Roman Polanski's elegant, gripping thriller The Ghost Writer is not about teenaged girls, not in any way at all. Which means my conscience is clear in recommending that you not miss this fantastic film. Polanski's ongoing, decades-long legal troubles, so recently in the news again, make him hard to embrace as a human being. But with The Ghost Writer, he proves, once again, that he is among the most accomplished filmmakers working today. Working from a novel by Robert Harris, Polanksi has crafted a film that is gorgeously simple to look at yet deeply involving in its story, visually minimalist and populated with characters who enthrall you even when you're not sure if you like them.

The opening moments of the film are so starkly graceful that I can't stop thinking about how cleanly Polanski drops us into the middle of a sordid tale of personal and political deception that spans decades, nations, and crimes from the most intimate to the most globally influential. An empty car sits on a ferry crossing gray New England waters on a blustery winter's night. Horns blare as other vehicles must go around it to disembark. Then the car waits alone as a tow truck scoops it up off the ferry deck, setting off its alarm. Then the car sits, surrounded by flashing police lights, on the dock. Then it's morning, and a body has washed up on a beach.

There hasn't been a word of dialogue the whole time. And already the film is positively dripping with intrigue.

Cut to Ewan McGregor in a fancy London restaurant, discussing a project with his agent: The former prime minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), who left office in disgrace, is looking for a new ghost writer for his autobiography, and Ewan should totally take the job. Professional banter bounces back and forth for a few minutes, during which -- if you're not paying close attention -- you may miss the little mention about how it was Lang's previous ghost writer who washed up dead on that New England beach. That sense of the impersonal ominous that creeps up over that opening bit with the ferry and the car now rains down on a guy we like, and you almost feel disappointed when he takes that ghosting job, because you know it'll only get him into trouble. Which it does.

This is hardly groundbreaking cinema, but it is an example of something that's increasingly rare these days: a popcorn movie for grown-ups. For all its sleek sophistication, there's something also wonderfully old-school about it, in the underlying attitude that movies can be ridiculously entertaining in a preposterous way -- Writer crashes into a wonderfully ludicrous ending -- but still not dumbed down to the level of adolescent interest. It's even telling how McGregor's character, the hero of the film, never gets a name: he's just "the ghost" or "the writer." He's not anonymous, exactly, and he's not keeping secrets ... but he's pretty much the only character onscreen who isn't. It makes for a fascinating conundrum of cinematic ruses and trickeries that continue to haunt you even after the film is over.

The Ghost Writer is available now on DVD.

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MaryAnn Johanson writes all her own words at FlickFilosopher.com. (email me)