Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 10/10/2013)

Seven years after exploring the impact of ageing upon the friendship between actors Peter O'Toole and Leslie Phillips in Venus, director Roger Michell and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi reunite to approach similar territory from a different direction in Le Week-end. This time the imperilled pair are sixtysomethings Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, who have been married for 30 years and have become so used to each other that his good qualities are beginning to irritate her and he has started taking her for granted.

In a bid to put a bit of romance back into their lives, they arrange a weekend in Paris. But, even as they board the EuroStar at St Pancras, it is clear that she is seething at his lack of spontaneity and he is retreating into himself as he wonders how to break the news that he has been dismissed from his university post for insulting a black female student. He also wants to broach the subject of their adult son, who wishes to come back home with his wife and child just months after moving out. But a more pressing concern is the state of the hotel in which they spent their honeymoon and Duncan's insistence that that take a taxi ride around the city until she can spot something more suitably palatial in which to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

Having opted for a suite with a view of the Eiffel Tower, Duncan resists Broadbent's clumsy attempt to seduce her and it takes a good lunch to put her in a better mood. They spend the rest of the day mooching around museums, churches and bookshops and even take a detour out to Montparnasse to see Samuel Beckett's grave before absconding from a bistro without paying the bill. Yet all is not well and Duncan infers that she would like to quit her teaching job and do something worthwhile with her retirement and Broadbent is forced to come clean about his enforced lay-off.

They bump into Broadbent's Cambridge contemporary, Jeff Goldblum, who reveals that he has relocated to the City of Light and is expecting a baby with young wife, Judith Davis. In inviting them to a soirée, he also lets slip that his literary career has taken off (whereas Broadbent's has stalled after showing some early promise) and that he is extremely wealthy. Thus, it is with some trepidation that Broadbent and Duncan arrive at Goldblum's apartment and they soon feel horribly out of place, despite empathising with both Davis and Goldblum's slacker son from his first marriage, Olly Alexander. But, while they begin to feel better about themselves (as they are not part of this ghastly coterie and are nowhere near as desperate to be the centre of attention as their host), it takes Duncan's flirtation with academic Brice Beaugier and Broadbent's heart-to-heart with Alexander and his soul-baring dinner table revelation to make them realise what they stand to lose if they separate. 

They arrive back at the hotel basking in an odd sense of superiority. However, they are informed that Broadbent's credit card has been declined and are forced to call Goldblum and ask him to meet them at a café. He finds the silver lining in the situation and they put a record on the jukebox and begin to dance, in homage to the Madison sequence involving Anna Karina, Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur in Jean-Luc Godard's Bande à part (1964)

Hanif Kureishi is a curious writer. His dialogue has a tendency to be florid and his scenarios invariably take a melodramatic twist. Yet he also has an intuitive gift for character and the milieux he creates always feel authentic. Thus, this is a bittersweet curate's egg of a picture that veers between moments of deft inspiration and utter contrivance. Fortunately, in his fourth collaboration with Kureishi, Roger Michell knows how to tone down his excesses. He is also a fine director of actors and allows Broadbent and Duncan to limn an eminently resistible duo, whose vulnerability allows the audience to forgive their peevish tics and traits and hope that they find a way of becoming the people they once were and would like to be again.

As he so often does, Jeff Goldblum also excels as the cocky American whose façade barely conceals his insecurities. But it's the tension between Duncan and Broadbent that holds the film together, as he rides her wounding barbs about the nature of his love for her and she tolerates his willingness to settle for second best. The simmering row over a past infidelity that they carry over into the dinner party is particularly well realised and the ensuing conversations that bring things to a head reveal their willingness to share their misery with others and fulminate upon it rather than sit down and discuss it together and assess how it might impact upon the future of their marriage. Yet, excellent though the leading trio are, cinematographer Nathalie Durand comes close to ensuring that Paris steals the show, while the use of tracks by Bob Dylan and Nick Drake alongside Jeremy Sams's pastichy score is worth a dozen of Kureishi's self-consciously chiselled bon mots.

The spatting twosome are at the opposite end of the age range in John McKay's Glaswegian romcom, Not Another Happy Ending. However, there is too little chemistry between Karen Gillan and Stanley Weber for this Curtisesque exercise to catch light and it hardly helps matters that the scenario is so clumsily chauvinist, as well as rather derivatively convoluted. Even more damagingly, the secondary characters are sketchy to the point of transparency, while the surfeit of catchy songs by Scottish artists on the soundtrack risks reducing the already lightweight action to trite insignificance. Notwithstanding such gripes, this is a very easy picture to enjoy, especially as cinematographer George Cameron Geddes so clearly relishes the second city scenery.

