An exceptional performance by Isabelle Carré as a spurned lover with a pathological talent for deceiving herself and others is the highlight of Michel Spinosa's Anna M. Rarely has cinematic psychosis been presented with such raw sensibility and unnerving potency and one dreads to think how a Hollywood remake might turn out - especially as the story lapses into stalker melodrama about halfway through.

Desperately lonely and prone to fainting fits, Carré commutes between the apartment she shares with her depressive mother (Geneviève Mnich) and the Bibliothèque Nationale, where she restores books with dwindling enthusiasm. One night, she deliberately walks into the road and is hit by a car that fails to stop. She is treated kindly by doctor Gilbert Melki and mistakes his professionalism for affection and develops a crush that begins with her following him from work but quickly escalates to presenting him with unwanted gifts and plaguing him and wife Anne Consigny with phone calls.

But the action inevitably begins to spiral out of control as Carré exploits such contrivances as a nanny's job in the apartment below Melki's and the film frequently risks straying into Fatal Attraction territory. Yet not even the clumsy contentment of the countryside coda can detract from Carré's bravura display of dangerous derangement and cinematographer Alain Duplantier's adroit use of environment to reinforce her changing moods.

The Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang could never be accused of indulging in emotional excess. However, his minimalist films have always courted controversy and the joint release of his two most recent pictures is bound to have the kneejerk prudes up in arms.

Wrongly branded misogynist by the PC brigade, The Wayward Cloud is a scathing assault on the exploitative nature of pornography and the emptiness of sex without love. Continuing the story started in 2001's What Time Is It There?, Tsai reunites Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Shiang-chiyi in a Taipei tenement during a drought. However, he prevents Chen from learning that Lee is shooting skin flicks in his flat with Japanese porn star Sumomo Yozakura and a watermelon, until a conclusion that is as devastating in its tragedy as its audacity.

Tsai punctuates the action with some kitschily choreographed Mandarin pop songs, with one number including a dancing merman and a giant penis and another serving as an excuse for some chorus girls to drape themselves provocatively over a statue of Chiang Kai-Shek. But these routines are more than mischievous gimmicks, as they hark back to more innocent times when screen romance meant more than a close-up money shot.

Inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute, I Don't Want To Sleep Alone is a perplexing modern fairy-tale, in which one handsome prince fails to wake from his slumbers, while his vengeful mother seeks to prevent the Cinderella she exploits at her coffee shop from finding happiness with her son's homeless dopplegänger (who is himself recovering from being beaten unconscious by some Kuala Lumpur street crooks).

With its water and smog imagery, this virtually wordless saga couldn't be more visually striking. But, by having the aforementioned Lee Kang-sheng play both the men in waitress Chen Shiang-chiyi's life, Tsai raises more questions about identity and sexuality than the slender narrative can bear. It's on much safer ground in the derelict factory, as Tsai uses the drifter's relationship with Bangladeshi Samaritan Norman Atun to explore the isolation of migrant workers.