Slipstream is a movie I missed out on first time around in the festival – a fantastic multi-faceted foray into the world of movies and the nature of filmmaking by Anthony Hopkins. As a freshman to independent cinema, Hopkins dazzles and even surprises us with his witty and often caustic take on Hollywood movies and cinematic conventions in what essentially is a movie within a movie.

Hopkins himself plays the lead – a burned out Hollywood scriptwriter called Felix Bonhoffer who retreats into his own inner sanctum when life becomes too unbearable and whose increasingly chaotic state of mind has spiralled out of control – leading us down all kinds of weird and spaced out rabbit holes, tapping into different streams of consciousness. Imagine a computer system malfunctioning and suddenly imploding and spitting out a whole whack of gobbledygook that’s impossible to interpret. This is basically what happens to Bonhoffer who permits us to take a long, hard look inside the wonderful if dishevelled mind of a creative wunderkind that tricks you at every conceivable turn into believing that what he sees and perceives is real and is not just another cerebral malfunction.

You know that Hopkins’s character has gone completely whacko when characters from his script start invading his personal space; the director and producer he believes were hired to shoot his movie called Slipstream wander about aimlessly in his computer monitor and actors accuse him of foul play and cutting them out of the script. The dazzlingly bright cinematography like a white-hot streak of light that fizzes and fades away like an electrical short circuit represents the hallucinogenic world that increasingly alienates him from reality. But what is reality; the truth is often a blurred line and the way the images build upon and deconstruct perceived reality, themselves random, fleeting, eclipsed, are as illogical and as insubstantial as dreams. The director clearly enjoys playing around with filmic conventions from the experimental to the comedic, merging indie cool with Hollywood glamour and the stylized aestheticism of arthouse.

The screenplay flashes back and forth furiously from past to future to present, barely giving us a chance to catch our breath, not intending for us to fully comprehend as this would inevitably tamper with that which is the magic and artifice that is pure cinema.

This is a bold move by the academy award winning actor, more than ably supported by a top dollar cast that includes John Turturro, Christian Slater and Stella Arroyave who take Hopkins’s self-referential play on film, its obsession with old Hollywood movie stars and today’s cult celebrity-ism as far as they can go without patronising us. Hollywood has always enjoyed dissecting itself; Sir Anthony Hopkins is the latest in a not inconsiderable line-up of hot celebrity totty to invent his own satirical incarnation. And they get away with quite bit - the movie is packed with references to the likes of Kevin McCarthy - famous for his role in the Invasion of The Bodysnatchers - Scorsese and Pacino, even country crooner Dolly Parton. There’s also a fun touch of irony in there – a reference to the Welshman himself and his psycho-freak Lecter character.

If the movie speaks candidly about the nature of mental degeneration it speaks just as vehemently about the state of the movie industry even going as far as cracking a joke about celebrities being taken over by alien parasites. One of the characters reasons that stars are really ‘poddies’ because ‘the poddies run the whole goddamm show’. But maybe the whole thing is just one huge joke on us; it certainly felt like Mr Hopkins was taking the liberty of stretching the boundaries of entertainment on more than a few occasions, but it’s such compelling, mind blowing stuff that he just about manages to get away with it.

Check out the rest of our coverage from the 60th Annual Locarno Film Festival by clicking here.