‘Although what you are about to see is a work of fiction’, reads the gnomic epigram that opens Todd Haynes’ magnificent Velvet Goldmine, ‘it should be played at maximum volume.’ And like its chosen theme - the all too brief Glam Rock explosion of the early seventies - it does precisely that.

In New York in a very Orwellian 1984, British journo Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) is sent by his newspaper to write a ‘whatever happened to’ on Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a Glam star who, at the height of his powers ten years before, staged a fake on-stage assassination in London. It’s that Citizen Kane conceit again - the investigation of a life - used by writer/director Haynes to examine not only the spirited music of the time (the causal connection between the late sixties Art School of Warhol and The Velvet Underground, and ‘Punk’), but a brief flowering of youthful rebellion and sexual liberation.

The Haynes of his right-wing-baiting first feature Poison was briefly the leading light of the New Queer Cinema, but this new feature is altogether a more complex beast. This is what we might call New Bisexual Cinema, a film that approaches its characters with a refreshing frankness that makes less of a distinction between gay and straight, men or women. And Haynes’ admirable cast play it entirely without timidity: Velvet Goldmine is sex, drugs and rock-’n-roll in equal measures. It will - thank God - do little to mollify his reputation as one of the most provocative of current film-makers.

Structurally the picture bounces back and forth as much stylistically as historically. Haynes employs the conventions of the classic (wooden) rock movie (Stardust would be his touchstone), alongside elaborately staged videos, impressionist montages, and even Expressionism. The film is realised with a nineties sensibility but a seventies playfulness: you do not have to look far to see the fingerprints of Cammell/Roeg’s Performance here, or A Clockwork Orange there. But none of this is ever at its expense. Haynes is clearly in complete control of his vision, from the 1854 prologue in which baby Oscar Wilde is delivered to a Dublin doorstep by a passing UFO (honestly), through to the aliens’ heart-lifting glitter-strewn buzzing of Arthur and American drug-rocker Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) as they make love on a North London rooftop. From the scorching titles to Steve Harley over the credits (think ELO in Boogie Nights), Velvet Goldmine makes for some of the most thrilling, exuberant cinema to pass this way in a very long time.

It should also be clear by now that it’s no bio-pic. This is Art School myth rather than the brickies-in-mascara we remember. Haynes has taken our Glam icons and run them through a fictional mill so as not to stamp-out cookie cutter images of Bowie or Iggy or Lou Reed. Brian Slade’s Maxwell Demon persona borrows from Ziggy Stardust but doesn’t play him. Likewise Wild’s leather-troued stage animal is clearly James Osterburg in public, more Reed in private. Haynes imbues his people with elements of all three, as well as Brian Eno (whose early solo work plays a crucial role) and Brian Ferry.

Fortunately he’s also assembled a cast sufficiently capable - and uninhibited enough - to make it work. Rhys Meyers strikes just the right pose, a balance of ebullience and arrogant self-absorption, as the quixotic Slade, while McGregor (despite a slight wanderlust in his accent) has the necessary abandon to both strip-off and dive through fire to The Stooges’ anthemic ‘TV Eye’, and deeply snog Rhys Meyers when called upon. This boy is every inch the rock star. Stand-up Eddie Izzard is equally good, clearly playing Michael Caine playing Slade’s thrusting, ruthless, flamboyant manager, Jerry Divine. But top honours go to Australia’s Toni Collette as Mandy, Slade’s very own Angie Bowie. From willing collaborator to ostracised outcast, it’s the Muriel’s Wedding star, along with Bale, who confers on the film its emotional heart.

And Bale himself is a revelation. Always something of a cold fish previously (Empire of The Sun, Metroland), it’s his Arthur - from sexually confused teenager to disillusioned adult - that is ultimately the subject of the picture. For, for all its lovingly staged musical moments and grandiloquent pronouncements, Velvet Goldmine is really about the journey to self-realisation. The apparent mystery that sparks Haynes’ screenplay is a McGuffin, there only as an entry point, to allow the film to comment on the wholesale corporate appropriation of rock rebellion in the eighties. Velvet Goldmine is one of precious few films that openly celebrate bisexuality, and the awkward, lank-haired Bale, especially in scenes of his Mancunian youth - masturbating over Melody Maker pictures of Slade and Wild - is its embodiment.

It’s tempting to speculate on the influence of the late Derek Jarman. Some connections are obvious - production design is by Christopher Hobbs, with marvellously invigorating costumes from Sandy Powell - but here and there, in its more sparsely realised moments (Divine’s arrival, a surreal press conference), there are definite hints of Jarman’s sensibility. A double-bill of Velvet Goldmine and the rude, invigorating Jubilee could prove instructive.

In the end though, what makes Velvet Goldmine a great film is the sense that, like Haynes’ last - the suffocating and brilliant [Safe] - it could never be anything other than what it is. It’s arrogant, aloof and self-absorbed because its subject is arrogant, aloof and self-absorbed. But equally, it’s self-aware enough to embrace its own inherent ridiculousness. It’s a brash, bold firework, a Glam film about Glam; a film about style that never wants for substance. And like Glam, more will hate it than will ever admit to loving it, but those that do will love it very very much indeed.