`Following' takes a look at ethics of voyeurism

Movie review

XXX "Following," with Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw, Lucy Russell, John Nolan. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan. 70 minutes. Grand Illusion. No rating; contains profanity, sexuality and violence.

What if you went to the movies, prepared to anonymously watch other people's lives unfold for your enjoyment, only to have the image on-screen look back at you?

The ethics of voyeurism is something Woody Allen whimsically tackled in his comedy, "The Purple Rose of Cairo," and Alfred Hitchcock sinisterly questioned in his classic thriller, "Rear Window." When we view films, are we all just a bunch of deranged peeping Toms, sitting safely, remotely in our darkened rooms, filling up our empty lives by examining others' behavior?

In his wicked, ice-cold filmmaking debut, "Following," British writer/director Christopher Nolan takes this analogy to a nastier level. His protagonist, Bill (Jeremy Theobald), is a thinly veiled metaphor for cinematic audiences. Unemployed, lonely and isolated, Bill doesn't spend his time in movie theaters, but instead takes the process out into the streets.

He spends his days following, or "shadowing," random strangers in London. After scrutinizing faceless crowds of people, Bill singles out an individual and trails that person from a distance. As he says, watching someone's behavior raises questions, and like movie audiences following a narrative, he wants answers.

Things get complicated, however, when one of Bill's subjects/characters, the sharply dressed, smooth-talking Cobb (Alex Haw), breaks Bill's wall of anonymity by catching him in the act. Cobb practices a brand of voyeurism that's a bit more dangerous than Bill's: He breaks into people's homes and sifts through their possessions, occasionally taking items as trophies. "You can tell a lot about people by their stuff," Cobb explains.

Both men continue to burgle, and violate, their nameless subjects' lives, until Bill becomes sexually obsessed with one of their victims, a nameless platinum blonde (Lucy Russell), and decides to step out of the darkness and seduce her. Naturally, everything goes horribly wrong from here, though Nolan tosses in a few cynical David Mamet-like plot twists to keep things interesting.

Shooting on basically no budget, Nolan has crafted a seamless, tense and creepy debut. Though only 70 minutes, "Following" contains more ideas and style than most full-length features. With its moody black-and-white cinematography and flawed, back-stabbing characters, it harkens back to the short, riveting films noir of the 1940s and '50s - lean B-movies in which no shot felt out of place and no narrative padding was needed.

Nolan's only flaw here is too much creativity. For some reason, he felt this straightforward story needed a disjointed, nonlinear structure. So it's told through a series of flash-forwards, and then doubles back to show the past. Bill tells the story to a man, and Nolan obviously wants to represent his chaotic mental state by jumbling the plot. It's unnecessary, but nonetheless doesn't ruin a compelling introduction to a promising new British filmmaker who's undeniably worth following.