Sex, lies and WikiLeaks: The Sundance experience

This year's Sundance festival was the year of the cougar. A host of films celebrated older women getting it on with teenage guys. A Teacher was about a high-school English teacher fond of back-seat quickies with one of her students. The Lifeguard follows the same set-up, this time with the action in a swimming pool.

But they were trumped by Two Mothers, about a couple of lifelong female friends, played by the radiant Naomi Watts and Robin Wright, who hook up with each other's surfer-dude sons. If you find that concept thrilling, be aware that none of these films was of the quality of the ultimate cougar movie, The Graduate. In fact, they all seemed tawdry and contrived.

That mirrored a general slump in quality at the festival - the weakest line-up in recent years. One particular disappointment was Before Midnight, the final part of Richard Linklater's trilogy about the tempestuous love affair between an American writer (Ethan Hawke) and his French wife (Julie Delpy). Set in Greece, its gorgeous locations give no respite to a non-stop stream of tedious midlife bickering.

Another let-down was the new documentary by Alex Gibney, Oscar-winner for Taxi to the Dark Side, who premiered WikiLeaks: We Sell Secrets, about whistle-blowing and transparency. Offering no new insight into the mind and soul of Julian Assange, Gibney did not even secure an interview with his subject, his excuse being that Assange had asked for $1 million to talk.

There were some bright spots. Narco Cultura was a heart-stopping documentary about the Mexican drug cartels that have made Juarez the most dangerous city on earth. Director Shaul Schwarz gained access to both the cops and the criminals to reveal a horrifying world of murder and torture, which the police are incapable of investigating for fear that they too will be decapitated.

Twenty Feet from Stardom was another well-received documentary, about the unsung backing singers for acts such as the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. Life According to Sam was an arresting but hopeful film about a boy suffering from progeria, a deadly accelerated-ageing disease.

Of the narrative features, the outstanding drama was Ain't Them Bodies Saints, a haunting, beautifully shot romantic thriller about an escaped robber (Casey Affleck) trying to reunite with his gorgeous wife (Rooney Mara) and stave off the romantic attentions of a local cop (Ben Foster). The best comedy was In a World…, which revolved around a vocal coach in Los Angeles who dreams of becoming a voice-over star.

Sex was a central preoccupation. There were biopics of two of the greatest figures in the sexual revolution. Paul Raymond, Britain's answer to Hugh Hefner, was impeccably played by Steve Coogan in The Look of Love. Across the pond, Amanda Seyfried starred in Lovelace as Linda Lovelace, the young Catholic woman who was lured into spending 17 days in the porn industry, which turned her into a legend as the star of Deep Throat, the Gone with the Wind of blue movies.

British filmmakers were flying the flag, with 15 features and eight shorts. One of those present at a lavish brunch thrown by the British Film Commission was "the Moo Man", aka Steve Hook, a Sussex dairy farmer and an advocate of raw milk, who became the subject of the eponymous film about the disappearance of traditional agriculture. Delighted to be in what he called the moo-vie business, he had lunched with Robert Redford the day before, and had just signed his first autograph.

When asked what would happen if a fan threw her knickers at him, he replied, "My wife would tell me to throw them back. And my other girls - the cows - would get upset, too."

British actors flourished. Daniel Radcliffe earned plaudits as Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, one of two films about the Beat poets. Felicity Jones, honoured two years ago with an acting award for her performance in Like Crazy, returned with a starring role in Breathe In, as a foreign exchange studio who causes havoc with her host's family. Kaya Scodelario, who found fame in Channel 4's Skins, is tipped to win this year's Best Actress gong for her role as a troubled teenager in Emanuel and the Truth about Fishes.

First-time British screenwriter Wentworth Miller made a mark with Stoker, a weird Gothic fairytale, on which he collaborated with Oldboy director Park Chan-wook, and a stellar cast led by Nicole Kidman. Stylistically overwrought, the Korean director's English-language debut is a coldly sensual, ultimately empty montage of jealous stares.

Some films sold for big dollars. Fox Searchlight bought the coming-of-age comedy The Way, Way Back for a reported $10 million, one of the biggest outlays in the festival's history. That sale was facilitated by its big names: Steve Carell and Toni Collette, and the writing team behind the Oscar-winning The Descendants.

Meanwhile, a reported $4 million was handed over for Don Jon's Addiction. This was another sex-themed film, directed by and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, about a man rendered incapable of intimacy by his insatiable appetite for porn. A similar figure was spent on Austenland, a watchable fluffy movie about a Jane Austen fan's obsession with Mr Darcy.