Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 18/7/2013)

Sadly, it was ever thus. Despite the fact that Alice Guy wrote, directed, produced and supervised over 700 films between 1896 and 1906 and became the first woman to run an American film studio, few were able to follow in her footsteps. Lois Weber and Dorothy Arzner made a handful of features in the 1920s and 30s, but the studio system encouraged a boys' club mentality that persists to this day. Things are marginally better in the land of Guy's birth, as France has allowed female talents to flourish since Agnès Varda emerged as one of the driving forces of the nouvelle vague. But, while most European countries can point to one or two women directors with international reputations, as can the odd Asian and Latin American industry, there are virtually no renowned African women film-makers.

Curiously, the Middle East bucks the trend. The likes of Nadine Labaki in Lebanon and Ronit Avni in Israel and Annemarie Jacir in the Palestininan Territories have all become familiar names on the festival circuit, while Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Samira Makhmalbaf and Mania Akbari are among the many Iranian women continuing the tradition started by Forugh Farrokhzad in the 1960s. However, they have now been joined by Haifaa Al Mansour, who provides positive proof that change is possible in the Arab world and beyond with Wadjda, which is not only notable for being the first feature to have been filmed entirely within the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (which has no cinemas), but also for the fact that it was directed by a woman.

Having made the shorts The Bitter Journey, The Only Way Out and Who? (all 2005), as well as the documentary Women Without Shadows (2006), Al Mansour had to defy both the odds and the authorities to complete her picture on a shoestring in the most trying of circumstances. But the sacrifices and travails feel entirely worthwhile, as this wry rite of passage shares the air of unaffected charm that has characterised so many Iranian films about childhood either side of the Islamic Revolution. 

Ten year-old Waad Mohammed lives with her mother, Reem Abdullah, in a suburb of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Father Sultan Al Assaf is devoted to his daughter and glamorous wife, but (in a household where the family tree on the wall lists only male names) he is under pressure from his conservative family to marry again because Abdullah has been unable to provide him with a son. He visits whenever he can, but Mohammed is anything but a daddy's girl, as she would rather be out playing with classmate Abdullrahman Al Gohani.

Being something of a tomboy, she wears jeans and baseball boots beneath her abaya and is jealous that he has a splendid bicycle when she is forbidden one in case it compromises her virginity. Indeed, getting around is a thorny issue for Saudi women - as they are not allowed to drive and can only travel on all-female minibuses to spare them to indignity of riding on public transport - and Abdullah threatens to report driver Mohammed Zahir for a visa violation when he fails to show up and she loses her job. However, from the moment she spots a green bike being delivered to Ibrahim Almozael's toyshop, Mohammed sets her heart on buying it and challenging Al Gohani to a race.

The trouble is, she needs 800 ryals and her mother refuses to help. So, Mohammed starts making bracelets and, when the market stallholders refuse to take them because they can buy in bulk from China more cheaply, she sells them at school. She also runs errands for the older girls who are no longer allowed to wander freely and acts as a go-between for lovesick senior Noura Faisal and her forbidden boyfriend,Talal Loay. Even when Faisal's secret is discovered and she is humiliated in front of the entire school by strict principal Ahd Kamel, Mohammed continues to take risks and tries to help a couple of girls whose friendship is seen as unwholesome before they, too, are rumbled and publicly denounced by Kamel.

But the real chance of making big money comes when Kamel announces a Qur'an study and recital competition and Mohammed devotes herself to winning the sizeable cash prize. She joins a specialist study class and even acquires a computer game designed to help learn scripture more easily. But, having already put a stop to her money-making escapades, Kamel suspects Mohammed's motives and keeps an extra close eye on her (even as rumours circulate that she is not herself as virtuous as her fearsome reputation would suggest). Thus, when she wins, Kamel announces that she has decided to award the prize to a Palestinian charity in Mohammed's name. Al Gohani tries to cheer her up by suggesting that they get married when they grow up. But Abdullah realises how much the bike means to her daughter and, when it becomes clear that Al Assaf has bowed to parental pressure, she returns the dress she had bought in the hope of enticing him and makes a defiant purchase.

Despite being forced to remain hidden while directing exterior sequences, Al Mansour has ably captured the experience of being female in today's Saudi Arabia. Clad in their black abaya cloaks and niqab veils, the adult women move around in the glaring sunlight like ghosts bent on remaining unseen. Forbidden from even touching the holy book while menstruating, they are expected to do what they are told without complaint. Indeed, as one of the teachers reminds the girls in her class in urging them not to let the menfolk overhear them, even their voices equate to nakedness.

Yet, Waad Mohammed's spirited tweenager fails to see why she should be deprived of pleasures that boys take for granted. Regardless of her stern outward appearance, her headmistress clearly shares her sense of subversion, while Mohammed's father and loyal playmate feel uncomfortable with certain customs and restrictions. However, Mohammed's inevitable victory is shrewdly tempered by Kamel's disapproval of the way she intends to spend her prize and the fact that the fireworks exploding overhead as Abdullah congratulates her daughter come from the wedding celebration taking place across the street that they have both been dreading.

Revealing the influence of Iranian, Egyptian and Western arthouse cinema, this may not be the most technically innovative or dramatically audacious film, as Al Mansour and her producers are too keenly aware of what's at stake to take too many risks. Hence, they make the occasional concession, such as Al Gohani's quaint, but politically loaded proposal. But German cinematographer Lotz Reitemeier keeps the visuals simple and makes adept use of confined spaces to reinforce the notions of confinement and constraint. Moreover, this landmark picture offers many fascinating insights into everyday life in Saudi Arabia, while 12 year-old Waad Mohammed delivers a performance of joyous naturalism that is splendidly counterbalanced by Ahd Kamel's hypocritical villainy.

