The Independent Recommends: Film

THE UNBLINKING, blank-eyed coolness of Bruno Dumont's La Vie de Jesus is mirrored in the inscrutable face of the film's main character. Freddy (David Douche) lives in a dull French town. His passions are his motorbike and his girlfriend, Marie (Marjorie Cottreel). He is a small fish in a small pond. Dumont's first feature comes on like Los Olivados on downers; his characters are earthy and even ugly, but there is a plain sanctity in his depiction of them which approaches the essence of compassionate film-making.

On release

As someone who has resisted The X-Files on television, I found the movie version moderately enthralling. What I did warm to was the nicely understated, often dryly funny relationship between David Duchovny (above) and Gillian Anderson. There should have been more. As anyone who has caught his cameos on The Larry Sanders Show will testify, Duchovny can be a real goofball.

On release