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If you only see one farting corpse movie this year...

Surrounded by parps of sniggering publicity, walkouts at its first Sundance screening and the possible smell of stunt casting, Swiss Army Man – the poignant, meaningful, stunning and intelligent treatise on life, love, loneliness, and yes, letting one rip – could be lost in the fug.

And that would just blow.

Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's magical-realist black comedy plays like Samuel Beckett directed by Michel Gondry with a screenplay by Dave Eggers. Or Terrence Malick meets the Farrelly Brothers, as star of the show Daniel Radcliffe himself prefers.

Paul Dano plays Hank, shipwrecked and alone on an island, sending out heartbreaking notes scrawled on yogurt pots and empty plastic bottles, begging to be rescued, praying not to die alone.

Wracked with despair, Hank prepares to hang himself. But then he spots something on the shoreline – another human. It's Radcliffe, and he's clearly dead. Utterly bereft, Hank slips his head back in the noose. Until a moment of pure Beckettian tragi-comedy, where the corpse emits a massive toot.

Slipping between euphoric fantasy and surreal comedy, told via astounding visuals (the image of Dano riding Radcliffe like a jet ski through the ocean whooping as if he was rodeo cowboy, pulling down the corpse's pants for extra fart power is only a tiny taste) Swiss Army Man manages to be one of the most inventive and sensitive films of the year.

Certainly as a feature debut it's astonishing – bold, original and like nothing else you'll see.

And Radcliffe is brilliant.

Often struggling to shake off Harry Potter's robes, Radcliffe has always made brave choices but not all of them sit quite right. He didn't look old enough for The Woman In Black's widower, he wasn't quite troubled enough for Horns' Ig.

But as the corpse, who Hank names Manny, he's just perfect.

Manny does have lines (from his mouth), and Radcliffe shows his comic timing to be impeccable. As the increasingly versatile Manny, he's dragged, ridden, hoisted, fired and milked (sort of) – yet Radcliffe still describes it as the most fun shoot he's ever done.

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Perhaps part of that could be to do with the obvious chemistry he shares with co-star Dano, the pulsing heart of the film, desperate for Manny's friendship who slowly finds peace, understanding and, yes, love, though their companionship. Dano's performance is steeped in pathos, and he too is terrific.

The wilderness where they find themselves is like the world of Where The Wild Things Are, packed with ornate decorated shelters handmade from sticks and rubbish transformed by the light and the make-believe games of the men into a beautiful idyll.

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Like Where The Wild Things are, too, though, this film is likely to leave those who buy into it sniffing back tears by the end.

Dream-like, doused in magic-hour imagery, at heart Swiss Army Man still remains grounded in the pain of human reality. It has something to important say, it just chooses to say it the round the back way.

It's a hard sell, with an easy log line, but take it from us: Swiss Army Man is so much more than the sum of its farts.

Swiss Army Man is released in cinemas on September 30.

Directors: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert Screenplay: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert; Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Paul Dano, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Timothy Eulich; Running time: 97mins; Certificate: 15

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