Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/5/2014)

Flying into Charles de Gaulle aiport after four years away, Iranian Ali Mosaffa is greeted through thick plate glass by estranged wife Bérénice Bejo as he makes his way through customs on to the concourse. Despite the fact he is returning to France to finalise their divorce, there is still a frisson between the pair, as they drive in the rain to the north-eastern suburb of Sevran, where Bejo lives in a cul-de-sac adjoining the railway line.

The pair exchange hesitant glances as they travel, with Bejo's feisty nature emerging during her interaction with other motorists and her struggle to find a parking spot. But a surprise awaits Mosaffa, who has accepted an invitation to stay at the family home for the duration of his trip. Bejo and daughters Pauline Burlet and Jeanne Jestin now share the premises with Tahar Rahim and his young son, Elyes Aguis. Moreover, Bejo is pregnant with Rahim's child and they plan to marry. However, as the teenage Burlet is quick to disclose, she dislikes Rahim intensely and informs Mosaffa that his wife, Aleksandra Klebanska, has been in a coma for eight months, since she discovered his infidelity and attempted to commit suicide.

As Bejo works in a chemist shop and Rahim owns a dry-cleaning business, Mosaffa finds himself babysitting Jestin and Aguis. He fixes a broken bicycle chain, unclogs a blocked drain and helps tidy up the cluttered garden. Despite being taken aback on discovering that his belongings are piled unceremoniously in the shed, Mosaffa also cooks dinner for the kids (none of whom are his) and bandages a cut finger. He even mucks in with the decorating and mops up spilt paint without complaint, even though he is hurt by the fact that Bejo is essentially erasing all traces of his ever having lived in the place.

Burlet is as temperamental as her mother and the pair have a blazing row that results in Burlet running away to stay with Mosaffa's friend, Babak Karimi. Bejo dispatches Mosaffa to make peace and Burlet confides that she forwarded email exchanges between Bejo and Rahim to Klebanksa and feels entirely responsible for her fate. Mostaffa reassures her that she could not have known how a stranger would have reacted. But the tensions between Burlet and Bejo prompt Rahim and Aguis to move back to their flat above the shop and mother and daughter have another furious argument that takes them a while to recover from. Shortly afterwards, it emerges that Rahim's assistant, Sabrina Ouazani (who disapproved of her boss's adultery) had told Klebanska the truth about his affair and, feeling guilty for the suffering he has caused, Rahim pays his wife a rare visit in hospital. He is curious whether the smell of his aftershave will rouse her and, much to his consternation, she reaches out to squeeze his hand.

Typically, Farhadi leaves us wondering whether this is a gesture of reassurance or possessive reclamation. But so many loose ends are left dangling tantalisingly at the end of this thoughtful picture. How, for example, will Bejo and Mosaffa reconcile their feelings for one another and their untenable situation? However, Farhadi is less concerned with the future than the way in which the past impacts upon the present. He is also fascinated by the way people muddle along in domestic units while carrying so much emotional baggage. Consequently, he devotes much time to capturing the shabby cosiness of a residence in one of the poorest parts of the capital. Yet, he eschews banelieue clichés, just as he avoids touristy vistas of the City of Light. This is a Paris of real people and, if their problems are slightly convoluted and Farhardi tends to make the men easier going and less emotional than the women, this always feels like a slice of life.

Bejo holds the picture together, but quite whether she merited the Best Actress prize at Cannes is another matter, as the focus of the action's two key segments falls on Mostaffa and Rahim. However, the acting is impressive all round, with Bulet combining viciousness and vulnerability to touching effect, while Mostaffa and Rahim forge a bond that is not only believable, but also revealing in its undercurrent of chauvinism, which slightly dissipates the film's humanist timbre. Yet, the locale often proves as enlightening as the performances, with Claude Lenoir's interiors reinforcing a sense of homely chaos that pervades proceedings that are photographed with teasing restraint by Mahmoud Kalari, whose lighting of the interiors is as delicate as Evgueni and Youli Galperine's sparingly used score.

A drastic change in tone comes courtesy of Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears. Following their debut, Amer (2009), and their `O Is for Orgasm' contribution to the horror anthology The ABCs of Death (2012), this is another self-consciously slick homage to Italian genre cinema that consistently runs the risk of prioritising style over substance. There is a plot lurking somewhere in the Manu Dacosse imagery that is diced to within an inch of obscurity by editor Bernard Beets. Similarly, there is plenty of knowing wit in the production design of Johanna Bourson that makes as slick use of the Art Nouveau location as the uncredited musical director makes of the motifs pilfered from the Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, Riz Ortolani, Guido and Mauricio De Angelis and Goblin scores that raised the nerve-shredding tension of many a classic giallo.

