Scams in a secret world

There is a school of thought which believes that if you plonk an American star in a British film, the resulting cross-cultural collision will produce a terrific film.

Samuel L Jackson wearing a kilt in Liverpool for The 51st State was bad enough, but this arch attempt at welding a romance to a scam thriller, and which stars Christina Ricci as Miranda the femme fatale, is even less engaging.

"I always buy stuff with preservatives in it. Makes you live longer," quips John Simm's Frank Barraclough, a lovestruck librarian in an unnamed northern town.

Wry humour aside, Frank has little going for him - apart from a severe case of gauche naivety which finally convinces the enigmatic object of his desire, Miranda, to shack up with him.

But Miranda has a secret life - and possibly more than one, judging by some of the phone calls she makes in the middle of the night - of which Frank is utterly oblivious. When she leaves him without warning he follows her and discovers a world of property scams and sexually predatory businessmen from which, perforce, he must rescue her.

Filmed with a clinical detachment, as though awestruck by the cleverness of its script (by playwright Rob Young), Marc Munden's movie is anaesthetised and forgettable. This despite an attractive performance by Simm and a genuinely bizarre one by Kyle MacLachlan as vengeful financier in thrall to Miranda's sexuality - watching him cut a button from Ricci's pyjama top and swallow it like a holy wafer, made me fear for his soul, if not his sanity.

Miranda
Cert: cert15