Parky at the Pictures (DVD 26/9/2013)

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.

The scene shifts to Stockholm for Mikael Marcimain's Call Girl, which recreates the sex scandal that threatened to erupt during the 1976 general election campaign. Around the same time, of course, a number of much-loved British celebrities were abusing their power to take advantage of young women and girls. But, while Operation Yewtree continues to expose those ensnared in the investigation into the heinous double life of Jimmy Savile, the Swedish courts chose to quash some of the accusations levelled against Prime Minister Olof Palme by screenwriter Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten and, as a consequence of the suit brought by his son, sequences suggesting that he paid for sex with underage girls have been removed from the original release print. In a couple of instances, these excisions impact directly upon the action. But the contention remains that, beneath its envied liberal exterior, Swedish society, both then and now, is rotten to the core and that those with vested interests and contacts in high places will always be able to cover up their peccadilloes and abandon the vulnerable to make whatever they can out of their shattered lives. 

David Dencik is a respected liaison officer in the justice ministry led by Claes Ljungmark. He is a regular client of Pernilla August, a madam who runs a high class call girl agency with her Polish assistant Ruth Vega Fernandez and her chauffeur, Sven Nordin. Their clients include government ministers, business executives and diplomats, as well as powerful crooks and members of the police elite. He is keen to keep a lid on an ongoing investigation into August's activities and is in cahoots with chief of police Claes-Göran Turesson to ensure that the different departments involved the case either run into dead-ends or find themselves on the tail of senior officers who have the power to continue the cover-up.

Fourteen year-old Sofia Karemyr finds herself being drawn into this sordid world when she is dropped off by her mother at a children's home on the outskirts of the city and placed in the care of social worker Hanna Ullerstam. She is an impressionable girl and, when her friend Josefin Asplund suggests they sneak out to go clubbing downtown, it is almost inevitable that they should be recruited by Jade Viljamaa to dance topless for an older man and that he will introduce them to August.

As August welcomes Karemyr and Asplund into her brood and starts training them for active service, Detective Simon J. Berger vows to get to bring August to justice and finds a willing accomplice in soon-to-retire homicide veteran Anders Beckman. However, his determination is matched by his naiveté and he is tailed everywhere he goes before being badly beaten by thugs he eventually discovers have connections with his own department. As he learns some harsh lessons, so do Karemyr and Asplund when August forces them into having sex with their first clients. Karemyr attempts to resist and is physically punished and threatened with blackmail unless she co-operates. Recognising how sullen and withdrawn she has become, Ullerstam tries to find out what is bothering her and tries to tell her superiors about her suspicions.

However, August has friends with much to lose in too many places for Ullerstam's claims to be taken seriously. But, when Karemyr collapses and is sent to a secure unit for observation, Berger manages to track her down. He has been deeply frustrated by the way in which the surveillance tapes he has commandeered have been doctored to protect the guilty and is keen to convince her that no one will be able to harm her. So, when August is taken into custody, he coaxes Karemyr into testifying against her. He is appalled when she begins identifying some of the man she has slept with, as they have been trying to push through legislation decriminalising incest and calling for equal rights for women in all spheres of Swedish life.

Yet, when Berger presents his report to Ljungmark, it quickly becomes clear that it could not only prevent the Swedish Social Democratic Party from retaining power and it is suppressed on Krepper's orders. Moreover, the investigation is closed and August's proposed sentence is suspended and she is allowed to go free. Shortly afterwards, Berger is killed in a hit-and-run accident and, realising that she can no longer trust anyone, Karemyr takes a bus out of the city into an uncertain future.

Given the shocking happenings revealed during Operation Bullfinch, this is a period picture with chilling contemporary relevance for our own city. But, while Marcimain lays bare the hypocrisy underlying the chauvinist establishment and the flawed libertarianism behind the permissive attitudes to all matter sexual, he allows Hoyte Van Hoytema's camera to linger on copious amounts of female flesh. Moreover, while he mocks the seedy lustfulness of the parties by having August and Vega Fernandez perform a salacious dance on a table top, he has no qualms about showing Karemyr and Asplund topless and even depicts a murdered prostitute in a disarming state of undress.