Credit must also be given to sound designers Dan Bruylandt, Yves Bemelmans and Mathieu Cox. But one cannot help feeling that, for all its technical accomplishment and teasing, mosaic-like mysteriousness, this is merely a disconcertingly superficial and misogynistically unpleasant Freudian reverie on male fear of the female pudenda.

Across the credit sequence, Danish telecommunications executive Dan Kristensen (Klaus Tange) flies from Frankfurt to Brussels after a business trip. He seems to doze off on the plane, but leaves a message for wife Edwige (Ursula Bedena) as he walks though the airport to hail a taxi home. Crosscut with his journey, monochrome photographs are animated using a simple stop-motion technique to show Edwige being stripped and bound by an assailant who produced a knife from inside a black leather jacket and strokes a naked nipple with the blade.

On arriving home, Dan finds the door locked and chained from the inside. When he fails to rouse Edwige, he breaks down the door to find the apartment empty. He checks a round, stripy hatbox in the wardrobe and puts on a record with a red spiral label and sips scotch while he works out what to do next. Having rung a few doorbells and been told to shove off as it's after midnight, Dan gets invited to the seventh storey by Dora (Birgit Yew), who pours him a cup of tea as she sits in the shadows wearing black lace and boots. She says she doesn't know Edwige, but confides that her doctor husband Paul (Hans de Munter) disappeared in mysterious circumstances soon after his retirement.

He became obsessed with a ceiling fresco of a beautiful woman around the same time he grew convinced that they were being watched whenever they made love. One day, he tied Dora to the bed and gave her a sedative before drilling a hole in the ceiling through the painted lady's hair. But, by the time Dora came round, Paul had become trapped in the ceiling. Although she was able to hand him long matches through the hole for a spell, he eventually vanished without trace and, when she peered through the hole her gaze was returned by an eye she claims was filled with hate and violence.

A transition from the eye in the story to Dan's eye seems to spook Dora, who asks him to leave. He goes out to the roof and encounters Barbara (Anna D'Annunzio) smoking in the nude. She tells Dan that Dora is crazy, but their tryst ends with Dan being awoken by the doorbell the next morning and one is left to speculate how much of what happened to him on the previous evening occurred solely in his dream state. His visitor is Detective Vincentelli (Jean-Michel Vovk), who reminds him that he reported a missing person the night before. Dan has no recollection of the call, but tells the cop what he knows (with the screen splitting horizontally at one point to give the impression that suspect and detective are one and the same person). Vincentelli reveals a scar on his neck and goes into a long digression explaining how he got it. He was employed at the time by a jealous husband who wanted his trophy wife (Manon Beuchot) kept under constant surveillance. However, Vincentelli became fixated with her and, following what could be his or her masturbatory fantasy, he asked to be relieved of his duties.

His employer refuses and Vincentelli follows the wife to an imposing building, where she appears to have a tryst with a stranger. As something is exchanged between them., Vicentelli was distracted by a little girl with a handful of red-wrapped sweets (Lolita Oosterlynck), who appears to spit at him when demanding her doll back. That night, Vincentelli sneaks into the wife's room and sniffs a make-up removal pad on her dressing table. He wanders into the corridor, where he gets the feeling he is being stalked. But Dan interrupts his anecdote to ask how this relates to Edwige and the detective leaves, complaining that he cannot investigate if there is no evidence.

As time passes, Dan receives a number of phone calls from Dora asking if she can take care of him. He is shown pacing around the room in a top shot, as he becomes certain that someone is inside the apartment and spying on him. But Dermot the landlord (Sam Louwyck) tells him he's imagining things and warns Dan that he may not renew his lease, as he has had lots of complaints about him. On leaving the apartment, Dermot sees a woman in red he doesn't recognise. But she gives him the slip and he thinks nothing more about it.

Dan fetches the hatbox from Edwige's wardrobe and finds a Matryoshka doll, a sliding tile puzzle, a magic wands and an audio spool wrapped in a piece of paper with the number `7' written on it. He plays the tape and hears a woman's voice claiming to have found her true identity and threatening to do dire things to Dan if she sees him again. Discomfited, Dan goes to Room No7 and knocks on the door. Barbara answers and makes short work of seducing him. Her body seems to glow when she removes her robe and she pushes Dan on to the bed. A mirror shatters and Barbara grinds fragments of glass into his chest as they make love.