Twentysomething Karen Gillan has filled a pin board with rejection letters from publishers unimpressed with the first novel she has based on her traumatic childhood. However, Frenchman Stanley Weber has invited her to his office and she sets off in her best Annie Hall outfit to meet him. Unfortunately, he is ranting down the phone when she arrives and roommate Iain De Caestecker offers her a seat in what passes for the waiting-room. She bursts into tears of joy when Weber offers to publish the story, but insists that the manuscript needs lots of work and a jaunty montage follows as they whip the text into shape and develop mutual crushes. However, when Weber changes the title from The Endless Anguish of My Father to Happy Ending, Gillan vows to break off all contact with him once she has completed her second contracted book.

Much to their surprise, the debut becomes a bestseller and Gillan is not only reunited with estranged father Gary Lewis, but also embarks upon a live-in relationship with conceited screenwriter Henry Ian Cusick. Weber looks on as Gillan becomes a key member of Lewis's pub quiz team and Cusick is selected to adapt her book for the screen. But, when she suddenly gets writer's block on the 37th and final chapter of her follow-up, Weber suddenly has cause for concern, as accountant Kate Dickie has informed him that his company will fold unless he can pay some bills pretty swiftly.

In truth, Weber is aghast that Gillan has been poached by rivals John Bett and Louise Goodall. But he has no option than to re-ignite her creative spark and help her finish the book that will part them forever. Thus, he decides to make her life a misery so she can tap into the muse that has been silenced by her burgeoning contentment. Breaking into her flat, Weber steals a sentimentally significant plant from her desk and tinkers with her laptop. However, instead of inspiring Gillan, his actions have an enervating effect and she begins baking furiously (sometimes in the nude) to occupy her time and finds herself being haunted by her heroine, Amy Manson, who is keen to know her fate.

Initially, Cusick is too self-centred to be supportive. But, after he is sent on a Steven Soderberghian wild goose chase, he proposes marriage and Weber is appalled when Gillan accepts. He tries to break them up at the book launch of his other promising author, Nicola Ball, who has a soft spot for the genial De Caestecker, who is a teacher who delights in feeding his classes such misinformation as the fact that Wordsworth was the first poet to use a computer. All looks lost when Cusick punches Weber for insulting Gillan. But he arrogantly changes the ending to her story to suit his scenario and she throws him out of the flat. Dismayed that such an upheaval has failed to unleash her inspiration, Weber turns his attention to Lewis, who walked out on the seven year-old Gillan on the day that her mother collapsed and died in Woolworth's. Weber browbeats De Caestecker into posing as a cabby so that Gillan will miss the pub quiz final, which Lewis hopes will confirm their rapprochement. But she races across Glasgow in the rain to keep the date and is overjoyed when they win the first prize of a trip to Disneyland.

Furious with Weber for interfering in her life, Gillan dashes off the final chapter and retreats to a cottage in the depths of the countryside. However, Manson refuses to leave, as she is unconvinced that the ending is right for her character and Gillan is surprised when Weber arrives on her doorstep and demands to be let in so they can salvage her text. As they start working, Weber suddenly collapses and the scene cuts to a cemetery. But the macabre setting has been chosen as a gimmicky place to launch the sophomore novel and all ends happily ever after (as one never doubted for a second that it would).  

Beloved by millions as Amy Pond in Doctor Who, Karen Gillan seems aware that she has a job on her hands in reinventing herself and, thus, she even performs a chaste nude scene in the course of giving her all in this amiable, if unremarkable romp. She never convinces for a second as a writer, but she has the spirit to defy Weber's stubbly, bespectacled Gallic boor and this feistiness goes some way to atoning for the folly of her liaison with the self-serving Cusick and the predictability of her patching up with Lewis, who seems to be able to wander back into her life without having to justify his actions (to her, at least) or explain what he has been doing in the two decades since he disappeared.

De Caestecker, Manson and Bell also fall victim to this sloppy attitude towards the minor characters, although the central conceit that Weber and Gillan hate each other even though they palpably don't is also pretty flimsy. The satirical assaults on the literary world are similarly feeble. Yet this breezes along efficiently enough and follows McKay's Jean Shrimpton teleplay We'll Take Manhattan (2012) in suggesting that Gillan has star potential an abundance.

