Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 27/6/2013)

Sadly, Gilles Bourdos has done little in Renoir to add to our knowledge or increase our understanding of one of French cinema's greatest talents. As much a portrait of the auteur's painter father Pierre-Auguste as a focused insight into the events that prompted Jean to become a film-maker, this adaptation of Jacques Renoir's memoir of his grandfather and uncle could not be more visually sumptuous. Owing much to Impressionist canvases and the 1936 featurette Une Partie de Campagne, the compositions of Taiwanese maestro Mark Lee Ping-Bing are sublime, while Benoît Barouh's production design enables Bourdos to capture the atmosphere in the idyllic retreat of Les Collettes in the village of Cagnes-sur-Mer on the Côte d'Azur. But, for all the meticulous attention to detail and evident sincerity of the project, this is too short of dramatic incident or psychological insight to be anything more than a ravishing work of heritage homage.

As 15 year-old Andrée Heuschling (Christa Theret) cycles along a sun-dappled country road in the summer of 1915, the only hint that there is a war raging in the trenches far to the north is an effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm hanging from a tree. As she approaches Les Collettes, she encounters the 13 year-old Claude `Coco' Renoir (Thomas Doret) strutting through the grounds in search of a distraction from the serenity of his father's enclave. He takes Dédée to the house, where she asks La Grand'Louise (Sylviane Goudal) if Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) requires a new model. She is taken to a studio in the garden, where she sees the 74 year-old artist in a wheelchair and so afflicted by rheumatoid arthritis in his hands that he has to have his brushes tied into his grip so he can work.

Despite still mourning the recent death of his wife, Aline (Michèle Gleizer), Pierre-Auguste is enchanted by Dédée and asks her to pose for him. She accepts and is offered her own room in the house so that she can be available whenever `le patron' needs her. Such is her self-assurance that she readily poses nude and attracts both the curiosity of Coco and the lowering resentment of La Grand'Louise and her assistant Madeleine (Solène Rigot), who have each posed for their master in the past. However, she makes the deepest impression on the middle Renoir son, Jean (Vincent Rottiers), who, like his brother Pierre (Laurent Poitrenaux) has been fighting in the Great War.

Wearing the uniform of the 6th Battalion of the Alpine Hunters, Jean returns on crutches, as he has narrowly escaped losing his leg to gangrene after being wounded. He resents the fact that his beloved nanny, Gabrielle Renard (Rohmane Bohringer), had been sent away by his mother before her death and wonders whether Dédée (who had been recommended by Henri Matisse) was intended as a parting gift of atonement for her husband. However, he soon comes to appreciate the beauty of her porcelain skin and flame-red hair and is grateful that she has sparked the ailing Pierre-Auguste's renewed creativity.

As he talks to his father, while watching him work in his studio and in the open air, it becomes clear that Jean has no notion what to do with his future. He tries to be helpful and makes the odd gesture towards keeping the bored Coco amused. But he is painfully aware of his limitations and has to be helped through a shallow stream by La Grand'Louise and Madeleine, who have carried Pierre-Auguste in his wheelchair so he can paint in a new location. Wandering away from the party, Coco sees a dead animal on the bank and gets another taste of the cruelty of death. But, while his father is frail, he has no intention of giving up the ghost just yet and manages a few steps on to the terrace at the coaxing of Dr Pratt (Carlo Brandt).

Dédée is obsessed with the cinema and adores the daredevil serial adventures of the American actress Pearl White. Jean admits that he enjoyed seeing Musidora in Les Vampires, but hasn't given the medium much thoughts. But he is becoming increasingly enamoured with Dédée and they make love after going fishing for eels by torchlight with some Italian boatmen. She urges him to make a career for himself in the cinema so that she can become his leading lady and a star of the silver screen and, despite his initial reluctance, he eventually agrees. Shortly afterwards, however, Jean gets angry with a peddler (Thierry Hancisse) who fails to respect his uniform and, such is his rekindled sense of patriotic zeal that his experience in an biplane prompt him to sign up to the fledgling air corps and Dédée is so furious with him for risking his life and reneging on his promise that she disappears.

Realising that his father is missing her, Jean tracks Dédée down to a seedy bar-cum-brothel in the nearby town and causes a scene when he tries to drag her home. Having already smashed some valuable plates in the kitchen when La Grand'Louise refused to let her boss around the maids (Cecile Rittweger and Joséphine Chillari), Dédée confirms her temperamental streak by resisting Jean's attempts to coerce her. But she returns to Les Collettes in time for a family picnic and smiles as the three siblings pose with their father and Gabrielle, who has been specially invited to see Jean before he leaves for his new reconnaisance squadron.

Closing captions inform us that Pierre-Auguste died in 1919 and that Jean survived the war to keep his promise to the newly renamed Catherine Hesseling, who starred in several of his early silent films. Yet, although they married and had a son, they separated in 1931 and, while he went on to make such masterpieces as La Grande illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu (1939), she slipped out of the limelight and died in poverty in a Parisian suburb seven months after Jean had passed away in Hollywood in February 1979.