As he looks up, Dan sees Barbara and Edwige's faces respectively bathed in green and red filtered light. A finger inserts itself into one of his chest wounds and, for an instant, he thinks that Edwige has returned. He wakes alone, however, and, having been warned that someone in his apartment means to harm him, Dan is plunged into a deliriously obfuscated reverie that makes extensive of coloured filters, cutthroat razors, naked flesh, bloodshot eyes and copious gouts of blood. He is at a loss to understand what is happening (and he is not alone!) and becomes even more disorientated when Vincentelli arrives to inform him that Edwige's head has been found.

Dan plays the detective the audiotape and says that a man with a beard (Joe Koerner) warned him through the wall about his intruders. He thinks he lives on the ground floor, but Dermot confirms that the occupant of the room (Michael Fromowicz) has long been in residence and he claims to have no knowledge of the bearded stranger. Juxtaposed with this development is a monochrome stop-motion passage showing a woman named Laura (Sylvia Camarda) having her nipple caressed by a knife blade, while the woman in red reaches for a dagger on the dressing table.

Snooping around the building, Dermot enters a room and finds a padlocked diary in a desk drawer. He reads what he presumes is a woman's assertion that she has been possessed by a force much stronger than herself. The scene cuts to Laura in black-and-white stop-motion opening the hatbox from Edwige's wardrobe and finding it empty. When she looks again, it seems to contain a homburg hat and a shadowy form appears beneath it. Something bulges the wallpaper, as Laura lies on the bed and begins to masturbate. Hands plunder her flesh as she fantasises and she appears to be pursued into the bathroom by sinister figures. But, as Dermot snaps the book shut, it's impossible to say with any certainty what is happening or what it means - a problem that recurs throughout the picture and feels all the more irksome as it leaves the viewer feeling foolish for not being able to follow what is essentially wilful dream logic the defies rational explanation.

Meanwhile, Dan is alone in his apartment when the man with the beard calls to him through the wall. He informs him that the flats are linked by a network of passageways and that Edwige became obsessed with Laura. However, he is murdered before he can reveal more and, when Vincentelli comes to investigate, he creeps into a room in which Barbara is lying face down on a bed. He photographs her naked back with his phone before scarpering as she wakes and makes a grab for a dagger on the dressing table.

Dan, meanwhile, has decided to break the wall in his bathroom and takes a sledgehammer to the tiles and plasterwork. Once inside, he seems to hallucinate, as the stained glass designs seen around the building form kaleidoscopic patterns. He recovers, however, on seeing a silhouetted figure walking past him and follows to see the woman in red pass through a red door whose No7 has inverted to resemble a capital letter `L'. Dan goes inside and a whited-out flashback shows a young boy running away from a teenage Laura (Aline Stevens) and, as he retreats back into the corridor, Dan realises he has blood on his fingers and has left red footprints on the floor.

The scene cuts to a black-and-white bathroom, as the older Laura realises she is not alone and a pair of gloved hands descend from the ceiling to drive a knife into her skull that leaves a vagina-shaped wound. As Dan washes his face in the bathroom, he tells his reflection that he saw Laura and the reflection claims to have known a Laura once upon a time. He urges Dan to leave, but he seems to ignore his own advice. Down in the lobby, he finds a bunch of flowers expressing condolences on his loss and takes them back to his room, which seems to have been trashed. He goes through the hole in the wall again and wanders along the passages until he enters Dora's room. Standing in front of her, he lights matches from a book he has been carrying since he got home and stares into the darkness, but Dora doesn't appear to move.

Pressing on, he spies on Barbara and Dermot in bed together. He stares helplessly as Barbara takes a pin from her hair and Dermot momentarily sees Laura stradling him. However, before she can strike, Vincentelli comes up behind Dan and shoots Barbara dead and she falls back in slow-motion. On returning to his apartment, Dan is surprised to see it has been tidied and he is even more taken aback to find Dora propped up in his bed. She asks to take care of him like she used to do and he tells her those days are over. Dora approaches Dan with a knife, but, as the light catches the blade, he sees the young Laura staring back at him and he grabs Dora's wrist before she can stab him.

