REVIEWED - PRIVATE: THE uncompromising agitprop energy that hangs around this tale of conflict in the occupied territories of the Middle East is a rare enough thing in contemporary cinema.

Though the most persuasive voices in Private, an Italian production played out in three languages, argue for peaceful resistance, we are left in little doubt as to where the film-makers' sympathies lie. Readers in search of that elusive artistic statement in favour of the Israeli occupations will just have to keep on looking.

Based quite closely on a true story, Saverio Costanzo's debut feature introduces us to the occupants of an imposing house halfway between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement. The stubborn paterfamilias, who refuses to move, but will not contemplate violent opposition, is a Palestinian academic with a taste for Shakespeare ("To be or not to be," he blurts out for no good reason).

When a squad of soldiers bursts in the door and barracks itself upstairs, the family members act out a variety of responses to the challenge of tyranny. An older daughter spies on the Israelis from a cupboard. One of the sons yearns to leave and then, when his father vetoes the notion, contemplates building a booby trap.

There are moments of heart-stopping tension. A scene where the brutal, sadistic commander holds a gun to the father's head is, with its reminders of similar sequences in Schindler's List and Klimov's Come and See, sure to stir ironic responses in viewers. And a terrifically claustrophobic atmosphere, heightened by nauseating handheld camera moves, persists throughout.

But, sad to relate, though the script offers us a strong situation, we get no real story to speak of. Once the characters have taken up position - voyeur, pacifist, agitator - they simply remain at their posts waiting for the unforgivably dreary Roger Waters song that announces the film's end. "The Germans kill the Jews, and the Jews kill the Arabs, and the Arabs kill the hostages . . . "

For heaven's sake, I come to the cinema specifically to get away from progressive rock.