Running Scared

Hemmings' debut as a director, an odd, Antonioni-ish mood piece, adapted from a novel by Gregory Mcdonald, about a student (Powell) who leaves Cambridge under a cloud because he sat and looked on while his best friend bled to death after slashing his wrists in their rooms. He had no right to interfere, he insists; and the rest of the film is a sort of crise de conscience in which, under an assumed name, he seeks self-justification and/or forgiveness in an oblique confrontation with the dead friend's sister (Hunnicutt). Beautifully acted throughout, attractively shot (much of the action takes place around canals and barges), it emerges as a curious mixture of razor-sharp incisiveness (the tentative inquiry into the suicide; a tongue-tied dinner party) and soulfully introspective tedium.