Sorry, Thanks is the directorial debut of Dia Sokol, the producer of films by Andrew Bujalski, Alex Karpovsky and Joe Swanberg; it stars Bujalski and a cast of largely non-actors; it was shot by Matthias Grunsky, the cinematographer of both Mutual Appreciation and Nights and Weekends. The sum total of these names and titles point in a certain trajectory of recent American film, one which need not be named by name to anyone who recognizes these references.

But Sorry, Thanks equally reminds of the indie films of the 90s, the kind of low budget but fully realized ensemble films that, if you didn’t see at Sundance, you’ve seen hundreds of times on the Sundance channel, the kind that slowly and cumulatively but surely turned character actors like Sam Rockwell and Catherine Keener into something like stars. Sorry, Thanks, a uniquely moral film but also a very funny one, offers the same kind of platform for the talents of Bujalski (here playing a real character, one even further afield from the on-screen persona developed across his own first two features than the dickish office manager in last year’s Goliath), and, even more so, Wiley Wiggins. Wiggins, in his first leading role in eight years, gives a minor miracle of a comic performance as Max, a 30-ish fuck-up who’s so deep within his own dysfunction that he can hardly see it.

When Max hooks up with Kira (Kenya Miles), all Sokol shows us is a pre-or-post coital-cute shadow puppet play (”Tonight’s special,” Max says) and the awkward morning after, when Max can barely open his eyes to register Kira’s eagerness to begin her walk of shame. The narrative splits so we can follow these clandestine bed partners separately for awhile. Max, so hapless that it seems he can barely dress himself (in fact, he defaults to the same shirt several times throughout the feature), relies on his grumpy, no-bullshit friend Mason (Bujalski) for rides around San Francisco, and to his job training interns at the office of a politician. When a new batch of bright, bright-eyed kids comes in, Max asks them right off the bat (in a deadpan that’s so weirdly cold that it makes you instantly worry about his mental state) to admit that they’re people of “compromised ideals,” and to be prepared to “watch [their] inner idealist die.”  Meanwhile, Kira’s recently out of a seven year relationship. She’s going through the familiar process of figuring out how to put together a quasi-grown-up life for the first time on her own. This involves going out a lot, drinking a lot, testing out friends as lovers, wandering around the city alone — anything to avoid having to go back to her new, barren apartment by her lonesome. Both of them seem to be trying to drift through the city and their lives without touching anything or letting anything touch.

Max and Kira come back together when, via friends of friends, they end up in the same bar. Max’s girlfriend Sara — whose very existence catches Kira by surprise — is there, too.  From the moment Sara, played by Ia Hernandez, steps on screen, we feel really, really bad for caring or even knowing about Max and Kira’s one night stand and ongoing flirtation. She’s adorable, she’s the kind of genuinely good person (she works with “heroin addicted schizophrenics and critiques films based on their “moral center”) who unknowingly makes the less upstanding among us hate themselves, their relationship seems to be such that she probably didn’t do anything to inspire infidelity, and she evidently trusts Max so much that she’d never suspect it.  It’s clear that her boyfriend is the fuckup, and that she’s only at fault for not realizing nearly how badly off he actually is. The introduction of the Sara character transforms Sorry, Thanks from another casual inquiry into the dating lives of urban twenty-somethings into a film about consequence, one which forces the viewer to question their own sympathies for the self-destructive actions (and inactions) of the primary pair on screen.

The blending of actors and non-actors gives Sorry, Thanks an interesting texture. Kenya Miles has been given a gift in the character of Kira, the rare female protagonist who is as blatantly indecisive and impassive as the average on screen young man, who says no and means it, who has needs and fulfills them without being needy. She occasionally has trouble holding down the screen on her own or in concert with some of the film’s more spectral presences, but she obviously gets what’s going on with Kira and is more often than not able to find a chemistry with her scene partners that makes the film, though tightly scripted by Sokol and Lauren Veloski, feel natural, casual, colloquial. Miles’ chemistry with Wiggins is of particular interest; it’s a slightly uneasy and at times, almost creepy one, which befits Max and Kira’s illogical and doomed ongoing flirtation. As the character develops and becomes more comfortable as a lone ranger, the actress’ performance becomes more impressive.

It’s rare to see a contemporary low-budget ensemble comedy that values each of its supporting players as much as Sorry, Thanks does, to the extent where each character, even those on screen for barely a scene, feels so real and whole and fully worked-out that you imagine they could fill their own movie. But this is ultimately Wiley Wiggins’ show. With a tiny facial tic here, a slight vocal inflection there, Wiggins finds jokes within jokes, adds poignancy to Max’s worst behavior, and somehow gets away with it.There’s a scene where someone’s trying to teach him how to use a copy machine that’s amazing. The mix of humility, sadness, frustration and agony dancing across his face is a little heartbreaking, and a little hilarious. It’s that tone that sets Sorry, Thanks apart — it sets you up with its deceptively breezy, primary colored staging, and, in the unlikeliest of times and modes, delivers a gut punch.