To Rent

(Cert 18)

Based on Herman Melville's Pierre or the Ambiguities, its title an acronym of the French translation Pierre ou les Ambiguities, Pola X is director Leos Carax's (Les Amants du Pont Neuf) latest foray into film after an eight-year, self-imposed exile.

Golden boy and child of the light Pierre (Guillaume Depardieu) is a novelist and aristocrat haunted by gray images of a young woman. Engaged to the similarly upper-class Lucie (Delphine Chuillot) he feels himself to be cold, emotionless, and distanced from the harsh realities of life. Ensconced in the beautiful surroundings of his mother's (Catherine Deneuve) chateau, Pierre senses a vacuum in his life, one that cannot be filled by either Lucie, or the sexually charged relationship he has with his mother. He becomes obsessed with the eerie image of the young woman, and is disturbed to find that she exists, and is actually his half-sister Isobelle (Katerina Golubeva). Deeply traumatised by her abandonment, and exposure to conflict, Isobelle uses Pierre as an emotional crutch. Pierre believes Isobelle to be the missing element in his life, and the connection with reality that he craves. Choosing

to run away with Isobelle results in Pierre's crumbling mental health, and tragedy for all those involved.

Pola X is a deeply melodramatic affair, and pretentious to boot. Torpid in the extreme, Carax signposts the mental deterioration of Pierre with a visual movement from the saturated brightness of the chateau, to a cold, blue filtered urban realism of the film's closing moments.

Boiler Room

Entertainment

(Cert 15)

From its trailer you'd expect Boiler Room to be a variation on Glengarry Glen Ross for the youth market . . . and it is. Written by 28-year-old Ben Younger, he takes his lead from David Mamet and his characters take theirs from Oliver Stone's Wall Street.

University drop-out Seth Davis (Giovanni Ribisi) runs an illicit, but successful, casino from the front room of his apartment. His father, Judge Marty Davis (Ron Rifkind) is not proud of his son's entrepreneurial skills, or general slacker attitude, and demands that he close down the casino. Seth desperate for his father's respect, and the merest glimmer of fatherly love, is encouraged by a high-rolling friend to apply for a job at stockbrokers J T Marlin. The company, under head recruiter Jim Young (Ben Affleck), promises him almost immediate entrance to the millionaire's club if he works hard enough. Seth only has to look at the cars and homes of the other brokers to know that what Young promises is true. Being a natural born salesman, Seth becomes quite successful, but his father has doubts about the company's authenticity. Seth, too, becomes suspicious of the vast amounts of money the

brokers are making, and discovers it's on the back of unsound stocks and shares created by the company.

Not as vicious as Wall Street, nor as harsh as Glengarry, Boiler Room is definitely a child of these two fathers. Affleck's cameo is almost a carbon copy of Alec Baldwin's Glengarry character, but not as vitriolic. A brisk pace keeps your attention, and skips over flaws.

American Psycho

Entertainment

(Cert 18)

A black comedy of nightmarish proportions, Brett Easton Ellis's novel revelled in the minutiae of murder, and the vanity of excess, the latter so wholly identifiable with the time in which it was set. Writer/director Mary Harron embarks on a ''feminist'' version of Ellis's social commentary on the violent machismo, and aggression of the 1980s soulless acquisition of money and power.

Our anti-hero Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) is a 27-year-old mergers and acquisitions executive with murder on his mind. Narcissistic, and ultimately insecure (he can be reduced to cold sweats at the sight of a competitor's business card, or the thought of a poor table at a restaurant), Bateman is a product of an environment of hostile takeovers, and reluctant mergers. His vanity and self-absorption are detailed in his early morning beauty regime, which proffers an acceptable veneer, and covers a vacuous interior. His friends share his superficiality. He himself admits to feeling no emotions except greed and disgust. His rivalry with a fellow exec leads Bateman to brutally murder him, and sends him spiralling into a mania of murderous intent, and maniacal critique of banal 1980s pop.

Slick and minimalist, like the age it represents, Harron's interpretation of Ellis's novel removes the violence and places it firmly in the realm of the

viewer's imagination. She establishes an idea of the brutal assaults, but leaves it to the viewer to fill in the blanks. Like the book, you are never sure if Bateman's crimes are real or imaginary, but his insanity is certain.