A few lines of background information might not have gone amiss at the start of the film, either, as only those au fait with Pierre-Auguste Renoir's life and times will be up to speed with events as Dédée first enters his orbit. However, even though more might have been said about Aline, Pierre, Coco and Gabrielle, Bourdos and fellow scribes Michel Spinosa and Jérôme Tonnerre capably convey the tensions between Renoir père et fils and the effect that Dédée has upon their sensibilities. They also suggest her capricious side, although they may not have got the historical chronology exactly right, as most commentators state that Dédée only became Pierre-Auguste's model in 1917 (two years after Aline had died). This would also be more seemly, as Dédée would only have been 15 in the summer of 1915 and, even a century ago, a sexual relationship with the 21 year-old Jean would have been highly inappropriate. It might also have been more accurate to note that Jean had first developed a serious interest in cinema while watching Charlie Chapin comedies while immobilised following his injury (when his visiting mother had convinced surgeons not to amputate his left leg).

Such quibbles aside, this is an admirably played period piece that has been tastefully scored by Alexandre Desplat. But, having acquired a reputation for unconventional adaptations of novels by Jean-François Vilar (Disparu, 1998), Ruth Rendell (A Sight for Sore Eyes, 2003)  and Guillaume Musso (Afterwards, 2008), Bourdos seems to have adopted a disappointingly traditional approach that is closer in spirit to Bruno Nuytten's Camille Claudel (1988) than Martin Provost's Séraphine (2008). Too many set-pieces seem to have been concocted for their visual effect than their dramatic or thematic significance, among them the close-ups of paint swirling beneath the surface of the water jar and the long shots of the torches illuminating the fishing smacks in the dead of night, the paddling procession through the crystal clear stream and the bicycling Dédée's encounter with some bedraggled soldiers on the road.  Thus, while such tableaux are never anything less than striking, they merely prettify the action and deprive it of the depth and trenchancy necessary for convincing, compassionate and compelling family biography or artistic appreciation.

Having already impressed with Let There Be Light (1998) and Tales of Intransigence (2004), onetime documentarist Reis Çelik gives an object lesson in restraint and discretion in Night of Silence. The winner of the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, this is an engrossing variation on the Scheherazade story that lifts the lid on the traditions and tensions of rural Anatolia without being condescending or judgemental. Indeed, by following the example of Nuri Bilge Ceylan (who is thanked in the credits), Çelik succeeds in making his allegorical points without diminishing the poignancy of the human drama that is superbly enacted by Ilyas Salman and Ezgi Dilan Aksüt and photographed with intimate tact by Gukhan Tiryaki.

Clad in a red veil, 14 year-old Ezgi Dilan Aksüt looks tiny as she emerges from a car after crossing a snowy landscape to the village that is about to become her home. She has been betrothed to a man she has never met in order to end a long-running and often savage blood feud and she is welcomed with great enthusiasm by her new family and neighbours. She is urged her to be loyal to her husband, even if he beats her. But Çelik is keen to emphasise the celebratory nature of proceedings he records with evident fascination.

However, the tone changes once Aksüt is ushered into her bridal chamber and handed the white sheet that she will have to produce next morning to prove that she was still a virgin when the nuptials were consummated. Nervous at meeting her spouse and fretting about what the night might entail, Aksüt is dismayed to meet Ilyas Salman, a short, stocky sixtysomething who has spent much of his life behind bars for the murder of his mother and a man who threatened the honour of his clan. He is equally surprised to lift the veil and discover that Aksüt is so young and it slowly becomes clear that the careworn groom is every bit as inexperienced and intimidated as his teenage wife.

Sensing that Salman is not the type to force himself upon her, Aksüt seeks to delay the inevitable by asking questions and relating stories in the manner of the 1001 Nights fable. His responses are hesitant, as he doesn't wish to lose face or appear to have surrendered the initiative. But he is grateful for the delay, as he is not only ignorant when it comes to female anatomy, but he has also been scarred by his long years of incarceration and resents being placed in this potentially humiliating position by relatives who exploit rather than respect him. However, as dawn approaches, the pair know they are going to have to find a solution to their problem, as so much is riding on the success of their union. 

Opening with a blaze of colour and frantic activity, this intriguing drama settles to become a tense and often touching two-hander, as Aksüt and Salman get to know each other and gradually realise that while they may not be kindred spirits, they are not as different as their age and experience would superficially suggest. It says much for Çelik's subtlety as both writer and director that, with the exception of an inessential dream sequence, the encounter never seems staged. Moreover, the viewer is never made to feel like an intruder upon private grief.

Çelik dwells on the wedding customs with a sense of reverence that recalls the bucolic and folkloric preoccupations of his previous pictures. However, in highlighting the more antiquated practices, he is clearly critiquing the entire nation's entrenched acquiescence in patriarchy. But, even those unfamiliar with Turkish custom and politics will be entranced by the performances and the deceptive simplicity of a well-told tale that ends on a tantalising note of ambiguity. .

