“Un melodrama criminal” is the tagline for “The Attachment Diaries,” the new film by Argentinian director Valentín Javier Diment, but, boy, does that not do the movie justice. Similarly, the “plot keywords” provided by Dark Sky Films — these include abortion, mental conditions, and lesbian love — are apt enough, but in the end they’re downright feeble when taking into account the sheer perversity of the picture itself.

This is one of the good things about “The Attachment Diaries”: Only rarely do its extremities of content come off as showboating. Has Mr. Diment, who also wrote the screenplay, purposefully set out to rattle the audience? Not, one thinks, the audience that keeps an eye out for this kind of thing — that is to say, a black comedy whose narrative and imagery poaches upon the mondo, the psychotronic, and the softcore oeuvre of Doris Wishman, queen of the “roughies.”

Should these references leave casual moviegoers scratching their heads, then let’s add that Mr. Diment has his other foot firmly ensconced in more respectable precincts of moviedom. Hitchcock is a lodestar, as is the austere Danish director Carl Dreyer and one of the most stylized of American auteurs, Douglas Sirk. Add a soupcon of Pedro Almodovar, a dash of David Lynch, and a passing nod to Yorgos Lanthimos and you’re left with a director who knows his cinema back to front, up and down, and to the very depths of his provocateur’s soul.

“The Attachment Diaries” is more than the sum of its cultural allusions. It’s testament to Mr. Diment’s talent that his tale of loyalty, love, and lies doesn’t get bogged down in its own cleverness. He does, admittedly, push el sobre, especially when the picture shifts from satiny black-and-white to a precisely orchestrated palette of saturated tones. The earlier part of the movie makes the 1970s milieu elegant and otherworldly. Once the color comes in, we’re out of the movie and in the director’s pocket. A frisson of wonder is lost in the process.

As the movie opens we watch the legs of a young woman walking down city pavement in a desperate state of repair. Her high heels prove a challenge on this rubbled surface; an unrelenting downpour doesn’t help. She comes to the gates of a large house and rings the bell. The doctor is in, as it turns out, but refuses to help the young woman. “Come back tomorrow morning,” she’s told. The high heels are gone. The rain continues.

The following morning, Carla (a pixieish Jimena Anganuzzi) again stands at the front gate of the home and surgery of the doctor, Irina (Lola Berthot). She’s let in by Irina’s housekeeper Dominga (Marta Haller), and is housed, fed, and treated as if her arrival were predestined. Carla is several months pregnant and wants an abortion, claiming that she was the victim of a gang rape. Irina doubts Carla’s story — there’s indication that they’ve done business before — but the fetus growing in Carla’s belly is real.

After which “The Attachment Diaries” — a reference to both the journals Irina has long been keeping as well as to a disorder that stems from childhood abuse — doles out one hyperbolic development after another. Baby peddling, blackmail, 40-year-old virgins, bullying mothers, casual sex, casual murder, casual dismemberment: Well, Mr. Diment’s movie goes to unsavory and sometimes explicit places. Just because a director can be gratuitous doesn’t mean he has to be.

All the same, “The Attachment Diaries” is hugely engrossing. After all, a viable aesthetic response is: “Just what the hell is going to happen next?” Mr. Diment is a consummate filmmaker — his knack for composition and camera movement is as spot-on as it is self-conscious — and Claudio Bieza’s cinematography is an exemplar of the art form. The front end of the movie, with its pewter-like surfaces and silky ambience, will leave one breathless.

The actors are good, giving and game for all the various loops Mr. Diment throws their way, but it is Ms. Berthot as the murderous and lovelorn Irina who is the focus. She’s sexy and grotesque in equal measures, and her presence helps to center a movie that keeps threatening to capsize on its own initiative. Should one’s taste tend toward the outlandish, “The Attachment Diaries” will more than fit the bill.