We start in the busy office of a high-powered agent, where at the morning meeting the team learns their star agent Ivan Beckham (Huston) has died, surprisingly, of lung cancer. Everyone thinks it's a cover story for a fatal drug, alcohol and sex binge. From here we flash back to Ivan's last days, during which he lures a big star (Weller) over to his camp, struggles with his girlfriend (Enos), handles a hyphenate client (Merendino) whose last writer-director-actor triumph was a film called Angelic Convulsions, spars with his father and sister (Graham and Duckman), parties very hard ... and tries to ignore the news his doctor has just given him.

Shot on digital video, the film has the feeling of improvised Dogme--intimate, unpredictable and so startlingly natural that it takes the breath away. This is due both to Rose's intrusive camera work and Huston's raw performance. Ivan's self-delusion is written all over his face, yet in Hollywood no one seems to notice. And as he descends into near madness, facing his mortality, the film takes on an almost elegiac tone (foreshadowed in the opening sequence, which has heavy Sunset Blvd overtones).

The story itself is brilliantly acerbic, blackly funny and surprisingly nervy--a searing look into the dark glamour of showbizz, playing on the idea that it's "difficult to maintain a sense of decency as an agent." Yes, it's all a bit of an inside job, and the colour-washed video sheen makes it look cheap and nasty, like someone's home movies blown up too big. But perhaps that's the point.