It's about time

Reviewed - Primer: HAVING seen Primer twice, I can say with some confidence that its frustratingly knotty plot - peppered with temporal wormholes and impossible switchbacks - does in fact make sense, though I defy anybody to follow it first time round without taking notes.

Shane Carruth's debut feature makes a valiant attempt to tell an outrageous science-fiction tale in a sober and realistic fashion. The director and David Sullivan play two intense engineers working on a complex device whose application is initially not entirely certain.

Dealing in the sort of outwardly mundane details that actually characterise eureka moments in science, Primer uses a surprising build up of mould on a sample object as its dramatic fulcrum. It is a measure of the subtlety of the film's exposition that the implications - the boys' magic box is, it appears, a time machine - seem close to plausible.

The latter half of Primer, previously all impenetrable mutterings about Nobel gases and such, then becomes taking up with the logistical complications that result from short-haul time travel. Having decided to make some money playing the stock market, the guys devise intricate plans to avoid meeting themselves in the future. Life becomes so complicated that they themselves begin to lose track of the time-line. "Are you hungry?" one says with a totally straight face. "I haven't eaten since later this afternoon."

Shot on a low budget in washed out colours, Primer is triumphantly successful in its endeavour to treat an inherently silly idea with absolute seriousness. Carruth uses the muttered, barely lucid dialogue perfected by the writers of 1970s conspiracy thrillers to cast a paranoid gloom over the enterprise. Combined with the withdrawn, introverted performances, this helps establish an atmosphere that will, one suspects, give future generations an understanding of the current era's unique anxieties.

By then we may have figured out exactly what is going on in the last reel.