More restrained, yet more caustic than the popular mockumentaries of Christopher Guest, the innovative Stardom risks flying over unsuspecting audiences' heads with its dry humor and barbed media criticism. Yet for all its vitriol and comic restraint, the film still manages to entertain and provoke. By co-opting the formal elements of infotainment, renegade writer/director Denys Arcand and cinematographer Guy Dufaux give their film an immediately recognizable visual rhythm; from gaudy talk-show debacles to steadicam sequences that recall the most annoying moments on MTV's The Real World and House of Style, Stardom's disparate formats all seem instantly familiar. How many celebrities' lives have we seen played out in just these sorts of tacky forums? As the time line accelerates and nouveau supermodel Tina Menzhal moves inexorably from obscurity to the A-list to pop culture's trash heap, the film achieves a sort of temporal poetry. Like a Behind the Music episode without the intrusive voice-over, Stardom dissects the cycle of celebrity build-up and decay with perfect acuity. The inverse of the loquacious hit man protagonist from the similarly themed Man Bites Dog, Tina is at once hopelessly omnipresent and utterly inarticulate -- a human being glorified in image but reduced to mute ubiquity. And because she's not a real celebrity, burdened with meaning, we're free to empathize with the indignity of it all.