The fine art of spinning a yarn is further explored in Sarah Polley's teasingly self-reflexive documentary Stories We Tell, which confirms the impression made with two earlier studies of marriage under pressure, Away From Her (2006) and Take This Waltz (2011), that this acclaimed Canadian actress is also one the country's finest directors. Revelling in the spate of ironic coincidences attendant upon her tale, Polley uses her own family history to explore how narratives shift focus according to the perspective of the teller. This may not be the most original topic and Polley borrows heavily from Michelle Citron's Daughter Rite (1978) to help examine it. But her confidence in both her subject matter and her technique ensures that this remains compulsive viewing, even during the more intimate revelations that often leave the viewer feeling uncomfortably like an intruder.

The focus of the film is Polley's mother, Diane, who is first seen in monochrome in the mid-1960s delivering a rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'" as part of a television audition. Super 8 home movies follow to explain how she was the life and soul of the party and husband Michael and children John, Suzy, Mark and Joanna all testify to her being a wonderful mother and an irrepressible spirit. However, we learn that she had earned a certain notoriety when she scandalised polite Toronto society by abandoning her affluent husband and losing custody of her first two children in order to romance Michael, an English actor with whom she had become besotted during a production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. Michael and Diane had married soon afterwards and had even appeared in a couple of plays together, including Eduardo De Filippo's Filumena, which provided the basis of Vittorio De Sica's Marriage, Italian Style (1964), in which Sophia Loren cons Marcello Mastroianni to the altar by refusing to tell him which of her three sons is his.

Unfortunately, Diane had fallen for the characters that Michael played on stage and was more than a little disappointed when he quit acting to get a regular job so that they could afford a large house and a comfortable lifestyle. She, however, continued to run a casting agency and appeared in such TV series as Street Legal, and remained the extrovert party girl even after having two more children. In 1978, she was offered a part in the Montreal production of David Fennario's Toronto at the Centaur Theatre. Reading from the letter he had written Sarah when her life had changed forever in 2007, Michael admits that he rather relished the prospect of a few months of respite and readily gave his blessing for her to go. However, on paying her a weekend visit, he was pleased to find their old passion re-igniting and was delighted when Diane returned from the engagement to announce she was pregnant.

Following a change of heart en route to the abortion clinic, Diane gave birth to Sarah on 8 January 1979. As her siblings left home, she found herself the centre of attention. But, when Sarah was 11, Diane was diagnosed with cancer and died soon afterward. Bereft, Michael and Sarah became closer than ever, although a family joke began to circulate around this time that she bore no resemblance to her father whatsoever. What is not mentioned here, but is crucial to know, is that Diane had launched Sarah as a child star and she had earned the nickname `Canada's Sweetheart' through appearances in films like Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and the Disney Channel's Road to Avonlea. Moreover, even after she fell out with the latter in 1991 for wearing an anti-war badge at an awards ceremony, she continued to act and won acclaim for her work in such pictures as Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Isabel Coixet's My Life Without Me (2003).

In 2007, however, while preparing to shoot Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, in which a 118 year-old man tries to piece together his forgotten life under hypnosis, Polley decided to find out whether Michael was her biological father or whether, as family rumour suggested, it was really actor Geoffrey Bowes. John recalls overhearing an anxious phone call in which his mother had confided that she was pregnant in a way that made him suspect the hearer was the father of the child. But he had said nothing for 28 years and Diane's friends Ann Tait and Deirdre Bowen had similarly held their counsel. However, a few days after Sarah confronted Bowes and was assured that he was not her father, she received a message from film producer Harry Gulkin, who had scored a major hit with Czech exile Ján Kadár's Lies My Father Told Me in 1975. Happy to meet another of her mother's circle, Sarah was aghast to discover that the 79 year-old was her real father and he explained how they had been drawn to each other during the run of the play and how he had tried, on learning of the pregnancy, to persuade Diane to leave Michael and live with him in Montreal.

While still processing the news, Sarah was contacted by a journalist who wanted her permission to run the story and she recalls weeping on a park bench wearing Neanderthal make-up from Mr Nobody as she pleaded with the reporter to hold fire until she had had time to tell Michael. Naturally, he had been devastated by the disclosure and had tried to arrange his feelings in the long missive that forms the linking narration to the film (and which we see him recording under Sarah's impassive and exacting direction). He was even more distressed when the results of a DNA test confirmed Gulkin as the father, although Sarah was amused to notice that she shared a gummy smile with his other daughter, Cathy. The situation also impacted upon the lives of her other siblings, as all three sisters got divorced shortly after the truth emerged and it became headline news across Canada.

In an effort to come to terms with her mother's secret existence, Sarah decided to make this documentary and relations became strained for a time with Gulkin when he insisted that his was the only side of the story that mattered, as he alone had gone through the same emotions as Diane and had been forced to keep silent about his paternity after attending her funeral. Eventually, however, he was persuaded by Sarah's insistence on studying the way in which stories can become distorted and falsehoods can become accepted truths and agreed to be one of the many talking heads seen in the film. But it only gradually becomes clear that Sarah had also played sly visual games throughout the picture and that the photos and home movies had been leavened with grainily shot reconstructions in which Rebecca Jenkins had played Diane, Peter Evans had been Michael Polley and Alex Hatz had been Harry Gulkin.