The week's only other woman director, Megan Griffiths, tells a very different story in Eden, the latest in a recent line of sex trafficking exposés that includes Lukas Moodysson's Lilya 4-Ever (2002), Juanita Wilson's As If I Am Not Here (2010) and Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch (2011). The latter featured Jamie Chung, as a dancer in the brothel to which the lobotomised Emily Browning is taken. Here, however, Chung takes the title role in a drama that opens in June 1994 and recalls the experiences of Chong Kim, whose memoir, Not in My Town, is an obvious influence on the screenplay. But, while Griffiths and co-scenarist Richard B. Phillips avoid the sensationalising aspects that undermined Paul Hyett's The Seasoning House (2012), they don't avoid all of the pitfalls in seeking to show American audiences that the sex trade it likes to think is based wholly on consent is as cynical, cruel and exploitative as any other.

Eighteen year-old Jamie Chung lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico with her taxidermist father, Joseph Steven Yang, and her dour mother, Laura Kai Chen, who can never forget the struggles involved in relocating the family from South Korea. Yang is more indulgent, however, and gives Chung the ring they were planning as a graduation present. That night, Chung and pal Tracey Fairaway go to a bar to try out their fake IDs and Chung finds herself chatting to firefighter Scott Mechlowicz. When Fairaway disappears with a pick-up, Chung agrees to let Mechlowicz drive her home. They kiss as he pulls over to make a phone call. But, by the time Chung has taken a closer look at his uniform on the back seat and realised he is an impostor, another vehicle has pulled up and, the next thing she knows, she is bound and gagged in the boot of a car heading for Nevada.

Having been deposited in a brothel based in a converted storage facility in the middle of the desert, Chung wakes to find herself tethered to a bed. She begs to calls her parents, as heavy Roman Roytberg holds her down and Native American nurse Tantoo Cardinal gives her an injection. As Chung sleeps, Cardinal removes the braces from her teeth and transfers her to a bunk bed in a dormitory full of other teenage girls. The next morning, Chung stays put, as the others scurry into the corridor, where local marshal Beau Bridges is handing out kittens that he hopes will teach the girls a sense of responsibility, as one of their number has recently tried to escape and he was forced to gun down the landowner and a deputy who had found her corpse in a ditch. Noticing that Chung has not fallen into line, he tells her that he will give her a few days to acclimatise and then expects her to start working or he will make life very uncomfortable for her folks.

Chung slowly becomes used to the routine of daily medical checks and strikes up a nodding acquaintance with fellow detainee, Jeanine Monterroza. However, she is distraught when she is dressed in PVC and driven to a porn shoot that involves her being handcuffed and whipped by a dominatrix. Back in the dorm, Monterroza tries to calm her down by singing to her. But the workload is unrelenting and Bridges's swaggering lieutenant, Matt O'Leary, bundles Chung into a car for a field trip to a cosy suburban neighbourhood. As he smokes crystal meth in the kitchen, O'Leary hears an excruciating cry and rushes into the bedroom to see a man clutching his bloody groin. Aware that his own neck is on the block if the brothel is ever discovered, O'Leary charges after Chung and reassures the onlookers she has begged to help her that she is a junkie who needs to be taken back to rehab. Dumping Chung in a tub full of ice cubes to teach her a lesson, Bridges urges O'Leary to clean up his act and, in a fit of pique, orders Roytberg to confiscate the kittens and kill them.

A caption informs us that a year has passed and Chung asks Monterroza during a rare recreational period why Russian blonde Naama Kates was allowed to keep her cat. She explains that she once snitched on some rebellious girls and is afforded certain perks as O'Leary's `nightingale'. The 15 year-old Monterozza is surprised that Chung is 19 and warns her that they will dispose of her once she becomes too old for the clientele. So, when she is taken to a soirée for middle-aged businessmen (during which she adopts a faux Chinese accent while servicing her john), Chung snaps off one of her heels and hides it for future use. When she finds that Monterroza has vanished and that Kates is wearing her graduation ring, Chung attacks her in the dead of night and, while he is amused by her spirit and ingenuity, O'Leary makes her swallow the ring as a punishment.

Chung seizes her opportunity and tells O'Leary that the Russian girls despise him and steal money on field trips because they know he has trouble with his three Rs. Furthermore, when she helps him claw back the cash that a bunch of college kids are trying to withhold and then betrays the companions who had run away during the confusion, O'Leary realises how useful Chung could be to him and he rewards her with a snort of cocaine in the front seat of the van on the way back to Dusty Canyons. She passes her ring in the toilet that night and cleans it under the tap before putting it on her finger, as a symbol of her graduation, which is confirmed the following morning when O'Leary gives her a gingham dress to wear and sends the pampered Kates out on a job while Chung cleans his quarters.

As she looks through some photos in his room, she finds one of O'Leary and Mechlowicz together and realises how she had been set up. But things finally seem to be looking up, as she is taught how to take phone bookings (and to recognise when the cops are fishing for information) and is rewarded with Kates's fat ginger tom. Chung also starts escorting girls on field trips and allows herself to be used as a guinea pig when O'Leary picks up a new batch of morphine from crooked chemist Russell Hodgkinson. In her befuddled state, Chung tries to seduce O'Leary on the way home and he is affronted that she would brand him as one of those men who thinks only with his genitalia.