Left alone, Dan goes through some old photographs of Laura and Edwige and pours whisky on them before setting them alight. The screen splits into three to show an old photo of Laura, her dead face on a mobile phone and the paper that was wrapped around the audiotape. The snooping Vincentelli finds an answermachine tape with sounds of screaming on it and pops it in his pocket. Another triptych appears showing Dermot, Dan and Vincentell, who seem to be looking at a photo of Laura, the reverse of the `7/L' paper (which resembles the fresco in Dora's room) and a phone image of a dead woman. As the detective's fingers fondle a discarded make-up pad, a rapid cut shows extreme close-ups of each man's eye before focusing on the `7/L' paper once more.

Dan passes through the hole in the wall again and a distorted shot suggests that he is facing himself as he walks purposefully to Room 7/L, where the young Laura reaches out to the innocent young boy. But, as she smiles at him, a gloved hand covers his mouth and a blade is driven down into the lad's skull and Laura screams. A drop of blood falls on Dan's nose and he falls to the floor, with a figure in black pulling his corpse along the floor. Meanwhile, Vincentelli uses his knife to open a locked door and uses a torch to pick his way through large sheets of blood-splattered plastic. He cuts into one of them and a female body drops down head first.

Undaunted, he enters Room 7/L and sees several of the items that have been key to the action lying casually around. A white-out flashback shows the young boy reading a pornographic magazine entitled Plaisir and he appears shocked by a picture of a model spreading her labia. Vincentelli sees maggots crawling on the desktop and he opens the drawer to find a locked notebook and a photo album with the word `Laura' on the front. The pages of the former are empty, while the latter contains pictures of both the older Laura and Edwige. As he tries to make sense of everything, a wardrobe door creaks open and he fires at it. A body tumbles out with a vagina-shaped wound in the skull. But, as Vincentelli looks on, a knife passes through the back of his neck and out through his mouth and he falls down dead.

The camera descends a floor to show a female figure with long hair put her hands to her head. A final whiteout shows an adolescent girl hold her stomach, as a drop of blood trickles down the inside of her right thigh. Between her legs, the young boy looks on aghast and uncomprehending. He calls the name `Laura' and she looks around and the amended title, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Fears, flashes up in bold red letters.

Even though this synopsis is based on two viewings, there is bound to be the odd slip (or, at least, alternative interpretations). Similarly, a bit of guesswork has been involved in putting actors to roles, as no detailed cast list seems to be available. What does come across from the above, however, is just how convolutedly labyrinthine this picture is - and that's before any attempt is made to analyse the intricate mosaic of the visual style. As one would expect, there is plenty of red in the palette, although lots of yellow has also been used to emphasise the link to the giallo genre, which was named after the yellow covers of Italian pulp fiction in the 1960s.

There are also lots of throwaway allusions, with the name Laura recalling both the enigmatic eponymous heroine of Otto Preminger's 1944 film noir and the murder victim in David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990). The use of Edwige is even more loaded, however, because (as Sight and Sound has rightly pointed out) Edwige Feneche was the star of several gialli, including Sergio Martino's The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1971) and All the Colours of the Dark (1972) and Giuliano Carnimeo's What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer's Body? (1972), which not only seem to have influenced Forzani and Cattet's choice of title, but also the outline of their plot.

Yet, while there is much to admire in such knowing homagism and in the overall aesthetic audacity, this is anything but a masterpiece. Indeed, it seems doomed to reside in cult corner in the shadow of another teasing Belgian fantasy, Harry Kümel's Malpertuis (1971), which saw a bedridden Orson Welles imprison the gods of Greek mythology in a crumbling mansion. The fragmentary assemblage may be adept, but it's also arch, with the resulting opacity often seeming insufferably smug. Some of the more hostile reviews have attacked this readiness to cock a snook at the audience's (in)ability to discern meaning (if, indeed, there is any). Others have simply denounced the prioritising of style over substance. But there is an intriguing mystery to solve here - as the killer's identity is never made entirely clear, even if the source of his psychosis is revealed in the chillingly matter-of-face denouement - and if some of the symbolism does border on the offensive, the imagery is never anything less than arresting and the boldness of Forzani and Cattet's vision is never in doubt.

Less flamboyant, but every bit as distinctive in its unconventional approach, Janez Burger's Silent Sonata recalls the absurdism that characterised so much Eastern European cinema in the 1960s. Back then, the tactic served a subversive purpose, as film-makers sought ways of hiding socio-political criticisms from Communist censors. But the lyrical surreality employed by this Slovenian sophomore always feels like a contrived stylistic gambit in a picture whose self-conscious artifice is reinforced by the fact that also opts to dispense with both dialogue and intertitles.

