Trust maverick director Alan Rudolph to make a detective story that isn't. Deliberately artificial, with oblique dialogue and story threads that turn to comic stylism, the film is really about people looking for love rather than people looking for people. Tom Berenger plays a detective, who, hired to follow a man, picks the wrong man and finds himself in another case, followed by another detective (Elizabeth Perkins). The two eventually become partners in a story that never allows us the easy option, yet, given this brilliant beginning, remains curiously unsatisfying. A cast of fine-looking women do unexpected things: the sophisticated Ms P plays a ragged embryo gumshoe; Anne Archer sings (well); Kate Capshaw subdues her usual bright glamour; Annette O'Toole takes off Meryl Streep; Ann Magnuson takes off Shirley MacLaine. There's even the occasional line of smart dialogue. 'Ever want kids? ' asks Berenger. 'Kids? ' queries Perkins. 'Yeah,' growls Berenger. 'little people running around with your face.' Maybe Bogart and Bacall could have made something of it all, though it might have baffled their fans as well.

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