As a military veteran and a family man, Bridges prides himself on being an upstanding member of his community. He also believes he is far too clever to get caught and is put out when federal agent Tony Doupe approaches him at the end of a lecture on drug smuggling to say that a guidance tracker had put him in the vicinity of the spot where rancher Demetrius Sager and deputy Stefan Hajek had been shot. Bridges turns on the charm in claiming he had merely being doing his rounds. But Doupe also places a call to Dusty Canyons and Chung realises that he is a lawman by the fact he asks about prices. She continues to bide her time, however, and accompanies O'Leary as he loads Kates's corpse on to Bridges's fishing boat, so they can push it overboard in the middle of a lake.

However, Bridges cannot resist taunting O'Leary about his Mennonite background, his learning difficulties and his undistinguished time in the US Army. So, O'Leary beats him to death with a club and Chung looks on in horror, as he smokes meth and explains that the order had come from above and that he just does as he is told. Yet, even though she feels a degree of pity for O'Leary, it is clear that Chung is still looking for her chance to escape. But her purpose is blunted when she finds the pregnant Monterroza in a remote house with its own medical facilities run by Eddie Martinez. She tries to laugh with O'Leary when he celebrates a TV news item about Bridges's death, but he realises she has seen something and warns her not to get any funny ideas. He pulls the van over in the middle of nowhere and orders a Russian girl out of the back and tells Chung to shoot her to prove her loyalty.

As she steels herself, O'Leary grabs the gun and hugs Chung, as he says he was only kidding. However, as they set off, he gets a phone call that Roytberg is a stool pigeon and, while O'Leary punishes him in the ice bath, Cardinal urges Chung to help her burn incriminating evidence in the courtyard. The girls are loaded into a large truck and taken to a new location and O'Leary tells Chung to pack a back because they are going to lay low in Dubai before returning to take charge of the operation. While he is out of the room, however, she fills his meth pipe with something from an aerosol can and strokes his hair as he chokes to death. Cutting off her leather ankle tag, Chung steals a couple of vials from the fridge and uses them to stab Martinez in the neck in order to rescue Monterroza. She comforts her by hoping that freedom can go some way to atoning for the loss of her child, but knows how difficult it is going to be to readjust to normal life, as she conquers her shame to call home from a paybox and breaks down on hearing her mother cry with relief.

Notwithstanding its scrupulous avoidance of nudity and sexual and physical violence, this never quite succeeds as either a denunciation of a pernicious trade or as a psychological thriller. Ben Blankenship's production design establishes a forbidding sense of place, which is reinforced by cinematographer Sean Porter's astute shifts between blinding sunlight, the dim artificial lighting of the brothel and the contrasting moods of the punters' abodes. But Griffiths struggles to achieve the necessary air of imperilment, as Chung seems immune to retribution, even though both Bridges and O'Leary are seen to kill on compunction. Moreover, there is also no real sense of how the girls interact, with the sequence of them chatting as though they were having a little R&R seeming to go against the ferocity of the regime's security arrangements. Similarly, the ease with which O'Leary can be duped by punters seems a touch convenient, considering his status within the organisation.

Yet, while the fact that the script is rooted in fact helps Griffiths bypass these and other contrivances, she is left more exposed in her efforts to tease the audience about whether Chung has gone over to the dark side or is merely playing games to alleviate her situation and give her more chance of making a getaway. Part of the problem here is the rather clichéd inscrutability of Chung's performance, which undersells the extent of her drastic transformation. But the fault lies primarily with the failure to flesh out her character beyond the knowledge that she is a bit of a rebel who smokes and goes to bars underage and has her name changed to `Eden' because her trailer park address happens to coincide with the Hebrew word for `delight' and the obvious notion of the corruption of innocence. Thus, while Chung holds the increasingly melodramatic action together well, she never quite seems to be the victim she so obviously is, with the result that this often feels more like a TV-movie than a hard-hitting attack on the evils of vice and the complacency and hypocrisy that allow it to thrive unchecked.

Ambiguity also proves crucial to Mike Figgis's Suspension of Disbelief, which seeks to recruit the viewer to its way of thinking with an opening red-lettered caption outlining Carl Jung's theory of the Participation Mystique. When a writer produces something intense and creative, the text explains, it's almost as though they have projected all kinds of unconscious material on to the fiction and, as a result, the reader understands it as if he or she was the actual writer. In such instances, according to Jung, fiction becomes fact and the most bizarre experiences can take place within the narrative because the reader is experiencing it directly. As such, there is no need to `suspend disbelief' because the reader is `in' the story. Yet, despite his shrewd attempt to flatter the audience into buying into his theses, Figgis doesn't quite succeed in persuading us to surrender all of our critical faculties.

Martin (Sebastian Koch) is a Munich-born novelist-cum-screenwriter, who supplements his income by teaching script craft at the London  Film School. Fifteen years ago, his wife, Claire (Emilia Fox), disappeared without a trace and, now, their daughter, Sarah (Rebecca Night), is playing a character based on her mother in a film Martin has written for up-and-coming director Greg (Eoin Macken). The first instance of Figgis trying to blur the lines between fact and fiction occurs as Sarah has a saucy telephone conversation in bed, which turns out to be a scene for the movie, which Greg isn't sure is going all that well and he warns Sarah that she can be replaced if she keeps having problems about handling a role with subtextual meaning so close to home.

Across London, Martin is teaching a class and seeking to convince his students that audiences become lost in films because their brains cease to discriminate between truth and fiction. The words pop on to the screen in blue and white letters to an accompanying blast of jazz, like something in a Jean-Luc Godard feature. Indeed, Figgis ensures that we see the posters of Godard and his wife-muse Anna Karina on the classroom wall before splitting the screen for the opening credits, which depict Sarah redoing the masturbation scene in noirish monochrome, while an evidently distracted Greg does the telephone voiceover in colour while pacing behind the scenes.

