This Year's Love

Words that fill me with dread: 'A Joel Schumacher Film' obviously, 'A Romatic Comedy from London', equally horrid. Yet finally someone has got it right - not Joel Schumacher of course.

Peter Kane's salty comedy is something quite new, an unsentimental, contemporary La Ronde set in Camden Lock. His bone dry script is adorned by a magic cast, not least the indomitable Kathy Burke, who is surely now England's greatest treasure. There is a real courage here, no corners are cut and no easy, neat solutions are adopted. If we are a little disgusted by the smugness of the artsy characters it is more than compensated for by their terrible sadness. Very human, very witty and beamed in from a different galaxy from the one that Hugh Grant inhabits.