(Cert 15, 126 mins): Starring Geoffrey Rush, Charlize Theron, Emily Watson, John Lithgow and Miriam Margoyles. Directed by Stephen Hopkins

Tragedy hiding behind comedy is the iconic stereotype of the clown - a bashed-about figure who makes everyone laugh yet remains strangely forlorn and unsmiling himself.

In modern times, this cliche is easily transferred to the comedian - a-laugh-a-minute on stage but the biggest of depressives off it.

Nowhere is this more classically seen than in the tragic tale of Peter Sellers' life, translated on to the silver screen here with a hearty cast of stars led by the inimitable Geoffrey Rush.

Rising through the comedy canon of fame from an average cheerful Goon to the star of Dr Strangelove, Being There and the Inspector Clouseau films, Sellers' suffered from an inner insecurity and lack of self-esteem that success only exacerbated.

"I do not know who or what I am," the star once claimed and director Stephen Hopkins' insightful biopic reflects this vision of a shell of a man who only comes alive while wearing one of his comic masks.

His most famous roles are mimicked with uncanny clarity at the same time as building a sense of the turbulent soul behind them.

The portrait painted is that of a mother-fixated, wife-beating monster who responded to his son's naughtiness by petulantly stamping on his toys and violently trashing first wife Anne's (Watson) flat after driving her into another man's arms.

He threatened suicide, publicly lusted after soon-to-be-second-wife Britt Ekland (Theron) and generally acted like a screaming child, yet the aim of this film is not, it seems, Sellers-bashing.

The question of whether the comic was a madman and fantasist who boasted of bedding Princess Margaret among many others or a hapless simpleton swallowed whole by celebrity has long preoccupied his fans and biographers.

Hopkins, a life-long Peter Sellers fan, aims to leave the door of ambiguity open and portray the complex character as a bit of both.

"I think you will find the film does not attack Sellers on any level. It is very compassionate," he says. "You will feel sorry for him."

Keeping the enigma alive is perhaps the film's strength. The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers has already received acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival and left main man Rush hotly tipped for a Best Actor Oscar.

His performance comes close to scratching beneath the surface of an essentially unknowable talent.