The sole foreign-language film on offer this week is Hong Sang-soo's curiously titled Nobody's Daughter Haewon. Surprisingly, this is the first feature by this eclectic South Korean auteur to secure a general release in the UK and it's a shame that audiences across the country will get to see this lacklustre offering rather than such thematically provocative and technically astute pictures as The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996), Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000), Woman Is the Future of Man (2004), Oki's Movie (2010) and In Another Country (2012). Nevertheless, admirers of Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer will recognise some of the influences here, even if they sometimes have to struggle to ascertain their significance.

Jeong Eun-Chae wants to be an actress, but she has enrolled on a film-making course in Seoul and is struggling to find her niche. She sits in the library and writes in her diary before dozing off. It is 21 March 2012 and Jeong goes to bid farewell to mother Kim Ja-ok, who is emigrating to Canada. They spend what seems to be a pleasant day together and Kim urges Jeong to make the most of her looks by entering the Miss Korea pageant. But Jeong is unable to tell Kim that she wishes she wasn't leaving and that she resents the idea that her mother is off to live the high life while she stays behind to struggle through her classes.

Once on her own, Jeong bumps into Jane Birkin (playing herself), who seems to be lost in the middle of the capital and is glad of Jeong's assistance. She wishes her well and tells Jeong that she resembles her own daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg. As she walks downtown, Jeong passes the hotel where she lost her virginity and starts thinking about Lee Sun-kyung. He used to be an admired film-maker, but is now a tutor on her course and has to put up with considerable stick from his students because he always used to mock academics in his pictures.

Prone to rages and sentimental outbursts when listening to a synthesised verion of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony on a tinny recording device, Lee is also married with a child and Jeong had to keep their liaison a secret from her classmates. On an impulse, she gives Lee a call and they arrange to meet at a restaurant. However, a number of his charges are also dining there and Jeong has to pretend she bumped into him by accident. As he listens to the kids chatting, Lee comes to realise how much Jeong's classmates dislike her and he watches with some stupefaction as she gets horrendously drunk and leaves.

On 27 March, Lee invites Jeong to spend the day with him and they visit the ruins of the historic Fort Namhan. He complains about the state of his marriage and his hatred of teaching, while she tries to cheer him up by explaining her philosophy of life. However, when she lets slip that she has slept with one of her fellow students, Lee subjects her to a volley of abuse and she leaves. Having presumably kept to herself for a few days, Jeong goes back to the campus library on 3 April and tells one of her friends about her relationship with Lee. As she is confessing, however, she hears that he has injured his face in a fall.

Later that afternoon, Jeong is approached by Eui-sung Kim, who teaches in San Diego and is back home for three weeks to find a new wife, as he recently got divorced. Jeong gives him the slip by going to Fort Namhan with Ye Ji-won and her married lover, Yoo Jun-sang. While they are talking, Lee calls Jeong and she rushes to be with him. He informs her that he has left his wife an begs her to run away with him. But he gets cross with her as she prevaricates and they start to argue and Jeong suddenly walks away.

Hong Sang-soo is renowned for his dissections of male foible and it is somewhat unusual to see him centring on a female protagonist. He is well aware that she is a flawed character and makes little effort to endear her to the audience. But, despite Jeong Eun-chae's beguiling performance, it's difficult to know what to make of her antics. Indeed, it's not always possible to distinguish between reality and dream, as she spend so much time scribbling in her diary,  snoozing or drinking heavily. Thus, does she really have an encounter with Jane Birkin and does she really give her a number to call in Paris? And, if she did, does this have any larger significance. And does Eui-sung really know Martin Scorsese and how does this (and other chance encounters with, for example, the stalking bookseller) fit into Jeong's rather aimless existence?

In many ways, not knowing when Jeong is living or fantasising adds to the film's pleasure and Hong ensures that we can never know definitively by duplicating several incidents. Jeong has conversations in secondhand bookshops with two different men, while a cigarette butt is twice thrown into the road and it is only on the second occasion that Jeong stamps it out and launches into a diatribe against smokers. Similarly, she makes two trips to the fortress and later notes in a café comments book a phrase that had made an impression when she had overheard it earlier. But is Song using these coincidences to offer us an insight into the way Jeong can flit between two worlds or is he simply remarking on the way in which the brain picks up and processes pieces of information during an average day? Or does he have something altogether different in mind? 

