No, Gattaca is about notions of identity and the stubborn nature of longing. That latter is provided for, at least for Vincent (Ethan Hawke), in space. His dreams are of the stars, of joining an exploratory Titan mission set to launch perfect human specimens into orbit from the headquarters of the Gattaca Corporation. But Vincent isn't perfect. Unlike his golden boy brother Anton, his was a "faith" - or in-valid - birth. He has both brains and a heart defect, and impurities that can only be bypassed with intimate bodily fluids drawn from the genetically flawless but crippled athlete Jerome (Jude Law). Danger is provided for by that murder and its pointers toward an in-valid perpetrator.

Hawke, surprisingly, is very good as the determined Vincent, always gazing skyward at the dozen or so blazing launches that arc above the glass ceiling of Gattaca each day. Of course, it's as important for him as it is Law that we are allowed to buy into their bargain, and thankfully Nicol's own screenplay isn't over-bothered about either squaring the prosthetic Mission Impossiblities, or in dramatically insuring Law with legless angst. The love interest is the barely watchable Uma Thurman, who, to her advantage, isn't asked to stretch her usual glacial, bland playing beyond playing a glacial and bland space cadet. She is mercifully forgettable. But then, the picture's chief joys lie almost exclusively away from its ostensible sales pitch. It does, for example, boast a supporting cast to die for, with Gore Vidal as the program director, Loren Dean reprising his detective role from Wenders' recent The End of Violence, with Alan Arkin as his partner, and Elias Koteas as Vincent's father.

More Alphaville than Blade Runner, the cold, spare, clean, tech noir sets are by Jan Roelfs, half of Peter Greenaway's usual design team, and are realised in the camera of the brilliant Pole, Slawomir Idziak. Idizak, who shot Three Colours: Blue and The Double Life of Veronique for the late Krzysztof Kieslowski, brings to this project a density of colour (greeny-blue interiors, golden-honeyed exteriors) that could hardly be held in greater contrast to the drab, over-lit TV images of Hollywood's favour. Visually the film is as lush as its intoxicating soundtrack by erstwhile Greenaway regular Michael Nyman.

Make no mistake then, despite its stars and a misguided attempt to sell Gattaca as a blockbuster, Nicol's film is a sombre, serious and undoubtedly moving art movie. If it overplays its dramatic hand in the final push (a familial revelation that comes out of nowhere), then it at least recognises that a film about dreams needs a suitably dream-like coda. And it's then, when Nicol finally fuses his understated images to Nyman's elegiac score and our own emotional investment in Vincent, that we appreciate his film as being something really very special indeed.