Sarah Michelle Gellar

It stars Buffy as a post- apocalyptic LA porn star. So why has it disappeared, asks anne bergman

It has all the markings of a cult hit: a movie featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar, sassy starlet of the tongue-in-cheek TV classic Buffy, fulfilling her fans’ dreams by playing a porn actress, and directed by wunderkind Richard Kelly, whose debut film Donnie Darko was described as "a high school movie directed by David Lynch". So what has happened to Southland Tales?

The film caused a ruckus when it was previewed at Cannes in May, garnering some of the worst reviews of any movie in competition. But a Sony Pictures exec, spotting the cult potential, picked up Southland Tales and asked Kelly to edit the 160-minute film down to two hours.

The cast looks like a crazy shopping list of teen favourites and cult heroes. It includes Justin Timberlake, The Rock, gross- out movie favourite Seann William Scott, Kevin Smith (better known as a director than an actor), former pop starlet Mandy Moore and even the English actress Miranda Richardson.

Yet there is no sign of Southland Tales on Sony’s release schedule into 2008. Instead, what is available to Kelly fans is a series of graphic novels that tell the back story of Southland Tales. Written by Kelly, and illustrated by Brett Weldele, the first two books are already out, with the third due in mid-December.

Like Darko, Southland Tales is an amalgam of genres: part science fiction, comedy, thriller and even - with Moby providing the soundtrack - part musical. And, again like Darko, which Film Four recently named one of its ’50 Films to See Before You Die’, the new film requires its audience to wrestle with the prospect of apocalypse.

Set in 2008, Southland Tales unfurls in Los Angeles three years after two nuclear attacks, as the US teeters on the brink of social, economic and environmental disaster. Kelly has said his film asks uncomfortable questions about US homeland security policy and civil liberties issues, post 9/11. (Ironically, just before Cannes, the US government reportedly reviewed Kelly’s passport and detained him after a name similar to his appeared on the terrorist watch list.)

Meanwhile, the questions remain: Will Buffy fans ever get to see Gellar in Southland Tales? Will it go straight to video - not such a threat, perhaps, given that Darko only took off after it left the cinemas and went to DVD? Or will it simply end up in obscurity, a perpetual cinematic "what if?" Stay tuned.