It's not always essential to understand a film in order to enjoy it. But one gets the feeling that Song is not particularly interested in the viewer's response and that he uses a mix of medium shots and zooms to maintain a distance. He also encourages his actors to avoid readable facial expressions while improvising conversations that seem full of character and satirical insights, but don't end up making things any clearer at all. Quite what all these circulatory meta-tactics mean is uncertain. But the overriding theme is that Jeong fails to learn from her mistakes and that, in searching for a place to belong, she is likely to make the gravest miscalculation of all.

Just a few weeks after he attended the Academy Award ceremony in Hollywood, British photojournalist Tim Hetherington was killed by shrapnel during a mortar attack in the Libyan town of Misrata. He had gone to cover the conflict in April 2011 because he felt a duty to report the truth to the wider world. Yet his genius for conveying the relatability of human behaviour in war zones would cost him his own chance of happiness and Sebastian Junger, with whom he had directed the acclaimed documentary Restrepo (2010), pays handsome tribute to his fallen friend in Which Way Is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington.

Hetherington is first seen struggling to explain his métier in a series of typically self-depreciating out-takes. Eventually, he settles on the explanation that he wants to show that people remain human even in the heat of battle because this makes warfare seem all the more compelling and problematic  Junger then cuts to handheld footage showing Hetherington in a vehicle with Chris Hondros, Guy Martin and Guillermo Cervera, as they ask the way to the front line amidst the chaos of the Libyan uprising. They drive through a deserted town and find themselves in the middle of a gun battle. As some young men bomb a nearby building, they laugh at the camera and insist that what they are doing is crazy. But Hetherington and his companions follow hard behind as they set light to some tyres to smoke out the enemy and ready their guns for another onslaught.

In 2008, Hetherington had asked himself why he went to such dangerous places and he was aware that there were personal reasons behind his desire to obtain the objective truth. Thus, while he knew that he was addicted to the thrill of being at the sharp end, he also sought to photograph images capturing a significant moment so that it could be preserved and shared. In Sri Lanka in 2004, he had photographed the crosses of a mass grave against the dusk sky and had captured innocent kids going to school in the midst of utter carnage. Such situations taught him about the need for intimacy in an effective picture, as there had to be something in every shot for the viewer to identify with. He also discovered that individuals made big events important.

As parents Alistair and Judith recall, Hetherington started taking pictures when he was a boy. Born the youngest of three in Birkenhead in 1970, he lived in 12 different places and never developed a strong sense of community. Yet he was always confident and breezed through a Classics degree at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford. However, he was in no hurry to enter the world of work and spent a year in India, immersing himself in places off the tourist routes and developing an empathy with those less fortunate than himself. On returning to Britain, he took a photojournalism course at the University of Cardiff and tutor Daniel Meadows avers that he had a natural eye to go with his winning personality. Classmate Marcus Rose remembers him spending 24 hours in an A&E department to collect material for a short photomontage film called Pain and this led him to study multi-media, as he sensed that there would be more to the future than print.

Junger diverts here to show Hetherington coaxing some Tamil fishermen into posing for him with their nets. He explains how photography made him feel free and channelled a destructive tendency. But, from the moment he encountered the Liberian Millenium Stars football team on their 1999 tour of the UK, he also knew that he had a duty to connect people. Thus, he spent the next eight years in West Africa and headmaster Sam Campbell recalls the courage he demonstrated in going into the interior of Sierra Leone to photograph students like Sophie at the Milton Margai School for the Blind, who has been victimised by rebel soldiers. According to journalist James Brabazon, this mission proved the turning point in Hetherington's evolution, as he realised moral outrage would solve nothing and that new beginnings could only come from avoiding stereotypes and restating blame.

He moved on to Liberia with Brabazon, where they reported on the unspeakable acts being perpetrated by President Charles Taylor against the rebels trying to oust him from power. This was Hetherington's first experience of combat and he not only shot video footage for Brabazon, but also took his own still pictures and earned the friendship of a LURD fighter named Black Diamond. American diplomat Dante Paradiso says the pair took enormous chances running with alienated Mandingos in such dangerous terrain and they might not have survived if they had been captured by Taylor's forces.

Brabazon opines that the young men on both sides seemed to enjoy the theatrics of war and yet Hetherington was fully aware how crazy it was for him to walk towards his potential doom for the sake of a snap. However, as he was using a Rolliflex camera to shoot portrait-shaped images, he often had to linger in dangerous places to compose his image and this attention to the scene around him allowed him to spot things he might have missed by dipping in and getting the hell out. He also developed the habit of talking to his subjects, even in the line of fire, and colleague Chris Anderson states that he learned to record human nature rather than warfare.

