In Dreams - Directed by Neil Jordan. Starring Annette Bening, Aidan Quinn, Robert Downey Jr, Stephen Rea
Jordan's underestimated venture into psychodrama proves imaginative and visually inspired as it draws together a grief-stricken illustrator (the alert and hypnotic Bening) whose daughter has been abducted, and the edgy, sad-eyed killer (Downey Jnr) with whom she becomes psychically connected. In its theme of trusting childhood innocence be-spoiled, it evokes Jordan's films of The Company of Wolves, The Butcher Boy.
Cruel Intentions
Directed by Roger Kimble. Starring Ryan Philippe, Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Christine Baranski, Louise Fletcher
The fourth cinema treatment of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a smart, sophisticated transposition of the story to present-day Manhattan where the charming but callous Valmont (Philippe) lusts after his cynical step-sister (Gellar) and sets himself the challenge of seducing a new student (Witherspoon) who insists she will remain pure until she falls in love. The language is coarser than before, but director Kimble never loses sight of the story's essence and the very promising young leading actors acquit themselves with panache.
Sitcom
Directed by Francois Ozon. Starring Francois Marthouret, Evelyne Dandry, Marina De Van, Adrien De Van, Stephane Rideau
From France, a calculatedly outrageous social satire dealing with an apparently contented - but decidedly dysfunctional - suburban family of four whose bourgeois lifestyle is turned upside down when the father brings home a pet rat. The consequences involve incest, sexual revelations and group sex orgies which are left unseen but hilariously suggested in this frenetic comedy which fumbles in its final stages.