Burger is not alone in borrowing a conceit that had resurfaced periodically since 1930 before Guy Maddin gave it renewed artistic credibility with Careful in 1992. Subsequent efforts have included Aki Kaurismäki's Juha (1999), Jerzy Skolimowsk's Essential Killing (2010), Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011) and Pablo Berger's Blancanieves (2012). Even Hollywood got in on the act with JC Chandor's All Is Lost (2013). But, even though Burger finds plausible reasons why the characters might eschew verbal communication, the `silence' imposes an eccentric artifice that will be more readily associated with the kind of quirky animation that became synonymous with the Eastern Bloc prior to 1989.

Indeed, the fall of the Iron Curtain appears to have sparked the war that provides the backdrop for action that seemingly takes place in an unnamed former Yugoslav country. Leon Lucev and children Luna Zimic Mijovic and Devi Bragalini are mourning the loss of Marjuta Slamic, who has been shot by a soldier near their remote farmhouse. Having prepared the body for burial, Lucev hears the sound of approaching vehicles and hides his offspring in the cellar before readying to face the interlopers with his shotgun. However, the trucks traversing the devastated terrain belong to the Circus Fantasticus and leader Ravil Sultanov asks permission to camp on Lucev's fields in order to stage a farewell show for ailing ringmaster René Bazinet.

Lucev consents and members of the troupe look on as he buries his wife. However, her place on the kitchen table is soon taken by Bazinet, who is brought indoors after being overcome by smoke after almost setting light to his caravan. Meanwhile, Mijovic and Bragalini become fascinated by the rehearsals and, when a tank appears on the horizon, strongman Slava Volkov and fire-eater David Boelee stage a show of defiance that results in the tank performing some tricks of its own before it is destroyed in a terrifying air strike.

As the days pass, Mijovic becomes fond of trick cyclist Yannick Martens, while her father finds solace in trapeze artist Pauliina Räsänen. Happy that her brood are rediscovering the joys of life, Slamic looks indulgently on, as her daughter rides to the coast with Martens, where they collect shells and fragments of coloured glass, in spite of the fact that the beach is strewn with cadavers.

The big top is erected and Lucev attends the show with his family. Clowns Daniel Rovai and Nataða Sultanova present Bazinet with a white rose, whose scent rejuvenates him and he resumes his role as master of ceremonies before handing his baton to the youngest member of the troupe, Enej Grom. As Bazinet walks off into the night, the heavens open and the tent and the farmhouse are flooded during the ensuing storm. The following morning, Lucev holds hands with Räsänen as they stand before two fresh graves. They rejoin the rest of the circus and head off with Mijovic and Bragalini in tow to see what awaits them in a still uncertain world.

Originally entitled Circus Fantasticus and released in 2010, this has taken a while to reach UK screens. It's very much a niche item and will frustrate as many as it fascinates. Despite conveying the idea that the troupe is comprised of artistes without a common tongue, Burger fails to provide a convincing reason why the family members would not speak to each other and this sense of enforced pantomime undercuts the grim aura that should make the flashes of magic realism all the more enchanting. Only Federico Fellini among film directors has consistently managed to make carny life seem romantic and relevant and Burger, like Jacques Rivette before him in Around a Small Mountain (2009), often finds himself caught in a no man's land between Ingmar Bergman and Cecil B. DeMille.

The performances are solid, with specialists from the Cirque du Soleil and the Moscow State Circus showcasing their skills to fine effect. Czech Divis Marek's photography and Vasja Kokelj's production design are also impressive. However, the use of the circus is a metaphor for existence is hardly novel and Burger has little new to add to the concept that life must go on, even in the midst of bereavement. Nevertheless, this remains a work of aesthetic elegance, whose melancholic sincerity proves hauntingly indelible.

We remain in Eastern Europe for the debuting Nana Ekvtimishvili's In Bloom, a semi-autobiographical rite of passage set in Georgia in 1992 that was co-directed by her Munich-trained husband, Simon Gross, who made his own feature bow with Fata Morgana back in 2006. Some of the more poetic realist passages owe much to the Italian neo-realists, the French nouvelle vagueurs and Ekvtimishvili's esteemed compatriot, Otar Iosseliani. But the presence of cinematographer Oleg Mutu connects the action to the work of such Romanian new wavers as Cristi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu,

Even though they frequently squabble, 14 year-olds Lika Babluani and Mariam Bokeria are inseparable. The former is reserved and naive and lives in a spacious apartment with her hard-pressed mother, Ana Nijaradze, and her boy-mad older sister, Maiko Ninua. Their father is in prison for a murder whose significance becomes apparent as the drama unfolds and Babluani treasures a box containing such possessions as some letters, a watch, a packet of cigarettes and a Soviet Union passport. She does take advantage of the fact that Nijaradze is often out to invite Bokeria and other classmates round to drink wine, smoke and enjoy a rousing singsong. The moment the door opens, however, they all pretend they are engrossed by their homework, while a more decorous waltz plays on the piano..