Hetherington also had an eye for graffiti and was not afraid to intervene if he perceived injustice. Brabazon chokes up as he thinks back to one occasion, when they were covering a clinic that had been set up inside a brewery and Hetherington prevented a rebel leader named Iron Jacket from executing a doctor he was convinced was a spy because he made him see that he could do more good helping the wounded than he could paying the ultimate price for a treachery that could not be confirmed. This encounter prompted Hetherington to switch to teaching and charity work for a while and he lectured his father on how lucky he was to live a life free from such everyday horror. He also made short films during this period so that people understood their world a little better. But, after four years, he felt the need to move on.

The scene cuts suddenly to the Korengal Valley in Eastern Afghanistan in 2007, where Hetherington and Junger filmed Restrepo. They were accepted by the men of the Second Platoon of Bravo Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade because they didn't try to push a political point and could be trusted not to freak under fire. Peter Bouckaert from Human Rights Watch reveals that it was a tough assignment and that Hetherington got on with soldiers and locals alike. However, he was surprised by the amount of action they saw and urged Junger to focus less on the combat than the toll it was taking on the men. In a bid to raise morale, he had his head shaved and listened intently as the troops chatted about everything from their families to red light districts and the Taliban. Sergeant Brendan O'Byrne recalls that they shared a male paradise, as everyone chipped in with filling sandbags and making bad jokes about the food. Indeed, Hetherington dubbed the encampment `Man Eden'. But he also captured the men endured between patrols and the things they did to pass the time, as he wanted to show them bonding in boredom, as well as fear and death.

Brabazon remembers his grandfather telling him that men only love unconditionally in a war zone and Hetherington was fascinated by this concept. Moreover, as Junger explains, combat might be a nightmare while you are caught in the middle of it, but one quickly comes to miss it once it's over and Hetherington explains that this is the case because you become so close to other men getting ready to die for you and his footage reveals how vulnerable the soldiers look as they sleep or try to occupy their minds and Anderson claims that the film laid bare how sad and shocking it is that countries ask their young men to lay down their lives for ideals in which they may not always believe with any great conviction.

The distress is evident on the face of Aron Hijar as one of his buddies, Staff Sergeant Larry Rougle, is killed and two more are wounded. One of the unit bellowed at Hetherington for trying to film the mourning and, while he later apologised, Hetherington was struck by how deeply the death affected everyone, especially when Afghans tried to steal Rougle's corpse. Looking back, Junger suggests that trauma in such situations comes from the pain of others and he still feels ashamed at having been part of the outside world looking in at what these young men were enduring. Hetherington raised a similar point in his 2010 short, Diary, in which he tried to show what it was like to do his job and determine where the `too far' line lies in any given scenario.

Bouckaert asserts that coming home eventually becomes the hardest part of war and Hetherington was also uncertain about his future. He planned to have a family with Somali-American film-maker Idil Ibrahim, who states that he had told her he was approaching 40 and getting too old for war zones. Junger confirms that he was contemplating a career change, but the Oscars played a big part in convincing him to go to Libya, as their glitzy artificiality left him craving reality and the Arab Spring was too big a story to ignore.

In April 2011, Hetherington travelled by boat to Misrata with a group of journalists. Father Alistair admits that he had a bad feeling about the mission, but Idil had insisted he go. On 20 April, the party arrived at the front line with the rebel forces and André Liohn explains that there was madness in the air that day, as some reporters were trying to get ahead of the vanguard. Guillermo Cervera claims that Hetherington knew that things were getting out of control and photojournalist Katie Orlinsky recalls an explosion just as he was stooping down to take a picture of a helmet lying on the ground with a hole in it. Hetherington, Chris Hondros, Guy Martin and Mike Brown were showered with shrapnel, along with several Libyans. Hondros seemed dead, but Hetherington called out that he had been hit in the leg and was bundled into a truck, where Cervera held his hand and encouraged him to stay awake. He kept waking up and whispered that he felt himself to be slipping away as they got closer to the main hospital.

Back in London, Judith Hetherington had bought some red roses, but couldn't bring herself to take them home and she exchanged them for white ones instead. She dropped them on the floor on hearing that her son had been killed and Alistair confesses over footage of the funeral and the pair perusing Hetherington's book in 2009 that he had never expected him to die. Idil reveals that she heard the news from Junger and refused to believe it. But, even though she is sad at missing out on a life with the man she loved, she remains glad that he never compromised.

