This audacious debut feature from British director Gerald McMorrow opens as a fairly conventional slice of comic book SF but soon twists itself into a more complex and unusual form, unfolding through the drawing together of four narrative strands. Ryan Phillippe is Preest, a masked atheistic vigilante prowling the futuristic but medievally decaying Meanwhile City, a stylishly dark and grotesque land whose people are opiated into obedience by the legal requirement to profess a religion, and colourful and bizarre sects abound. Meanwhile, in contemporary London, Milo (Sam Riley) is one of those sensitive floppy-haired young men endemic to British film; he’s stood up at the altar and retreats into dreams of a childhood sweetheart. Emilia is an art student prone to morbid romanticism who casts herself as a tragic heroine in repeated suicide attempts. Peter Esser (Bernard Hill) is a lonely old man wandering London’s streets and shelters in search of his lost son, with whom he dreams of reconciliation.

As the division between London and Meanwhile City begins to blur, Franklyn’s themes emerge: explorations of the permeable boundary between ‘reality’ and fantasy, our idealisation of love, our self-defensive delusions, which frequently slip into psychosis or faith. The fractured narrative and plot feints shape the film’s discussion of fate – is it simply random or guided by a supernatural agency? And are some people mere pawns in others’s happy endings? Despite being, in some respects, highly manipulative, the film opens itself up to interpretation, trusting viewers not only to puzzle through the cryptic plot but to form their own readings of its message.

Franklyn’s philosophical ambitions invite derision, and its fairytale styling means it frequently, perhaps even deliberately, falls into triteness and cliché. It’s certainly shot through with inconherencies and imperfections. But it’s brave, imaginative and amazing-looking, and takes a refreshingly fortean attitude to the question of the nature of reality.