NEW FILMS

PONETTE

(PG) H

Director: Jacques Doillon

Starring: Victoire Thivisol, Marie Trintignant, Claire Nebout (subtitles)

Ponette is a precociously intelligent four-year-old girl whose mother dies in a car accident. As the implications of this death, and of mortality in general, begin to dawn on the child, she takes some comfort in the titbits of religion which she has absorbed, and accordingly awaits her parent's imminent resurrection.

The young Victoire Thivisol shows a preternatural comprehension of acting technique, though this isn't exactly a recommendation of the film - bizarre as it might seem to commend an actress for being too good, it's hard to deny a distinct discomfort at watching one so young parade emotion this raw and primal.

It doesn't help matters that Ponette, while tenderly photographed, has nothing very sophisticated to say about grief or childhood - you never get the feeling that you're in the hands of a confident or challenging artist. Perhaps the film's failure to engage finally comes down to the fact that when adults are good, they're very, very good, but when children are good, they're creepy.

THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION

(15) HH

Director: Nicholas Hytner

Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, Alan Alda, John Pankow

The heroine of the bubbly 1995 comedy Clueless, realised that she was in love with her stepbrother, played by Paul Rudd, only after her first choice of boyfriend turned out to be gay. Now it's Rudd's turn to play "Crush the Straight Girl" for this new romantic comedy, in which he confounds his flatmate's dreams of wedding vows and joint burial plots by going and dancing at the other end of the ballroom, so to speak. Now what does he want to do a thing like that for?

Indeed, this may be the question on the lips of many heterosexual males in the audience, since the thwarted desires in question emanate from the bosom of Jennifer Aniston - Rachel in Friends. Her presence in the picture is purely symbolic; she's there to prove that homosexuality isn't something which occurs in degrees - it doesn't metamorphose into bisexuality when confronted with a beautiful woman.

The film is like a primer for viewers who don't think they know what makes gay people tick, and though it can be very funny and charming, it has all the subtlety of a party political broadcast. The director, Nicholas Hytner, who made The Madness of King George and The Crucible, keeps the romantic complications light enough to be palatable while still acknowledging the pain which ripples through the characters, though the neatly rounded ending is a disgrace.

Rudd is fine as the beleaguered hero, but the real joy is in the supporting players, including Alan Alda as a self-absorbed literary agent.

JOURNEY TO THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD

(U) H

Director: Manoel de Oliveira

Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Yves Gautier, Leonor Silveira (subtitles)

Featuring Marcello Mastroiannai's final performance, this seasoned picture's lament that "the mind can be fine, but the wrapping deteriorates" doesn't apply to the man himself. His disposition, wise and sunny but flecked with both mischief and weariness, is unchanged; he still looks like a man who has been benignly trailing heavy luggage for all eternity without complaint.

But the picture, by the 90-year-old film-maker Manoel de Oliveira, is a grave disappointment. It's a commentary on life and experience through the travels of Manoel, the elderly Portuguese director played by Mastroianni (guess who that's based on?), and his young French companions.

There's some dreamy travelogue footage, shot from a vehicle's rear window - what with all the talk of death and the past, I felt like I was touring Portugal in the back of an ambulance - but this backwards perspective is typical of the film's fuzzy nostalgia.

The director is prone to rusty attempts at humour, and some heavy-handed symbolism which can infiltrate the most remote corners. When Mastroianni strains to grab a burst of blossom on a tree, his friends look on blankly, refusing to lower the branch for him. Why? Because it's symbolic blossom, and a symbolic branch. He's probably got symbolic arthritis, too - it's that sort of film.

PALMETTO

(15) HH

Director: Volker Schlondorff

Starring: Woody Harrelson, Elisabeth Shue, Gina Gershon

Each week seems to see the release of yet another ironic modern film noir, the latest edition to the genre being Palmetto, directed by Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum), but badly missing the wit and precision of John Dahl. Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson) is the ex-writer and ex-con who gets mixed up with a pair of duplicitous women - a glamorous millionaire's wife (Elisabeth Shue) and her stepdaughter, Odette (Chloe Sevigny).