Yet, while accusations of fetishisation are valid, they are even more relevant where Lina Nordqvist and Michael Higgins's décor and Cilla Rörby's costumes are concerned. Every prop, item of furniture and outfit has been impeccably researched to create an IKEA-ABBA wonderland that is so mesmerisingly evocative that it almost threatens to overwhelm the narrative. Indeed, the trappings are depicted so lovingly that the lingering close-ups and splendidly parodic zoom shots become more important than the thematic analysis. Mattias Bärjed's synthesised score also comes close to being kitsch. Yet, Marcimain resists the temptation to indulge in cosy or corny nostalgia, as the look and mood of the times are adroitly used to comment on the corruption, carnality and callousness of the patriarchal clique conspiring with cynical opportunists like August's despicable madam.

Revelling in the chance to play an arch-villainous, August gives one of the finest performances of an impressive career. But she is never fully the focus of the action, as it veers from Dencik's factotum, the exploited Karemyr and the dogged Berger. Consequently, the plot meanders and the shift in tone between the period pastiche and the ScandiCrime is not only abrupt, but also unconvincing. This is slightly surprising, given that Marciman was Tomas Alfredson's assistant on the meticulous 2011 John Le Carré adaptation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and that he has plenty of experience on the small screen. But he also struggles to make the contrasts between the politicians speechifying and fornicating and between the escorts cavorting licentiously and testifying with abashed intensity about the pleasures of entertaining a better class of john. Thus, for all the magnificence of the mise-en-scène and the boldness of the performances by the female leads, this often feels sluggish, coldly dispassionate and, ultimately, lacks the human interest to match its authenticity.

Since first coming to international attention with 101 Reykjavík (2000) and Jar City (2006), Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur has also divided his time between stellar Hollywood ventures and more personal projects. Thus, following Inhale (2009) and Contraband (2012), he has returned to home waters for The Deep, a recreation of the incident that made Guðlaugur Friðþórsson a national celebrity in March 1984 and which stands as a metaphor for the mettle and modesty of a country that has slowly clawed its way back to prosperity away from the international gaze after its economic meltdown in 2008.

Ólafur Darri Ólafsson lives on the Westman Islands, an archipelago off the south coast of Iceland with a population of around 5000. As most people are involved in the fishing industry, everyone knows each other and nobody harbours a grudge after another night of hard drinking culminates in a fist fight. Overweight, baby-faced and reluctant to move out of his childhood home, Ólafsson is pals with Björn Thors and Jóhann G. Jóhannsson, who has recently married Þorbjörg Helga Þorgilsdóttir. They have a few drinks as they wait to embark on skipper Þröstur Leó Gunnarsson's rickety tub, The Breki, and there is just an edge to the banter with crewmates Guðjón Pedersen, Walter Grímsson and Stefán Hallur Stefánsson as they sail out into the Atlantic swell.

Not long into the voyage, a storm begins to brew. Suddenly, the bickering stops and the men join forces on deck to try and save the fishing equipment. But the tempest causes the boat to lurch and Gunnarsson is killed. The rest of the crew are also washed overboard and, as Ólafsson tries to help Thors and Jóhannsson as The Breki sinks, it becomes clear that their plan to swim the several miles to the nearest land in freezing waters is untenable. Yet, having looked up and seen a seagull circling overhead, Ólafsson decides he that has no option but to strike out for the shore.

Buffeted by the wind and the waves, Ólafsson manages to get some momentum and he tries to take his mind off the cold and the sheer physical exertion of ploughing through the icy seas by chatting to the seagull about the things he will do if he is given one more day of life. He also thinks back to his youth when the volcano erupted on the island and parents Theodór Júlíusson and María Sigurðardóttir were forced to evacuate their home. He prays that he makes it back and is more surprised than relieved to reach land after six hours of hell. However, he is still many miles from civilisation and has to stride out over solidified lava before he eventually reaches familiar landmarks.