With this realisation, comes relief that Sarah had not filmed herself breaking the news to Michael from several angles as he sat in anguish at the kitchen table and that the septuagenarian occupies the privileged position of being narrator, actor and interviewee and, thus, is allowed to blur the line between reality, memory and reconstruction in a unique manner. Michelle Citron had also staged vérité moments in Daughter Rite, which had also been accompanied by a poetic voiceover. But Polley potently shows herself talking through scenes with Rebecca Jenkins, as though she is discussing her own life with her mother, and promptly debunks this deeply moving incident by concluding with a shot of the sheepish Geoffrey Bowes admitting that he had slept with Diane after all.

Slickly edited by Michael Munn, ingeniously designed and photographed by Lea Carlson and Iris Ng, and cleverly costumed and coiffeured by Sarah Armstrong and Josie Stewart to complete the Super 8 illusion, this is probably no different from a thousand and one other domestic sagas in which families have managed to survive secrets and lies and renegotiated a new way of getting along. The fascinating aspect is that, while Diane is not there to defend her actions, nobody actually seems to blame her for her infidelity (as it is generally accepted that Michael wasn't the most demonstrative husband) and only John takes her to task for recklessly neglecting birth control arrangements while in the throes of passion. This could be taken as a comment on the status of women in the 1970s, but it also suggests that a family with a dramatic background is fully aware of the allure and power of the flawed heroine. Most of all, however, it confirms Polley's contention that the recollections of everyone in the film (including herself) are prone to reinterpretation by virtue of the circumstances in which they were recorded and their positioning in the final cut. Consequently, even the absolute truth (if it ever exists) can be brought into question by manipulation on the screen

Operating with great sensitivity, particularly towards Michael (whom she clearly still adores), Polley refuses to soft soap and, while she allows John the odd breach of the fourth wall, she keeps a firm grip on proceedings to prevent the account becoming too sensationalist or sentimental. But hard facts remain at a premium and it is evident by the close that a fair amount of damage has been done by Diane's elaborate charade, with even some of her offspring betraying their disappointment at her conduct. What's more, it isn't ultimately clear why Polley wanted to make the film (and subject her loved ones to such public introspection) or quite what she got out of it. This vagueness is reflected in the odd digression and self-indulgence, as well as the decision to keep Diane as an elusive enigma. Moreover, Polley stubbornly avoids expressing many opinions of her own, either on camera or in her voiceovered emails. But whether it proved cathartic or not, this is an ambitious, lucid and accomplished piece of film-making whose conclusions on the ownership of an episode and the authentic and unreliable memories it accrues will cause many to cast a backward glance at their own past.

Versions of the truth also dominate Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing, a documentary about the massacre of around one million Communists in Indonesia in 1965 that was so lauded on its festival premiere that Errol Morris and Werner Herzog agreed to come on board as executive producers. Herzog called it `powerful, surreal and frightening' and claimed it was `unprecedented in the history of cinema', while Morris insists it `demands another way of looking at reality'. Yet, while there is no question that this is a courageous, ambitious and distinctive attempt to do something different with actuality while alerting audiences to shocking atrocities committed by killers who show no remorse whatsoever for their crimes, this is also a work without a crucial historical context and one that avoids any explanation of its rationale or methodology. Consequently, it is impossible to know what Oppenheimer was hoping to achieve through his endeavours after his attempt to profile some of the survivors fell through in the face of official pressure. Moreover, it is difficult to discern who devised the strategies employed, what arrangements were made between the makers and their subjects, or how long the shoot lasted and which episodes were filmed at which specific time. Without this information, this has to be regarded as a compelling curio that singularly fails to have the same intellectual or emotional impact of more sombre investigations into acts of genocide elsewhere in the region, such as Rithy Panh's S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (2003) and Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath's Enemies of the People (2009).

The picture opens with a quote from Voltaire: `It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.' This is followed by a series of captions explaining what the film is about. But the full story can only be gleaned on the official website (http://theactofkilling.com/), which should be studied at length by anyone planning to see the film, as only then can any semblance of sense be made of what it contains.

In the North Sumatran town of Medan, ageing assassins Anwar Congo and Herman Koto go into a poor neighbourhood to find volunteers to help them recreate their actions of some five decades earlier when they responded to the assassination of six hardline generals by the PKI Party during an attempt to oust President Sukarno by beating, torturing and butchering hundreds of suspected Communists and their supporters. In all, around one million people were killed by these gangsters (who insist that the word derives from `free men') and Anwar and Herman have agreed to collaborate with the American-born, but Danish-based Oppenheimer because they want their deeds to be remembered. Indeed, Anwar is so proud of what he did that he takes the crew to the rooftop above what looks like a bag shop and demonstrates how he used a wire garrotte on his victims because it was less bloody and more efficient than other means of execution. He also does a little dance and explains how they often used to smoke dope while killing to make the experience more pleasurable. 

