An artist on the skids

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live," said Charles Bukowski, who regularly went crazy, largely through drink.

It is an artist's privilege, of course, to misbehave on the way first to notoriety and then to fame.

Though not his best book, Bukowski's early novel, which forms the basis of Norwegian director Bent Hamer's first English-language film, describes accurately enough his beginnings as a writer, drinker, womaniser and unemployable bum.

Hamer, who made the delightful Kitchen Stories, doesn't go mad making his film and follows Henry Chinaski (Bukowski in thin disguise) as he pursues his early life with a restraint that allows Matt Dillon, in the title role, to give one of his best performances.

Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei are good, too, as his suffering girlfriends and the sleazy atmosphere of American big-city poverty is painted with deadpan accuracy.

Perhaps this is thin gruel as drama compared to previous Bukowski films such as Tales of Ordinary Madness and Barfly. But, at its best, it is perceptive, funny and sad, with Dillon easily holding our attention throughout.

Factotum (A Man Who Preforms Many Jobs)
Cert: 15