Having heard about the disaster, the community had not unnaturally presumed that all hands must have been lost. There is general amazement, therefore, when Ólafsson reappears and relates his story. He is subjected to a battery of tests to prove that he has endured such physical duress and it is rather cruelly noted that his excess fat probably helped keep him buoyant and warm. When confirmation of his feat comes through, Ólafsson becomes a media sensation, although he is decidedly uncomfortable with the attention and plays down any notions that he is a hero. But, while he becomes something of a curio, Ólafsson is also aware that his survival is resented by the family and friends of some of those who were lost and his sense of guilty gnaws at him as he tries to resume normal life.

Based on a stage monologue scripted by Jón Atli Jónasson, this is a technically striking film that required Kormákur and his crew to shoot for many days in the least hospitable of conditions. They also had to sink a trawler, as no CGI was employed at any time during the  production. Deciding against filming in a tank, Kormákur subjected Ólafsson to hours in the wet and dark in sub-zero temperatures and his performance is all the more astonishing for the sheer risk involved in achieving it. Cinematographer Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson and sound recordist-cum-editor Björn Viktorsson also deserve enormous praise, as do sound designer Ingvar Lundberg and audio effects creator Gunnar Oskarsson, as the noise of the ocean, the cries of the birds and the silences and gales of the overland trek are crucial in the absence of dialogue.

More time might have been spent to fleshing out Ólafsson's character, as the opening shore leave sequence is too short to establish his personality and place within the settlement. The cod 16mm home movies used to suggest his life passing before his eyes also feel a little twee. But, while this may lack the spectacle of blockbusters like Wolfgang Petersen's The Perfect Storm (2000), it surpasses the intensity of Australian Andrew Traucki's aqua-chiller, The Reef (2010), without resorting to its melodramatics and sentimentality, and matches the authenticity of compatriot Árni Ásgeirsson's Undercurrent, in which skipper Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson's sister,  Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir, comes to suspect that trawlerman Víkingur Kristjánsson's death might have been more suspicious than crew members Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Gísli Örn Garðarsson, Ólafur Egilsson and Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (yes, him again) are letting on. That said, the inclusion of a brief television interview with the real Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, in which he describes in simple words the experiences we have just witnessed, throws the entire picture into relief, as these few seconds of actuality are much more poignant than anything in the meticulously crafted reconstruction. 

Still prevented from working in his native Iran, Abbas Kiarostami looks like remaining a peripatetic exile for a while longer. So, the odds must be quite short that his next project will be set in the Americas or Australasia, as he has already covered the other continents with the documentary ABC of Africa (2001) and the fictional features Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love, which are respectively set in Italy and Japan. Taking its title from a 1957 Ella Fitzegerald cover of a Jimmy Van Heusen song that was introduced by Dinah Shore, this is a teasing amalgam of classic Kiarostami concerns and stylistic tics and deft homages to Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and, would you believe, Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, for all its many pleasures, this is very much a minor work that will frustrate as many as it delights.

Struggling to pay her way through college, twentysomething Rin Takanishi places cards in a number of phone boxes around Tokyo advertising her services as a `paid date'. Her red-haired friend, Reiko Mori, thinks she has made a mistake by dressing as a schoolgirl and introduces her to Denden, a `protector' who finds her clients without the risk of meeting complete strangers. However, mechanic boyfriend Ryo Kase knows nothing about Takanishi's double life and the opening scene has her sitting in a busy restaurant trying to reassure him over the phone that she is not up to anything disreputable, while the camera fixes firmly on the unimpressed Mori.

