Gus Van Sant on this evidence has clearly got a thing about skateboarders. Against the backdrop of a skateboarding community, a story emerges in cut-glass editing form, of the death of a security guard. It's one of those stories that only declares its hand gradually, in terms of who was responsible for the guy's death, the only firm thing we know is that the young man at the heart of it, Alex (Gabe Nevins), had something to do with it.

Based on Blake Nelson's novel, and shot imaginatively by Wong Kar Wai's man Christopher Doyle, Van Sant's film takes you into a rites-of-passage world where a young middle-class teen is finding his identity and in this film, is finding less comfort from his parents breaking up and more through feeling at home amongst working-class street kids who accept him for who he is, rather than anything he's supposed to be.

Against this backdrop, you've got the detective story unraveling about what really happened to a security guard who on a particular day found himself in confrontation with a group of skateboarders. Alex is moved to write his story by a girl-friend who tells him if he has something to unburden, its best he writes it down.

Paranoid Park is low-key, authentic, meandering, and well-shot with Doyle going for some particularly great angles and moving skateboard shots. You get the impression that director Gus Van Sant became fascinated by this world or has longed to set a story amongst the skateboarding fraternity.

Rather like Closing the Ring, you watch the film expecting a decent payoff at the end and the one you get, may not be the one you expect. That said this is a polished effort, it's the winner of a 60th Anniversary prize from Cannes, and whilst ultimately not being a film you'd get wildly excited about, it continues the director's pre-occupation with adolescence and is bound to be of interest to Gus Van Sant fans.