Junger concludes that a Vietnam veteran once told him that the core aspect of any war is losing a brother and Hetherington's death had finally brought home the lesson they had been trying to teach in Restrepo. Yet, while this is a deeply moving paean to a beloved comrade, it never feels as though Junger has captured the essence of the man, let alone the mindset of a war correspondent. Jacqui Morris did a much better job of the latter in profiling Don McCullin in her 2012 documentary, McCullin. But Junger makes the most of Hetherington's visceral video footage and the interviews that he conducted with him to gain a first-hand insight into his assignments. But it is the photographs he left behind that make the deepest impression and, if the closing montage to the strains of `Danny Boy' comes perilously close to pathos, it confirms Hetherington's rare talent and his compassion for everyone who fell under the gaze of his lens.

The latest entry in the Exhibition on Screen series, Phil Grabsky and Ben Harding's Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure, coincides with the National Gallery show curated by Betsy Wieseman, which contains five works that have never hung together before. Only 36 of the 50 canvases that Johannes Vermeer produced are known to survive and this exhibition concentrates on those trademark intimate interiors featuring musical instruments. The selection is supplemented by pictures by other artists from the Dutch Golden Age, which host Tim Marlow reveals demonstrate the way in which music was used in allegorically and attributively by artists catering for a new middle-class clientele, whose Protestant sensibilities meant that any aspects of sensuality had to be either coded or conveyed with the utmost subtlety.

As Wieseman explains, the exhibition came about because The National was entrusted with `The Guitar Player' (1672) while Kenwood House in Hampstead underwent renovation and it seemed the perfect opportunity to explore the significance of music to 17th-century Dutch art and the synaesthetic link that Vermeer was unique in creating between space and silence. However, according to narrator Clare Corbett, Vermeer left no record of his life and very little is known about him as either a man or an artist. He was born in Delft in 1632 and spent much of his youth in the Flying Fox hostelry owned by his father, Reijnier, a former silk worker who changed the family name from Vos to Vermeer for reasons that haven't been conclusively uncovered.

Arthur Wheelock of the National Gallery of Art in Washington describes how Reijnier began selling art towards the end of his life and Johannes was expected to take over the business when his father died in 1652. However, he enrolled instead in the Guild of St Luke and started out producing historical subjects like `Christ in the House of Martha and Mary' (c.1655), which suggested the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggists. However, the film doesn't mention artists like Dirck van Baburen, Gerrit van Honthorst and Hendrick ter Brugghen, even though works by the latter pair are later showcased and they proved a notable influence on Rembrandt van Rijn and Gerrit Dou, who also feature later in the story. Indeed, unusually for a Seventh Art documentary, the background detail is more than a little sketchy here and this cannot be solely down to a shortage of primary sources.

While we may not readily associate the subject matter of items like `Diana and Her Nymphs' (c.1653-54) and `The Procuress' (1656) with Vermeer (who may well have slipped a self-portrait into the latter image of a woman tempting a client with one of her prostitutes), the familiar visual tone is already evident and Marlow and Tracy Chevalier, the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring, discuss this in relation to `The Music Lesson' (c.1662-53). Marlow suggests that the couple could be a tutor and his pupil, a father and his daughter or sweethearts playing and singing in a chaste moment of courtship. He also points out the inscription on the virginal the woman is playing proclaims music as both a joy and a comfort and he notes how enigmatic the composition is, as the face of the woman is reflected in a mirror that also reveals the feet of the artist's easel. However, Chevalier insists that rather than creating a work open to several interpretations, Vermeer is being highly specific and, by positioning the figures at the rear of the image, he is focusing the viewer's gaze rather than inviting their speculation.

The first room in the National show is dedicated to the versatility of musical imagery in Dutch art, with Harmen Steenwyck's `Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life' (c.1640) and Jan Jansz. Treck's `Vanitas Still Life' (1648) utilising instruments and skulls to convey the transience of existence. By contrast, Thomas de Keyser's `Portrait of Constantijn Huygens and His (?) Clerk' (1627) places a lute on the politician's desk to reinforce the notion of his sophistication, while Carel Fabritius's `A View of Delft, With a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall' (1652) examines how music can be used for pleasure and praise by positioning the stall between a tavern and the Nieuwe Kerk.