Sarah is about to celebrate her 25th birthday and Martin buys her a digital Leica to use at her party. Greg comes with her co-star Juliette (Melia Kreiling) and argues with Martin that a screenplay is meant to inspire a director rather than serve as a road map. As he chats with his agent, Nesta (Frances De La Tour), about late revisions for a Paramount project, he notices Sarah's friend, Dominic (Lachlan Nieboer), arriving with a striking stranger. She is Angélique (Lotte Verbeek) and, as Martin gazes at her, the noise of the party blanks out and his blurry vision is accompanied by the sound of his computer keyboard, as Figgis seeks to confuse us about whether what we are seeing is real, fiction or a figment of Martin's imagination. Martin goes to bed as if in a dream, with his glance catching the playbills lining the staircase walls of fliers for the plays he wrote for Claire.

As Martin falls on the bed, there is a cut to Angélique sitting coquettishly on a swivel chair in front of a red curtain before a further cut shows Sarah and Greg watching their movie from the front row of a theatre (preview or otherwise). The image goes hazy and the slurring sound effects give the impression that Martin and Angélique have made love, but everything is left deliberately vague so that, when Sarah gets a call from Dominic next morning saying that Angélique failed to come home, the close-up of Martin eavesdropping in the foreground is invested with a guilt that may or may not be justified (the Kuleshov Experiment, anyone?).

The scene shifts back to the film set, as Greg tries to coerce Sarah and Juliette into performing a lesbian kiss to conclude the final scene. He explains that this is `a film within a film within a film' moment. But, as the screen splits, the actresses question their motivation for such a clench and Greg proclaims that it will help the picture's overall challenge to the postmodernistic clichés of the Humphrey Bogart-style of film noir. Still unconvinced, the pair begin to rehearse and promise to do it during the take when Greg insists that women in the audience will feel empowered by what they see.

Back in Hampstead, some jaunty music introduces Inspector Bullock (Kenneth Cranham), who wants to ask Sarah and Martin about Angélique's movements after the party. He tries to lighten the mood with some ill-judged jokes about French girls and makes Martin feel even more uneasy by mentioning that people have a habit of disappearing from the house. Before Martin can take offence, however, Bullock gushes that he is a big fan of his books and, just as suddenly, returns to what Martin can remember of chatting to Angélique around 2am. Martin shruggingly recalls that they merely exchanged pleasantries before he went to bed around 3am, but his train of thought is interrupted by Bullock asking if he would take a look at a script he has written.

At this juncture, Figgis cuts back to Martin telling his class that beginnings are easy. It's knowing what to do next that makes the difference between good and mediocre films. He says that the writer owes it to the audience to deliver on the promise and confides that a good rule of thumb to remember is that `character is plot'. While he is speaking, a couple of fishermen spot a body in the canal and Martin and Sarah go with Dominic to identify the body. Bullock asks Martin if he has had a chance to look at his script yet, but he apologises saying he has been too busy. Emerging from the morgue in a state of shock, Dominic bumps into a woman who looks exactly like Angélique and Thérèse (also Verbeek) announces that she has come to see her sister.

A large blue caption proclaiming `twin' appears on the screen, along with a dictionary definition. As Thérèse faints from the stress of the situation, Sarah suggests that she stays with them. The legend `character is plot' flashes up and a shot of Martin writing is juxtaposed with one of either Angélique or Thérèse lying on a bed with pills spilt on the pillow. Once again, the viewer is left high and dry about whether they are watching fact or fiction and it hardly helps that Martin scribbles `possible ending of first act' on a piece of paper before screwing it into a ball and missing the bin when he tosses it across the room.

Over dinner, Thérèse announces that things are more complicated than she imagined and that she will have to remain in London for 10 days. They insist she stays with them before Martin goes to his study to peruse Bullock's script. However, he is distracted by an image (that may be a memory) of Angélique rising from his desk chair to pull down her dress as he reached up to touch her cheek. But the reverie doesn't last long and Martin delivers the harsh verdict to Bullock that his scenario is hopeless and is even more sternly dismissive when Bullock hopes that he is joking. Martin offers to make a statement and is busy admitting that Angélique came on to him at the party when the crestfallen Bullock begins to cry at having had his dreams dashed and he falls off the chair in the throes of a heart attack.

Left alone, Martin tries to write about the night Claire had told him in a busy restaurant that she wanted a divorce. She had taunted him about being spineless and having slept with all his friends. She had even threatened to keep his beloved Sarah away from him before throwing a glass of wine in his face. He had risen to strike her, but the flashback is interrupted by the phone ringing and he coaxes Sarah through some doubts about whether she has the talent to play such a demanding role. Too distracted to work, Martin goes to see if Thérèse is in her room and he cooks dinner for her. She says Sarah is a lovely girl and Martin explains how she had applied for the role of her mother under an assumed name in case anyone suspected nepotism. They smoke and drink wine together and are laughing across the table when Sarah comes home still feeling low and unhappy that Thérèse is wearing some of Claire's clothes.

The next day, Thérèse accompanies Martin as he scouts locations on the south coast  In the car, she reveals that her parents had been killed in a crash when they were eight and they had been raised apart in a small town where everyone knew everybody else. One day, Angélique had confided that she was being abused by her new father and he had killed himself at the height of a scandal. She had come to live with Thérèse's family and, for a while, everything seemed blissful. But Angélique accused her foster father of harassing her, which Thérèse knew to be untrue. Thus, when she was interviewed by the police, she had exposed Angélique as a liar and disowned her after she was sent to an institution for troubled children.

