Mal

The moral of the story is that your sins will destroy you. The adulterer gets his comeuppance. The paedophile commits suicide. The innocent suffer. Sex has a tendency to be blamed for everything. Why not here? Mal means evil. Evil implies sex. Sex equals death.

This Portugese movie, starring the English actress, Pauline Cadell, is an ensemble piece, like Magnolia, covering a series of inconclusive storylines. It lacks the fascination and originality of Paul Thomas Anderson's masterpiece and seems to drift through scenes of little consequence until hitting the hard edge of castastrophe.

An old man searches in vain for his granddaughter. The perfect couple turn out to be flawed because the man is a serial womaniser. A delinquent junkie becomes a reluctant toy boy. His mother finds God.

The acting is shrill. Cadell feels lost in another language, abused by a script that mocks her femininity. "This is not about God," someone says. "It's about power and money." It isn't. It's about the end of the world and how immorality is to blame. Gomorrah Revisited.