Nic Roeg has nothing to prove. His CV includes some of the most imaginative, intelligent and charged films in recent British cinema: Walkabout, Performance, Bad Timing, The Man Who Fell To Earth, the near miraculous Don't Look Now. And yet since the Potter collaboration Track 29 he's been all over the place. He made the slight Castaway a lot more interesting than it deserved, the ill-feted Cold Heaven into an intriguing failure, and an adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness that barely rises above execrable.

Two Deaths, we are pleased to report, is Nic Roeg straining again at the creative leash. If too much of his work in the last decade could have been made by just about anyone, this film is at least recognisable. Most of the trademarks are here, from a near religious refusal to tell a straight story to notions of possession and slightly queasy sexual politics. The screenplay is by Don't Look Now scribe Allan Scott, from a novel by Stephen Dobyns.

Excepting its flashbacks, the film is terribly stagy, its dialogue rigorously non-naturalistic. The latter is not a problem, especially when its in the mouths of actors as good as Gambon, Braga and Nickolas Grace, but the former does occasionally make this BBC co-production feel hemmed in by its budget.

But despite that, Two Deaths is easily Roeg's most resonant, haunting film in years. From the foodie excesses of the feast to the intrusions of the battle outside to more intimate Roegian ideas of truth and denial, the film has a seductive pull on the senses, culminating in a sophisticated, elegant, frankly gob-smacking proof of the title. Anyone who has ever been seduced by the old Roeg will find something to relish in here.