Rent or Buy (From The Oxford Times)

Rent or Buy

7:42am Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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Having stormed both the bestseller charts and the box office, Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finally comes to DVD. Fans of the book may be bewildered by the speed with which scenarists Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg dispense with a sizeable chunk of the text in the opening 20 minutes. But, as the pace slows, Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation develops into a satisfyingly twisting, although at times gratuitously twisted, whodunit.

Despite deciding to lay low after being set up for libel charge by the conglomerate he was trying to expose, Swedish journalist Michael Nyqvist accepts a commission from ageing industrialist Sven-Bertil Taube to find out who murdered his favourite great-niece back in 1966 and keeps sending him pressed flowers on his birthday as a taunting reminder of her perennial gift. With nothing better to do until his prison term begins, Nyqvist moves into a cabin in the grounds of Taube's island estate and begins delving through the archives for clues.

Meanwhile, punky computer hacker Noomi Rapace, who has been investigating Nyqvist for Taube's lawyer, begins to take an interest in his activities. Under state supervision following a crime committed in her childhood, Rapace has been made a ward of sadistic businessman Peter Andersson, who blackmails her into giving him sexual favours. However, having brutally paid Andersson back for raping her, Rapace allows Nyqvist to trace her and she moves into his lodgings to help with his enquiries.

The discovery of a photograph from a street parade convinces the pair that the 16 year-old knew her killer. But further investigation not only leads them to conclude that the supposed victim is not dead, but that the family's Nazi past is behind the case of mistaken identity that has tormented Taube for 40 years.

The original title of both book and film - Men Who Hate Women - sets the tone for this deeply disturbing tale. Rapace's encounter with Andersson and Nyqvist's climactic brush with death are both pitilessly gruesome and Oplev ensures that Eric Kress's camera captures every sordid detail. He similarly lingers over the lesbian Rapace's unexpected seduction of Nyqvist. But, for the most part, Oplev is content to pore over the dusty documents and fading photographs that set the sleuths on the right track. Consequently, this often feels more like a gothic police procedural than a chiller in same vein as The Silence of the Lambs.

Unfortunately, the simmering sense of Sweden as a morally corrupt and unregenerately misogynist society is allowed to dissipate, as the ingenuity of the plot takes over from the disconcerting undercurrent. But Rapace makes a feistily troubled anti-heroine and if the romance with Nyqvist doesn't entirely convince, it's never allowed to distract from the mystery. Forbiddingly designed by Nils Sejer to contrast the snowscapes with the gloomy interiors, this is always more polished than compelling and it will be fascinating to see what second unit director Daniel Alfredson has done with concluding parts of the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, which were similarly edited down from 180-minutes mini-series.

Lucio Fulci was renowned for comedies of sexual manners before he turned to giallo and Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) built on the reputation forged with One on Top of the Other (1969). It reunited him with Jean Sorel, who plays the philandering husband of London socialite Florinda Balkan, who has persuaded politician father to find Sorel a position in his prestigious law firm. Troubled by a series of dreams, in which she explores her sapphic side with trippy neighbour Anita Strindberg, Balkan visits psychiatrist George Rigaud and confides her fears about murdering Strindberg with a letter opener. When that very crime transpires and Genn receives a letter threatening to name Balkan as the killer, he hires investigator Stanley Baker to expose the blackmailer. However, with Balkan afraid that she might actually have acted out her debauched fantasy, it proves to be trickier case than the whistling sleuth had anticipated.

With Ennio Morricone's score adding to the mood of unease created by Vincenzo Tomassi's sharp editing of Luigi Kuveiller's disconcerting visuals, this is one of Fulci's better efforts. Much of its notoriety lies in the footage of the eviscerated dogs. But Fulci creates many memorable sequences here, including the psychedelic party and the hallucinatory reveries. But the standouts involve Penny Brown throwing paint-daubed knives at a white wall behind Balkan's step-daughter, Ely Galleani, and hippie Mike Kennedy relentless pursuit of Balkan through a labyrinth of dark tunnels and an abandoned church. On the downside, some of the dubbing is dubious, while the use of zooms and split screens occasionally feels gratuitous. But if proof were needed that Fulci could often rival Mario Bava and Dario Argento, there's plenty here.

Long hailed as a cult classic - if only for being the first horror film recorded in stereo - Jorge Grau's Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) has finally arrived on disc. However, this homage to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) has been so shockingly dubbed that dialectologists will be doubled up with laughter. Nevertheless, this odyssey into the idyllic Lake District has more than its share of gruesome moments, as well as some caustic insights into the establishment's attitude to the generation that made the 60s swing.