Martin listens in silence before a cut shows his movie alter ego being humiliated in the restaurant. Juliette looks on jealously, as Greg and Sarah have an intense, intimate discussion about the scene before she asks to have Sarah moved out of her eyeline, as she is putting her off her stride. Greg urges the actor playing Martin to convey the feeling that this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him, just as the real Martin heads for home and Thérèse says she suddenly feels as though she has been pitched into a movie. She discloses that Angélique would have loved the situation, as she delighted in pretending to be somebody else and was so good at passing herself off as her twin that few could tell for sure which was which. As they drive in the darkness, Thérèse turns to face Martin and asks what he had thought of Angélique. He says he had only said `hello' to her and Thérèse suggests she would have been attracted to him, as she had always gone for older men with power.

Figgis superimposes Martin's memory of Angélique over Thérèse's face and, apart from a string of pearls, there appears to be no difference between them. She undoes a button on her dress and asks Martin if he slept with her sister and he is so taken aback that he swerves off the road and lands the car in a ditch. They clamber out unhurt and hold hands as they walk back to the village to use the pub phone, as Martin cannot get a signal on his mobile. As the stand on a bridge over the river, Thérèse wonders about how long it had taken her twin to drown, as she had never been able to swim.

They share a single room in the pub and Martin calls Sarah to explain what has happened. She tells him that the police have taken her camera to check the photos for clues, but they get cut off and she chides Greg for looking through the things on Martin's desk (which include a notebook containing a marked-up map of the village in which he has just been stranded - as if he had planned the whole thing or Figgis is playing meta-games with us again). Greg and Sarah kiss and she fellates him uttering the phrase `daddy's little girl' at his insistence, as a montage of her pictures flits behind her on Martin's screensaver. A cut shows the movie Claire being throttled and this appears to be the dream that Martin is having when he wakens with a jolt to calm Thérèse, after she also seems to be assaulted by a nightmare. However, as she rolls on to her side, her eyes open to suggest she had been feigning.

Soon after he returns to London, Martin is visited by DCI Hackett (Julian Sands) and a WPC (Ginny Dee). He repeats Bullock's dubious jape about this being an unlucky house before pursuing an aggressive line of questioning that puts Martin on the defensive. However, he takes the opportunity to change his story, by insisting he went to bed around 2am and had barely spoken to Angélique, let alone seduced her. He also says that Bullock had collapsed because he had been upset about his script and Martin seems almost touched by the news that he has since died. Hackett shows him one of Sarah's snaps suggesting that Martin had flirted with Angélique, but concedes that it's no longer true that the camera never lies and he leaves after Martin agrees to a DNA test.

At the inquest, Thérèse sits between Martin and Sarah and the WPC keeps a close eye on Martin as the coroner (Rachel O'Meara) returns a verdict of accidental death, as Angélique was under the influence of drink and drugs and may well have tottered off the towpath and drowned because she simply couldn't swim. But, while the police seem content to accept this finding, Martin has his doubts and the word `suspicion' pops up in blue letters along with another dictionary definition. A brief montage shows him flying to France and speaking to a swimming instructor (Sarah Lewerth) in the public baths. Meanwhile, Sarah invites Thérèse to a friend's birthday party and is slightly unnerved when she submerges her head to rinse some stinging shampoo out of her eyes. But, even though their faces monetarily merge on the surface of the bath water, the incident passes as quickly as the image of the young Thérèse and Angélique appears on the screen as Martin learns that they were both fine swimmers and often changed places so it was never clear which one had won the trophy.

Sarah gets drunk at the party because Greg is back with Juliette and she feels used. She dances provocatively with Thérèse and they kiss in the taxi on the way home. Next morning, however, Sarah feels uneasy at waking up in the same bed and leaves for the set without discussing what had happened between them. Left to her own devices, Thérèse wanders up to Martin's study and, sitting in a white dressing-gown, begins to read a manuscript. She is interrupted by a call from her old swim coach telling her that a stranger had been snooping around and then by Dominic bringing dropping off Angélique's belongings. She takes the bag upstairs and, in slow-motion, inhales the aroma of the clothing, as Dominic tries to make small talk in the adjoining room. She asks him if he had read the notebook in her bag, but he admits his French is woeful.

A fleeting grainy image of Angélique walking unsteadily along the towpath seems to end with her stopping to speak to someone she knows, but it disappears as Thérèse strips and puts on her twin's dress. Martin walks in and Dominic hastily makes his excuses. Thérèse asks how his research mission had gone and he senses that she has been tipped off. He also suspects that something occurred with Sarah in his absence, as she is suddenly keen for their guest to leave immediately after the funeral (although quite why this should take place in London rather than in France seems to be a sloppy piece of contrivance).

Sarah urges Martin to come to the crematorium and he sleeps badly. A voice intones `this is clearly a dream' on the soundtrack, as Thérèse appears to tell him that Angélique had a horror of drowning and she accuses him of thinking she had killed her sister. He sees himself pushing one of the twins into a pool bedecked with red curtains and she swims over to kiss him underwater (but he is no longer certain whether he is fantasising or fearing Thérèse or Angélique). As he wakes with a start, he goes to the bathroom and stares at himself in the mirror (with the doors of the cabinet creating an intra-frame split-screen). What seems to be Angélique's ghostly face appears in the mirror behind him and he drops his water glass in terror - but it's not revealed if this is part of another dream or just his over-active imagination playing tricks on him.

