Buenos Aires children's theatre director Carlos Rueda (Banderas) has a sixth sense - not only can he see dead people but missing ones as well.

The tie that binds the alive and deceased in his vivid visions is that they are all victims of the loathsome political repression of left-wing activists in the Argentina of the seventies.

Among the 30,000 liberal-minded doctors, teachers, students and trade unionists who literally disappeared, is Rueda's journalist wife Cecilia (Thompson).

Rueda discovers by way of one of his student actors, whose dad has been seized in the night, that by touching relatives of the missing he can see their fates.

It's a bit of a mixed blessing because he is able to follow the brutal trail of rape and torture of his own wife by virtue of human contact with their daughter Teresa (Dolera).

However, it also puts down enough markers for him to set off in a bid to discover where she is being held and rescue her from the bestial government goons.

It's a brave movie that uses a device - here Rueda's clairvoyance - to dramatise a historical occurrence quite as grim as events portrayed here.

But as the repression of the prisoners grows from the disorientation of random arrest to horrific gang rape of mother and daughter, the overall effect is one of insensitivity.

Frankly, the sub-human treatment meted out to Rueda's family and friends is of such a low order that what was a dramatic device becomes a theatrical conceit.

We could also have done without the over-stylised fleet of green Ford Falcons carrying the thugs to their next bloody appointment and an avian obsession - flamingoes, doves, owls - symbolically fluttering away on the sidelines.

Based on the novel by Lawrence Thornton, critics at the Venice Film Festival really got their gondolas in a twist over it - but it's not that bad.

The performances are up to the mark even if the dialogue emerges as slightly stagey but there is no attempt to put the action in an historical context - why were the military such venal criminals?

It's one of those unfortunate chapters of history that should be treated - Schindler's List-style - in a straightforward and unadorned manner. Not as a fatuous dream sequence.

Tim Evans