Paranoid Park

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Gus Van Sant has become a dab hand at wrongfooting his followers. After Good Will Hunting, he made Psycho, a topsy-turvy piece of avant-garde experimentation parading as a cash-in. Then he repeated the process, following Finding Forrester with a trilogy of tranquil dramas - Gerry, Elephant, Last Days - on turbulent themes - bewilderment, murder, suicide - to which his stifling new film, Paranoid Park, is the unofficial coda. It concerns a young skater Alex (Gabe Nevins) who accidentally kills a railway security guard, and writes up his experiences in a Moleskine notepad, before burning them on a bonfire.

The film is shot by Van Sant's sometime collaborator, Christopher Doyle, who is here on much calmer form than his previous expeditions, as befits a film in which a bogstandard exchange constitutes a narrative peak. The film's teenage protagonist stares blankly at everything around him, as if constantly dazed by new stimuli, and Van Sant is clearly preoccupied by every slight change that is registered on his face. Alex occupies the everyday, eating in Subway, but Van Sant and Doyle's trickery succeeds in making the atmosphere of the film somewhat strange - something worth putting on film. Paranoid Park does credit to Van Sant; his subversiveness, adventurousness, and practised oddity truly shine through.