When Christine Galbo wrecks his motorbike at a petrol station, trendy London antique dealer Ray Lovelock accepts both a lift up north and the offer to use Galbo's car to visit his friends. However, they get lost en route to her sister Jeannine Mestre's place and, while Lovelock is asking a farmer for directions, Galbo is attacked by the lumbering Fernando Hilbeck. Nobody believes Galbo's story, however, and it's only when brother-in-law José Ruiz Lifante is slaughtered by Hilbeck that Lovelock wonders whether he has been infected by the ultrasonic radiation machine that was undergoing a crop-dusting trial at the farm.

Bullet-headed cop Arthur Kennedy has no time for such fanciful speculation. Indeed, not even the revelation that Hilbeck was pronounced dead the week before at the Manchester morgue seems of interest, as he is more concerned about the fact that Mestre is a recovering heroin addict and he doesn't want drug-crazed hippies on his patch. When Lovelock and Galbo head into Lancashire to get to the bottom of the mystery, Kennedy gives chase, convinced the long hair is a Manson-like Satanist. But even he is forced to concede that something rum is going on after cannibalistic encounters at the city's cemetery and general hospital.

Atmospherically photographed by Francisco Sempere and creepily scored by Giuliano Sorgini, this disjointed chiller just about convinces the viewer that zombies are roaming the English countryside. But Grau's view of the fascistic police clearly owes more to his experience of Francoist Spain than his knowledge of Z Cars or Dixon of Dock Green. Kennedy and Lovelock make serviceable adversaries and the undead cut disturbing figures, as they rampage in search of victims. But the dubbing of the continental cast is truly atrocious and seriously undermines the malevolent mood.

The town-and-country dichotomy recurs in Götz Spielmann's Revanche, a suspenseful, Oscar-nominated thriller that is as much notable for its eerie evocation of the stillness and silence of nature as its satisfyingly twisting existentialist plot. Ultimately, this is more a film about blame than revenge and, in having most of the characters take responsibility for both their choices and the consequences of their actions, Spielmann reminds viewers of the folly of victimhood and the danger of confiding secrets to those not in one's emotional or moral debt.

Resisting attempts to move him into a home, ageing widower Hannes Thanheiser is determined to cling on to his bucolic existence in the small Austrian town of Gfohl and, thus, accepts the friendship (but never the charity) of shopkeeper Ursula Strauss and her cop husband, Andreas Lust, whose own lives would be significantly improved by a child. Their idyll is shattered, however, by Thanheiser's grandson, Johannes Krisch, the lackey of Viennese brothel owner Hanno Pöschl, who comes to rob the burg's bank in order to deliver Ukrainian prostitute Irina Potapenko from drudgery, danger and debt by opening a restaurant in Ibiza.

But, during the course of the bungled raid, the far from heroic Lust kills Potapenko and Krisch lays low on Thanheiser's farm while he decides what to do next. However, Krisch's growing fondness for Strauss and some unanticipated empathy with Lust threatens to change the foursome's dynamic.

Magnificently photographed by Martin Gschlacht (who is slowly emerging as one of the continent's most accomplished cinematographers), this riveting study of desire, isolation, guilt and redemption proves surprisingly optimistic in its assessment of human weakness. The performances are as taut as Karina Ressler's clipped editing, with the 83 year-old Thanheiser contributing several moments of exuberance and piquancy. However, it's the stolen trysts between Krisch and Potapenko in the seediest of surroundings and the post-miscarriage sadness driving Strauss away from Lust that leave the deepest impression, as the prospect of discovery and violence becomes increasingly inevitable.

Equally fascinating is Yoshihiro Nakamura's Fish Story, which has been brilliantly adapted from a Kotaro Isaka novel by Tamio Hayashi.

Cutting between time frames with reckless abandon, the action opens in 2012, as wheelchair-bound Kenjiro Ishimaru rolls through a deserted Tokyo with a meteorite hurtling through the sky above him. Seemingly undeterred, he enters a record shop and chastises owner Nao Omori for playing mediocre music as the world is about to end. However, Omori has a story to tell about punk band Gekirin - who would have been huge had they not split up and let The Sex Pistols take all the glory - and a seminal track that he confidently predicts will save the planet.

The scene shifts to 1982, as student Dakaku Hama discusses rock with his pals and alludes to the legend that the minute's silence in the Gekirin song `Fish Story' contains the sound of a woman screaming that can only be heard by those with a sixth sense. Hamada later meets Mai Takahashi at a bar and she predicts that the world will one day be indebted to him. She also warns him that he will meet a woman from whom he shouldn't be separated. Naturally, Hamada presumes that Takahashi means herself and he dreads to think what fate will befall humanity when she is stolen away from him by a campus bully.

