The White Ribbon (15)

STREWTH. The new, Palme d'Or-winning film from Austrian director Michael Haneke has landed the kind of early reviews last seen at the world premiere of Hamlet.

It's "eerily perfect". A "forensic study of social breakdown". And it's shot in "pellucid monochrome", apparently. Which is great, because you know the one thing that always pulls in the punters is the thought of some pellucid monochrome.

Broadsheet baloney aside, this is one hell of a film, made by one of the most brutally clever directors out there. But it's also a 2½-hour, black-and- white, soundtrack-free drama about life in a remote German village in the 1910s - and the most exciting bit is in the first two minutes when a horse falls over.

As such, I'm not going to recommend it as a laugh-a-minute night out.

Told in voiceover by the village schoolteacher (Christian Friedel), The White Ribbon is a mystery without a clear answer, and as such it'll drive anyone who likes neat endings up the wall. Strange things start happening to the villagers, which at first seem like accidents but are later revealed as someone's strange campaign of punishment.

This is the kind of film people will be picking apart for years, and justifiably so - it's more complex and subtle than a greyscale Rubik's Cube.

But if you're not in the mood for that, even by Haneke's standards it's a right old trudge.

One to be admired, more than loved.

OUT FRIDAY

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