Independently Wealthy

Image credit: XX/XY: Larry Riley

Which is not to say that lovability is a requirement for pleasure. Many of the stronger offerings from developing filmmakers featured characters with no great claims to likability, but who, in the context and style of their stories, came alive as subjects worth caring about. Joe Carnahan's ''Narc,'' a nice little B-style imperfect-cop caper, runs on a propulsive energy, not to mention terrific, raspy performances by Jason Patric and Ray Liotta as uneasy undercover partners. ''Australian Rules,'' Paul Goldman's tough, engrossing Aussie antidote to the mush of ''Monster's Ball,'' grips viewers with the racial strife between whites and blacks on a Prospect Bay football field.

None of the triangulated lovers in ''XX/XY,'' a Frenchified, ''Friends''-type drama about two girls (Kathleen Robertson and Maya Stange) and a guy (Mark Ruffalo) over the course of a college-to-adulthood decade, is anyone worth hanging out with. But despite first-timer shakiness from writer-director Austin Chick, the filmmaker does convey a personal tone and provides audiences with incentive to stick around (if only to enjoy the soundtrack's French-bistro music).

The sexiest, most voluptuous film I connected with this year -- here's hoping it makes it onto American screens uncut -- was Julio Medem's ''Sex & Lucía,'' an intriguingly convoluted, time-shifting, erotically charged narrative (from the Spanish director of ''Lovers of the Arctic Circle'') about a writer, his characters, and his (often naked) women. The debut that practically sat up and begged to be petted was Pete Jones' Project Greenlight winner, ''Stolen Summer.'' (With its puppyish moral of tolerance and a welcome appearance by Bonnie Hunt, it doesn't deserve to be kicked, just gently swatted on the nose.)

Finally, the most tail-wagging trifle was ''Tadpole,'' Gary Winick's short, shaggy romantic comedy set in privileged Manhattan, about a precocious 15-year-old prep school lad (Aaron Stanford) who nurtures a crush on his glam stepmother (Sigourney Weaver). The doll who really steals the show is Bebe Neuwirth as a hubba-hubba family friend. The guy, meanwhile, who really deserves the royalties is Wes Anderson, he of the influential cult-favorite ''Rushmore'' -- to whom this affection-hungry knockoff owes a big, grateful hug.