By contrast, the more outgoing Bokeria has to share a cramped flat with drunken father Temiko Chichinadze, embittered mother Tamar Bukhnikashvili, aimless brother, Sandro Shanshiashvili and shrewish grandmother Berta Khapava. No wonder, therefore, she prefers being with Babluani, whether gambolling through a field, riding on the dodgems at the funfair, or joining in a class rebellion against strict teacher, Marina Janashia. Bokeria also delights in flirting with such Tblisi tearaways as Zurab Gogaladze, Giorgi Aladashvili and the more dashing Data Zakareishvili, who has plans to go to Moscow and make his fortune. He is keen to marry Bokeria on his return and, as a result, she spurns the flowers that the thuggish Gogaladze keeps giving her. Indeed, she is deeply touched when Zakareishvili entrusts her with his handgun and a single bullet.

Bokeria soon lends the weapon to Babluani, however, as she is being pestered near the bridge on the way to school by Aladashvili and his sidekick, Gia Shonia. Violence is always seemingly near the surface in a country close to conflict over the disputed Black Sea territory of Abkharia. Thus, Aladashvili tries to intimate Babluani with kung-fu moves, while fights break out in bread queues and quickly spiral out of control.

But everything changes when Gogaladze and his family snatch Bokeria from the street and rush her into a forced marriage. Her parents seem powerless to prevent the match, while Bokeria is far from happy at the prospect of having her wings clipped by in-laws Tamar Bukhnikashvili and Temiko Chichinadze. Yet she goes through with the ceremony and Babluani dances at the afterparty with a strangely joyous abandon, considering that her closest friend has been forced to bow to tradition. Even Bokeria seems to warm to the idea of being a wife when she is serenaded by a solo guitarist and almost swoons with the romantic intensity of the gesture. However, she soon learns how restricted her movements have become, as Gogaladze forbids her to attend school and refuses to allow her to celebrate her birthday with her friends.

Zakareishvili hears about his beloved's abduction and returns to Tblisi. However, Gogaladze and his pals are waiting for him and murder him in a knife fight. Heartbroken, Bokeria urges Babluani to hand over the gun so she can exact her revenge. But, having lost her father to a revenge crime, she talks her out of ruining her life in such a reckless manner and even finds a way of resolving her feud with Aladashvili.

Despite occasionally straying into melodrama, this is a fascinating memoir of a little-seen place at a key point in its recent history. Ekvtimishvili and Gross capture the sights, mood and sounds of the time, with curfew announcements, patriotic radio exhortations and minor Phil Collins hits as likely to crop up on the soundtrack as more traditional Georgian music or tunes hailing from back in the USSR. But, where Ekvtimishvili's script scores highest is in its insights into the status of young women in a nascent democratic society, where virginity suddenly only matters to misogynist traditionalists. The group sequences of the girls gossiping and flexing their new freedoms are splendidly staged and the ensemble playing is admirable. But scenes such as the family dinner that descends into an hysterical shouting match feels less controlled

Six decades have passed since Andrzej Wajda made his directorial debut with A Generation (1954), the first part of a trilogy completed by Kanal (1955) and Ashes and Diamonds (1958) that reflected the traumas, treacheries and tragedies of the Second World Was with an immediacy that departed audaciously from the tenets of Socialist Realism that had been imposed by the Kremlin upon all satellite states in the Eastern Bloc. Much has happened in his native Poland in the interim and Wajda has always been there to chronicle events that have often impacted well beyond the national border. Now, the 87 year-old retains the mix of integrity and steely sincerity that made Man of Marble (1976) and Man of Iron (1981) such masterpieces in completing his unofficial triptych about worker unrest during the Communist era with Walesa. Man of Hope, which blends archive footage and dramatic reconstruction to compelling effect in producing a fitting tribute to a man who helped change the destiny of Europe.

