The infrastructure of “The Sleepwalker” is as carefully-arranged as the brick modernist estate where all the action takes place. Above that framework, unfortunately, is a vague exercise in arty mystery and perplexing behavior.

We are in the woods of Massachusetts, where this stunning getaway is home to Kaia (Gitte Witt), currently remodeling her late father’s house with the help of boyfriend Andrew (Christopher Abbott, from “Girls”). The extremely abrupt arrival of Kaia’s sister Christine (Stephanie Ellis, who looks like a hippie Modigliani portrait) makes for an unwanted houseguest; then Christine’s fiancé Ira (Brady Corbet) shows up in search of his errant, and pregnant, companion.

Long-simmering tensions and old family secrets will now be served in the main room, along with too much alcohol. And oh yes, Christine sleep-walks.

Oddly, Christine’s nocturnal ramblings are mostly taken in stride by the other three, but then nobody seems overly concerned about her conspicuous mental unbalance. When Andrew — at first glance a salt-of-the-earth type, although he’s got a secret past too — raises the question of how soon they can get this weirdo out of the house, he sounds a rare note of recognizable human behavior.

Maybe such behavior wasn’t the goal of director Mona Fastvold (co-writer of the script, with indie stalwart Corbet), who seems more interested in the more experimental aspects of storytelling, or at least in creating an ambiguous world that Roman Polanski or David Lynch might have conjured up during a mild daydreaming session.

Taken as that, “The Sleepwalker” does create a disquieting mood: gauzy, rife with fairy-tale disfigurement, and laced together with a disorienting score (music mixed with ominous sound) by Sondre Lerche and Kato Adlund.

Fastvold, a Norwegian music-video director making her feature debut, brings a northerly chill to this setting. The bluntness of the sex scenes has a European directness, and the two men get an interesting current of competitive hostility going, basically because they’re male.

These impressive elements somehow don’t create a world that completely hangs together, and the problem has something to do with the people onscreen: They remain four characters in search of something beyond caricature, “types” who seem to carry symbolic weight for the filmmaker but don’t really breathe on their own. The house, though, is worth a look.

“The Sleepwalker” (two and a half stars)

Some arty mystery unfolds at a cool Massachusetts estate, where two couples sift through some long-simmering tensions and old family secrets. Director Mona Fastvold’s David Lynch-like exercise doesn’t completely come together, maybe because the people on screen tend to remain symbolic types.

Rating: Not rated; probably R for nudity, language, violence

Showing: Sundance Cinemas