Boarding Gate

French auteur Olivier Assayas continues his skewed logic of post modern noir with an erotically charged thriller about Sandra, an ex-prostitute turned international drug runner (played by Asia Argento), who revisits her former lover Miles (played by Michael Madsen) for one last roll on the floor. The couple hasn't lost their flair for dramatic S&M encounters, and the bawdy sequence is the centerpiece of the movie. What follows is an unfulfilling chase story that ends on a diminished chord. Olivier Assayas's films are a frustrating cinematic ritual for their oblique rendering of kinky sexual intrigue lurking beneath the surface of every business decision and transaction perpetrated by his characters. Call it a cinema of guilty pleasure, and don't worry if you fall asleep in your seat after the sex scene is over. You won't be alone.

Rated R. 106 mins. (C) (Two Stars)