Spanning the period from the suppression of the workers' protests in 1970 to the collapse of authoritarianism in 1989, the action turns around the 1981 interview between Lech Walesa (Robert Wieckiewicz) and Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (Maria Rosaria Omaggio), which brought the leader of the Gdansk shipyard rebels to international attention. Readily depicting Walesa as a flawed individual, Wajda recalls how the young electrician was duped into becoming an informer in 1970, as he struggled to raise numerous children with his wife, Danuta (Agnieszka Grochowska). But, as the decade progressed, Walesa started to play a greater part in the protest movement and, following the homecoming of Pope John Paul II in 1979, he emerged as a charismatic figure within the Solidarity union, whose activities led to the imposition of martial law in 1981.

Wieckiewicz presents Walesa as an arrogant, under-educated, grandstanding everyman whose championing of the common people was rooted in a mistrust of intellectuals and apparatchiks. But he also captures his courage and commitment, as he wins back the trust of the comrades he had been forced to betray in seeking to act as a conciliator. The most gripping segment centres on the Solidarity struggle. But Wajda also excels in the sequences in which Danuta is strip-searched at the airport in 1983 after being allowed to collect her husband's Nobel Prize in Oslo and in which Walesa addresses the US Congress in 1989.

He is superbly abetted by production designer Magdalena Dipont, cinematographer Pawel Edelman and editors Grazyna Gradon and Milenia Fiedler, who switch between monochrome and colour and archival and dramatic material with seamless dynamism. In truth, Wajda comes close to hagiography at times, but he and screenwriter Janusz Glowacki can be forgiven for being in awe of such a raw and sometimes reckless working-class hero.

Finally, Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt packs the incident into his feature debut, The Rocket, which was inspired by a group of Laotian boys he found gathering explosives for scrap during the filming of Bomb Harvest, a 2007 documentary profile of disposal specialist Laith Stevens. Making evocative use of rarely seen locations, Mordaunt and cinematographer Andrew Commis capture a society still feeling the effects of its violent past and struggling to come to terms with the cruel demands of the future. Yet, while it centres on a 10 year-old boy overcoming prejudice and almost insurmountable odds, there is nothing contrived or mawkish about this lively rite of passage. However, it is perhaps better suited to teenagers with a nascent interest in subtitled cinema than it is older arthouse regulars.

Such is the Laotian suspicion of twins - as it is believed that one will always be evil - Alice Keohavong has hidden the fact that Sitthiphon Disamoe had a stillborn sibling from husband Sumrit Warin for a decade. Mother-in-law Bunsri Yindi knows the truth, however, and when news breaks that the family will have to leave its village to make way for a second dam in the region, Yindi blames the misfortune on Disamoe and claims he carries a curse that will be the undoing of them all. Distressed at not knowing that a son had been buried without his knowledge, Warin takes Disamoe to see the existing dam further up the valley and they watch in melancholic silence as a video explains how the land of their ancestors will be flooded and they will have to move to a place called Paradise.

As he spends much of his time fishing, Disamoe insists on taking his boat with them. However, they struggle to get it to the top of a hill and it goes crashing down the other side and crushes Keohavong. Yindi snaps out the truth about his birth and Disamoe is so upset at killing his mother and being branded accursed that he runs back to the village, where Warin finds him sitting among the mangoes that had picked before they left. He promises the boy that they will plant them in their new garden and Disamoe cheers up. However, this happy day will have to wait a while, as work has yet to start on Paradise and the family is forced to choose between canvas and corrugated iron at the Nan Dee Relocation Camp.

While fetching water, Disamoe meets nine year-old Loungnam Kaosainam, who shows him around and introduces him to her uncle, Thep Phongam, who wears a purple suit because of his fixation with soul singer James Brown. He shows Disamoe an unexploded bomb in the forest and warns him to stay away from it. But the boy quickly learns that Phongam has a bad reputation, as he collaborated with the Americans during the Vietnam War, and he scowls when Warin informs him that he is not to play with Kaosainam any longer, even though he has given her one of his treasured mangoes. Outraged at being kept from his new friend, Disamoe runs to her shack and notices that she has a silent television. Reasoning that it is wrong for the camp leaders and the hydroelectric people to have power when the poor don't, Disamoe tries to connect a cable to the mains. But he succeeds only in blowing the system and he is chased around the camp until Warin is warned that they will be evicted if his son causes any more trouble.

