AMATEUR (Directed by Hal Hartley. Starring Isabelle Huppert, Martin Donovan, Elina Lowensohn, Damian Young)

The amateur of the title could, at a stretch, refer to any of several characters out of their depths in a convoluted plot, but, according to Hal Hartely at least, it actually refers to himself, reflecting “the way I feel most of the time, sort of confused about what competence refers to.” Which might seem an odd confession coming from the writer-director who, after Tarrantino at any rate, is probably the most critically admired American film-maker of recent years.

His amateurishness, if it could really be called that, is perhaps his strongest suit: he comes into his stories from an oblique angle, throws emphasis on the least obvious points of a scene, populates his world with characters prone to speaking their thoughts in deadpan monologues as if they were all on some kind of truth serum and puts it all together with a deliberate lack of polish. His films are low-key, off-beat, out of kilter with what one normally expects from American cinema, but resonant with intelligent humour, philosophical observation and idiosyncratic form. His growing body of work (The Unbeleivable Truth, Trust, Simple Men and some witty shorts) is strikingly individual, and immediately recognisable. Hartley is not so much an amateur as an auteur, and an exteremely original one at that.

His first social comedies drew misplaced comparison with Woody Allen. Simple Men took him into different, more melodramatic terrain, although you could be forgiven for not noticing, the vestiges of his thriller plot being almost entirely obscured by his emphasis on character. On one level Amateur represents his response to the new brutalism of American independent cinema, and might almost be his first real movie movie if it weren’t so damn peculiar. He has risen to the challenge of Tarantino by creating a formally daring B-movie thriller, populated by brutal hit men, porn stars, pimps and nymphomaniacs and complete with shoot-outs, police interrogations, kidnappings and even a quite gruesome torture scene, yet his quaint, playful approach to the genre cliches reduces his plot to inconsequentiality. It is simply an excuse to keep things lurching forward while the director investigates the nature of character, personality, determinism, existentialism and other such matters that rarely get a look in in American cinema.

Messing about with pulp fiction like a happy deconstructionist, Hartley comes closer to the old new wave of French cinema (early Godard and Truffaut) than the new new wave of America. He reinforces his European, art-house bent with the casting, French star Isabelle Huppert bringing an ethereal wistfulness to the paradoxical role of a virginal, sex obsessed ex-nun and Romanian model Elina Lowensohn looking radiantly confused as a kind of accidental femme fatale, a hard core porn star on the run from her vicious ex-boyfriend and a gang of international criminals. In between these is American Hartley regular Martin Donovan as a hero to Isabelle, a villain to Elina and an enigma to himself, since he has developed the convenient movie problem of amnesia.

Amateur may represent an impasse for Hartley. His earlier films, set in recognisable social environments, seemed more profoundly observed than this jokey pastiche. While it is encouraging to see this gifted film-maker stretching out into different terrain, the at times over-quirky results suggests that it may be less naturally suited to his talents. Which is barely a criticism, since Amateur’s shining warmth, humour and intelligence still lifts it above most of its more professional competition. The body count may be considerably lower than you might expect in a guns and gals thriller, but the IQ is certainly higher.