Tetro

It would be kindest to ignore Tetro. Tetro is a film from Francis Ford Coppola, the man who gave us some of the most enduring films known to cinema, The Conversation, The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, and his place in film history is assured. Coppola is now in his seventies, and holding Tetro up to the standards of the films of his prime is an exercise in pure disappointment. Billed as a highly personal film, it is also highly unengaging, highly self-regarding and highly dull.

Even if it were not a Coppola film, Tetro's lazy soap opera plot combined with expensive perfume-ad visuals would not engage. As is, it's embarrassing to see the themes of family, patriarchy and guilt explored so powerfully in The Godfather getting such a weak airing here, as the actors - who are actually not bad - scramble towards the many mirages that promise profundity in a script which has none.

Newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, who looks so like a young Leonardo DiCaprio that I actually had to check they're not related, is rather sweet as Bennie, the younger brother to Vincent Gallo's Tetro. Tetro - ludicrously touchy and prone to fits of anger - is fairly infuriating, though no more so than most Gallo characters. He has father issues. Do we care? Not really. Why his lovely girlfriend, played by the excellent Maribel Verdu from Pan's Labyrinth, does is a mystery.

Tetro is intended as an intimate portrait of a small group of people, and while Coppola is probably more famous for painting his pictures on an epic scale, he has also directed one of the least ostentatious and most successful thrillers of all time, The Conversation, so we know he's capable of keeping things understated.

Here, occasional glimpses of what might have been descend into either swivel-eyed melodrama with lots of "How could you do this to me?" bellowing, or freewheeling accordion-soundtracked picaresque involving local types. The film industry really needs to declare a global moratorium on scenes where a fiery Latino woman throws chopped-up suits out of the window while her man implores her forgiveness from the street below and other men grin knowingly.

Worse even than the family issues and bad humour is the climactic theatre festival to which Tetro and Bennie eventually bring their play. There's all sorts of logistical stuff that doesn't make sense here, but let's gloss over that and onto the character of Alone, a critic, played by Carmen Maura. Ah, the lonely life of the critic. Truly, we are all Alone. At least the artists care what we think, right? Wrong! Towards the end of the film Tetro faces down his critic, telling her that he no longer cares what she thinks. Could there be a coded message here? Let's make a giant leap together and infer that Coppola isn't bothered by his reviews. In view of Tetro's likely reception, that's probably a good thing.