Well, he was a pretty weird film-maker, so it's fitting that this movie version of his last 24 hours should be packed with weirdness. Willem Dafoe is the only non-Italian in the cast: his scenes are mostly played in English, with just a few Italian phrases (and an interview in French) to remind us we're watching a Continental movie.

And very Continental it is. The night before his murder we see Pasolini on his knees in front of a series of punk suburban toughs in a scene as close to hardcore as anything in his movies. The following day comprises a series of meals and meetings (with his mother, friends, movie people, his rent-boy nemesis): all slow-paced and stylised with echoes of THEOREM Pasolini's own contribution to the cinema of the New Wave. He's writing a book and visualises it in cinematic terms: it combines a vision of the Second Coming of the Messiah with a return to orgy-rich Sodom (does the pun on 'second coming' work in Italian?). And the day ends with his fateful encounter with the rent-boy and the tougher punks who will write 'Finis' to the Pasolini story. Writer/director Abel Ferrara does not venture into Oliver Stone territory to explore the conspiracy theories which sprang up immediately after Pasolini's death in 1975.

So, this is film-making at its weirdest, turgid and pretentious to a rare degree, as were most of Pasolini's pictures. But this one is beautifully shot, and Dafoe gives an immersive performance (and bears a striking resemblance to the man he is playing). One maverick director's epitaph for another.

An observational glimpse on the last hours of the famed and controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini, "Pasolini" is a glacial record of art and society in 1970s Italy. Willem Dafoe plays the complicated artist highlighting the man's torment and humanity. The real life Pasolini's oddball intensity is missing in this portrayal; rather, Dafoe embodies a reserved, cultured homosexual who lived the opposite worlds of cultivated society and the seamy underworld. Amidst this depiction is the backdrop of a turbulent Rome in the throes of political and social unrest. Being an Abel Ferrara flick there's nudity and some graphic sex (both straight and gay) that provides some chuckles and titillation. While not for everyone this highbrow and arty film serves as a compelling tribute to one of the most fascinating artistic figures of the 20th-Century.