Byline: Adrian Martin

WHEN The Player (M, Roadshow) was released in cinemas last year, the question most frequently asked of director Robert Altman by journalists was "where have you been all these years?" _ meaning the 12 years since his last big Hollywood film Popeye. Altman's curt answer was always the same: "I've been working. Where have you been?" The director had indeed been working at a furious pace throughout the '80s, in several different countries _ directing plays, films, TV specials, operas. Much of this work has been invisible in Australia; his six-hour TV film Tanner '88 is only now receiving a screening at the forthcoming Melbourne Film Festival, in the wake of Tim Robbins's vastly inferior Bob Roberts. And although The Player would seem to mark a return to the kind of film that made Altman famous in the '70s (like Nashville, McCabe and Mrs Miller and California Split), it also reflects the intense, minute explorations of acting, characterisation and storytelling that he has done in the intervening years. The Player begins with a virtuoso shot that has already become famous: a twisting, complex, unbroken long take in which slick Hollywood studio types debate the virtue of movies that start with long takes. This is not only a smart joke but an indication of the film's compelling ambiguity _ Altman's admittance that his own movie is complicit with the system that it so savagely parodies. The witty script, by Michael Tolkin from his novel, resembles a more successful screen adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Griffin Mills (played with icy charm by Tim Robbins) is a studio executive. He evaluates pitches _ brief verbal synopses of often absurd film ideas. Griffin is made increasingly nervous by the power plays in his company, and especially...