Ae Fond Kiss (15)<br></br>Code 46 (15)<br></br>Trauma (15)<br></br>Kontroll (15)<br></br>In My Skin (18)

Skin: it can be a problem, or it can be an hors d'oeuvre

Love affairs between a white and an Anglo-Asian are hardly uncharted territory for British film-makers. Last year there was Bollywood Queen and the year before that there was Bend it Like Beckham, so when you watch Ken Loach's new film, Ae Fond Kiss (15), you can have a fair stab at what's going to happen as soon as a blonde Irish music teacher (Eva Birthistle) kisses a DJ (Atta Yaqub) with Pakistani parents: his family will disapprove, everyone will argue, and love will conquer all.

Still, Loach does take a few diversions from the beaten track. As the film is set in Glasgow, where Birthistle teaches at a Catholic school, she's under almost as much religious pressure as her boyfriend. Yaqub's dilemma, meanwhile, has as much to do with his own sense of responsibility towards his heritage as it has to do with external influences. But the real surprise is how jolly it all is - initially, anyway. In the film's first half, the salty West Coast humour and the sweet, sexy romance are a pleasure. Birthistle, especially, is pert and ballsy enough to make any man think twice about his loyalties. However, just in case we were having too much fun, the second half of Ae Fond Kiss is increasingly preachy and downbeat, until, by the end, it's not about people anymore, it's a plod through the issues.

Code 46 (15) is a moody, low-key science-fiction film directed by Michael Winterbottom and written by Frank Cottrell Boyce. Tim Robbins stars as a mind-reading detective on the trail of a "papelle" forger - papelles being the passport-visa combos you'll need in a few decades' time - and Samantha Morton co-stars as his chief suspect. When the hunter meets the hunted it's love at first sight, but they haven't reckoned with a law named Code 46 that forbids them to get together.

It seems that Winterbottom and Boyce had a few intriguing ideas about how our future might look and sound, and then they added the story as an afterthought. Their best tricks are to sprinkle the English dialogue with Spanish and French phrases, and to film the actors on location among the most futuristic skyscrapers in Shanghai and Dubai, so their surroundings look ultra-modern and alien, but far more believable than if someone had gone to the expense of building sets or CGI backdrops. Within this terrific setting, though, is a plot that's borrowed from Minority Report, Blade Runner and the other films adapted from Philip K Dick books, and it's bewilderingly underplayed. The central twist could be treated as either a source of riotous comedy or mind-bending tragedy, but in Code 46 it's passed over with barely a shrug, while Robbins and Morton's characters are so hazy they're almost gaseous.

The third British film of the week is Trauma (15), a psychological chiller starring Colin Firth. One dark and stormy night he has a car crash that kills his wife and puts him in a coma, and when he awakes he keeps having spectral visions. Is he being haunted? Is he going mad? And are we bothered either way? The lesson Trauma teaches us is that if a film's hero is losing his grip on reality, we can't sympathise unless he's a normal person with a normal life to begin with. But from the moment we meet Firth's character, he's a dazed and confused scruff with no job, no family, and only an ant farm for company. When the explanation for his visions finally comes, we're beyond caring - which is lucky, because it's absolute tosh.

You might not imagine that the coolest film of the week, if not the year, would be about ticket inspectors on the Budapest underground system, but Kontroll (15) has got the words "cult classic" spray-painted all over it. Set entirely below pavement level, it recounts the thrilling misadventures of a motley gang of ticket-tearers as they get into fights with their rivals, chase fare dodgers up and down escalators, and keep an eye out for a hooded serial killer who is shoving commuters onto the tracks.

Sandor Csanyi, the leather-coated hero, has such a charismatic half-smile that any Hollywood producer with any sense should be paying for his English lessons. And Nimrod Antal, the writer-director, has a blockbusting career ahead of him, too. His film has deadpan humour aplenty, the protagonists are both hopeless clowns and reckless rebels, and the action hurtles along with the unstoppable anarchic energy of its pumping soundtrack. In other words, Kontroll could be retitled Tube-trainspotting.

In My Skin (18) is a French film written and directed by its star, Marina De Van. After accidentally gashing her leg at a party, and realising, to her surprise, that it didn't hurt, she becomes more and more fascinated by the experience of cutting herself, until she is calmly and methodically slicing off her skin and drinking her blood. It might put you off your popcorn, but In My Skin is no exploitative horror movie. Instead of setting out to shock or frighten us, De Van views the self-mutilation with the same detached curiosity as her character, and gives us a level-headed, blackly amusing film that is sometimes gross, but always engrossing. It also contains one of the most delightfully choreographed dining scenes since Sid James was under siege in Carry On... up the Khyber. During a dinner meeting in a fine restaurant, De Van's business associates discuss their favourite European cities while, under the table, she makes use of the cutlery in ways not recommended by the manufacturers.

n.barber@independent.co.uk