The Top 10 Films You Didn't See in 2010

Sadly, these esteemed venues rarely venture now beyond the latest arthouse and indie offerings. They still provide a vital service and Oxford should be grateful that it has two cinemas that refuse to kow-tow to the mainstream muscle of the Hollywood machine. But, every now and then, it would be nice if the Phoenix and the Ultimate Picture Palace welcomed some of the many touring programmes that are on offer throughout the year.

Until quite recently, the Phoenix used to take selections from the London Lesbian and Gay, the London Australian and UK Jewish film festivals. But, unlike other theatres in the Picturehouse chain, it now tends to focus on titles from the weekly release schedule. Thus, Oxford audiences are forced to miss out on fascinating features that are regularly enjoyed by their counterparts in such other university cities as Bath, Brighton, Cambridge, Exeter, Southampton and York.

No one is expecting the UPP or the Phoenix suddenly to become outposts of the National Film Theatre. But each could benefit from a more adventurous screening policy that would help restore Oxford's reputation for having a vibrant film culture. Perhaps this whistlestop survey of the past year's festival highlights will prompt readers to add the own voices to a call for a bit more cine-eclecticism.

Before launching into the Top 10, there are a number of pictures worthy of honourable mention.

The best North American items are Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (in which Dolan's chic Montreal twentysomething competes with gal pal Monia Chokri for the affections of new-in-town Niels Schneider) and Aaron Katz's Cold Weather (which sees Oregon dropout Cris Lankenau teaming with sister Trieste Kelly Dunn to track down his missing girlfriend), while the pick of the documentaries are Frederick Wiseman's Boxing Gym and Leon Gast's Smash His Camera, which respectively profile Texan fight coach Richard Lord and contentious paparazzo Ron Galella. South of the border, the trio to seek out comprises Martin Carranza and Victoria Galardi's Amorosa Soledad (with flighty Argentine Inés Efron dithering over a romance with dullard architect Fabián Vena), Anahí Berneri's It's Your Fault (in which Erica Rivas excels as a doting Argentinian mother accused of harming her children) and Pablo Stoll's Hiroshima, a so-called `silent musical' that follows a hilariously inconsequential day in the life of Uruguayan slacker Juan Andrés.

Japanese cinema had a most productive 12 months, with the standouts being Hajime Kadoi's Vacation (a Kieslowskian study of the bureaucracy of death that sees prison guard Kaoru Kobayashi volunteer to supervise an execution to earn a week's paid holiday to get to know new wife Nene Otsuka and her young son), Kôji Wakamatsu's Caterpillar (which chronicles the tense relationship between limbless and hideously burned Sino-Japanese War hero Shima Ohnishi and his increasingly resentful wife Shinobu Terajima) and Nobuyuki Miyake's Lost & Found, in which Shun Sugata delivers a poignant performance as the new clerk in a backwater station's lost property office, whose devotion to duty improves the lives of his world weary clients. By contrast with this cosy tale, Brillante Mendoza's Lola offers an unflinching insight into the harsh conditions along Manila's waterways that are endured by Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio, whose grandsons were respectively the victim and the perpetrator of a fatal mugging in the Philippine capital.

Shocking truths also emerged in Eyal Sivan's documentary Jaffa: The Orange's Clockwork, which shows how a fruit known in the West as a Christmas treat was actually a token of conquest and oppression. Another equally impressive and equitable Israeli picture was Avi Nesher's The Matchmaker, a coming-of-age saga set in the year after the Six Day War that centres on teenager Tuval Shafir and the marginalised folk he encounters in Haifa's Low Rent district through his association with limping Romanian émigré, Adir Miller.

The latter's brusque nature finds echo in Olivier Rabourdin's gruff chauvinism in Séverine Cornamusaz's Coeur Animal, as the Alpine farmer tries to prevent ailing wife Camille Japy from becoming too friendly with Spanish labourer Antonio Bull. Basque septuagenarian José Ramón Argoitia becomes equally suspicious of wife Itziar Aizpuru's growing friendship with childhood confidante Mariasun Pagoaga in José Mari Goenaga's For 80 Days, after they meet while visiting comatose patients in a San Sebastían hospital. And more mixed signals drive the action in Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor's Yo, Tambien, as Down Syndrome graduate Pablo Pineda develops a crush on brassy office co-worker Lola Dueñas.

