Grit and grim

Stir Of Echoes (18) General release

It's the misfortune of David Koepp's supernatural thriller that it will be widely perceived as arriving on the coat-tails of the hugely popular The Sixth Sense, to which, on the surface at least, it bears a remarkable similarity: a troubled father with communication problems; a young son who appears to have paranormal powers; ghosts in the house; family difficulties . . . But this is no cheap cash-in - Koepp's film is based on a novel written in 1958, and actually went into production at the same time as the other movie.

If, like me, you're in the small minority of viewers which found The Sixth Sense over-rated and ponderous, with (whisper it) a much-hyped "twist" that was plain as the nose on your face from early on, then you might just find Stir of Echoes a more impressive elaboration on the same themes.

Certainly Kevin Bacon is a more expressive, interesting actor than Bruce Willis, and here he turns in one of the best performances of his career, as a blue-collar thirtysomething living in a working-class Chicago suburb with his wife and son (Zachary David Cope). A frustrated rock musician, he feels vaguely dissatisfied with his life, until, at a drunken party one night, his sister-in-law (Ileanna Douglas) hypnotises him as a dare. When he awakens, Bacon finds himself apparently hallucinating and, in the days that follow, he becomes aware that somebody or something is trying to contact him. Simultaneously, he and his wife (Kathryn Erb) finally notice that what they thought was their son's lively imagination is actually a little bit more than that, and that something horrible has happened recently in their apparently peaceful suburb.

Part horror film, part murder mystery, Stir of Echoes (terrible title, by the way) is a surprisingly polished and sophisticated piece of film-making from writer-turned-director Koepp, who evokes the gritty Chicago milieu with far more conviction than you would normally expect from this kind of thing. In this he's aided by an excellent cast, impressively headed by Bacon, whose chief claim to fame recently has been for the trivia game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but who proves here what a fine character actor he is.

The Girl on the Bridge (Club IFC, Dublin) As the current retrospective season of his work at the IFC shows, the French director Patrice Leconte has never allowed himself to be pigeonholed into one particular genre. From broad comedies (Les Bronzes) to cool, quirky mysteries (Monsieur Hire) and satirical costume dramas (Ridicule), Leconte has amassed an impressive and eclectic body of work over the last 20 years - although audiences in this part of the world have tended only to see his less overtly populist films (French commercial cinema does not travel well, if at all).

Leconte's latest offering is an enjoyably elegant romantic fairytale, closest in tone to his 1990 fable, The Hairdresser's Husband. Like that film, The Girl on the Bridge charts the odd, mutually dependent relationship between a middle-aged man and a vulnerable young woman, played in this case by Daniel Auteuil and Vanessa Paradis. She is a promiscuous waif contemplating suicide by jumping from the bridge of the title; he is a world-weary circus performer, down on his luck, who persuades her that, instead of jumping, she should become his partner in a knife-throwing act. This mismatched couple travels to Monte Carlo, Italy and onwards on a cruise, which takes them to the furthest corners of the Mediterranean.

On paper, this may look like exactly the sort of generation-gap romance which leaves a certain type of French cinema wide open to criticism - how many romances between depressed older women and highly sexualised young men have we ever seen? And what is the subtext of an affair where the man throws knives at the object of his desire?

That caveat aside, like The Hairdresser's Husband, The Girl on the Bridge successfully avoids the twin pitfalls of whimsy and portentousness, thanks in large part to its two principal players, Paradis and Auteuil, and to some lovely, widescreen, black and white cinematography from Jean-Marie Dreujou. The style and mood frequently recall the French cinema of the early 1960s, and there's a wry sense of humour throughout which is typical of Leconte's best work.

Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo (18) General release Don't say you haven't been warned. The pre-publicity for Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo proudly announces that it comes from the same stable which gave us Adam Sandler in Big Daddy, so it's no surprise that the humour is several years short of juvenile in this tale of a hapless fish enthusiast (Rob Schneider) who finds himself a new job as a glamorous gigolo. It's harmless stuff, and Schneider does have slightly more charm than the inexplicably popular Sandler. The only surprise is the timorous approach to sex - the film-makers seem much happier sticking to the tried and trusted formula of fart jokes and predictable slapstick routines.

Following (Club IFC, Dublin)

Showing from Monday at the IFC, Christopher Nolan's micro-budget, intriguingly stylised mystery thriller, shot in black-and-white around London, explores classic cinematic themes of voyeurism and violence through the story of a young man (Jeremy Theobald), obsessed with following strangers, who becomes embroiled in the criminal life of one of his subjects. Nolan employs a complex, interweaving structure of flashforwards and doubling back to add to the sense of unsettling mystery in this story of deception, collusion and betrayal. Clearly filmed on a shoestring, Following occasionally falters in tone, but overall it represents a clear and confident new voice in British film-making, and it certainly knocks the socks off most of the dismal breed of generic Britfilms in its mastery of suspense and narrative tension. At a lean 70 minutes, it's also the shortest feature film released here this year, which can't be a bad thing.