Denden arranges for Takanishi to meet a special gentleman and she is reluctant to go, as she should be revising for an examination and keeps ignoring calls from her concerned grandmother, Kaneko Kubota, who wants to come and see her. He insists it is a worthwhile call and that she will be well treated and paid. So, Takanishi crosses the city to meet with Tadashi Okuno, a retired sociology professor who is more interested in companionship than anything more carnal. He has prepared dinner and engages Takanishi in conversation about a painting on his wall, as she bears a passing resemblance to its subject. Such is her inexperience that Takanishi feels unable to get to the business end of the evening and eventually makes her excuses to go into Okuno's bedroom. However, another phone call distracts Takanishi and, having undressed, she falls asleep on the old man's bed.

The following morning, Okuno assures Takanishi that he had a lovely time (although it isn't revealed if anything physical did occur between them) and offers to drive her to college so she isn't late for her exam. As she arrives, however, she sees Kase waiting for her and she introduces Okuno as her grandfather to stop him from becoming jealous. While she goes takes her paper, Okuno and Kase are left chatting outside and the latter detects a fault in the former's engine and suggests he brings it into his workshop for a repair. Much to his surprise, Okuno is recognised by one of his former students, who went on to become a policeman. They chat as Kase tinkers with the car and itches to get back to the subject of how much he adores Takanishi and how he should go about persuading her to marry him.

Bidding Kase a somewhat relieved farewell, Okuno returns to the campus and agrees to give Takanishi a lift to a nearby bookshop. She frets that she has made a mess of the exam and he tries to console her. A few hours later, Okuno gets a call from the distressed Takashini asking if he will pick her up. She has a cut on her face and he goes to fetch some first aid supplies, while she tries to evade the prying questions of a neighbour. However, no sooner has Okuno returned and begun tending to the wound than the irate Kase shows up. He has learnt the truth about Takashini's moonlighting and is furious that Okuno won't let him inside. After ranting and threatening, the frustrated Kases smashes a window.

Ozu aficionados will probably recognise the allusions to Woman of Tokyo (1933) and Tokyo Story (1953) in Takashini's decision to prostitute herself to fund her education and in her careless attitude to a doting relative. Others might spot the Vertigo (1958) reference in the discussion of the painting in Okuno's home. But the focus on a young woman compromising her virtue in order to survive in a patriarchal society recalls several Kenji Mizoguchi melodramas from the 1930s and also casts fascinating light on the contrasts between the freedoms `enjoyed' by females in Japan and Iran. Kiarostami had tackled this theme before in Through the Olive Trees (1994), in which actress Tahereh Ladanian is plagued by unworthy suitor Hossein Rezai. However, he is keen to point out that while Takanishi may seem more emancipated than her counterparts in the Islamic Republic, her fate is every bit as much dictated by the men in her life as it would be under the ayatollahs.

But Kiarostami is in playful mood here, with even the title being something of a tease, as nobody within the scenario is really in love with anybody else. What's more, none of the characters appear to have much of an understanding of their own personalities, let alone their desires. Okuno may seem to be sophisticated, but he still contacted Denden to book a young lady for the night and would, in all probability, have slept with her if she hadn't passed out. Takanishi herself knows she is letting down Kubota and her family back in the countryside, but cannot think of any other way of funding a course she is evidently flunking through a mix of inability and lack of application. At least, Kase has a trade and is committed to his relationship. But he is driven more by possessiveness than amourousness and is only capable of lashing out when his temper boils.

Yet, despite the resistibility of the principals, this is an engaging and often amusing picture. In some respects, it's a companion piece to Certified Copy, which similarly sought to fathom the authenticity of the feelings developing between antique dealer Juliette Binoche and writer William Shimell. But much less happens here, as Kiarostami experiments with ambience, morality and notions of role playing. He is superbly served by cinematographer Katsumi Yanagijima, production designer Toshihiro Isomi and sound editor Reza Narimazadeh in creating misleading audiovisual juxtapositions, while editor son Bahman Kiarostami deftly judges the pace of proceedings in linking the lengthy takes.