Another odd couple relationship develops in Andrus Tuisk's Bank Robbery, as timid Estonian teenager Henri Kuss receives a crash course in growing up from his tattooed, ex-boxing uncle, Hannes Kaljujärv. Fourteen year-old Anna Karczmarczyk also learns the hard way when she becomes torn between fitting in with the chic clique at school and seducing class geek Franciszek Przybylski in Pole Katarzyna Roslaniec's disconcerting study of globalised adolescence, Mall Girls. And, finally, Romanian Cristi Puiu provides an even more sobering insight into post-Communist ennui in Aurora, a disturbingly matter-of-fact study of a killer awaiting his moment.

10) Zero
Caprice plays its part in Pawel Borowski's Zero. However, nobody seems to be fully in control of their destiny in this slickly orchestrated, multi-stranded odyssey across Warsaw that rather betrays the debuting director's background in advertising. Considering how much happens, Borowski has surprisingly little to say about anything, as his unnamed characters hurtle around intentionally and accidentally impacting upon each others' lives with little thought for the consequences of their actions. Yet while this postmodern approach will frustrate those hoping for insights into such hot-button topics as infidelity, surveillance, pornography, paedophilia, the state of the health service, the decline of the family and the rise of a new class system, this is never anything less than expertly made and irresistibly compelling.

Company chairman Robert Wieckiewicz sets the wheels in motion by detailing private eye Bogdan Koca and his mute assistant Zbigniew Konopka to spy on chic wife Aleksandra Poplawska, who relies on mother Joanna Bogacka to babysit while she conducts an affair with toyboy underling Michal Zurawski. Meanwhile taxi driver Marian Dziedziel ferries other lost souls around the city, including doctor Maria Maj, whose encounter with a gigolo eventually ties in with the stories of newspaper vendor Andrzej Mastalerz (who can't afford a life-saving operation for his son), outwardly respectable gent Michal Tarkowski, skin flick producer Przemyslaw Bluszcz and his pregnant mistress Roma Gasiorowska, and puppet pedlar Slawomir Rokita, his soft-hearted wife Boguslawa Schubert and their robber son, Rafal Mohr.

Some of the pieces need forcing into place, particularly the ones concerning a drunken businessman, a casual bar pick-up and the shocked wife who finds them coupling in the kitchen. However, Borowski deserves credit for keeping over 20 stories in the air and resorting to contrivance in only a couple of them to ensure the loose ends are all neatly tied.

9) The Desert of Forbidden Art
A failed artist who dedicated his life to collecting Uzbek cultural artefacts and the avant-garde paintings proscribed by Moscow, Igor Savitsky was a remarkable character and both his achievement and his legacy have been well served by Tchavdar Georgiev and Amanda Pope's exceptional profile. Narrated by Ben Kingsley and with voice-over contributions by Ed Asner and Sally Field, this is a compelling chronicle of courage in the face of Communist intransigence that acquires a shocking contemporary relevance through the threat now posed to the collection in the Nukus Museum by rising fundamentalism.

A White Russian who became an archaeologist after his family lost everything in the 1917 Revolution, Savitsky became fascinated by Uzbekistan while on a dig in the north-western province of Karakalpakstan. Initially, he collected costumes and items of ornate folk art. But he soon began amassing the 40,000 works of illicit art that would otherwise have been destroyed on Kremlin orders. Among the artists he championed were Mikhail Kurzin, Alexander Volkov, Ural Tansykbaev, Nandezha Borovay, Elena Korovay, Yevgeny Lysenko, Alexander Nikolaev and Ivan Komarovsky and the documentary sketches in the details of their clashes with the authorities against Gennadi Balitski and Alexander Dolgin's reverential images of their ravishing pictures.

