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Carl Bessai's Emile reminds us that Sir Ian McKellen is used to playing more complex characters than Gandalf or Magneto. In this dreamily moving melodrama, the British thesp stars in the title role as an ageing academic who left Canada and his farming family for England and a high-flying university career some 40 years ago. With his neat bow-tie and embarrassed smile, he's a classic English bachelor whose genteel reserve cracks when a trip home brings old memories flooding back.

Honoured with a lifetime achievement award from a Canadian university, Emile makes the long journey back across the Atlantic to confront the demons of his past. His only surviving family members are his niece Nadia (Deborah Kara Unger) and her ten-year-old daughter Maria (Theo Crane). Nadia seems happy to put him up, but bubbling beneath the surface of their relationship lie old resentments and a bitterness that time won't heal. As the past bleeds into the present through a series of yellow-tinged flashbacks, we begin to realise the extent of this man's guilt.

An uneventful story affectingly told, Emile sees McKellen capturing the sadness of a man who has lived a life of missed opportunities and whose later years are marred by a terrible sense of shame. It's his vulnerable, poignant performance that holds this lightweight drama together. Not even writer-director Carl Bessai's occasional fumbles - such as having the ghosts of the past turn up bloodied and bruised - can detract from the actor's quiet fragility.

"MCKELLEN MAKES A LOT OUT OF VERY LITTLE"

Much like the little-seen gem Gods And Monsters - in which McKellen starred as 30s horror director James Whale and tried to seduce Brendan Fraser (there's no accounting for taste!) - Emile is a fantastic showcase for the actor's understated talent. Ably assisted by Deborah Kara Unger as the angry, wounded woman he once abandoned, McKellen manages to make a lot out of very little.