Life imitates art

Having run through almost every film genre there is, the prolific Michael Winterbottom has now embarked on the seemingly impossible assignment of adapting Laurence Sterne's 18th-century classic, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It may be a cornerstone of English literature but you only have to read a few pages to realise that the convoluted novel is surely unfilmable.

The dodge, however, that Winterbottom uses is a simple and surprisingly effective one. He has made a film about someone trying to make a film of Tristram Shandy. In so doing, he has kept the main strand of the book reasonably intact, which is about getting past the complications of your own messy breach birth and youth.

To this, Winterbottom adds a very entertaining commentary on the equally messy and often even more ludicrous business of film-making itself. If Tristram Shandy was the first postmodern British novel, Winterbottom's film is just about the best post-modern British film.

Anyone who saw his 24 Hour Party People will not be surprised to learn that the director is much aided in his venture by Steve Coogan, who takes three parts, not one of which is Alan Partridge. He plays Tristram, Tristram's father, Walter, and "Steve Coogan", actor.

He succeeds in all three, but particularly so when making mockery of his own showbiz reputation - whether trying to defuse a tabloid journalist's exposure of his assignation with a lap-dancer or finding it impossible to have sex with his visiting wife as a consequence. It's a dryly funny performance which never goes over the top and provides a real fulcrum for the film.

Others impressively aid him and Winterbottom is well supported by a screenplay from Martin Hardy that sounds as if it's cleverly improvised in parts, while also displaying a shrewd knowledge of the absurdities of the film-making process. Rob Brydon takes the part of Tristram's uncle, and plays himself as an actor jealous of Coogan - their sparring bookends the film deliciously.

Naomie Harris is very good as the runner who is more knowledgeable about film than anyone else and would quite like to get laid by the star of this one. Gillian Anderson nobly makes fun of herself as the Hollywood star brought in at the last moment. Kelly Macdonald plays Coogan's longsuffering wife and Ian Hart is ever reliable as Joe, the benighted writer of the film within the film.

Almost everyone in the cast seems to sense that there's some fun to be had with their lines and one's only doubt is that the movie will become more of a cult for those aware of the fraught film-making process than for those who want to know about Sterne.

With its genuine wit, and even some wisdom, it is one of Winterbottom's most successful films and a genuine pleasure throughout. Sterne, you feel, would have been well pleased that his own feelings about the infuriating nature of translating life into art have been so well mirrored in a different medium.

A Cock And Bull Story
Cert: 15