Ray Pride

If the only thing Hal Hartley had gotten right about his "Beauty and the Beast" riff was his multitude of long looks at Sarah Polley's dreamy-scheming face, I'd be pleased already. Aw, she gleams. "No Such Thing" is peculiar--not that Hartley's earlier work wins any popularity contests--and reports from Cannes 2001 were withering calumnies against the writer-director's continued employment. Nice, then, to finally see it almost a year later and find that despite a few goofy missteps--Polley does not take to strappy black leather like certain blonde starlets--that the picture is a sweet, serious thing, taking parts in the wilds of Iceland and the suites at the W Hotel on New York's Upper East Side in equal measure. A television camera crew disappears in Iceland and winsome fiancée Sarah Polley dispatches herself to solve the riddle of the ageless, unstoppable beast. The monster, played by Hartley vet Robert John Burke, is a typical Hartley curmudgeon, as wont to utter weary variations on the word "fuck" as to illuminate himself as a metaphor for the killing jolts of contemporary information overload. Polley gets a few trademark Hartley apothegms, notably "It's like my mom used to say, the world is a strange and uncertain place." Uh-huh. Then again, there's Dr. Artaud, a mad scientist who gets to deadpan, "I said rude things to the chambermaid and she set me free." Philosophical slapstick, Hartley's visual collaboration with Michael Spiller offers cool, lush frames, and concludes "No Such Thing" with a triumphant final image of eye-glazing beauty and simplicity.

"No Such Thing" opens Friday at Pipers Alley.

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