“The Art of Love” is an almost-flippant Turkish take on “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Never quite funny, and nowhere near amusing enough to be a caper comedy, with stakes that are entirely too low to be an effective heist picture, it just sort of lies there, looking sleek and sexy, as if that’s enough.

It isn’t. Any more than the middling thefts and tepid chase scenes through Istanbul and Prague, which could have used a French second unit director’s consulting to bring them to life.

Turkish TV starlet Esra Bilgiç is Alin, someone with a passion for art and a degree in it who found a good use for her expertise — working for Interpol, tracking art thefts. Someone is stealing “the least valuable painting” from Europe’s museums and galleries. She and agent Ozan (Ushan Çakir) are stumped until she figures out these works of Fauvism are all about “love.”

They guess what might be targeted next, guess right, and just as the thief slips through their fingers, Alin realizes it’s this billionaire named Güney (Birkan Sokullu) whom she dated until he “disappeared.”

Small world.

Now he’s back back from hiding, and leading a team in stealing art. Apparently.

The movie’s cat-and-mouse “Thomas Crown Affair” variation is that this time it’s overwhelmingly from the investigator’s point of view as she plots to re-enter his life and tempt him until he slips up.

“Look at what you’re making me do, Güney!”

His “team” is barely in the background, save for a hacker (Nil Keser) vs. Alin catfight.

The odd playful or sexy moment is lost in the low-heat tedium of everything that happens. Even a third act shootout seems dispirited.

Want to remake “The Thomas Crown Affair” on a Netflix/Turkey budget? Script and stage a “Grand Gesture” in a baroque concert hall, with only two dancers and our billionaire and his former enamorata the only ones in the audience. Saves money on performers and extras. Have your swaggering, rich thief talk about “extreme sports,” but skip actually showing them.

The idea is sound as the story’s plot has worked in a couple of other films. But the performances don’t pop. “The Art of Love” never overwhelms us with affluence, never titilates us with sex (not really) and never gives us anything like the suspense that would be needed for this to come off.

A bit more polish in the Craft of Screenwriting and the Art of the Chase Scene, and maybe a little more money in the budget, and this this can’t-miss premise wouldn’t have missed.

Rating: TV-14, gunplay, fisticuffs, mild profanity

Cast: Esra Bilgiç, Birkan Sokullu, Firat Tanis, Nil Keser and Ushan Çakir

Credits: Directed by  Recai Karagöz scripted by Pelin Karamehmetoglu. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:39