While Irina Korovay and Valery and Alexander Volkov reminisce about their parents, critics John Bowlt, Lidia Iovleva and Andrei Sarabianov extol the virtues of the painters and New York Times journalist Stephen Kinzer and onetime Communist Party boss Kallibek Komarov recall Savitsky's genius for working the system in order to divert state funding into preserving outlawed works. But the most considered opinions are delivered by Marinika Babanazorova, who succeeded Savitsky as the Nukus curator on his death in 1984 and is not only concerned by the impact that the climate is having on the collection, but also fears for its fate if militant Islam ever comes to power in the region.

Making solid use of newsreel and photographic stills, Georgiev and Pope combine cultural, political and personal history with considerable assurance. The story of how Volkov was forced into denouncing Kurzin during a show trial in the 1930s is deeply moving, as is the account of Borovay's suffering during her seven-year detention in a dehumanising gulag. But this is as much a celebration of ingenuity and artistry as a memoir of authoritarian philistinism and tyranny and the bold, richly coloured items on view will linger long in the memory.

8) The Last Report on Anna
The 1956 Hungarian Uprising is just one of the landmarks recalled by Márta Mészáros's The Last Report on Anna, a dramatic speculation about a Communist attempt to lure Social Democrat politician Anna Kéthly out of her Belgian exile in 1973. Impeccably structured around a labyrinth of flashbacks and reveries, this is a satisfyingly complex picture that not only captures the mood of the differing periods, but also succeeds in satirising the security network while also emphasising its menacing omniscience.

As the last Russian train leaves Hungarian soil in 1991, historian Ernõ Fekete meets brother Jákob Ladányi in a Budapest bar to break the news that he was persuaded to act as a government lackey in the early 1970s. The scene cuts to the same location, two decades earlier, as Fekete agrees to use a trip to a conference on Walloon literature in Brussels to befriend Enikö Eszenyi, who has been in exile since the failure of her bid to appeal to the United Nations to support Imre Nagy's coalition. Dancer wife Gabriella Hámori has high hopes for the assignment, but both card-carrying father Gábor Máté and activist uncle György Cserhalmi have their misgivings, with the latter being particularly dubious, as he was Eszenyi's lover before circumstances separated them.

Arriving in Brussels, Fekete receives his instructions at the embassy from handler Adél Kováts. But Eszenyi and sister Zsuzsa Czinkóczi instantly suspect his motives and only relent when he gives Eszenyi a box of keepsakes entrusted to him by Cserhalmi. Fekete admires Eszenyi for her resistance to anti-Jewish laws in the 1930s and her patriotism during the war. But he is frustrated by her refusal to accept that things have improved since her defection and is embarrassed by her taunting during meetings with acolyte Tibor Gáspár and Beata Fudalej (as Golda Meir who befriended Kéthly in New York in 1956).

However, she humiliates him twice in front of the newly arrived Hámori - at Eszenyi's birthday party and at a reception following his lecture, when Kováts's clumsy attempt at politicised small-talk prompts Eszenyi to storm off. Abandoned by Hámori (who flees to Paris) and bereft by the news of Cserhalmi's death, Fekete is left to endure Kováts's pity and a lifetime of under-achievement.

Produced by Pál Sándor, this is a typically dense and involving Mészáros drama. Imposingly photographed by Emil Novák and meticulously designed by Tamás Banovich, it switches deftly between scenes of great historical significance to more intimate moments, such as the jetty tryst when Eszenyi received the cherished box and the diaphanous scarf and book of poetry it contained. Both she and Fekete (who doubles as his younger uncle) are superb, with the former's fierce political commitment being tested by pangs of nostalgia and romance, while the latter's unsuitability for treachery undermining his efforts and costing him everything he has schemed for. It's nearly 60 years since Mészáros started directing and while this may not be comparable to Adoption (1975) or the Diary quartet (1982-2000), it's still a powerful and provocative tribute to an evident inspiration.

