Roger Dodger

A coming of age, a rite of passage. But for whom?

I've no idea if the Beano, the British comic book for boys, ever travelled to the United States, or whether Roger Dodger writer/ director Dylan Kidd would have been familiar with one of its chief characters, Roger the Dodger. Maybe the name (no offence, you Rogers out there) simply invites the noun. In any case, the Dodger was a mischievous little rogue, whose main aim in life was to use his wits to avoid all responsibility directed his way. The joke of the strip was that however cunning, however cruel, he never got away with it. Roger was a coward, whose comeuppances were always spectacular.

It's tempting to imagine the eponymous character of Kidd's fine first feature as the little Dodger himself, ostensibly grown up: via a spell in Viz, perhaps, an accidental education, then having travelled to New York's frantic dating scene to find that, having tormented his parents for years, fresh victims await him - women. As with the comic-book character, Roger Swanson thinks that he has it all worked out, the joke again being the level of his misguidedness and the extent of his just desserts. The film is a wake-up call to all you lads who imagine you know what you're doing. Watch this film and weep.

It opens as so many American independents these days, with witty banter around the dining table, where Roger (Campbell Scott) is holding court. A top copywriter at a NY advertising firm, he is presenting a cod Darwinian thesis to his work colleagues, which projects the future "obsolescence" of men, once women find a way of procreating without them. It's entertaining, eloquent, persuasive - and pure rhetoric, the only purpose of which is to demonstrate the extent to which he, an alpha male, is very much in charge of the table.

Already Scott lays down the modus operandi of this man: blanket talk, a barrage of cynicism and malice flowing forth on the silk conveyor belt of cigarette smoke that pours, also, from his mouth. Behind it, his small, watery, beady eyes calculate the effect of every one of his little time bombs. He operates at a level of self-consciousness that would drive others mad.

But the evidence of self-delusion is already staring at him from across the table. Roger's audience includes Joyce (Isabella Rossellini), who is both his boss and his lover. In the next scene, she shows who really has the power, right now, by ditching him. Roger can't quite believe it. "I'm your boy, your thoroughbred" he declares. When she suggests that they make the most of their last night together, he replies that "Goodbye sex is never good. Next week we'll have get back together sex." The wit is knee-jerk, his only mode of expression, but his position at the table has changed.

This is merely the prologue to the real story, which starts with the arrival of Roger's 16-year-old nephew Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) - naive, inexperienced, a bit of a dork, and looking on Uncle Roger to teach him the ways of the world.

Nick wants to lose his virginity: who better to help him do it? At this stage we have no idea of Roger's resources, whether the laddish sexism deepens into misogyny, whether the barbed words will extend to wicked deeds. We're about to find out.

"So you need some help with the ladies?" he asks the boy. It's like Mephistopheles offering Faust a crash-course in courtly love.

What follows is a long night spent in the seedy, solipsistic world of New York singles bars and sex clubs, the boy hanging on his mentor's every word. It is a 12-hour coming of age, a rite of passage - the question being, ultimately, for whom?

Two qualities drive the film along. The first is the mesmerising rat-a-tat-tat of Roger's repartee, which produces at least one cracking line a minute and slowly reveals the sad, and thus sympathetic man behind the bad boy persona.

In the street, as he's trying to teach the boy how to letch, he reports with pride the fact that "I can see behind me, on a good day" and exclaims angrily "Are you blowing my cover, like some construction worker?"

Later when an older woman actually kisses the boy, Roger tries it on with her friend but is pushed away. "Come on," he pleads, "for symmetry." Campbell totally nails the duality of a character who is at once repellent and fascinating.

The other impetus is intrigue, the question of what lies beneath the talk. Just how Machiavellian is Roger? Why did he steal Joyce's scarf and what does he intend to do with it? To what extent is he prepared to sacrifice his nephew's already frail ego to bolster his own?

Kidd locates his man-child and boy in a nocturnal New York which features much less overtly than in most films. He shoots in close-ups and medium shots, keeping his focus on the people, allowing the city's presence to exist - via yellow cabs and steam vents, streets flashing past the window - in spirit only.

It's a valid tactic, which removes the unnatural gloss given the dating game by Sex and the City and any number of New York-based romantic comedies.

Roger Dodger serves as a potent foil to Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men, the hitherto definitive film about modern male mores. While LaBute portrayed men who, whether through cunning or weakness, translated bitter misogyny into real harm to women, Dylan Kidd posits self-loathing and self-inflicted wounds. His Roger talks the talk but, while people laugh, they don't take him seriously.

The women here are very much in control: whether it be Rossellini's capricious boss, or the friends (nicely played by Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkeley) who Roger and Nick hit on in a bar, and who rightly identify the boy as the wiser and - were he not a minor - more attractive of the two. The most delicious moment in the film is when they realise that Nick is still a virgin: the camera switches to three pairs of feet, the women's shifting in excited synchronisation on either side of the boy's.

What Roger Dodger shares with the earlier film is the suggestion that we are all sucked into ill-advised role-playing, in life, the extent of our unhappiness commensurate with how vigorously we pursue our miscasting.

LaBute said the moral of his film was, "Be careful who you pretend to be, because that's who you'll end up being." Roger Dodger is about a man with one last chance to rewrite the role.

Jonathan Romney returns next week