New Films

EVER AFTER (PG)

Director: Andy Tennant

Starring: Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston, Dougray Scott

A daddy's girl (Drew Barrymore) is tormented by her beastly stepmother (Anjelica Huston) after her father's death, but finds hope in the arms of a handsome prince. This is Ever After - or, more accurately, Cinderella 90210.

Technically, the movie is a period piece, but the colloquial language and revisionist behaviour cause you to nervously anticipate the introduction of some 16th-century version of rollerblading or shopping malls. The usual pleasures are all present and correct: ruddy-faced peasants, prickly pantomime turns from Huston and Richard O'Brien, coy romance between Barrymore and the Scottish actor Dougray Scott, whose suitably dippy expressions banish all memories of him as a brutal cop in Twin Town.

General release

A SOLDIER'S DAUGHTER NEVER CRIES (15)

Director: James Ivory

Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Barbara Hershey, Jane Birkin

The family at the centre of this film isn't without its troubles or idiosyncrasies. But the issues which propel the script are dislocation and adjustment: everyone in the film is looking to belong; they are each a touch out of synch. The most obviously displaced character is Billy, a French boy adopted by the writer Bill Willis (played by Kris Kristofferson) and his wife Marcella (Barbara Hershey) while they are living in Paris in the 1960s. Billy is taken under the wing of his new sister, Channe, but is constantly prone to feelings of alienation as he enters his teenage years.

What gives the film its warmth is the leisurely narrative rhythm, which is complemented by the cinematographer Jean-Marc Fabre's watchful compositions which recall De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

Limited release

THE TRUMAN SHOW (PG)

Director: Peter Weir

Starring: Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, Laura Linney

The origins of the premise behind The Truman Show are currently being disputed among Hollywood's legal sharks. However, the film's basic idea - about a man (played by Jim Carrey) who discovers that his whole existence has been televised since birth and broadcast to the world - owes a hefty debt to Muriel Spark's The Comforters, in which a woman finds that she is trapped inside a novel about herself.

Like Spark's book, Peter Weir's film uses the conceit to explore existential dread and ideas of authenticity. But its specific setting, in the technologically controlled world of television, neatly taps into a pair of prevalent late- 20th-century concerns: a fear that we are being watched even in our most intimate moments, thus eradicating all concept of privacy; and an insatiable hunger for fame.

The film is certainly very funny, which is due more to the cleverness of Andrew Niccol's script rather than its star's presence - Carrey is actually quite heart-rending as an actor, when he smothers his hysteria. But be warned that this is a cold, clinical experience - a movie which explores what an audience wants while, somewhat bravely, refusing to cater for a predetermined appetite.

General release