7) Sex, Okra and Salted Butter
Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's Sex, Okra and Salted Butter marks a dramatic departure from the more serious-minded Bye-Bye Africa (2001), Abouna (2004) and Darratt (2008). Set in Bordeaux, this droll domestic comedy centres on a Malian exile's struggle to raise his family when his nurse wife falls for one of her white patients. Gently probing the process of assimilation, while also challenging entrenched prejudices, this makes for lively, affectionate and deceptively perceptive viewing.

Baffled as to why Ivorian wife Mata Gabin would want to abandon him and their three sons, Malian patriarch Marius Yelolo pays frequent visits to the hospital where she works in an increasingly desperate bid to shame Gabin into coming home. However, youngsters Charles-Etienne N'Diaye and Vincent N'Diaye seem surprisingly phlegmatic at the turn of events, while older brother Dioucounda Koma is far more concerned with selling cars and dating new boyfriend Andrew Isar than his disapproving father's mental state. Browbeaten by the elders of his diasporic community, Yelolo seeks solace in Jewish neighbour Lorella Cravotta. Yet, while she hopes for romance, he views her more as a surrogate housekeeper - that is, until Isar asks him to shelter homeless Guinean Aïssa Maïga.

The focus shifts slightly after Yelolo invites Gabin's sister Marie-Philomène Nga to stay in the hope she can broker a reconciliation. Indeed, it even loses momentum slightly as Nga imposes her will on Koma's stuffy boss and lunches with Gabin and her oyster farmer beau, Manuel Blanc. But, when Koma announces that Maïga is pregnant with his child, Yelolo accepts the fib at face value and arranges a soiree that will finally allow him to pluck up the courage to tell Cravotta how he really feels about her.

Closing on a neat twist, this is a consistently amusing satire on traditional African attitudes to gender, sexual identity and masculinity. Both the indigenous and the immigrant menfolk are revealed to be less in control than their posturing would suggest. Yet, while Nga can accept Gabin's adultery and Koma's homosexuality, she appears put out by Yelolo dancing cheek to cheek with the homely Cravotta. Brightly played by a fine ensemble and directed with a wry wit and keen sense of social absurdity, this is as sharp at it's entertaining.

6) Tuesday, After Christmas
Radu Muntean follows up Boogie (2008) with another intense drama that relies on naturalistic dialogue to tell its deceptively simple story. Shot mostly in long takes that make concentrated use of the widescreen space, this is essentially a domestic saga that explores universal themes. But Muntean also offers some astute insights into the new Romanian class system and its consumerist mentality.

Despite being married to Mirela Oprisor for a decade, bourgeois Mimi Branescu has fallen heavily for Maria Popistasu, the dentist who is fitting his daughter, Sasa Paul-Szel, with braces. Despite only being together for five months, there is a playful cosiness about their post-coital chatter in the opening sequence. But they are about to be parted for the Christmas holidays, as Popistasu is leaving Bucharest to stay with her widowed mother.

Branescu leaves his mistress's bed to go shopping with Oprisor and his relationship with her is just as easily familiar, as they search for a snowboard for Paul-Szel and later tease old friend Dragos Bucur about his penchant for trophy girlfriends. However, Branescu's two loves meet head on the following day when Oprisor insists on coming to Popistasu's surgery to discuss the necessity of Paul-Szel's painful treatment and the younger woman is so livid at being placed in an invidious position that she heads home without returning Branescu's calls.

The next day, he invents a business meeting to apologise to Popistasu in person and receives a frosty reception from her protective mother. However, he succeeds in coaxing Popistasu round and promises to tell his wife about their affair - even though he would much prefer to maintain the status quo - and he breaks the news in an excruciating scene, in which Oprisor devastatingly slips between shocked incomprehension, overwrought recrimination and steely decisiveness, as the hapless Branescu tries to assure her that he never meant to hurt her.

