Indeed, the legacy of these two peaks has proven so long-standing, that the box office failure Blindness has been all but forgotten, and his latest film, 360, takes pride of place as the opener for this year’s London Film Festival. Heralded as the new work from an international artist, the film bears more than a passing resemblance to the work of an uninspired hack. While this approach is in one sense ambitious, tackling universal themes by exploring small moments that have major consequences, it is also insultingly shallow, as Peter Morgan’s script moves from one instance to another, giving only rudimentary depth to each sequence, and merely focusing on how the characters fit together in the film’s smug over-arching structure. We begin with a Slovakian girl posing for a sleazy German photographer, and soon find out that she is auditioning for his ring of high-class prostitutes, with the hope of making her fortune by selling her body. Her first john is a British businessman (Jude Law), far from home and in a rough patch with his marriage. His wife (Rachel Weisz), it turns out, is having an affair with a Brazilian fashion photographer, whose girlfriend discovers his infidelity, and promptly leaves him. As much as the film tries to make it clear that it is concerned with circles, closed loops and the cyclical nature of human existence, the plot plods ever forward, moving linearly through its half-formed fragments. This, unfortunately, means that the few moments of promise whip by. Good performances from Law and Weisz are squandered, with barely half a dozen scenes between them, and a stand-out turn from Anthony Hopkins, in good-natured, chatty form, really deserves more than a few dialogue sequences and one admittedly stunning monologue. Elsewhere, the most thematically interesting plot strands – one concerning a Muslim in conflict with his lust for a married woman, another about a rehabilitated sex offender’s first experience of public life after years in prison – are unconvincing, as they’re stapled together with their neighbouring storylines. Whether this is more of a misstep on Morgan’s part or that of the director, it’s not easy to tell. For while it’s true that the storytelling finesse that elevated The Queen and Frost/Nixon above dramatic dreariness is completely missing here, Meirelles lacks the style and energy to make the material sing – too often relying on split-screens and off-beat wipes to keep the narrative flowing. That, or it’s like an indulgent, sentimental and entirely humourless Love Actually – which is a strange triumph in its own right. For blow-by-blow coverage of the London Film Festival, follow Michael on Twitter. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here. And be our Facebook chum here.