chicago sophisticate meeting her North Carolina in-laws. Tim Kirkman’s “Loggerheads,” another Tar Heel production, failed to generate much excitement, but the Memphis-set “Forty Shades of Blue” surprised many by walking off with the Grand Jury Prize.

The gigantic story out of Sundance had to do with an altogether different movie about the South – the really Deep South. Wobbling along on their little flipper feet, those irrepressible penguins marched everyone’s attention down to Antarctica. “Hustle and Flow” was a success, if not nearly the crossover blockbuster expected. “Junebug” excited critics more than audiences, garnering another round of raves on release but only modest business. Neither “Loggerheads” (in theaters next month) nor “Forty Shades of Blue” (at Film Forum until October 11) are likely to shift the spotlight back.

Penguins or no penguins, this fresh crop of Southern cinema was never going to go over big. With the exception of “Hustle and Flow,” these are quiet, understated movies – solid enough fare, if lacking the gravity to swell a homegrown new wave. “Forty Shades of Blue” plays like a minor work from a major director, the sort of thing you’d respect, and maybe even indulge a little, in view of bolder work by the same auteur.

It is, in fact, only the second film by writer-director Ira Sachs, whose debut, “The Delta,” got a lot of people excited about his future. I never saw it, but his follow-up can’t be a quantum leap; it closes with a brazen Truffaut allusion that merely reinforces the sense of an artist still working through his own imagination. “Forty Shades of Blue” has been painted with patience, perceptiveness, skillful obliquity of narrative line, and strong color in the performances, but the angles don’t add up, the pattern doesn’t cohere.

Like “Junebug,” the film examines tense family dynamics from the perspective of an outsider. Dina Korzun is Laura, a bony Russian immigrant with a young son, nouveau riche fashion (lots of animal prints and size-zero designer jeans), and a well of resignation as cold and deep as Lake Baikal. Some years ago, she landed in Memphis on the arm of Alan (Rip Torn), a legendary music producer and bon vivant who scooped her up on a tour of Moscow. Their unspoken resentments triangulate when Michael (Darren Burrows), Alan’s estranged son, comes to visit with much emotional baggage in tow.

The romance that develops between Laura and Michael is less than credible, though it makes schematic sense as a way of plugging the holes where Alan’s affections ought to be. Mr. Torn is solid as the boorish, unfaithful patriarch, and Ms. Korzun, on whose skeletal shoulders the movie rests, creates intriguing tension between her almost frightening physical fragility and a sinewy inner stoicism. But Michael is a weak link, and the movie topples for it. Mr. Burrows is hindered by an underwritten role, but rather than find his own way into the character, shading the sketch with his own shades of blue, he fights the flatness, and we see it.

***

Just in time for sweater season comes a movie about Botox babes and sun kissed studs diving for pirate (and each other’s) booty in the Bahamas. Jessica Alba (Sam) stars as a set of Botox lips, ripe melon bosoms, and pilates-perfect curves into which vanish all trace of her bikini bottom. Paul Walker is Jared, an ab-o-licious man-dolphin dunce who swims to the surface every now and then to say “bro,” “gnarly,” or “friggin.'” Joining them are alpha-idiot Bryce (Scott Caan) and the “coke whore” he picked up the previous night at the Mercer (Ashley Scott as Amanda).

They find all sorts of stuff in the water: sharks, manta rays, snorkel montages, dead people, 18th-century pirate ships, cargo planes full of cocaine. Predictable, laborious trouble ensues as the inevitable bad guys show up on the scene, the most memorable of whom is the bling-laden, gun-toting, Mohawk sporting Primo (Tyson Beckford).

I’d like to say “Into the Blue” is sexy counter-programming against the fall’s serious prestige flicks. The truth is it looks an awful lot like a soggy summer movie being dumped in theaters to drown. Anything this dependent on wet cleavage and hairless pecs is pushing things at 90 minutes; at two hours it’s borderline abusive. I’m deeply saddened to note that director John Stockwell may have had only one good tropical cleavage movie in him: 2002’s infectious surfer girl saga “Blue Crush.”