Storyville

Mark Frost's ambitious directorial debut is an oedipal thriller - Greek tragedy by way of Chinatown - in which the sins of the father have political, social and environmental ramifications. Even so, this flat transposition of an Australian novel (Juryman by Frank Galbally and Robert Macklin) will disappoint admirers of Frost's scripts for Twin Peaks and Hill Street Blues. Cray Fowler (Spader), scion of a Louisiana dynasty, is expected to assume the family seat in Congress. Unaware that one should never dally with cocktail waitresses during an election campaign, he lays himself open to blackmail and a murder charge, at which point the skeletons start to emerge from the family closet. Whalley-Kilmer wraps a Cajun accent around lines of numbing banality.