Syamsul Arifin, the Governor of North Sumatra, meets with Anwar and jokes that everyone used to be terrified of him because he was such a ruthless bandit. Yet, while Anwar is delighted by his reputation, he is happy to admit that he was making a living scalping tickets for the local cinema when the call to arms came. He deeply resented the fact that the Communists wanted to restrict the import of American movies like the Elvis Presley musicals that made him the biggest profits. But, as he and Herman get drunk in a bar, he concedes that he has started having nightmares about his crimes and wishes he could control them, as he knows what he did was necessary for the good of the country.

Newspaper publisher Ibrahim Sinik agrees that Anwar and his cohorts performed a vital national service and he recalls how he used to interrogate suspects in his office before dispatching them to Anwar for punishment. He admits his job as an editor was to convince the public to detest Communism and his efforts were supported by Pancasila Youth, a patriotic movement whose members still wear their orange camouflage shirts with zealous pride at rallies, such as the one addressed by leader Yapto Soerjosoemarno, who loves to play golf and follows a programme of `Relax and Rolex' when not denouncing his enemies.

Anwar and Herman readily acknowledge the debt they owe to the films of John Wayne, Marlon Brando and Al Pacino and the former has his grey hair dyed black to re-enact a noirish scene of grilling a suspect, which he asks Oppenheimer to pause because they can hear the call to evening prayer coming through the window. Having completed the sequence, he lights a cigar and says human rights mean nothing to him and he hates hearing people droning on about how important they are. His dislike of restraint on his activities becomes clear when he discusses the crackdown on Chinese residents in 1965 and how many gangsters continue to exact protection payments from them to this day. As if to prove the point, Oppenheimer shows Safit Pardede on his rounds in the nearby market. Yet, at a Pancasila meeting, Jusuf Kalla, who is the Vice-President of Indonesia, says that intimidation is sometimes necessary and that the country needs `free men' to stand up and be counted.

Having looked through some old photos and reminisced about how smartly they had dressed to kill, Anwar and Herman rehearse their extras for a house-burning scene with the assistance of former comrade Sundardi and current neighbour Suryono. Such is the authenticity of the role-playing that some of the children begin to cry. Yet everyone congratulates each other on how well they have done, as Anwar confides that this kind of activity was small beer and that he was once more sadistic than the Nazis he had seen on the big screen. They mock up a Western scenario, with Herman donning drag to play a belle who is threatened with rape and murder unless she co-operates. But Oppenheimer cuts away from this highly stylised situation to show Herman singing to himself as he lounges in a pink frock and head-dress and some dancing girls emerge from the mouth of a giant piscine edifice beside the sea that had once been a thriving restaurant.

Reunited with old pal Adi Zulkadry, Anwar jokes about reporter Soaduon Siregar claiming to have been a big wheel in 1965, when, in fact, he was a minor figure in Ibrahim Sinik's office. Despite being in the middle of having scar make-up applied to their faces, Anwar beckons Siregar over and introduces him to Zulkadry before they recreate a scene in which a Communist is being drilled about giving land to farmers in the hope of winning them to the cause. They debate whether they were more sadistic than their foes and Zulkadry is surprised to hear during a fishing trip that Anwar is becoming increasingly disconcerted by his dreams. He admits that an apology might do something to heal old wounds, but proclaims that he feels no pangs of conscience about the necessary evil he committed and urges Anwar to see a psychiatrist with the helpful reassurance that they are not just for mad men. Indeed, as they drive through the streets and recall the 1966 `Crush the Chinese' initiative, it is evident that Zulkadry continues to derive great satisfaction from stabbing innocent victims (including his girlfriend's father) and having everyone be afraid of him.

Back in make-up, he explains to Anwar that the only way to avoid guilt is to find the right excuse for one's actions and stick to it come what may. Thus, he remains unmoved as Suryono describes how his Chinese stepfather was dragged from the house one night and later found dead under an oil drum. He recalls how nobody helped his grandfather and his 11 year-old self recover or bury the body and how they had to move to a shanty town soon afterwards, where the lack of facilities prevented him from learning how to read or write. Anwar and Zulkadry listen patiently, but decide the story is too complicated to merit a dramatisation and Suryono nods sadly before being summoned to play a torture victim in the next sequence. 

Looking on, Siregar says much of this is new to him, as he had no idea at the time that such atrocities were being perpetrated. Anwar and Zulkadry are highly sceptical that somebody working for a newspaper could have remained ignorant and accuse him of trying to cover his tracks. They return to the task of blindfolding Suryono prior to his demise and, as he sobs on being denied permission to see his family, a faint flicker of discomfort crosses Zulkadry's face, as though the tableau had revived a suppressed memory. However, he soon regains his edgy poise and frets that the documentary is going to make them look soft in comparison to the Communists. He admits they could be tough, too, but suggests that some things are best kept secret and, when Oppenheimer asks if he considers himself a criminal, Zulkadry says he was a warrior battling a very real enemy and if he contravened the Geneva Convention then he is entitled, as the victor, to rewrite history from his perspective to justify his actions. Unmoved, he avers that he would be cleared by any court in The Hague, but thinks there is little to be gained by raking over the past.