As the scenario continues to defy linearity, it alights in 1975, as vocalist Kora Kengo strives to make Gekirin a success. But the standout sequence takes place in 2007 and centres on a boat to the northern island of Hokkaido. Having fallen asleep on a school trip, teenager Mikako Tabe becomes increasingly hysterical before waiter Mirai Moriyama attempts to console her with a tale about his father urging him to become a champion of justice. No sooner has he uttered the line than the craft is seized by hijackers and Moriyama leaps into hero mode in a martial arts sequence that is hilariously daring in its Zen-like precision, comic athleticism and tragic outcome.

It scarcely matters that this breathtaking interlude doesn't seem to fit into the grander scheme of things, as Hayashi supplies a summary of what's gone before prior to launching into the satisfying denouement. Indeed, it's this disregard for the rules of screen storytelling that makes this so exhilarating. The direction, photography and design are pretty perfunctory (although this undoubtedly has much to do with the limited budget). But the cast enters fully into the spirit of the gleefully offbeat action that is bound to attract a considerable cult following.

The fate of a band is also central to Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats, which follows Iranian musicians Ashkan Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi in a race against the clock to organise a covert gig, record an album and make arrangements to perform in Europe. The winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and resembling a mumblecore hybrid of Fatih Akin's Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005) and a youthful variation on Ghobadi's own Half Moon (2006), this is a celebration of the urban iconoclasm that helped drive this summer's post-electoral protests. But while it reveals the extent to which underground culture, mobile phones and social networking sites have taught a generation of Iranians to kick against the system, this is also a cautionary tale that warns about expecting too much too soon.

Fresh from another spell inside for playing music without a licence, Ashkan Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi receive an invitation to appear in London. However, they lack the documentation to secure their passage and could do with some new bandmates. So, when they meet wheeler-dealing bootlegger Hamed Behdad at an illicit recording studio, they decide to entrust him with the details, while they write some English songs. Behdad introduces them to an ageing rascal who can get them their passports and visas and then transports them around Tehran on his motorbike to watch a range of indie groups in the hope of recruiting instrumentalists for their tour.

However, things don't go smoothly, as the musicians Koshanejad and Shaghaghi are most keen to hire aren't free and they struggle to find a suitable venue for their debut show. Moreover, Behdad proves to be highly unreliable and Shaghaghi becomes convinced that he's going to rip them off. Yet when there's a delay with the money that Koshanejad's mother is supposed to be wiring from Germany, Behdad sells his bike to pay for the fake paperwork. And that's when he sees his contact being bundled into the back of a police car.

Ghobadi can't be faulted for trying to showcase as many bands as possible in this whistlestop survey of the Iranian rock scene. The mix couldn't be more eclectic and he shoots the various electric bluesmen, heavy metalists, daff-tapping folkies, strutting rappers and indie boppers in locations as different as cellars, rooftops, sitting rooms and ancient ruins. He also frequently complements the numbers with MTV-style videos (undoubtedly the film's visual highlight) that tellingly expose the harsh realities of life under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But for all Koshanejad's awkward hipness and the scarf-clad Shaghaghi's constant fretting, the linking episodes (with their surfeit of transient characters) are rather dull. There are exceptions, such as the droll price list for black-market documents and Behdad's motor-mouthed explanation to an unseen cop why he's in possession of so many counterfeit movies. But it's only on the day of the concert, when Koshanejad and Shaghaghi track down the missing Behdad to a wild party across town, that the story's poignant human element finally kicks in.

A very different Iran emerges in exiled photographer and video artist Shirin Neshat's Women Without Men. Adapted from an acclaimed novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, this deeply personal account of life in Tehran during the 1953 coup that toppled Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi started life as a series of gallery installations. But Neshat has singularly failed to find a way of linking the four vignettes into a coherent narrative.

Opening with a woman in her late twenties committing suicide by jumping from a rooftop, the action flashes back to Shabnam Tolouei being admonished by fundamentalist brother Bijan Daneshmand for listening to the radio news and defying his command to marry a man she deems unsuitable. Tolouei's neighbour, Pegah Ferydoni, claims to empathise with her plight. But she is much more interested in impressing Daneshmand, in the hope he will propose. However, when she hears the recently interred Tolouei calling to her from a shallow grave in the family courtyard, Ferydoni helps exhume her and watches with astonishment as her spectral friend wanders away.