A third of all extant Vermeers are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a montage comprising `A Lady Writing' (c.1665-67), `Woman With a Balance' (c.1663-64), `Study of a Young Woman' (c.1665-67) and `Girl With a Red Hat' (c.1665-67) encapsulate Vermeer's genius for presenting stillness and movement within the same frame. These pictures also depict ordinary people going about quotidian chores and Wheelock and the Met's Walter Liedtke explain how they chimed in with the public's image of itself after establishing a democracy after William the Silent led a revolt against Spain in 1568 and the Dutch Republic became one of Europe's most prosperous colonial powers over the ensuing century, thanks to its burgeoning cloth trade and mercantile fleet.

Vermeer's `A View of Delft' (c.1660-61) confirms the importance of water to the city and Quentin Buvelot of The Mauritshuis in The Hague explains how the new bourgeoisie became crucial patrons for Dutch artists in the way that monarchs, nobles and prelates were elsewhere on the continent. As the republic was so urban in nature, people didn't invest in land, but in art and five million paintings were produced in the country during the 17th century to be snapped up by blacksmiths and cobblers, as well as the powerful merchants. Among the titles cited here are Gerrit von Honthorst's `The Violinist' (1626), Gerard ter Borch's `Woman Writing a Letter' (1655) and `The Suitor's Visit (c.1658), Pieter de Hooch's `The Bedroom', `Woman and Child in a Courtyard' (both 1658-60) and `A Dutch Courtyard' (1659-60), Rembrandt's `Self Portrait' (1659) and Gabriel Metsu's `The Intruder' (c.1660), but it isn't made clear whether they are part of the National exhibition.

The second room in the show concentrates on music as a social boon and contains such pictures as Hendrick ter Brugghen's `The Concert' (c.1626), Jan Miense Molenaer's `A Young Man and a Woman Making Music' (c.1630-32), Jacob Van Velsen's `A Musical Party' (1631) and Pieter de Hooch's `A Musical Party in a Courtyard' (c.1667), which not only show what instruments were popular at this time, but also how they were played and how music was considered an intimate pastime in which people participated rather than passively listened. Marlow also explains how stringed instruments often symbolised the female form and suggested dancing, which was considered somewhat risqué by more puritan sorts. And we get a chance to hear something from the period, as a quartet from the Academy of Ancient Music plays Nicolaes a Kempis's `Sinfonia Sacra' (1649), as Richard Egarr explains the chordal nature of a bass viol, like the one in Jan Olis's `A Musical Party' (1633), and the differences between the keyboard instruments in Gabriel Metsu's `A Man and a Woman Seated By a Virginal' (c.1655) and Jan Steen's `A Young Woman Playing a Harpsichord to a Young Man' (c.1659).

Wieseman joins Marlow to assess Vermeer's `A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal' (c.1670-72), which is notable for the invitational gaze of the subject and the fact that the lid of the instrument was decorated with a landscape painting, which suggests the affluence of the sitter (although Vermeer preferred anonymous idealisations to portraits) and the irony that the artist himself was never sufficiently wealthy to afford such an exquisite object. Indeed, had he not married into the prosperous Catholic family of Catharina Bolenes in April 1653, he might have struggled even more than he did. Converting to appease mother-in-law Maria Thins, Vermeer moved into the family home and established his small studio in an upstairs room, where he painted and `Allegory of the Catholic Faith' (c.1670-72), which could well have been modelled on the family's own private chapel, which contrasts with the whitewashed church interiors familiar from so much Dutch art at this time

In order to compete with so many rivals, painters had to develop a distinctive style and Vermeer was unusual in that he didn't pander to the vanity of clients wishing to be immortalised in oils. But, even though his models were invariably family members, he never titled any of his canvases or identified his sitters. Thus, although he had 15 children (four of whom died in infancy), it is not known whether any of his own offspring appear in `The Little Street' (c.1658-60), which depicts everyday activity with the same unfussy fidelity as `A Maid Asleep' (c.1656-57), which shares the serenity of his best pictures and slightly suggests his own desire to find a bit of peace and quiet in what must have been a chaotic household. Arthur Wheelock and Taco Dibbits of Rijksmuseum concur that Vermeer was a master of light and movement, whose delicacy seemed to encase moments in time in pictures like `The Milkmaid' (c.1657-58) and `Woman in Blue Reading a Letter' (c.1663-64), with Dibbits marvelling at the realism of the plasterwork in the former, whose subject he describes as a secular Madonna.

