The details regarding the release of Steven Soderbergh’s “Bubble” are as strange as anything in the film. Beginning today, the movie can be seen both in theaters and on high-definition cable. Starting Tuesday it will also be available on DVD. This is the first of six movies Mr. Soderbergh will make for HDNet Films, which shares owners with Magnolia Pictures, Landmark Theatres, and the eponymous cable network, and thus stands to profit from a multiple-format release. But in the past year, the idea of simultaneous openings has gained credence even in Hollywood, where fears about diminishing theater attendance have prompted studios to consider drastic solutions.

Whatever else it might accomplish, the strategy could fundamentally alter the movie going experience, eliminating the need to attend theaters when seeing first-run films. As if to emphasize the radicality of the project, Mr. Soderbergh has made a film conspicuously lacking in other elements of movieness – namely, drama, incident, and camera movement. “Bubble” is a 72-minute character study with strenuously uninteresting characters; an observational piece in which little is observed; and eventually, a whodunit with only three suspects, two of whom are quickly shown innocent.

Above all, the film is an experiment in acting. Like Mr. Soderbergh’s 2002 “Full Frontal” (anyone expecting “Ocean’s Twelve” or “Traffic” is in for an unpleasant evening), “Bubble” is based on a minimal script by Coleman Hough, and as in that film, the actors have filled in the gaps with improvisation. But whereas “Full Frontal” encouraged the stars (Julia Roberts, Catherine Keener) to mug for the camera, “Bubble” is designed around its nonprofessional actors’ passivity. The film was shot in and around Parkersburg, W.V., where the entire cast was found – but charisma was clearly not a prerequisite.

Largely free of action, the narrative follows the lives of Kyle (Dustin James Ashley) and Martha (24-year KFC employee Debbie Doebereiner), whose workplace – a doll factory – provides Mr. Soderbergh with a great deal of hypnotic monotony to photograph. Situations are viewed as if through a microscope, with disproportionate emphasis accorded to, say, moments of purchasing donuts or using the vending machine. The focus on the mundane comes across as faintly condescending, the implication being that these working-class characters have little in their lives capable of carrying a feature length film. Conversations rarely rise above the level of small talk, and remain bizarrely affectless when they do. “I think we’re just gonna hang out in the bedroom for a little bit,” Kyle tells his mother when returning home with a date; the line elicits a typical nonresponse.

Struggling at home with an ailing father, Martha fancies herself something of a mother figure for Kyle. Their unspoken bond is disrupted by the arrival of Rose (Misty Dawn Wilkins), a new employee and single mom to whom Kyle takes an immediate liking. Ms. Wilkins is the only performer who radiates something like star power, and her relative perkiness – not to mention her character’s penchant for thievery – goes a long way toward short-circuiting the movie’s mannered rhythms.

It’s at this point that “Bubble” develops into a murder mystery – a shift less interesting for the audience than for the actors, who have the opportunity to imitate their favorite “Law & Order” episodes. (Watch the relish with which the actor playing the detective spits out that old cop movie standby, “What you’ve got to do is start telling me the truth.”) But even as a genre exercise, “Bubble” dodges a conventional payoff, keeping the viewer at arm’s length.

“Bubble” is never less than engrossing, but it’s also seldom engaging as a story. This is the kind of movie that might tempt you to rent the DVD, where a making-of special could no doubt chronicle Mr. Soderbergh’s efforts to coax (or suppress) performances from his inexperienced actors. Unfortunately, the puff documentary that’s actually on the DVD – filmed after the shoot, with Mr. Soderbergh relegated to another supplement – proves as unilluminating as the film proper. No matter how it’s viewed, apparently, “Bubble” remains as hollow as its title implies.