Martin and Sarah keep a respectful distance at the funeral, as Thérèse leaves her pew during the sermon to touch the coffin, as though pushing it into the incinerator (as she may or may not have pushed Angélique into the canal - or as Angélique might have pushed Thérèse). She sips water at the reception afterwards, as Martin is pestered by Dominic's parents, who are avid readers. Thérèse asks Martin to drive her to the airport and, as he parks in the multi-storey, she accuses him of hypocrisy for suspecting her of murder. He asks how much of her childhood account was true and she concedes that a kindly farmer and his wife adopted them both and they joined forces to arrange his accidental death when he began abusing them. She snaps that he did the same with Claire, or at least thought about it, and tells him to stop being so judgemental.

But the revelations are still not over, as Martin says he discovered that the girls were separated and raised in separate homes, but kept changing places and led their new parents merry dances. Thérèse counters by saying she knew that Angélique had made a play for him and still feels it is possible that he killed her. Yet, as she protests that her heart is broken, a quiet smile plays on her lips as she gets out of the car and she says they are very alike, as they kiss goodbye. Martin smiles in acknowledgement of her supposition and watches her walk away. She pauses to look back, either because she has fallen for him or because she needs final reassurance that he has bought her story, and the scene fades, with no proof existing that foul play was involved in the death of whichever twin perished in the canal.

However, Figgis isn't quite ready to let go yet. He cuts back to a debate in Martin's scriptwriting class about whether it is fair to the audience to leave them hanging. A further cut takes us to the premiere of Greg's film, which ends with Claire killing Martin and Juliette and Sarah kissing with a pool of red blood oozing on to the monochrome cobbles (against a CGI backdrop of a nocturnal metropolis). Martin joins in the applause, as the closing credits ripple over Greg, Sarah and Juliette's bodies, as they take their bow. The real crawl begins with Thomas Hengelbrock's `Miserere' and viewers are left to make what they will of what they have just seen.

As likely to frustrate as it is to fascinate, this is a film that will inevitably divide opinion. Figgis has long been willing to experiment in his features and, while this is nowhere near as visually ambitious as Timecode (2000) or as dramatically powerful as Leaving Las Vegas (1995), it is exciting to see someone testing digital technology's potential for more than making pretty pictures. It is also good to see someone refusing to be bound by the conventions of the Hollywood narrative, even if the self-reflexive gambits he employs were passé when Godard was iconising Karina. But Figgis is simply not in the same league as a film-maker and, consequently, for all his laudable efforts to do something different, his Jungian ruse fails to persuade us to suspend our disbelief for more than a few seconds at a time. Thus, while it often teases, frequently amuses and occasionally intrigues, this mostly settles for proclaiming its own ingenuity in much the same manner as Nicolás Pereda's Greatest Hits (2012), which played in last weekend's London MexFest.

In fairness to the cast, they mostly acquit themselves admirably. Sebastian Koch delivers another solid display of steely impassivity, while Rebecca Night is suitably vulnerable as the naive daughter and Kenneth Cranham excels as the comic-relief detective. Dutch actress Lotte Verbeek is less assured in coping with the demands of her deadpan delivery, but her occasional hesitancy adds a certain brittleness to her work. As for Figgis (who probably served as his own cinematographer and editor, as well as composer), he clearly had a ball and, if he periodically pushes his luck, he can be forgiven for being a bit pretentious and smug, as too few other British directors, beside the shamefully marginalised Peter Greenaway, are attempting anything similar.

Depressingly, far too many American directors are churning out thudding thrillers like Scott Walker's The Frozen Ground, which is all the more dispiriting as it features two fine actors who deserve better than  such mundane assignments. However, with the Hollywood emphasis being on youth and beauty (as it always has been), Nicolas Cage and John Cusack may just have to get used to the fact that the blockbuster days are over and, like so many of their forebears, they are going to have to eke out the remainder of their distinguished careers in potboilers that really should go direct to DVD rather than cluttering up an already crowded theatrical schedule. Based on actual events that took place in Anchorage, Alaska in 1984, this purports to be a tribute to the 17-21 women murdered by serial killer Robert Hansen and Walker seeks to reinforce his sincerity by showing photos of the victims to the accompaniment of a tacky soft rock track before the closing credits. However, all he succeeds in doing is highlighting the cynical opportunism of a grotesque piece of tasteless exploitation attempting to pass itself off as a heroic police procedural.

When teenage prostitute Vanessa Hudgens is found handcuffed in a motel cabin, the cop who rescued her is so dismayed that his superiors refuse to go after local baker John Cusack that he gathers evidence and posts it to the office of state trooper Nicolas Cage, who is about to quit his job because wife Radha Mitchell thinks he is too obsessive and they need a change of scenery. When the body of a young girl is found in the Kink River forests, however, Cage is determined to get to the bottom of a case that has seen dozens of girls like Gia Mantegna go missing after telling friends they were off to meet a photographer. The press is certain that there is a serial killer preying on prostitutes and topless dancers, but Lieutenant Kevin Dunn and DA Kurt Fuller insist the recent deaths have coincidental similarities rather than follow identifiable trends.

Cage is unconvinced, however, and reckons that the perpetrator is a meticulous man with a low profile who probably works shifts. He pores through over 600 unsolved cases in the hope of finding linking clues. Eventually, he comes to Hudgens's file, in which she describes meeting a man in a camper van with her pet dog. As he digs deeper, Cage establishes that Cusack had served time for rape back in 1971 and goes on a search of the red-light district with vice cop Michael McGrady hoping that one of the girls will recognise Hudgens from her photo. He also meets up with Katie Wallack, whose sister has disappeared, and she gives him the identical bracelet that she knows she would have been wearing when she was abducted.

