An academic physicist confronts the Big Existential question at life’s end in the deliberate, low-key sci-fi dramedy “Omni Loop,” a film that ponders “What was it all for?”

A career with great promise and a life of paths taken or not taken hangs over a kind of “Edge of Tomorrow” meets “Groundhog Day” tale of a scientist who tries everything to fend off the inevitable, perhaps missing the larger “point” of her life in the process.

Mary Louise Parker is Zoya Lowe, a woman about to die because somehow a black hole has opened in her chest. She’s got another physics text co-written with her husband (Carlos Jacott) at the printers, ready for a last edit, a daughter (Fern Katz) who needs her and a big fat regret hanging over her life at this terminal juncture.

But “terminal” goes into overtime every five days, as Zoya has some magical pills that pop her back a week, in time to get the worst news again, have a premature 55th birthday party arranged by her grieving family again, visit her aged mother in a nursing home one “last” time and deal with her will and her publishers all over again.

The life-extending “loop” might be “Hail Mary” way of giving her existence meaning, “making my mark.” Or is it a trap, a way of obsessing about the outcome, about scientific pursuits she didn’t complete which might have “solved” her problem? What’s she not getting?

“Omni Loop” — Bernardo Britto’s film takes its title from a line on Miami’s downtown “Metromover” commuter rail — is about Zoya’s long, last ditch effort to get answers and maybe get results. Meeting a community college science student with Zoya’s “An Introduction to Modern Physics” book, she breaks the pattern, tracks the kid down, and day after day, re-explains her dilemma and her “plan” to young Paula (Ayo Edebiri from TV’s “The Bear”).

Existence that has lost all meaning through the endless, soul-sucking grief of the repetition of the last week of Zoya’s life takes on purpose again as they take over an unused lab, pore over old research and brainstorm new approaches that will put Zoya back in contact with her youth, a disappointed mentor (Harris Yulin, terrific) and perhaps the “reason” she was gifted with these magic pills as a “promising” child.

Parker, of “RED” and TV’s “Weeds” and many other credits, has always done her best acting with her incredibly expressive eyes and emotionally open facial expressions. A simple side-eye from her is usually worth a laugh. Here she gives us glimpses of wide-eyed puzzlement at her dilemma, always washed-away by the resignation of despair.

Parker makes the “loop” of repetition eye-rollingly funny, forlorn and wistful, even hopeful in a “Maybe this time we’ll get it” way.

The narrative lets us see things from Adeberi’s Paula for a few scenes, in that “everybody’s going through something (not just Zoya)” aphorism. The younger actress matches Parker puzzlement for puzzlement, always in her case impulsively replaced by hope. The kid, remeeting and re-learning Zoya’s plight, time after time, almost instantly engages with the challenge, bringing a fresh set of eyes and a new appreciation for Florida’s community college system.

The picture drifts out of its loop in the latter acts, and the messaging of Britto’s debut feature can seem downright retrograde in an era of reviving feminism.

But “Omni Loop” gives us a less gonzo, more reflective and frankly sadder riff on themes explored in time travel tales and in the “alternate universes” of “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Confronting Paula with her “gift” pills, Zoya has to learn “Do you really think you’re the only person who has a reason to go back” in time?

And even with that “gift” of a do-over, who among us knows what we would do with it, why, and if it will provide the “fix” we figure our lives need?

Rating: unrated

Cast: Mary Louise Parker, Ayo Adeberi, Carlos Jacott and Harris Yulin.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bernardo Britto. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 2:09