Meanwhile, Herman has been chosen to stand for election and he tries to pick up some oratorical tips from watching Barack Obama on the news. He canvasses for votes on the streets and finds it tougher going than he expected, as while he had hoped to make a quick buck by going legit, he finds that many of the people he approaches are only willing to support him in return for a bribe. Marzuki from the North Sumatran parliament says that Pancasila is involved in lots of illegal activity and acknowledges that the majority of those at party rallies are being paid to attend so that the function looks good on the news and seduces undecided voters. 

As Herman gets a crash course in Indonesian democracy, Anwar is teaching his grandchildren not to persecute an injured duckling. However, the focus soon switches to the filming of a nightmare sequence, in which a ghost with an elaborate costume and a black-and-white painted face stands at the foot of the bed and shakes its long, pointed fingers at him. For some reason dressed in drag, Herman directs the scene and criticises Anwar for exhibiting insufficient fear. In a bid to reconnect with his crimes, Anwar takes a train into the countryside and wonders whether his night terrors might stem from his failure to close the eyes of a man he had once beheaded with a machete. He sits in the nocturnal jungle, but the camera is too distant to know whether he is genuinely searching his soul or merely striking a photogenic pose.

Back in the studio, Anwar sits on a chair as Herman (once again in women's clothing) cuts into his neck with a hacksaw. He fakes a throaty rasp to convey his agony and goes to inspect the dummy head that will be used to complete the illusion. As the extras goad Herman into finishing the job, Anwar sits in disturbed silence  He also protests during another set-up when he seems to be buried up to his neck in sand and a dragged-up Herman taunts him with what is supposed to be his plucked-out liver.

This grizzly sight comes between a guided tour of the material rewards for being a paramilitary and a shot of Herman and Anwar sitting in pink outfits while dancing girls emerge from the fish structure as they rehearse their musical routine. But things are about to take an even more bizarre twist, as Anwar appears on a chat show on the state-run Televisi Republik Indonesia channel and brags openly about his crimes, while the female presenter allows the various Pancasila supporters in the audience to shout slogans before she chimes in by declaring that God hates Communists. But, even before one has had a chance to digest this hideous digression, Oppenheimer cuts to Deputy Minister of Youth and Sport Sakhyan Asmara arriving on the location set to supervise the reconstruction of the 1965 torching of the village of Kampung Kolam. Once again, no background is provided as to why this may be an important event. But we see Asmara encouraging the extras to show proper fury, as this was a war in which no mercy could be shown. During a lull, some discuss with alarming relish the pleasure they derived from raping underage girls, while Asmara and Herman exhort the female extras to think positively as they improvise their reaction to the brutal assault befalling them.

Asmara reminds Oppenheimer that this all happened a long time ago and that more humane methods have since been found for dealing with opposition. Perhaps for this reason, the scene is presented as a blur with muffled sound to reduce the horror of what is being commemorated. But who knows what any scene in this perplexing picture is supposed to convey. Once again, everyone seems chatty and content with their contribution after Herman calls `cut!', although several more participating children seem traumatised by their experience and Anwar is forced to concede that he is distressed by how real it all looked and he briefly ponders the fate of those youngsters whose lives he had ruined in the mid-1960s.

Interestingly, Anwar again insists on playing the victim (complete with blindfold and oozing head wound) in the final reconstruction, as Herman essays an American-style gangster making a Communist lackey pay for trying to stamp out Hollywood movies. Anwar looks tense as he feels a rope being placed around his neck in imitation of his patented killing style and he tells Herman to get this in one take, as he cannot stomach doing it again. By contrast, Zulkadry stolls around a shopping mall with his family without a care in the world and there is deep irony, therefore, in the choice of `Born Free' as the song to which the dancing girls (including a blue-gowned Herman) gyrate before a gushing waterfall, as a Communist who has been murdered by Anwar presents him with a medal for putting him out of his misery and sending him to heaven.

Reclining at home, Anwar views this number with evident pride. He asks Oppenheimer if he has the throttling scene with him and gets his grandchildren out of bed to sit on his knee as he watches the playback.  Naturally, the children are bemused and Anwar is alone again as he reveals that he felt a real sense of fear once his dignity had gone and wonders aloud whether that was how his victims felt before he killed them. Oppenheimer suggests off-camera that they probably felt genuine dread at the prospect of being slain, while he felt nothing more than a twinge of guilt because he was simply creating make-believe brutality. This blunt correction seems to effect Anwar and he begins to well up, as though decades of denial had suddenly been breached. Seemingly, as a result of this epiphany, Anwar returns to the rooftop where he had earlier strutted with such assurance and now retches piteously as the enormity of his offences appear to dawn on him. Despite being clad in a sharp mustard suit like a pimp from a blaxploitation thriller, he suddenly seems like a frail old man and he vomits profusely before slowly making his way back downstairs and out into the night.

Bizarrely, Oppenheimer opts to accompany the closing credits with more clips of the dancing girls on the jetty leading from the maw of the metal fish and, thus, takes the curse off Anwar's moment of truth. But is that really what is was or is this just another staged scene for a camera unwilling to make clear distinctions between what it is being asked to observe. And was this genuinely the last thing that Oppenheimer and co-director Christine Cynn filmed? Without a timeframe, the audience is left to suppose and surmise, with those familiar with the brand of manipulation perfected in Nanook of the North (1922) by Robert Flaherty being highly suspicious about the verisimilitude of much of what they have witnessed - especially as its maker has labelled this `a documentary of the imagination'.