The performances are also splendid, although the most mesmerising scene simply has Takanishi sitting in the back of a cab checking her phone messages as the neon lights of the city intrude through the windows.  Indeed, as one might expect from Kiarostami, a number of incidents take place within vehicles. But while several anecdotes, jokes and fibs are told in transit, the action captures a real sense of the bustling capital and the deceptions and compromises that are essential to surviving in it. Nevertheless, one expects something a little more challenging from this remarkable director than a variation on the Pretty Woman theme of a tart with a heart finding a romantic john who treats her with the respect she deserves.

It's endlessly frustrating that British audiences get to see nigh on every piffling outing made by the latest pouting Hollywood pin-ups but have to make do with only the occasional release featuring some of the world's finest actresses. Since she made her astonishing debut in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's Rosetta in 1999, Émilie Dequenne has made some 20 pictures. Yet, you can count on one hand the number that have been widely seen in this country. The same is true for bigger names like Catherine Denueuve, Juliette Binoche, Audrey Tautou and Isabelle Huppert, as only a fraction of their output is picked up by UK distributors. But the likes of Cécile de France, Ludivine Sagnier, Déborah François and Marina Hands should all be much bigger stars over here and it is dispiriting to note that even though Dequenne is about to get the best notices of her career for Joachim Lafosse's Our Children, they will do little to raise her profile with British film-goers or make her any more bankable at the box office.

Based on the case of Geneviève Lhermitte, the Brussels woman who slit the throats of her five young children in 2007, this is not a sensationalist melodrama or a gritty slice of social realism. Instead, it's a meticulous study of the walls closing in on a wife and mother who barely realises that her spirit has been broken until she commits the appalling crime that seemed her last hope of escape. As the grief-stricken Dequenne lies in a hospital bed begging a nurse to ensure that her babies are buried in Morocco and Lafosse shows their small, white coffins being loaded on to a plane, we realise the full horror of her desperate actions. But the subtlety and sensitivity of the screenplay co-written by Lafosse, Thomas Bidegain and Matthieu Reynaert and the harrowing honesty of Dequenne's exceptional performance ensure that we come to sympathise with this crushed soul rather than condemn her.

Flashing back six years, the story opens with teacher Émile Dequenne in the early stages of a romance with Tahar Rahim, a Moroccan who has lived in Belgium since older sister Mounia Raoui contracted a marriage of convenience with middle-aged doctor Nils Arestrup several years earlier. The bond between the two men is much stronger than their guardian-ward or brothers-in-law status would suggest and Dequenne is faintly aware of Arestrup's disapproval when they announce their plans to wed. Yet, he agrees to be their witness, pays for their honeymoon (which they insist he shares) and invites them to move into the comfortable apartment where he has his surgery. Moreover, he also makes Rahim his assistant when it becomes clear that he doesn't have the talent to pursue his own medical studies.

Alone except for envious older sister Stéphane Bissot, Dequenne is delighted by the warmth of the welcome extended by Rahim's family when they travel from Morocco for the wedding. Although Raoui no longer lives with Arestrup, mother Baya Belal is still hugely grateful for all he has done for her children. But younger brother Redouane Behache.is less appreciative, as he resents being left behind when Rahim moved to Belgium and accuses him during the reception of being Arestrup's lover. Yet Arestrup comes to seem more grandparental than sugar daddyish when Dequenne gives birth to a daughter (eventually played by Jade Stambouli) and he not only gives the couple thoughtful gifts to mark the occasion, but he also gets up in the night to help with the crying fits. Indeed, even after the arrival of a second girl (Sohane Stambouli), Arestrup offers Dequenne more support than the immature and culturally chauvinist Rahim, who bellows at his wife when the older child falls downstairs and she blames herself for not closing the protective gate rather than her idle husband for not keeping a better eye on his children.

