And sometimes things feel excessively polite: in bed Sammy and Bob lie wrapped in the sheets

And sometimes things feel excessively polite: in bed, Sammy and Bob lie wrapped in the sheets in that decorous movie way that tells us we are seeing something more contemplative than just post-coital langour. But you wonder whose reserve is really at stake here – the characters', the actors' or Lonergan's own?As a stylist, Lonergan is an unapologetic conservative, and you wonder quite what impressed Martin Scorsese enough to make him sign on as executive producer. Stephen Kazmierski's photography has a clean TV-movie look about it that is always pleasing, never surprising. This is what you might call a well-kempt film.Ouch – I can't think when I last felt so churlish in my reservations about a movie. Good for Lonergan, though – he's a sympathetic director and a likeable actor too, playing Sammy's priest in a lugubrious, jowly performance apparently modelled on Deputy Dawg. So he's hardly a firebrand, but then American cinema has room for a Mr Moderation.

Lonergan probably has a healthy future ahead as a thoroughly reliable, thoughtful film-maker – You Can Count on Me could be his career manifesto.. Eleven great glass dishes radiate out in a circle across the stage, each cradling a shimmering pool of water The floor beneath is a bed of spreading sand. Bathed in a low yellowish light, a cluster of pale grey "boulder" people nestle down in this sand Almost imperceptibly they stir. They attempt to sit, but don't seem to have the strength, not sure perhaps if the time really has come to awake. Eleven great glass dishes radiate out in a circle across the stage, each cradling a shimmering pool of water The floor beneath is a bed of spreading sand. Bathed in a low yellowish light, a cluster of pale grey "boulder" people nestle down in this sand Almost imperceptibly they stir. They attempt to sit, but don't seem to have the strength, not sure perhaps if the time really has come to awake. This eerie, primordial landscape is the world of Sankai Juku, Japan's leading Butoh company, who bring their stylish mirage to Sadler's Wells next week.The piece is called Hibiki, which translates as "a distant resonance" Its every movement is considered, controlled, intense.

The figures learn to rise, peer into the water, unbow their heads and scan the sky. They move tentatively, with a low centre of gravity, feet connected firmly with the ground. Swaying in sinuous unison, their long white skirts swish while a red egg hangs like a pendulous plumb-line from each laced corset as the dancers' arms reach out to feel the air, like sleepwalkers.In a moment of elated elevation, the androgynes suddenly spring skywards, before sinking back down to the sand, and reassuming their position of foetal sleep. The water drips on, and a faint tracery of footprints now patterns the sand, like bird-tracks on an early-morning sea-shore."It's circular It circulates. Life is a continuous river," nods Sankai Juku's formidable founder, Ushio Amagatsu, after the performance.Continuity matters very much to Amagatsu. What does he require from his dancers? "Concentration and continuity". How has his work developed? "There is little variation in style.