It's certainly disappointing that Oppenheimer has eschewed any analysis of the political situation in Indonesia either in 1965 or in the present day and that he seems so uncurious about why so many mass murderers were immune to prosecution and remain at large and thuggishly active. But what most frustrates here is the way in which the shifts from vérité to fantasy facilitate Oppenheimer's evasiveness and leave us with many unanswered questions about the nature, process and purpose of this entire enterprise. There is a chilling story to be told here and Oppenheimer is to be applauded for uncovering it and for having the pluck to record and present it in his own way. But this slippery experimental riposte to traditional objective non-fiction film-making chooses only to tell a fraction of the sorry saga and, by doing so in the most arch and wayward manner possible, it mythologises the murderers and does a grave disservice to the very people it is striving to solemnise.

The third film this week to combine interview, archive material and reconstruction is Anthony Wonke's Fire in the Night, a harrowing account of the Piper Alpha disaster that is much more conventional than The Act of Killing, but also much more focused, cogent and accomplished. Admittedly, Wonke had the advantage of working from an acclaimed book by Scotsman journalist Stephen McGinty, but he makes solid use of the facts and evokes memories of wartime films about the Blitz with the poetic realist images achieved by cinematographer Mike Eley, which suggest the ethereality of this terrifying calamity in the middle of the North Sea without trivialising the experiences of the 61 who survived it or the 167 it claimed.

Editor Steve Ellis draws on a number of industrial films and television reports to provide the background information on the Piper Alpha platform owned by Occidental Petroleum that was towed 120 miles north-east of Aberdeen in 1975 and originally operated as an oil rig before being converted to gas production. At its peak, it produced 300,000 barrels a day in conjunction with the neighbouring Tartan and Claymore facilities and most veterans agreed that the most disconcerting aspect of working there was the helicopter flight from the mainland rather than the day-to-day business of extracting oil or gas. Home movies and photos show the men at work and play and the likes of control room operator Geoff Bollands, flight officer Mike Jennings and instrument technician Roy Carey agree that they had plenty of good times aboard before 6 July 1988.

Keen to keep the rig working while certain areas underwent renovation, Occidental decided against a complete shutdown. However, at 2200 hours, a non-operational gas pump was accidentally activated and the leaking gas caused an explosion that engulfed a large part of Piper Alpha in flames. As the mobile rescue barge The Tharos and the support craft The Silver Pit tried to approach in the face of intense heat, mayday calls were issued for urgent assistance from Scotland. Within 20 minutes, however, the gas pipe from Tartan had melted and caused a second explosion that allowed 30 tonnes of gas per second to feed an enormous fireball.

As Bollands, Jennings and Carey recall how they attempted to reach safety, Wonke uses diagrams of the platform to show how they had to travel through endless corridors and down crowded staircases to descend the 175 feet from the upper level to the sea. However, while between 20-30 managed to escape within the first half hour or so, the majority of the crew went to the accommodation area to await details of the helicopter shuttles that they presumed would arrive before the blaze got out of control. Charles Haffey on The Silver Pit and Captain Sean Ennis of the standby craft MV Sandhaven remember how those afloat were less optimistic and the latter's fears that a catastrophe was unfolding were confirmed when two of his own crew were killed when their boat tried to return to the inferno and was caught in the 2250 hours blast that saw 1280 tonnes of gas ignite and leave 187 men virtually stranded on the rig.

By midnight, the structure had begun to give way and 80 souls perished in the accommodation block because there was simply no way out. Scaffolders Dave Lambert, Joe Meanen and Billy Clayton, rigger Barry Goodwin and painter Bill Barron describe their desperate struggle to survive and they all recollect the grimness of the scene on the shore, as the last helicopters landed and waiting loved ones realised that their sons, husbands, fathers and boyfriends were never going to return. Following scenes of the lucky ones being treated in hospital, Wonke shows the remnants of the platform being sunk and reveals in a series of closing captions how Occidental was heavily criticised in the official report, but avoided criminal prosecution. In all, 106 recommendations were made and over £2 billion was spent over the next decade to improve safety standards. But, while there has been no major blow-out on a North Sea platform in the intervening 25 years, this is little consolation to George Cross winner Charles Haffey, as he sips a pint in his local, or the still traumatised Bill Barron, who posed for the memorial statue in Aberdeen's Hazlehead Park that sculpted by Sue Jane Taylor.

Considering how little contemporary footage exists of the disaster (there were no camera phones around as there would be today to provide countless eye witness records), Wonke makes resourceful use of the available material and integrates the reconstructions with considerable finesse. Aided by Andrew Phillips's discreet score, he also conveys the changing mood on the rig as the lifeboats were found in splinters, as the lights failed and as mates aware that the heat and smoke were too intense for them to pass through shook hands and faced their fate with humbling stoicism. No wonder some of the survivors become tearful in reflecting upon their brush with death and the difficulty of dealing with the guilt of having been spared. 

