REVIEWED - LAST DAYS: FOLLOWING Gerry and Elephant, Last Days completes Gus Van Sant's trilogy of minimalist, elliptical movies ending in death. Breaking all the rules of the biopic genre, Last Days begins at the end and never lapses into flashback as it draws an impressionistic picture of a strung-out, barely coherent rock star - inspired by Kurt Cobain - before he takes his own life.

The fictional rock star is known simply as Blake, and played with a smouldering intensity by the adventurous young Michael Pitt, long-haired, scraggy-bearded and eccentrically dressed to resemble Cobain. Pitt strikes a magnetic presence that adds immeasurably to a largely improvised, non-linear movie.

Van Sant risks alienating viewers with an extended opening sequence where Blake wanders through a forest, takes a swim, dries his clothes and wanders home again, muttering incomprehensibly along the way, although his mumblings were helpfully subtitled in French at the Cannes film festival.

Regardless of that, the point clearly is that Blake is a lost soul, a young man who moves with his head stooped, as if the weight of the world lay on his shoulders. It becomes clear that everyone, including the friends sharing his home, want a part of him, and he finally just can't take anymore, poetically ascending a stairway to heaven.