Muntean subjects the viewer to one last harrowing sequence, as Branescu attempts to pretend that everything is normal during Christmas Day with his parents. Indeed, the way in which he and Oprisor use the distraction of some carol singers at the front door to slip the presents under the tree without Paul-Szel noticing is perhaps the most poignant moment of the entire film, as it's clear that he has thrown away an enviable home life for an uncertain future.

Impeccably choreographing Tudor Lucaciu's camera movements to prevent the lengthy dialogue passages from seeming stagy, Muntean forces the audience to share every emotion in this superbly acted ménage. Oprisor and Popistasu are outstanding and while Branescu's character is perhaps too slightly drawn to explain why he could attract two such vibrant women, his dichotomy allows the acerbic socio-political comment that simmers in the background and suggests that Romania is still a nation caught between two worlds.

5) Tomorrow There Will Be....
Chilling proof that the dark days and deeds of the early Communist era have yet to be forgotten is provided in Jan Hrebejk's record of a stage performance of Aleš Brezina and Jirí Nekvasil's opera, Tomorrow There Will Be..., which draws on state sources to recreate the persecution of Dr Milada Horáková, the 48 year-old Czechoslovak National Socialist politician whose execution at Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 drew protests from such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Sir Winston Churchill. Superb lighting and design, plus the aggressive percussive drive of the score, make this a distinctly unsettling experience, as Hrebejk confirms with his periodic shots of a captivated audience.

Placed under surveillance by Dr Hora's StB secret police after she visited the Austrian border region in the spring of 1948, Horáková was finally arrested the following autumn and the libretto sets great store by revealing the political motivation for what became a show trial of 13 defendants whose guilt was presumed long before court proceedings started. With Sona Cervená playing Horáková and voicing some of the accusations made against her and Jan Mikušek sporting a newspaper suit to essay the different apparatchiks responsible for compiling and prosecuting the case, the action is relentless and there is something terrifying about the vehemence of the interrogation and the injustice of the process, which is reinforced by the insistent chanting of the Canti di Praga, as a group of factory workers sat at a long table and commenting on the various stages of the procedure, and the hideous detachment of the five girls from the Kuhn Children's Choir, who wear starched white shirts and blood-stained aprons to play the attorneys hand-picked by the Communist regime to ensure there would be no acquittals.

The sentencing duet between Cervená and Mikušek, the plea for mercy made by Horáková's father and teenage daughter (which emphasised her opposition to the Munich Pact and the torture she had endured at the hands of the Nazis between 1940-44) and the final letter of resigned encouragement for her family and supporters are deeply moving. But the standout segments involve Mikušek and the Canti di Praga, as they plot Horáková's downfall, fabricate evidence and decide upon the optimum manner of managing the trial so that none of the accused could effectively defend themselves or make inflammatory statements.

4) Susa
Rusudan Pirveli adopts an unflinching naturalism that outstrips the harshest examples of neo-realism in the exceptional Susa. Photographed with a restless handheld camera by Mirian Shengelaya to capture a coarse lyricism that nevertheless leaves the viewer in no doubt about the poverty that the characters endure, this is yet another keenly observed exposé of the failure of the Eastern European democracies to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the collapse of Communism.

Twelve year-old Avtandil Tetradze lives with his mother Ekaterine Kobakhidze in a dilapidated estate to the north of Tbilisi. With husband Giorgi Gogishvili a long-time absentee, Kobakhidze slaves at Levan Lortqifanidze's bootleg distillery, while Tetradze makes a few extra coppers delivering bottles to regulars in the nearby town. When not traipsing through muddy, potholed streets or paying protection money to bullies Viktor Ksovreli and Givi Kartvelishvili, Tetradze amuses himself with his homemade kaleidoscope and hangs out with Paata Khvedelidze, who has escaped the hooch business and now dreams of bettering himself by striking out on his own (even though he lives in a shack and seems to have got himself involved with dealing and organised crime).