In spite of the growing tension between Rahim and Dequenne, she quickly becomes pregnant again and delivers another daughter (Yasmine Boussoualem). She continues to teach, but is largely left to run the home alone and can't even confide in Bissot after she is banished for flirting with Arestrup, who isolates Dequenne further by sending Rahim back to Africa to recharge his batteries. In his absence, Arestrup makes Dequenne feel inadequate by getting the girls to behave better than she can. Moreover, he fields calls from Rahim, who greets his wife with little enthusiasm at the airport on his return and yells at the kids when they pester him for attention while he is trying to watch the football

Sensing an opportunity, Dequenne suggests they move to Morocco and Rahim is tempted by the idea. However, he changes his mind when Arestrup threatens to break off all contact and Dequenne reluctantly accepts the decision when Arestrup reminds her that girls are treated very differently in the Maghreb  In a bid to ameliorate the situation, however, Arestrup decides to move to bigger premises. Yet the increasingly careworn Dequenne is given no say in the matter and she soon becomes pregnant again. Initially, Rahim can barely disguise his dismay, but his mood changes when they have a boy (Jovan Zec) and even Dequenne seems to respond positively to sessions with therapist Nathalie Boutefeu.

She also enjoys a trip to Morocco and Belal is touched by her devotion towards her son and grandchildren. She even lets Dequenne take her paddling in the sea. But the real reason for the visit becomes clear when Arestrup asks Dequenne if she would be willing to coax Bissot into marrying Behache so he can come to Brussels. Yet Dequenne feels so relaxed on her return that she lets slip that Arestrup is both her brother-in-law and her GP and Boutefeu suggests that they exclude him from their consultations and only meet on an occasional rather than a weekly basis. Dequenne tells Arestrup that she has been discharged from therapy, but he keeps her off work and on pills in a bid to retain his control over her. But he also becomes more openly critical and ticks her off for giving her eldest girl a standing ovation for a dance in the school play. Rahim proves equally critical when Dequenne dozes off and fails to have dinner on the table when they come home. He even slaps her for not showing Arestrup sufficient respect and they eat the pizza he buys for them in sullen silence.

Belal seems to sense Dequenne's growing despair when she arrives for Behache's wedding and insists on praising her for being such a good mother. She also gives her a traditional Moroccan kaftan, which Dequenne wears incessantly, even though Arestrup tells her she looks ridiculous in it. He continues to undermine her confidence after Rahim escorts his ailing mother home and there is a touching moment at the airport when Belal gives Dequenne an extra hug after noticing the coolness of her son's farewell. Suddenly feeling alone, Dequenne stops the car on the way home and sobs after singing along to the Julien Clerc song `Femmes...je vous aime'.

She tries to call Boutefeu to explain her gloomy thoughts, feelings of gnawing anxiety and the growing terror that something is going to happen to the children. But Arestrup discovers she has been deceiving him and calmly informs her that she has not deserved the help and affection he has given her and her offspring. Thus, after she faints while watching her eldest having a veruca removed, Dequenne steals a kitchen knife while out shopping and returns home to sit the kids down with cakes and a new DVD, while she calmly murders her son and calls each daughter in turn to an upstairs room before phoning the police to confess to her crime and lament her inability to kill herself.

Wisely, Lafosse refrains from showing the climactic tragedy. Instead, he observes from across the living room as Boussoualem and the two Stamboulis toddle out of shot to meet their fate. He also presents Dequenne's emergency call over an outside view of the house, so as not to diminish our sympathy for her. But such is the conviction of her performance that only the hardest heart would blame her, even for such a forlorn act. Her beauty and personality are eroded before our eyes as Rahim and Arestrup chip away at her self-worth and confidence to perform the most menial task. However, because Rahim's callousness is so careless and Arestrup's calculation so insidious, her decline feels all the more disturbingly mundane and her solution so much more disproportionate to what even her own sister considers a cushy situation.

As in Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2009), Arestrup exerts a curious grip on Rahim that is left tantalisingly unexplained. The supporting performances are also solid, with Belal's compassionate, but impotent mother-in-law being the standout. Jean-François Hensgens's cinematography and Anna Falguères's deceptively comfortable interiors are also inspired, as is the use of Scarlatti's `La Maddalena' and Haydn's `Stabat Mater'. But the plaudits go to Lafosse, who has learned not to push the plot so hard since teaming Jérémie and Yannick Renier with Isabelle Huppert in Private Property (2006), and to Dequenne, whose Best Actress win in the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes last year was so thoroughly deserved.

