Ae Fond Kiss

(Herald rating * * * *)

The third part of what veteran director Loach calls his Glaswegian trilogy (following My Name is Joe and Sweet Sixteen) is an East-West love story. Culture clash has fuelled plenty of well-intentioned Britcoms in the last decade - the wonderful East is East and the somewhat blander Bend It Like Beckham spring to mind.

Unsurprisingly, Loach - whose pedigree stretches back to the 60s through more than a dozen films - takes a grimmer view. The movie has none of the rage of, say, Spike Lee's incandescent Jungle Fever - there is more sorrow here than anger - but it's characteristic of the film-maker that there is no easy way out of the characters' predicament.

The film takes its name from a Robert Burns love poem ("Ae fond kiss and then we sever"), which drips with the desperate longing felt by the film's two lovers. They are Casim Khan (Yaqub), the son of Pakistani immigrants who dreams of being a DJ and opening his own club, and Roisin Murphy (Birthistle), an attractive and passionate part-time music teacher in the Catholic school Casim's sister attends.

Loach, and his constant writer Paul Laverty, engineer the couple's meeting in a kinetic opening sequence that plunges us right into contemporary Glasgow. Their attraction is instant and their chemistry sizzling. But problems quickly surface.

She is a refugee from a bad marriage that has never been dissolved. When she is offered a permanent job she needs a rubber-stamping by the local priest (Kelly) but he bawls her out: "Did you think you could get into bed with any Tom, Dick or Mohammed," he demands, "and then go off and teach Catholic children? The faith of our fathers is not for the faint-hearted."

It's here that the film veers closest to unsubtlety, although Kelly's cameo is electrifying.

But on the other side of the cultural tracks, things are even worse: Casim's father has plans for an arranged marriage, and Casim's sister Rukhsana (a radiantly sincere Avan, who almost steals the show) has ambitions beyond the father's imagining. That's not even to mention the reaction of Roisin's white friends.

Loach balances all these competing forces with grace and assurance and not a trace of cliche. He and Laverty are smart enough to realise that it's hard even between the lovers ("It's easy for you," Casim grumbles to Roisin at one point. "You've got nothing to lose") and their relationship is pleasantly unromanticised.

In the end, the film-makers' collective wisdom is distilled into a line Casim's best friend delivers. "You're being stupid if you think anyone's going to understand," he says. Loach, as always, is better at asking questions than providing cheap catharsis. And watching him do so is an engrossing experience.

CAST: Atta Yaqub, Eva Birthistle, Gerard Kelly, Ghizala Avan
DIRECTOR: Ken Loach
RUNNING TIME: 103 mins
RATING: M (violence and sex scenes)
SCREENING: Rialto (sneak previews this weekend) and Bridgeway from Thursday