Harmony is a key element in Vermeer's work and Marlow and Chevalier explore this through `A Young Woman Steated at a Virginal' (c.1670-72), which suggests this is a maiden ready to duet, as a viol da gamba and its bow are leant up against her virginal, while a painting on the wall behind her shows a procuress at work. The light is darker here than in what is usually considered its companion piece and the expression is certainly invitational, if not entirely come hither. However, Chevalier says this is not one of Vermeer's great works, as the hands resemble pig's trotters and she concludes that even he couldn't always compartmentalise his life and the cares of his real world have been allowed to intrude upon his idyll.

Marlow invites Xavier Brat from the Dulwich Picture Gallery to make the comparison between this canvas and Leyden artist Gerrit Dou's `A Woman Playing a Clavichord' (c.1665). In his day, Dou was hugely popular and sold more paintings than his former master, Rembrandt  Consequently, Vermeer would have been impressed by the composition. However, he focused less on drapery and props than on light, mood and silence and, thus, he removes all extraneous detail from his image and produced what Brat considers the distilled essence of the scene.

As the camera fixes on `A View of Delft' (c.1660-61), Corbett reveals that Vermeer worked slowly and often had money troubles, as he only produced two to three pictures a year. Nevertheless, `Young Woman With a Water Pitcher' (c.1662), `Woman With a Lute' (c.1662-63), `Girl With a Pearl Earring' (1665-57), `A Lady Writing' (c.1665-67) and `The Love Letter' (c.1669-70) captured the world around him with such fidelity that he made the mundane seem dignified. Walter Liedtke concedes the paintings betray a little male voyeurism, as Vermeer was trying to sell buyers a image of the kind of woman they might want to spend their lives with. Yet, he often painted entirely from his imagination without models or props. 

Love is a key theme of the exhibition and Marlow takes us into a third room filled with intimate duets. Gabriel Metsu's `A Woman Seated at a Table and a Man Tuning a Violin' (c.1658) and Godfried Schalcken's `A Woman Singing and a Man With a Cittern' (c.1665-70) reveal the role that music played in courtship, while Jan Steen pushes the scenario further in `A Young Woman Playing a Harpsichord to a Young Man' (c.1659), as the former sits primly at a keyboard beating the inscription, `Solely for the Glory of God', while he is connected to the legend `Actions Make the Man' (which is reinforced by the image of a boy carrying a large lute in to corridor outside the room.

Egarr explains how stringed instruments are considered more intimate and Hendrick ter Brugghen's `A Man Playing a Lute' (1624) and Gerard ter Borch's `A Woman Playing a Lute to Two Men' (c.1667-68) allow the viewer to get a closer look at the expressions on the faces of the subjects. Citterns and guitars were considered more daring instruments, with the latter being imported from Spain and considered somewhat wanton. Indeed, Vermeer himself was persuaded to indulge in a compositional shift in `The Guitar Player' (c.1672), as he placed his figure to the front left of the frame and had her looking off into a space unoccupied by the viewer. He also crops the image to reinforce the edgy aura and Wieseman is thrilled to be able to hang it between the virginal pair, and is moved to tears, as though she is seeing them in Vemeer's studio.

By 1672 (which is known as the `rampjaar' or `Year of Disaster' as British and French armies invaded the republic), Vermeer was struggling to live up to the vision of his vocation presented in`The Art of Painting' (c.1666-68), which he kept as a kind of calling card to show prospective clients. But there was no sign of the crisis, either, in `Young Woman Seated at a Virginal' (c.1670-72), even though the wall behind the woman in a yellow shawl is exceedingly bare. This small picture has only recently been confirmed as a Vermeer and Wieseman extols the glow he manages to generate on the simple plaster wall behind the subject, which draws the viewer into immersing themselves within the milieu. But the strain of making ends meet took its toll and Vermeer died in 1675 at the age of just 43. Liedtke reveals how little he left in an inventory of his possessions and it wasn't until the 1860s that his reputation was revived by the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger.

Grabsky and Harding leave us here, without a Marlovian summation of Vermeer's achievement or a verdict on how well the exhibition fulfils its remit. As in earlier entries, the photography is superb, as the camera moves in from a mid-length shot to dwell on details in loving close-up. But, while it provides a fine introduction to Vermeer's work and the status of music and painting in the Dutch Republic during his lifetime, this stints on the biographical information and rigorous intellectual insight offered in Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy and Exhibition: Munch 150. The lack of an extensive Vermeer archive clearly reduces the options, but it isn't always clear which of the non-Vermeer items are in the show and which have been included simply to illustrate a point. These films should not be son et lumière catalogues, but the balance between content and context feels slightly skewiff for a profile of a compositional master.