The Dancer Upstairs

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * * *)

In his debut as director, the endlessly fascinating actor John Malkovich has made an absorbing though flawed film which captures much of the brooding, elegiac grace of Nicholas Shakespeare's excellent 1997 novel.

The film, which Shakespeare himself scripted, is set, like the book, "somewhere in Latin America in the recent past" - though it is widely documented that the writer conceived the novel while working as a journalist in Peru, trying to track down the murderous guerrilla leader of the ultra-radical Shining Path, Abimael Guzman.

The coy refusal to be specific is, in any case, rather undermined by the mention of place names such as Miraflores, an upscale suburb of Lima.

Guzman's correlative here is Ezequiel, who leads a violent revolution waged largely by female or child assassins.

Agustin Rejas (Bardem) is a lawyer-turned-cop on the villain's trail, under pressure from his superiors and saddened by his marriage to a vain and complacent wife.

His investigations bring him into the world of Yolanda (Morante), his daughter's dance teacher, who seems to be nursing a sadness of her own.

The novel, narrated in hindsight in the way that Marlowe told us the story of Lord Jim (though its style is much more Greene than Conrad), imparts a key plot-surprise early. The script, by contrast, observes the movies' more simple dramatic needs by saving the revelation for the climax, though it's not too hard to see it coming.

It gives it a more conventional narrative arc, but Malkovich's characteristic cool self-possession is always on show in his work behind the camera. He has named Costa-Gavras' State of Siege as an inspiration, and this film has much of that one's icy chill and quiet outrage.

He also has a patience with his actors, particularly Bardem, which lends the film a slow, almost reptilian rhythm befitting its slow gestation (he worked hard to get the money, spurning Hollywood backing which would have doubtless forced him to cast Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz).

But somehow he never manages to nail it.

Rejas is supposed to be wrestling with the problem of working in the service of a regime every bit as corrupt as his quarry, but much of the time he seems like a man irritated at not being paid.

The dense moral complexity of the novel seems largely to have evaporated, leaving a very stylish but ultimately empty police procedural in its place.

Bardem, Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of the gay Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls, underplays Rejas with real delicacy, but supporting performances are often grating.

Morante (the mother in Nanni Moretti's wonderful The Son's Room) has none of the depth and texture the part demands, and Lencastre as Rejas' wife is a jarring cliche.

The script devotes too much time to having characters tell each other to be careful and, disconcertingly, everyone speaks in English (though not always) but reads and writes in Spanish.

For all that, it's an engrossing thriller which throws light on a part of the world not often seen on screen here.

Cast: Javier Bardem, Laura Morante, Abel Folk, Alexandra Lencastre

Director: John Malkovich

Running time: 135 mins

Rating: R16 (violence, offensive language)

Screening: Academy from Thursday