Meanwhile, taciturn prostitute Orsi Tóth is so disturbed by the sight of a client's face disappearing before her eyes that she runs away naked from the brutal brothel run by Shahrnush Parsipur and violently scrubs herself in the local baths. Across the city, army officer's wife Arita Shahrzad encounters an old flame and thinks back fondly to the time when she was considered an elegant and erudite hostess. Abandoning her martinet spouse, she finds a rundown mansion in the wilderness and announces her intention to start a literary salon.

She is eventually joined by Tolouei, Tóth and Ferydoni, who has since been raped while out alone. The women find solace in an Edenic forest to the rear of the property. But, on the night of Shahrzad's gathering, the military descends and the country's contradictions muscle in through the gates with bluff general Tahmoures Tehrani and his men.

Impeccably photographed by the seemingly ubiquitous Martin Gschlacht and with a haunting score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, this is a frustrating feature on both an aesthetic and a political level. The allegorical allusions to the suppression of a popular democratic movement are extremely powerful, but they prevent the full resonance of the story's feminist aspects. This is doubly a shame, as the confident Shahrzad and the painfully emaciated, but mesmeric Tóth deliver poignant performances. However, much of the staging is stiff and the dialogue often pretentious. Thus, while this won the Silver Lion at Venice, the bestowal seems to owe more to reputation and philanthropy than genuine cinematic merit.

Pia Marais's autobiographical debut, The Unpolished, also picked up a festival prize at Rotterdam. However, this joint winner of the Tiger Award takes a very different approach to the subject of finding oneself.

Sharing a cigarette with mother Pascale Schiller, 14 year-old Ceci Chuh is keen to return home to Portugal. But she's forced to stay in Germany because drug-dealing father, Birol Unel, has just been released from prison and is keen to move into the house that Schiller has inherited from her recently deceased father with their equally eccentric friends, layabout Georg Friedrich and free-loving Joana Preiss. Determined to make the best of a bad situation, Chuh tells the neighbourhood kids that she is a diplomat's daughter and soon acquires a devoted circle of friends. However, her plans to register at the local school are thwarted by her indolent parents and their latest scam threatens to disrupt their already desultory lifestyle.

Whether spinning yarns to impress her new pals or snapping back with a sassy line to silence the excellent (and ultimately vulnerable) Friedrich, Ceci Chuh makes quite an impression in her first film. But this is as much a study in acceptance as stability and Chuh and her folks eventually come to an understanding, even though it takes a rather ill-judged rant from an outsider to bring about the rapprochement. With Diego Martinez Vignatti's handheld visuals conveying both the addled atmosphere of the trippy household and Chuh's sense of insecurity, this is also a shrewd insight into the shortcomings of communal living, as a combination of lust, immaturity and hypocrisy expose the flaws in the grown-ups' psyches. However, the determinedly elliptical structuring occasionally feels a little haphazard.

Finally, somnambulist stilt-walker Leandro Stivelman's rite of passage proves even more bizarre in Argentinian auteur Eliseo Subiela's Don't Look Down.

Still struggling to come to terms with father Hugo Arana's death, Stivelman is convinced that a ghostly hand is leaving him notes during the night. By day, he clunks around Buenos Aires in a sandwich costume to advertise a fast food joint. But he has never forgotten helping Arana deliver cemetery ornaments and he is certain that someone is watching over him.

Then, during one of his nocturnal peregrinations, Stivelman crashes through a skylight and lands on the bed of the beguiling Antonella Costa. Assured by mother Maria Elena Ruaz that Stivelman is a gift from a higher power, Costa sets herself to teaching him everything she knows about Tantric sex - and, from the 18 extended passages of gymnastic love-making that follow, it's clear she knows quite a lot. However, Costa is from Barcelona and her imminent departure forces Stivelman to forget his other woes.

Mystical, mischievous, but occasionally prone to verging on the ridiculous, this unconventional romance is definitely not for those consternated by the sight of naked flesh. Subiela and cinematographer Sol Lopatin spend much of their time up close and personal with the handsome couple, who deserve great credit for making the endless erotica seem so sensual. But they also merit praise for keeping straight faces during the sequences in which Costa stresses the importance of the 81st thrust and Stivelman has out-of-body experiences at the height of his ecstasy.

Ultimately, few will notice that much of the philosophising is superficial and the denouement is disappointingly saccharine. But don't dismiss this simply as a piece of sophisticated smut. Subiela seeks to do more than pictorialise pages from the Kama Sutra and his ideas on connecting, enjoying, appreciating and letting go are sometimes disarmingly poignant.