Lawrence Jordan is a master of the animated collage film; in Our Lady of the Spheres he is at his eeriest. Mute figures with spherical heads move through Victorian steel engravings of idyllic landscapes, baroque palaces and lunar space, punctuated by sudden flashes of light and the sound of alarm buzzers. Cocteau and Max Ernst. Extraordinarily rich in imagery and symbolic overtones, Our Lady is dramatic without being narrative; instead, it abstracts the essentials of drama-rising and falling waves of tension, suspense, and release-while leaving the details entirely open to free association. The mute figures seem alternately as outsiders who explore a strange, fragmented old world, and insiders who have invented and put this world into motion. Russell Merritt