Much of this relentlessly grim drama's early action concentrates on Tetradze, as he makes deliveries to such cheerless customers as a deli owner and the concierge at a backstreet bingo parlour. It's a tough existence, as not only is the bag heavy, but Tetradze is regularly chase by security guards in the market area, who resent him selling illicit booze on their patch. However, he stashes the bottles (which he has wrapped in cloth to protect them, on Khvedelidze's advice) in a rubbish dump and calmly trudges back to retrieve them after receiving the latest warning from a cop who seems to rather sympathise with his plight.

One day, however, Gogishvili returns and Tetradze is convinced that things will take a turn for the better. But his father is a broken man (although it's not made clear whether he has failed to find profitable work elsewhere or has been in prison) and he latches on to Tetradze for something to do while Kobakhidze is at the factory. Tetradze is not only embarrassed by his father's presence, but he also resents the fact that he spend their hard-earned cash on snacks and does nothing to protect him when he is captured by Ksovreli and Kartvelishvili and locked in a room in an abandoned building as punishment for missing a payment.

Urushadze and scenarist Giorgi Chalauri offer no solutions, as Tetradze's fortunes will only improve significantly when he is old enough to carve his own niche. But, it's clear that most roads are dead-ends in this rundown and deeply depressed milieu and that Tetradze has diminished his chances of making good by showing his contempt for the exploitative Lortqifanidze. Not since David Bradley played Billy Casper in Ken Loach's Kes (1969) has such a pugnacious kid seemed so small and vulnerable in a world that he tries to meet head on without having the first idea of how it really works.

3) Little Nicholas
Played to perfection by a knowing cast and charmingly capturing the misconceptions of childhood in a more innocent age, Laurent Tirard's affectionate adaptation of René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé's 1959 bestseller, Little Nicholas, has been a runaway hit in its native France and should delight audiences of all ages, as well as intriguing those familiar with Goscinny from the Asterix the Gaul books (which are drolly referenced here in the magic potion episode).

The picture opens ebulliently, as Tirard uses an essay question about what 10 year-old Nicholas (Maxime Godart) wants to be when he grows up to introduce chums Alceste (Vincent Claude), Geoffrey (Charles Vaillant), Clotaire (Victor Carles), Eudes (Benjamin Averty), Rufus (Germain Petit Damico) and Agnan (Damien Ferdel) and set the tone for the cascade of comic incident to follow. However, it's the revelation by classmate Joachim (Virgile Tirard) that his life is about to be ruined by the birth of a baby brother that convinces Nicholas that his own bickering parents (Kad Merad and Valérie Lemercier) are also expecting and that they will abandon him in the woods like Tom Thumb to make room for the interloper. Consequently, he decides to hire gangster Blind Jack to kidnap the baby and begins trying to raise the money to pay for his services, unaware that he has actually contacted a garage owner, who thinks Nicholas wants a car towing away.

When not chronicling Nicholas's misadventures with soppy neighbour Marie-Edwige (Elisa Heusch), teachers Sandrine Kiberlain and Anémone, school supervisor François Damiens and principal Michel Duchaussoy, Tirard also follows the misfortunes of his father, as he tries to impress his haughty boss Moucheboume (Daniel Prévost) with a dinner party that goes spectacularly wrong after mother has a couple of drinks to calm her nerves. The school health inspection and the bid to steal Geoffrey's father's car on a steep Parisian slope are equally hilarious. But there's never a dull moment in this breezily nostalgic romp, whose slender storyline consistently plays second fiddle to such gleeful set-pieces as the calamitous encounter with florist Louise Bourgoin and the visit of education minister Michel Galabru.

The juvenile cast is splendid, with the perpetually fretting Godart and the sweetly dense Carles standing out. But it's the grown-ups who steal the show, with Merad and Lemercier particularly amusing as the bickeringly devoted couple whose every word and deed is misinterpreted by their charmingly naive son.