Undaunted, Disamoe steals some flowers from a graveyard and presents them to Kaosainam. She tells him to put them back. But, in so doing, he knocks over a bamboo shrine, whose candles set fire to the surrounding memorials and the settlers are so furious that they torch Warin's tent in reprisal and the family is forced to make its escape aboard a cart loaded with unexploded bombs. Now refugees from a displacement camp, they rely on Yindi hitching a ride on a motorbike and sidecar, which they have to share with a piglet. Moreover, they have to part with some of their precious cash to bribe brigands who try to stop them passing in the night.

Eventually, they find an abandoned village and Disamoe is so frustrated that he starts whacking fruit with a stick and is only prevented from thrashing a bomb by the ever-watchful Phongam. The device explodes as soon as he tosses it away and Warin agrees that they cannot remain in such a place of danger and death. As they trudge on, they have to wheel the drunken Phongam in a shopping trolley because Kaosainam had promised her father she would always take care of him. But, when they finally reach another camp, the elders inform them that they can only stay for two days because resources are so scarce. Warin wonders what is to become of them, but Disamoe is more interested in the fact that the residents are about to hold a rocket launching competition in the hope of causing a downpour, with the designer of the missile that travels the furthest receiving a substantial prize.

When they are sent to the nearby town to buy rice, Disamoe and Kaosainam see lots of people working on their rockets, including some monks. Kaosainam dances to distract one group so that Disamoe can steal a fuse and he tells her that he would buy a plot of land if he could win the contest. For once, Yindi likes the idea, as she doesn't fancy having to work in a factory and live in the city. So, Disamoe wanders off into the forest for inspiration and thinks he sees his mother. He follows her into a funeral procession and, when Kaosainam comes to find him, he barks at her like a dog until she leaves him alone. He wanders deeper into the jungle and finds a UXB. He calls it a `sleeping tiger' and strikes it with a rock in a bid to prise it open. No sooner has he walked away, however, than it detonates and sends a colony of bats flying into the sky.

Relieved at having survived another near thing, Disamoe begs Phongam to help him build a rocket and they head for the bat cave to scoop up some guano to use for fuel. As he is afraid of ghosts, Phongam refuses to go inside and Disamoe is surprised to meet an old lady and her daughter. She asks if Disamoe is a ghost and the crone accuses him of being a bad twin because he doesn't bleed. Frightened, the boy gathers as much droppings as he can and skedaddles. But he refuses to give up and still have high hopes when the day of the big event dawns.

Entrants whose rockets fail to take off get pitched into a pool of muddy water and one man is dropped in when he lets go of his too soon and it nearly crashes into a nearby house. Everyone expects the enormous `Million' rocket to win. But Disamoe has been experimenting and puts Phongam's expertise into a missile he dubs, `The Bat'. However, the judges refuse to let a small boy on to the launch frame and he pleads with Warin to take his place. Fearing the worst, Yindi tries to stop her son from stepping into the breach. But he ignores her and, even when Disamoe suddenly has reservations, he lights the fuse and the rocket shoots into the sky and travels an impressive distance before exploding like a firework.

The crowd cheers rapturously when it starts to rain and Disamoe is hailed a hero amidst the rejoicing. Kaosainam congratulates her friend and suggests that this is a blessing from his mother when the elders invite the family to become part of the community, as they have brought it such good luck. Phongam has decided to move on, however, and as he leaves on the bomb truck, Kaosainam gives Disamoe her mango and tells him to plant it and prosper, as she bids him farewell and promises never to forget him.

There have been several recent films about scrappy kids proving the grown-ups wrong in following their instincts to win the day. But few have demonstrated such brio in joining the pantheon of screen scamps as Sitthiphon Disamoe, whose talent for calamity costs him his mother and his temporary home before he finally comes good. He is winsomely supported by Loungnam Kaosainam and the rascally Thep Phongam, but neither role is as fully fleshed out and it does feel at times as though the supporting players exist simply to push the plot along and help Disamoe realise his destiny.

Nevertheless, Mordaunt avoids patronising exoticism and touches thoughtfully on the effects that warfare has had on South-East Asia and the price that ordinary people have to pay for the so-called progress imposed upon them by multinational corporations. But the pacifist and ecological messages are never forced, even when Mordaunt explores the extent to which a modernising society is still prone to superstition. The humour is never particularly subtle, especially where Phongam's Uncle Purple is concerned. But younger viewers will enjoy the slapstick and should warm to the theme of a rebel finding both a cause and acceptance, while also learning to appreciate that not every kid has it as easy as they do.