She’s a tabloid darling, her life a scandal-filled soap opera playing out in real time across the pages of the gossip rags. She may be an actress, but more column inches are devoted to her latest red-carpet ensemble than have been dedicated to all her performances. The superficial parallels between Sienna Miller and the character she plays in Interview are obvious. But just as her soap star Katya subverts our expectations, running rings around the jaded hack journalist (played by Steve Buscemi) who so clearly underestimates her, so does Miller.

In fairness, Miller has already made a persuasive case for her abilities as an actress: Factory Girl, for all its flaws, featured a raw and vulnerable turn from her. Here, playing a character with whom she’s clearly familiar, she is mercurial and unpredictable, kittenish and cruel. Her barbed-wire bickering with Buscemi is the snare that hooks us into the film.

Buscemi, who directed Interview and is credited as a co-writer, plays Pierre Peders, a political correspondent and a war reporter who has been demoted by his editor to doing showbiz interviews with starlets. He feels the humiliation like a kick to the head with each generic question he has to concoct. Somewhat unprofessionally, he makes no secret of the fact that he considers the work beneath him. His interview with Katya, held in the kind of restaurant where everybody goes but nobody eats, is over almost before it has begun. But a freak accident caused by the gravitational force of Katya’s celebrity flings them back together again, sending them up to her loft apartment, the location for the vast majority of the film.

Meryl Streep on politics and passion

From The French Lieutenant’s Woman to a news reporter: how does Meryl Streep get her disguises so right

• Meryl Streep got the ball rolling

Related Internet Links

• London Film Festival

BACKGROUND

• London just capital for directors

• Naomi Watts wows on opening night

• Tony Leung is in the mood for lust

• Pretty boy Brad Pitt grows up

• Brothers grim

BACKGROUND

• Eastern Promises

• Viggo Mortensen joins the underworld's cast

• Michael Moore's healthy scepticism

• Are you kidding?

• Laura Linney, accidental screen queen

Related Links

• Steve Buscemi gives us the creeps

The interview that results is less celebrity puff piece, more brutal psychological warfare. Pierre provokes Katya by challenging her intelligence, daring her to be interesting. Katya unleashes the big guns – disarming him with her sexual allure and her fine whisky. It’s a savage battle between two opponents who are not afraid to play dirty, and who, deep down, recognise a kinship.

The problem with this film is more to do with its structure and tone than the performances. The two-hander is by definition a very theatrical set-up, and this staginess is not mitigated by the declamatory dialogue. It’s an icily contrived piece – the exchanges are slick but never feel honest or authentic. The mood swings that propel the drama and quicksilver dynamics between the characters feel a little manufactured, though they do result in some intriguing moments.

Interview is a remake of a Dutch film by Theo van Gogh, the controversial film-maker who is now best known in the UK for having been murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist angered by the short film Submission: Part I. The Dutch producers who initiated the project have said that the remake is a posthumous way to fulfil Van Gogh’s wish to work in the United States, although one can’t help suspecting that it was also a way to cash in on his subsequent notoriety.

Tomorrow at the festival

13.00 Flight of the Red Balloon Odeon West End 2

13.30 Redacted Odeon West End 1

15.30 Interview Odeon West End 2

16.00 Summer Rain Odeon West End 1

18.30 Capital Tales Trafalgar Square

18.30 Shotgun Stories Odeon West End 1

20.45 In Your Wake Ciné Lumière

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010