Later questioned about his relationship with Suzanne he slurs in a manner that seems like insouciance – before a

Later, questioned about his relationship with Suzanne, he slurs in a manner that seems like insouciance – before a quiver betrays his emotion, switching him from slobbery to sobbing.As Suzanne, Nicole Kidman gives the sort of bold performance that wins awards, even if she never truly surprises or shocks us. Suzanne’s personality is a bright facade that fronts a dark corridor of craving Kidman lets sourness seep through the perkiness. When Dillon suggests, patronisingly, that Suzanne’s career is a dead end, Kidman’s face drains of all liveliness, turning to stone. Suzanne is a study in stupidity, its deadening, literally murderous danger. She knows all the rules of etiquette, but her elaborate manners seem sinister because she is devoid of the sensitivity towards people that would make them work She is charming but friendless, and unsexy.

Her swaying walk is more purposeful than erotic, the stride of someone heading for the boss’s office to ask for a rise.There are many incidental pleasures. The screenwriter, Buck Henry, bristles with repressed savagery as Phoenix’s teacher. The guys in the local station, who find Suzanne’s pretensions somewhere between a hoot and a pain, have a hilarious smirking laddishness (“We called her gangbusters”). And Dillon’s Mafia-linked dad (Dan Hedaya) twitches through the movie with unease about his flighty daughter-in-law, until, too late, he lets his misgivings out with a baseball bat in his dead son’s bar. If the movie doesn’t deliver on its sociological agenda, it’s slick and enjoyable enough to prevent us from greatly caring. One to look out – if not to die – for.Lewis Gilbert is the directors’ director, the sort of reliable pro who could knock the ricketiest of scripts into shape. Now 75, he appeared in his first film, as an actor, in 1933 (Dick Turpin).

In recent years his craft contributed much to the success of Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine; and a gung-ho friend of mine rates Gilbert’s Who Dares Wins as the greatest film ever made. Gilbert’s Haunted (PG), based on a James Herbert novel, is anything but a masterpiece, but the old pro has not lost his touch. The story is familiar: a rationalist scientist (Aidan Quinn) investigates a grand country house rumoured to be haunted. The cast is starry but erratic: Kate Beckinsale, as the daughter of the house, typecast as an English rose; Anthony Andrews, who co-produced, as her sinister brother; Anna Massey, with a taut, fish-like face and terrified eyes as their aged nanny; and John Gielgud, dropping in for a cameo as the local GP. The confused script is studded with cliches (“Isn’t it funny how music makes memories vivid?”).