Echoes of Jaco Van Dormael's The Eighth Day (1996), Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor's Yo, tambien (2009) and Hans Van Nuffel's Oxygen (2010) reverberate throughout Belgian Geoffrey Enthoven's road dramedy Come As You Are, which explores the sexual urges of the ailing and disabled. Utterly predictable in every regard and strangely chauvinist in its attitude towards women, this essentially means well and has its share of sweet and smileworthy moments. However, one of these days, someone is going to have to make a film about a dying or handicapped woman longing to lose her virginity.

Paraplegic Robrecht Vanden Thoren, near-blind Tom Audenaert and cancer-stricken Gilles De Schryver have long been friends. They are respectively cared for by ageing folks Robrect Vandem Thorem and Katelijne Verbeke, single mother Marilou Mermans and trendy parents Johan Heldenbergh and Karlijn Sileghem, who have tended to cosset them in an effort to make their lives more bearable. De Schryver's younger sister Kimke Desart doesn't see why he deserves so much fuss and is more than a little jealous when he is allowed to go on holiday to Spain with his pals.

What the trio have failed to divulge, however, is that they plan to visit a brothel that caters for the less able-bodied. But the best laid plans seem dashed when De Schryver learns that his tumour has become more aggressive and Heldenbergh and Sileghem refuse to let him travel. Undaunted, Vanden Thoren makes contact with replacement nurse-driver Isabelle de Hertogh, who agrees to chaperone them in her specially equipped minibus.

Convinced that the obese De Hertogh cannot understand Flemish, Vanden Thoren and De Schryver make fun of her, much to Audenaert's discomfort as he acts as translator. Moreover, they refuse her help when they stop for the night at a hotel and it is only when she pulls Audenaert out of a lake after he slips during a layby bathroom break that they accept her and she reveals that she has understood every word they've been saying.

Yet, having got along famously during a night camping under the stars, De Hertogh delivers the pals to their parents at a motel the next day. They plead to be allowed to continue their journey and the dying De Schryver swings the decision by making it his last request. As they drive on to their luxury Spanish villa, De Hertogh reveals that she had no option but to betray them as she had only just come out of prison after attacking her abusive husband and couldn't risk infringing the terms of her parole.
=
This news serves only to intensify Audenaert's growing affection for De Hertogh and he backs out of the brothel visit in order to be alone with her. But, even though Vanden Thoren and De Schryver finally realise their dream, the trip is destined to end on a sad note.

Occasionally sentimental, but laudably non-patronising in its depiction of impairment, Pierre De Clercq's screenplay ensures an amiable enough odyssey. A dream sequence showing the threesome almost celestially healthy is a slight miscalculation, but Enthoven's emphasis on normality keeps the action on track, even when it meanders into unnecessary digressions such as De Schryver's date with a pretty Spanish girl during an unsupervised night out. Moreover, the performances are fine, with Vanden Thoren being persuasively brattish and De Hertogh nicely understated as the brusque carer with a soft centre.

Finally, diametric worlds collide in Michael Mayer's debut, Out in the Dark, which makes the most of a meagre budget to impart a political spin upon the oft-told tale of love across a divide. However, the Haifa-born, California-trained director is not content with pitching his star-crossed lovers into the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He and co-scenarist Yael Shafir also make them gay and gives one of them a Muslim fundamentalist brother with connections to a terrorist organisation. As if this isn't enough melodrama for one picture, Mayer also laces the mix with denial, regret and sacrifice to ensure that the climactic thriller segment ends on a resounding note of poignancy and indignation.

