L.I.E.

Michael Cuesta's 'L.I.E.' is a rites-of-passage film, so it is only appropriate that it contains that essential moment of a young man's coming of age, the first shave. A man stands behind a young boy in front of a bathroom mirror, spreads shaving cream over the boy's smooth face, and carefully draws a cutthroat razor over his neck and upper lip, all the time whispering comments of reassurance into his ear.

The scene shows all the love of a father passing down the lessons of manhood to his son. But the boy, Howie Blitzer, is not, at least in any ordinary sense, the man's son, for the man is Big John Harrigan - Vietnam veteran, pillar of the community, and predatory paedophile.

Named after the Long Island Expressway which runs alongside Howie's neighbourhood, and on which his mother was killed in an accident, 'L.I.E.' tells the story of a boy looking for lost love and a man looking for lost youth. Both characters are drawn with great intelligence, and the moments which they share on screen are electric in their complexity: intimate but exploitative, tender but full of menace.

Shot with stark natural lighting and sharp colours, 'L.I.E.' has a striking, almost hyperreal visual style, bringing an intensity to the events it depicts. It deals, like 'Kids', 'The River's Edge' and 'Gummo', with the theme of adolescence in the absence of proper parental supervision; and it dares, like 'Happiness', to portray a paedophile as a fully rounded character who is more than just a tabloid monster; and the title and setting of 'L.I.E.' evoke another film which treats the relationship of an older and younger man, 'Love and Death in Long Island'. Yet 'L.I.E. innovates in that it shows the relationship, and the way in which it is able to develop, largely from the point of view of the boy.

The tragedy of Big John's self-knowledge and the ultimate nobility of his dealings with Howie is conveyed with subtlety by the outstanding Brian Cox; and Paul Franklin Dano captures perfectly Howie's guilt-filled sexual awakening and his desperation to have a responsible father.

Brilliant.

Anton Bitel