In the understandable absence of any investigation into the cause of the crisis or its aftermath, the talking heads are the key to this tribute, with the most arresting testament being Carey's recollection of the warmth of the water as he hit it, the sensation of the top of his head burning as he realised that he was being boiled alive, the vow to survive in order to keep his promise that his younger daughter would have as lavish a wedding as her sister and the dilemma about whether to take the lifejacket off the corpse of a dead colleague. His insight into the conditions on the rescue vessels is also telling, as is Ennis's remembrance of the pals who lost their lives trying to save others and Meanen's matter-of-fact account of his plunge from the helideck. Consequently, this stands as a fitting memorial to both the lost and to those who have since been haunted by their memories of a truly tragic night.

Although it's ostensibly a drama, Travis Mathews's debut feature, I Want Your Love, feels much more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Arriving here on a limited engagement after it caused something of a furore in Australia when it was denied a certificate on the grounds that its unsimulated sex scenes were insufficiently germane to the narrative to prevent them from being branded pornographic, this follows in the footsteps of Andrew Haigh's Weekend (2011) and David Lambert's Beyond the Walls (2012) in playing down the `gay' aspect of the same-sex scenario and treating the characters as human beings with universal hopes, fears, desires and insecurities. However, the standard of the acting is disappointingly low, while the absence of a tangible plot leaves this relying heavily on bedroom sequences that staunchly eschew eroticism, but leave far too little to the imagination and offer few, if any, genuine character insights.

Having failed to make it as a performance artist in San Francisco, thirtysomething Jesse Metzger has decided to return to Ohio and see if he can carve a niche in his notoriously conservative home state. Flatmate Wayne Bumb has invited some of their usual crowd to spend a last evening together before the big farewell party planned for the following night. However, Metzger is in no mood for the prattle of African-American shop clerk Brontez Purnell, Bumb's flirtation with boyfriend Ferrin Solano or the waspish interjections of the sole women in the group, Shannon O'Malley and Courtney Trouble. So, he slips away to see older neighbour Keith McDonald, a more successful artist who has been something of a mentor and is not entirely convinced that Metzger is doing the right thing for the right reasons, as he is hoping to pay off some of his debts by living rent free with his parents.

Left to mooch the streets alone after failing to lure McDonald into a bar, Metzger sleeps late and spends his last day in the city wondering whether he is making a mistake. He knows part of the problem lies with his ex-boyfriend, Ben Jasper, and they have a pleasant afternoon together that serves only to further cloud Metzger's thinking. However, while out jogging, he gets a phone message from his father (Bob Mathews), in which he states that he won't allow him to sponge off him once he's back and a rather shell-shocked Metzger decides to give his party a miss and hide out in McDonald's apartment while he is out of town.

Downstairs, things are beginning to liven up. Purnell makes a less than subtle play for Jasper, while Bumb (who has been having second thoughts about asking Solano to move in with him) finds himself part of a threesome with Jorge Rodolfo. Tentative kisses lead to shirts being discarded and armpits being licked. But the emphasis is soon on graphic sexual encounters that are photographed and edited to stress the urgency of the lust, but also the lack of gymnastic posturing that one associates with pornography. Moreover, once Rodolfo takes himself off to the dance floor, both couplings become acts of love-making rather than pure gratification and this is why Metzger's tryst with the unexpectedly returned McDonald ends prematurely, as he realises it is not what he wants.

The picture ends with Jasper driving Metzger to the airport and the latter getting the giggles, as it has dawned on him that he is actually excited about going home. Quite whether this counts as a happy ending is by the by and few viewers will be particularly bothered what happens to any of the characters, who are too sketchily drawn to be worthy of much emotional investment. But, apart from a couple of mentions of condoms, Mathews skirts such Queer Cinema clichés as coming out, safe sex and being part of the scene to present a bunch of friends living their lives and making the best of our recessional times. His dialogue might not be up to much and he clearly doesn't set much store by slick performance. But he and Bryan Darling do a decent job of editing Keith Wilson's grainy, tightly framed and often handheld imagery and convey something of the skittishness of the social circle and the frisson of the copulation sequences.

While this may not shatter any taboos or establish any new benchmarks, it makes for more consistently enticing viewing than Mathews and Hollywood buddy James Franco's Interior: Leather Bar, a rather self-conscious actorly piece that takes the notion that William Friedkin had to cut 40 minutes from his epochal thriller Cruising (1980) in order to get it an R certificate and encourages a group of young actors under the tutelage of a bona fide S&M master to reinvent the missing action. Pushing the players to see how far they will go in the name of art, while exploring when the graphic non-simulation of sexual acts becomes pornographic, this is an intellectually valid exercise that is made all the more fascinating by the cameoing presence of Franco, who had done something similar with the experimental Memories of Idaho (2011), which was based on scraps discarded from Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho (1991). Yet, while they are both undeniably raw and edgy, what I Want Your Love and Interior: Leather Bar chiefly have in common is an air of self-satisfaction with their own perceived daring that diminishes their ability either to challenge or convince.