Much to his relief, Cage finds Hudgens and she describes (in flashback) how Cusack had chained her to a post in his den while wife Katherine LaNasa and their children were away and how she had nearly been found by a snooping neighbour, as she had cowered in a room full of hunting trophies. She says that Cusack's eyes went black as he raped her and she had left a tampon inside her in the hope of collecting semen that could be used as evidence against him. But, even though she had escaped her ordeal, the cops had not believed her story and Cusack had remained at large. Upset that Cage seems so powerless to help her, Hudgens goes back to the red-light district, where she is hired as a dancer by Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, who gives her crystal meth to overcome her stage fright and she is surrendering to the music at her pole when she panics on spotting pimp Curtis `50 Cent' Jackson, who tells her that she owes him and will come running to him one day for protection.

Meanwhile, the morgue calls Cage about another body found in the wilds that has been hideously mutilated and he gets home to urge his six year-old daughter not to grow up. As if to emphasise the perils that lie ahead, the action cuts to Cusack bundling the terrified Mantegna into his plane and he takes off from a small airfield and guns her down as she tries to run away. He takes her heart-shaped necklace as a souvenir and finishes her off with another bullet from close range.

Cage meets Hudgens at a roller rink and pleads with her to testify against Cusack. She says she risks too much if they fail to make the case stick and has learnt not to trust people after her mother allowed her to be abused as a child. But Cage convinces her of his integrity by telling her how he lost his sister on his 21st birthday when a drunk driver killed her and she suddenly appreciates that he knows all about crimes going unpunished. Later that night, Cusack sees Hudgens dancing at the club and leaves in a hurry, as he knows she could identify him. However, she is also terrified that he will come after her and Cage only just catches her at the airport as she seeks to flee. He informs her that she survived to help put Cusack behind bars and offers to shelter her at his house until they can take her statement.

Unfortunately, Mitchell is furious that Cage has brought such a woman into their home and, overhearing the argument, Hudgens slips away and takes a room in 50 Cent's downtown dive. He puts her back on the snowy streets and she is disconcerted to see a moose wandering around a back alley. Unaware that both Cage and Cusack are searching for her, she returns to O'Keefe's club and overdoses on pills and cocaine in a toilet cubicle, where she is found by one of Cage's crew and taken into safe custody, as a seething Cusack looks on from the shadows.

Sitting by her bed waiting for Hudgens to come round, Cage sees a photo of her mother and she reveals she always thought she was her sister as she had had her at 15. But Hudgens has never forgiven her for letting an uncle harm her and wishes she could find someone who could reassure her that everything is going to be okay. Cage promises he will nail Cusack and goes on surveillance outside his house. However, he and Sergeant Dean Norris are spotted and Cusack piles everything that could incriminate him into his car and gives Cage the slip in order to take off in his plane to dump the evidence. Recklessly, however, he keeps the bracelet belonging to Wallack's sister.

Armed with a profile compiled by the FBI, Cage urges Fuller to grant him a search warrant so he can find hard evidence linking Cusack to the killings. He agrees, but the delay enables Cusack to bribe thug Brad William Henke into finding Hudgens and he threatens 50 Cent that he will kill him for an unpaid debt unless he hands the girl over within two days. As Matt Gerald and Brett Baker lead the search of Cusack's property, Cage interrogates his suspect, who freely admits that he uses prostitutes for oral sex as he doesn't want someone he loves performing such a sordid act. He also acknowledges his 1971 rape conviction and says he has served his time and cannot be linked to the current crimes. Cage queries why 12 women would all describe an identical method of kidnapping and assault, but Cusack insists the evidence is circumstantial and Cage knows he needs to find a .223 rifle on the premises that would connect Cusack with the wounds found on the dead girls.

He tries to taunt Cusack into losing control and gambles on charging him, even though the search has yet to turn up evidence of anything other than insurance fraud. He drives to the house and is sickened to see the den is exactly as Hudgens had described it and he implores his team to leave no stone unturned in the hunt for the vital clues. Knowing he will need Hudgens to testify, he coaxes her into going to a safe house prior to an interview with Cusack's attorney. But, just as Gerrard's unit find .223 guns hidden in a secret alcove in the ceiling and Mitchell tells Cage that he shouldn't quit the force because being a cop is who he is, Hudgens gets cold feet and gives her guard the slip and heads back to 50 Cent's den to collect her belongings.

Lo and behold, he offers to give her a lift and calls Henke to make the trade. However, as 50 Cent tries to pull a fast one by brandishing a gun, Hudgens realises she is in danger and steals a car and heads back into town. Henke shoots the pimp and comes after her, as she calls Cage on the car phone to arrange a rendezvous at 50 Cent's place. Cage arrives just in time to rescue Hudgens from being smuggled down the fire escape and gets back to headquarters to see Fuller announce that he is ready to free Cusack as the evidence against him is too flimsy to stand up in court. Deciding to pull a fast one, Cage confronts Cusack with a flying log found in his bedroom marked with the places where some of the corpses had been found. He insists that the tags simply indicate his favourite hunting spots, so Cage puts Wallack's bracelet on the table and Cusack flinches. Moreover, the door of the interrogation room falls open and Cusack sees Hudgens in the corridor and jumps to his feet and screams that he should have killed her when he had the chance.

Cage leaves in satisfied silence and a montage shows Cusack being arraigned and then helicoptered into the wasteland to help find the remaining bodies. A caption informs us that Cage was promoted to commander and remained with the force until he retired, while Hudgens became a mother of three. But the final insult comes with the snapshots of the real victims and Walker stoops so low as to dissolve a shot of Hudgens with the actual Cindy Paulsen, who is praised for finally speaking out about her shocking experiences.

