Hollow Reed.

Directed by Angela Pope (Cinepix) Reviewed by Bob Satuloff

This British stew of a movie mixes three-alarm ingredients--child abuse, gay parenting, and blinding sexual need. Directed at a roiling boil by Angela Pope, it's ferociously acted by a first-rate cast, But for all its fireworks, Hollow Reed keeps the viewer at an emotional distance.

The story centers on 8-year-old Oliver (Sam Bould), whose fate is about to be decided by the courts. Will he stay with his mother, Hannah (Joely Richardson), and her live-in boyfriend, Frank (Jason Flemyng), who's been accused of physically abusing the boy? Or will Oliver's physician father, Martyn (Martin Donovan), win custody? The answer seems cut and dried until we learn that Martyn lives with his lover (Ian Hart).

In the vicious court battle that follows, the script favors the gay lovers. But neither couple can resist manipulating the little boy. Nor do they recognize what Pope rubs in the viewer's face: Oliver is a disconnected, possibly disturbed child. Even if he hadn't been physically victimized, he'd be damaged, and all the adults are at fault. Though his condition is meant to involve us, it has the opposite effect. No court verdict will help this child; we're spectators at a tennis match in which the little boy is the ball and nobody wins.