There's been a mini-trend for some time, since the critical and commercial success of Pulp Fiction and more recently Inception, to play around with linear narrative in the hope that it will freshen up old plots. The suspicion remains, however, that all that's required is a year's supply of smoke and mirrors. Trance zigzags restlessly this way and that, scene follows scene and motivations merge one into the other. We're never sure who the bad guy is, which needn't be fatal in a film. But this one cheats us by introducing a narrative thread late and out of the blue.

Like Side Effects, it is visually dazzling, a brilliant piece of editing for its own sake. But I cannot recall what followed what or how it ends. Like a firework, it slipped from my mind within minutes of viewing. The only residue was a lingering sense of having spent a good two hours with thoroughly unlikeable people who'd insisted on telling me the contents of their bad trips.