On Friday morning, the film distributor The Orchard announced that it was cancelling the release of Louis C.K.’s new movie, “I Love You, Daddy,” in light of a Times story, published on Thursday, in which five women described C.K.’s past sexual misconduct. (In a statement released after the Times story came out, C.K. acknowledged that the allegations are true.) The decision to cancel the release of the film is welcome; ”I Love You, Daddy”—which Louis C.K. directed, edited, wrote, and stars in—is a disgusting movie that should never have been acquired for distribution in the first place.

On the surface, “I Love You, Daddy” is a gloss on Woody Allen’s “Manhattan,” down to the black-and-white cinematography and the lush score. Louis C.K. plays Glen Topher, a successful New York television writer and producer whose seventeen-year-old daughter, China (Chloë Grace Moretz), to his distress, becomes involved with a sixty-eight-year-old movie director, Leslie Goodwin (John Malkovich), who is also Glen’s idol.

Yet, long before that central plot kicks in, from the very first scene of the film, “I Love You, Daddy” is a story of wounded rich-white-male pride and its sweet revenge. In that scene, Glen is having a fancy lunch with his ex-wife, Aura (Helen Hunt), who tells him that their daughter, China, a high-school senior who has been living with her, wants to move in with him—because he has money, a fancy apartment, a jet, and a beach house, and she only has a “rathole” of an apartment. His response is quick and brusque, and his point is clear: “You divorced me when I was a loser.” (Eventually, it comes out why Aura left him: because he’d been having affairs with other women. The message that this plot thread sends is clear: put up with it and get the benefits, or spare your dignity and take your lumps.)

What brings Leslie Goodwin into China’s life is Glen’s work. China shows up at her father’s apartment just as he gets word, by phone, that his new series has been green-lighted. A day or two later, Glen gets a surprise visit from Grace Cullen (Rose Byrne), a highly regarded actress who wants to be in his new series and also hints that she wants a personal relationship with Glen. She invites Glen, China, and China’s best friend, Zasha (Ebonee Noel), to a party at her house, where they see Leslie from afar. China asks Glen, “Isn’t he a child molester?” Glen answers, “Allegedly.” After an introduction and a brief chat with Leslie, Glen tells China, “I always wanted to be that guy.” China answers, “He comes to parties to meet young girls. He’s a perv.” Leslie soon proves her point: at the party, he takes China aside and chats her up with a suavely overwhelming stream of compliments and cant, spiced with a lecture about feminism and a declaration of free-spirited artistic amoralism.

A day or two later, Glen hires Grace to play the lead in his series; then they start meeting often, ostensibly for work, and they quickly become a couple. Meanwhile, China and Leslie meet again, in the juniors’ department at Barneys, where she is shopping and he—as he admits, or boasts—is girl-watching. Leslie and China spend a day together in innocent Central Park frivolities; then he invites her to join him on a trip to Paris. Glen won’t permit her to go; she goes anyway, and Glen is distraught. Glen complains about the situation to Grace, who disagrees, explaining that it’s not a big deal—that she herself, when she was fifteen, had a relationship with an older man and came out of it just fine. Glen reacts with bewildered outrage; he and Grace have a bitter argument, and they break up.

When Leslie and China return from the trip, Glen questions Leslie bluntly about his relationship with China, who, horrified by what she considers Glen’s intrusion into her private life, storms out of his home and won’t speak to him again. The dénouement comes at the Emmys banquet. Glen’s series turns out to have been a total flop; but Leslie—claiming that Glen’s work inspired him to try his hand at TV—has created a series that wins him an award. Yet, with the help of his producing partner, Paula (Edie Falco), Glen begins to put his career back together, and, with the help of his ex-girlfriend Maggie (Pamela Adlon), he reconciles with China.

These general contours of the story make Louis C.K.’s idea clear: Glen’s narrowly moralistic opposition to China’s relationship with Leslie costs him everything. It costs him his career, because it distracted him from working on the series and also disrupted his relationship with Grace, who, as he says, was his inspiration for writing the show. What’s more, Grace’s and Leslie’s easygoing attitudes—hers toward her teen relationship with an older man, his toward having relationships with very young women—are marks of their greater artistry and of their magnanimity. Leslie and Grace, unlike Glen, don’t narrow-mindedly judge relationships on the basis of appearances or of age (what Grace calls a mere “number”). The conventionally moralistic Glen is also a more conventional and mediocre artist.

The movie’s idea is fractal—it’s reflected perfectly in each of its details, which don’t just excuse but actually endorse sexual depredation as an artistic practice and as a way of life. Take Glen’s relationship with Grace. He’s the showrunner, doing the hiring and firing of actors; yet his sexual relationship with Grace is depicted as her idea, undertaken, she says, not for the good of her career but because of her desire for him. That relationship comes off not as him taking advantage of her but as a power move on her part. Grace is depicted from the start as a sex symbol: while Glen is on the phone with her agent, Glen’s friend and sidekick, the comedian Ralph Kinder (Charlie Day), vigorously and blatantly mimes masturbation throughout the time of the call, continuing to do so when Paula enters the office. Later that night, Glen and China watch a movie with Grace in it, an erotic thriller in which she sexually provokes men and then kills them. China calls it “feminism”; Glen responds with a lecture of his own about feminism: “Feminism means being independent, not lounging on a deck. You haven’t filled out a single college application.”

What Louis C.K. never does, in “I Love You, Daddy,” is consider in any practical or emotional detail the reasons why the relationship between a seventeen-year-old woman who hasn’t filled out a single college application and a sixty-eight-year-old man of wealth and accomplishment might be inadvisable—why the difference between them is more than a number. For instance, there’s no reckoning with differences in experience or in power—because the movie takes pains to put China and Leslie on equal footing. What goes on between China and Leslie is depicted as no prurient romp (it’s never actually clear whether their relationship is sexual). Rather, the movie makes it look as if Leslie is offering China a blend of Black Mountain College and Fitzgerald’s Riviera. Leslie takes China to Paris on his private jet, which is filled with his entourage of stylish young bohemians lounging cheerfully and playing music. The merry troupe also surrounds Leslie at a Paris banquet where he holds court, and keeps him company on his yacht, where China conspicuously cuddles with a young British playboy—while Leslie sits in the background, watches them, and types away on a classic Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter. China’s trip with Leslie and his retinue is her education, an education greater than college, and it’s also his artistic inspiration.

That’s the over-all idea—and the doctrine that Louis C.K. puts in his male characters’ mouths and justifies as “feminism.” Whether in Glen’s lecture to China, in which he defines feminism for her as “independence,” or in Leslie’s lecture to China, in which he argues that feminism is about opposing a patriarchy that is hardly more oppressive than a matriarchy would be, Louis C.K. assumes from the start that women’s power is equal to—even superior to—that of men.