As with so many Hollywood studio movies at the moment, this is wildly overwritten to ensure that nobody in the audience can possibly miss the subtleties of the plotting and characterisation. But it also feels as though the actors need plenty of words to validate their performances and it is intriguing to compare Cage's earnestly garrulous cop with Cusack's taciturn killer, as though the debuting Walker somehow feels that eloquence is a badge of honour - hence his use of the opening quotation from Isaiah: `As a sheep before its shearers is silent, so did he not open his mouth.' Yet neither Cage nor Cusack entirely convinces and Hudgens does a much better job in breaking away from her High School Musical image than Cusack does from his erstwhile romcom persona. But such are the limitations of Walker's cumbersome screenplay and perfunctory direction that the cast can almost be exonerated.

It's never a good sign when a picture has 30 credited producers and this often feels as though it has been assembled by numbers. Patrick Murguia's cinematography capably captures the harshness of the frozen terrain and the grimness of the red-light district, while production designer Clark Hunter creates a creepy lair for Cusack's predator. But Lorne Balfe's score booms as hollowly as the crass dialogue and advertising veteran Walker's visual sense this has more in common with a BritCrime cheapie than the bullet-headed crime dramas like Alan J. Pakula's Klute (1971), which New Hollywood used to make so well.

Although it is much more restrained, Drake Doremus's Breathe In also stumbles into obvious narrative pitfalls. These are largely of its own making, however, as Doremus and co-writer Ben York Jones have left it to the cast to improvise their dialogue around a loose outline and, as a consequence, the performers trapped in the subplots have striven too hard to make the most of their fleeting opportunities. In many ways feeling like a dialled-down companion piece to Doremus's Like Crazy (2011), which also starred Felicity Jones, this is not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination. Indeed, it often resembles one of Ingmar Bergman's chamber dramas or one of Woody Allen's more earnest imitations. But it also lacks originality and rather collapses into melodrama in the final reel.

As the action opens, Guy Pearce is posing wife Amy Ryan and teenage daughter Mackenzie Davis for the photograph that will go out with the annual round-robin message to their friends. With so many of their peers divorced or heading for the courts, Pearce and Ryan are understandably pleased that they have managed to stay together, especially as they had a few difficult years when Pearce was trying to make it as a rock musician. Now, he teaches music at Davis's upstate high school and occasionally plays the cello with the New York City Symphony Orchestra. However, Pearce is feeling increasingly nostalgic about his footloose days and the prospect of an audition for a full-time chair with the orchestra concerns Ryan that the stability she has worked so hard to achieve will be jeopardised.

More pressingly, however, the family is preparing to welcome 18 year-old British exchange student, Felicity Jones, who arrives in the middle of a thunderstorm and seems frustrated to have landed herself in the suburbs rather than in the centre of Manhattan. She appears more assured than Davis, who is going through a rough patch after breaking up with boyfriend Brendan Dooling. But they get along well enough and Ryan is too preoccupied with her cookie jar collection to notice that Pearce has also taken a shine to their guest. As her teacher, however, he is surprised by her reluctance to practice and decides to put her on the spot by asking her to play a tricky Chopin piano composition in front of the entire class. Starting nervously, Jones throws herself into the piece and her fellow students are as impressed as Pearce, who convinces himself that she is also an outsider artist and he takes to having long conversations with her, in which she flatters him about his own talent and he begins to wonder whether he has finally found the soulmate who truly understands him.

The sudden change in his mood is detected by Ryan, however. Moreover, Davis is also becoming increasingly irritated by Jones and resents the impact she is having on Dooling. He invites Jones to a party in the city and she is angry when he turns up alone expecting to go on a date. But he exacts his revenge for her rejection by telling his classmates that they slept together and Jones seeks solace with Pearce, who succumbs to his daydreams and kisses her. Unfortunately, the embrace is witnessed by Davis, who becomes so distraught at the turn events are taking that she crashes the car and Ryan summons Pearce to their daughter's hospital bedside.

Davis makes a full recovery and Jones returns to Britain (and the family and/or romantic problems from which she seems to have been running away). As the film ends, Pearce once again poses his family for the camera. They are all aware how close their idyll came to being shattering and there is an ironic acknowledgement that the accompanying letter won't quite be as detailed as it had been in previous years. Moreover, as Davis will soon be going to college, one is left to speculate how Pearce and Ryan will fare in her absence.

Neatly capturing the aura of self-congratulation in which Ryan has cocooned her idealised version of domestic bliss, Doremus has no difficulty in persuading the audience that thousands of other residences across America operate along much the same lines. Providing the perfect complement is the regret gnawing away at a devoted husband and father who wishes he had done things differently and lingeringly wonders whether he still could. But the introduction of a chic temptress at the very moment that the couple's attention should be focused on their obviously troubled daughter feels like a device used in a screenwriting workshop rather than a fact of life. Consequently, from the moment Jones steps across the threshold, the story starts heading into soap territory and Doremus's reluctance to stop it is hugely disappointing.

Jones shows well enough as the stranger who keeps her backstory closely guarded and falls as much prey to her own vulnerability as to Pearce's inveiglement. Playing somewhat against type, he also conveys something of the egotistical and sexual wistfulness at the root of most male midlife crises. But Ryan is lazily presented as something of a passive aggressive termagant, while Davis is required to do little more than sulk. Kyle MacLachlan and Alexandra Wentworth make the most of a choice cameo as a couple of barbecuing neighbours, but the characters involved in the orchestra and high-school subplots remain ciphers and Doremus struggles to draw the disparate threads together. Thus, while this is polished and serenely photographed by John Guleserian in a range of blues and beiges that match the soulful strains of Dustin O'Halloran's piano score, it always feels detached from reality and, rather like Ryan's homemaking, it seems just a touch too deliberate.