A truly surreal and enthralling film

When Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Being John Malkovich, was asked to write an adaptation of Susan Orlean's bestseller, The Orchid Thief, I don't think anyone could have imagined what he would come up with. Finding the task in hand overwhelmingly problematic, Kaufman's solution is to produce a script about his struggle to write the above screenplay.

Are you following so far?

Kaufman also creates himself a scriptwriting twin brother, entangles Orlean herself in a romantic sub-plot, throws in a few crocodiles for good measure and rounds the whole thing off using such conventional narrative practices that they become unconventional. Confused? You should be, but don't let that put you off.

Kaufman and director Spike Jonze create a truly surreal and enthralling film which demands attention and serves up fantastic performances from its principle players. Nicolas Cage in the demanding dual role as Charlie and Donald Kaufman is superb, creating two engaging and sufficiently different characters.

Meryl Streep follows her acclaimed performance in "The Hours" with an Oscar-nominated turn as Orlean, while Chris Cooper's role as orchid-poacher John Laroche quite rightly earned him a coveted little gold statue. A film unlike anything you've seen before and, because of that very fact, an experience I can not recommend more highly.