Currently studying for his psychology masters at the Birzeit University in Ramallah, Nicholas Jacob has high hopes of being allowed to continue his education at Princeton, Stanford or Cambridge. However, for the moment, he has trouble leaving the West Bank in order to get into the nearby Israeli city of Tel Aviv. Thus, he has to wait until dark before sneaking past the checkpoints to visit his flamboyant friend, Loai Noufi, who works in a trendy gay bar. One night, Jacob catches the eye of affluent Israeli lawyer Michael Aloni, who explains that he is out to parents Alon Oleartchik and Chelli Goldenberg, but keeps his sexuality a closely guarded secret from his colleagues and opponents. In return, Noufi reveals that he comes from a conservative village where homosexuality is ranked among the deadliest of sins.

Compounding Jacob's problem is the fact that brother Jameel Khouri is part of a militant anti-Israeli cadre and has hidden a cache of weapons in the family home. He is unhappy that Jacob keeps going to Tel Aviv and fumes when he is granted a special student visa to enable him to use the city libraries. However, Jacob exploits his new freedom to call on Aloni and the pair soon become lovers. He has less time for Noufi, though, and is powerless to prevent him from being detained by the Israeli Defence Force and returned to Ramallah. Khouri's group decide that Noufi is an informer and they beat and kill him as a warning to others not to fraternise with the enemy.

Distraught at having witnessed his friend's execution, Jacob begs Aloni to secure him residency papers before Khouri, mother Khawlah Haj and younger sister Maysa Daw find out about his sexuality. However, Aloni's actions only arouse suspicion and IDF agent Alon Pudt tries to blackmail Jacob into spying on Khouri and his associates. When he refuses, his visa is revoked and his situation deteriorates rapidly when his family learn about his activities in Tel Aviv and disown him. 

Alone and afraid, Jacob slips back into the city. However, the IDF raid his house that night and arrest Khouri on discovering his weapons stash. Watching the TV news, Aloni convinces himself that Jacob must share his sibling's ideology and refuses to see him, let alone offer him sanctuary. Certain he is going to be killed, Jacob narrowly escapes capture after being chased by the police. However, help is soon at hand, as Aloni realises his mistake after Pudt pays him a call and he risks his own neck in trying to find his lover. He tells him a gangster who owes him a favour can smuggle Jacob to France, where they can be together. But, in acting as a decoy, Aloni is arrested by the IDF and, as Jacob leaves the harbour by boat, Pudt delights in taunting Aloni that not only is his career over, but his life is ruined, too.

Ever since he made Yossi & Jagger in 2002, Eytan Fox has been the doyen of gay Israeli cinema. Indeed, echoes of The Bubble (2006) reverberate around this earnest, but deeply flawed picture. Yet, for all his sincerity, Mayer lacks Fox's narrative control and visual sense. Consequently, this always feels like a tract with a message to disseminate rather than a story about human beings trapped in an appalling predicament. Employing close-ups in often dimly lit locales, cinematographer Ran Aviad capably contrasts realities in Tel Aviv and the West Bank, while editor Maria Gonzales introduces an air of unpredictability with her skittish cutting. Composers Mark Holden and Michael Lopez also impose a brooding atmosphere without overly manipulating the audience's emotions. But there is precious little chemistry between Aloni and first-timer Jacob and the dearth of spark makes the reckless chances the pair take seem all the more contrived.

Similarly, too many of the secondary figures border on caricature, with Noufi's campness being as clumsily limned as Khouri's extremism. Nevertheless, Mayer does succeed in exploring the sense of confinement and persecution that most Palestinians feel. The opening sequence in which Jacob creeps towards Tel Aviv, for example, is unaffectedly disconcerting and it's a shame that Mayer decides to jettison such restraint in ratcheting up the tension in the latter stages Similarly, he might have made more of the pressures that are brought to bear upon ordinary citizens by both the security forces and their jihadist counterparts. But resonant points are invariably made with a thud rather than with precision and, as a result, while this potently exposes the prejudice that exists on both sides of the conflict, it feels closer in spirit to Merav Doster's heavy-handed Eyes Wide Open (2009) than Eytan Fox's nimbly critiquing Yossi (2012).