2) Kamome Diner
Despite being adapted from a short story by Yoko Mure, Naoko Ogigami's Kamome Diner is a slice of Finnish feel-good that owes a considerable debt to the deadpan films of Aki Kaurismäki, as it follows thirtysomething Satomi Kobayashi in her bid to reinvent herself by introducing home-style Japanese cooking to the resistant residents of Helsinki's harbour district. However, her only regular customer is teenager Jarkko Niemi, who has a penchant for anime and hope Kobayashi knows the words to the `Gatchaman' theme.

But while she doesn't, Hairi Katagiri does. She arrived in Finland after deciding to begin again and pointed to a map at random. Having nowhere to stay, she agrees to move in with Kobayashi and becomes her waitress. Nevertheless, the trio of naysayers (who act like a Greek chorus on the action) refuse to give the menu a try and not even Kobayashi's cinnamon buns can tempt them inside. But, one day, stranger Markku Peltola wanders into the diner and imparts the secret of making perfect coffee. Together with Kobayashi's omusubi rice balls, the irresistible aroma starts to bring in the patrons, as well as another stray, Masako Motai, who came to Finland after devoting her life to nursing her parents and is now stranded after losing her luggage.

Had USC graduate Ogigami remained inside the Seagull Diner, with its décor in the colours of the Finnish flag, this would still have been an amiable comedy about three misfits finding their niche in a foreign land and spreading a little Japanese culture in the process. However, by having angry local Tarja Markus force them into exploring their new milieu and attempting to integrate with their neighbours, she fashions a gently incisive study of identity, belonging and the universal appetites that link humanity. Aided by Tuomo Virtanen's luminous photography, she uses repetition and revelation to show the ex-pats gradually acclimatising to their surroundings. But her restrained style also suggests a bit of fresh air blowing through the gendai-geki that has changed surprisingly little for a genre that's supposed appraise to on modern life.

1) La Ventana
Production designer Rafael Neville, cinematographer Julián Apezteguia and sound designer José Luiz Díaz make key contributions to Carlos Sorín's sublime study of age and mortality, La Ventana. Set in the glorious Patagonian countryside surrounding a shabbily grand pink hacienda, the action centres on octogenarian writer Antonio Larreta, as he gird himself to enjoy one last day in the sun before bidding farewell to his prodigal pianist son, Jorge Díez.

Having spent the morning fussing over Larreta, housekeeper María del Carmen Jiménez and maid Emilse Roldán are distracted by the impending arrival of the visitors and the incessant chatter of piano tuner Roberto Rovira. Consequently, Larreta is able to slip through the front door and totter with through the fields, saline drip in hand, to watch cattle being herded on the horizon and a youth proudly brandish the hare he has poached for his supper. However, as Larreta now spend much of his time bedridden or writing at a small desk in his room, his exertions prove too much for him and he collapses.

Discovered by some passing cyclists, Larreta is driven home and propped up in bed in time for Diez and haughty wife Carla Peterson to pay their reluctant respects. Insisting on toasting the couple in vintage champagne, the old man fleetingly revisits a moment from his childhood when his babysitter kissed him goodnight as his parents hosted a party downstairs. Mistaking Peterson (who has only remained in the room because it's the sole place she can get a signal for her mobile phone) for the fondly remembered silhouette, Larreta's vision begins to dim like the slow fade at the end of a silent movie.

A work of immense visual beauty and sensory subtlety, this graceful reverie feels indebted to Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries (1957) and Cries and Whispers (1973). But there's nothing derivative about this immaculately judged last hurrah, which rejoices in such small moments of pleasure as Larreta freeing a trapped fly, chatting with his faithful doctor about Adolfo Bioy Casares's The Invention of Morel before entrusting him with his signed copy of Jorge Luis Borges's A Universal History of Infamy and taking a valedictory pee in the great outdoors. Even Rovira's discovery of two tin soldiers entangled in the piano wires has its poignant significance, as the undemonstrative Diez pockets them without a word the moment he sets eyes on them.

With every sight and sound treasured for its simple beauty, this is a touching treatise on the constancy of nature and the transience of life. But it's also a deeply felt and, at times almost spiritual, paean to the flickering indelibility of cinema itself.