The films of Harmony Korine are easy to appreciate, but enjoying them is, shall we say, a bit trickier. After grenading indie cinema at 19 via his honest, wrenching script that became 1995's controversial "Kids," Korine made his directorial debut with 1997's now-cult classic "Gummo," hailed by half as uncompromised art and reviled by the other half as depraved indulgence. And though Korine didn't receive an actual directing credit on 1999's schizophrenia sideshow "julien donkey-boy" - perhaps the only Dogme 95 tenet that film didn't shoot to hell - its equally polarizing reception cemented his status as a fearless individualist, the spawn of a Herzog-Cassavetes-Jodorowsky three-way.

The problem with Korine's directorial efforts is that while he's created some grotesquely bewitching imagery, it's been difficult to find anything resembling heart amidst the dead cats and masturbating nuns, which has made any real emotional investment nearly impossible. But after a nine-year absence (!) from feature filmmaking, Korine returns with "Mister Lonely," an occasionally abstract allegory told through two unrelated tales of isolation and faith that positively shock with their sweetness and humanity. Without sacrificing his rebellious edge, the former enfant terrible seems to have... well, if Korine hasn't actually turned the corner, then he definitely knows where the corner is, and he doesn't appear to be afraid of that, either.

Charming Diego Luna ("Y Tu Mama Tambien") puts his melancholy brown eyes to effective use as our ostensible title character, a Michael Jackson impersonator who perks up upon meeting "Marilyn Monroe" (the daring Samantha Morton, maybe the best of her generation) as they ply their trade in a Paris nursing home. (Chanting "Live forever! Don't die!" to a roomful of fading seniors is... wow.) Marilyn tempts Michael to a pastoral commune in the Scottish Highlands filled with other impersonators, including Madonna, the Three Stooges, and an absurdly profane Abe Lincoln.

"Mister Lonely" gets much surreal mileage from gorgeous scenes featuring the fake-famous in bizarrely mundane dioramas, like Abe Lincoln riding a motorbike with Michael Jackson, or the Pope (British film fixture James Fox) in bed with the Queen (Anita Pallenberg, who famously screwed her way through the Stones). It's "a place where everyone is famous, and no one ages," and a place where Marilyn is married to Charlie Chaplin, but, as she rightly points out, he sometimes reminds her of Hitler. Though the commune's focus is putting on a show for the village, they're putting even more effort into sustaining their fantasy world, rendering them ill-equipped to deal with reality when it inevitably, tragically arrives.

Korine's comments on the fickle, lonesome nature of celebrity are likely rooted in his own experiences over the last decade and a half, and whenever his admittedly maddening narrative methods get too conceptual, it helps to have profound talent like Luna and Morton as emotional tethers. German auteur Werner Herzog is also hanging around, starring in the film's more metaphysical thread about Central American nuns whose deep trust in God makes for visually dazzling miracles. The ultimate meaning of brides of Christ happily plummeting through the sky was lost on me, but days later, my own mind is still in total freefall.

Though it's a minor quibble, John Malkovich's now Connery-like refusal to abandon his Chicago-by-way-of-the-theahtah accent to play Austrian artist Gustav Klimt nearly harms filmmaker Raúl Ruiz's "Klimt" from the get-go. And it was already a hard sell: more deathbed reverie than straightforward biopic, "Klimt" attempts to illustrate its subject through a series of opulent fever-dream flashbacks. Sylph-like Saffron Burrows ("The Bank Job") co-stars as a French dancer and her double (maybe), and Stephen Dillane - he totally owned Thomas Jefferson in "John Adams" - plays an enigmatic bureaucrat (maybe), while the gossamer plot concerns itself with fin de siecle matters of art, love, and censorship.

The original version of "Klimt" runs nearly 40 minutes longer than the one available to US screens, so it's not surprising that the theatrical cut is a luscious mess, beautifully rendered eye candy denied the opportunity to flesh out anything solid. But Malkovich, as always, is fun to watch, perpetually walking that tightrope between awful and astonishing. 

Mister Lonely

(NR), directed by Harmony Korine

Opens Friday

Klimt

Directed by Raúl Ruiz

Screens Friday at the Dryden