Liebestraum

Figgis's temple-throbbing suspenser is a convoluted tale of lust and jealousy, moodier and more elegiac than his earlier Internal Affairs. Nick Kaminsky (Anderson), an architectural journalist, is summoned to the death-bed of the mother he never knew (Novak). Mooching around the unfamiliar town, he meets old friend Paul (Pullman), a property developer about to demolish a unique cast-iron department store, boarded up since a gruesome '50s murder. He becomes obsessed with the fate of the building, which Paul is sworn to destroy, and with Paul's wife Jane (Gidley), a photographer who records the ruin's final hours. And amid all the dust and debris, is a shadowy, malevolent figure who seems bent on harm towards all three. Kaminsky's adventures in the eerie small town have a Lynchian flavour: there's a paunchy, psychotic police chief, a curious doubling of whorehouse and nun scenes, and the final plot gyrations defy analysis. But the performances are great, especially Gidley's innocent and moving femme fatale.