Film Studies: Finally, a film to make all the others roll over like amiable dogs

As the new movies crowd into the back end of 2002, a bunch of US critics got ready for Adaptation. This is the new picture from the team that, two years ago, gave us Being John Malkovich – writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze. It was with that audacious entry into the high gothic mind of Mr Malkovich (and that actor's droll permission for so many trivial bugs in his lofty belfry) that some of us hoped we were seeing a new American wave. For the sublime nonsense of that debut film – for at least the first hour – was the kind of absurdist, self-referential comedy that seemed to promise a way of repossessing that long since forsaken excitement: movie. After all, if no one takes movie stories seriously, or straight, any longer, then one way home is to pick up the comic potential in all the broken pieces of that old engine, suspended disbelief.

Being John Malkovich didn't hold all the way. Its high spirits flagged; the audacity could see no way to get off the stage. And the novelty that Jonze and Kaufman were on to required nothing less than a directly ascending line. They need to study Buñuel to see how only rising illogic can escape the dismal letdown of subsidence. Still, the first hour was an astonishing landmark, and the decision to offer so much self-ridicule to Malkovich seemed inspired in the light of his refusal to notice humiliation. Indeed, suddenly the lugubrious, chilled Malkovich began to look like the essential post-modern actor (something made clear in the forthcoming Ripley's Game, the definitive portrait in absent-minded wickedness).

More than that, Malkovich in his own Being was revealed as modern yet deranged. His great intelligence was affect-less; it was a year zero in acting, wise and child-like and so ready for antic adventures that any hint of sincerity felt antique.

Unfortunately, Nicolas Cage has nothing like the same daring in Adaptation. But before getting to that woeful countenance, let's try to describe the initial brilliance of the concept, which is radical and comic even if it misses the effrontery of the first film. Cage plays Charlie Kaufman (yes, the film's co-scenarist) who has moved on from Malkovich to the task of trying to adapt Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. I have not read that book, yet I believe it exists and I take on trust that it concerns Ms Orlean's adventures in pursuing the real-life story of John Laroche, an orchid poacher from the swamps of Florida.

And as Adaptation lifts off, so Susan Orlean becomes Meryl Streep, while Laroche is Chris Cooper. Streep works to be an interesting Orlean (and the real Orlean has bravely gone along with her own hijacking) as Charlie Kaufman (Cage – please pay attention) begins to lament that she presents him with a very tough task. She doesn't have enough story or arc, so she tries to give him more. But the adaptation is going badly, as observed by Charlie's twin brother, Donald (Cage again).

At last we're there, on the brink of Adaptation's lovely abyss – for this is a movie eager to be lifted up by the difficulty of its own making. This is more than brilliant, I think. It's a coup, a stroke of self-reference so vast that you can see so many films rolling over (like amiable dogs), happy to become upside-down creatures. Being John Malkovich had just the same sort of premature self-destruction, and all the promise of a new, serene surrealism.

Adaptation has another wild card in that the Kaufman twins consult a famous Hollywood teacher of scriptwriting (played like a fierce Lecter by Brian Cox). And Cage does always let us know which twin is which. But still, finally, Adaptation becomes more sedate and routine as it struggles to find a way of ending decently.

Alas. But Jonze and Charlie Kaufman (Donald seems to be an invention) are close to something profound. They're like a Crick and Watson team who are searching for the essential genetic structure but still think it's spelled AND.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk