Stay

Hard not to think of the title of this one as a desperate plea to fidgety cinema audiences: Hang in there...it will all make sense in the end. Except that it won't.

There's something up with reality, and the director seems to be tantalising us with some of the more memorable solutions to the problem: Sixth Sense, Fight Club, Sliding Doors, Bobby Ewing's famous shower scene comeback in Dallas. What we end up with is all and yet none of these; a state of affairs that Bob Hoskyns' character's remark "the Buddhists were right" may throw some light on, but does little to diminish the annoying sense that one is being goaded into an even more painful and pointless second sitting.

This has to be one of the most stylistically irritating movies ever made. Every shot wants to be a masterpiece. The care that has gone into the visuals is in marked contrast to that with which the characters are presented to us. I found no reason to give a damn about any of them. How I wished that suspended piano would fall and squash Ewan Mcgregor's character, psychologist Sam Foster. And when his young patient Henry announced that he would be committing suicide the following weekend, I thought "why wait?"