Divisive Italian director Luca Guadagnino has been busy since scoring an international arthouse hit with I Am Love (2009). In addition to the full-length documentaries Inconscio italiano (2011) and Bertolucci on Bertolucci (2013), he has also made a clutch of shorts, including Here (2012) and Walking Stories (2013). Now, he returns to features with a loose remake of Jacques Deray's La Piscine (1969), in which the glamorous quartet of Alain Delon, Jane Birkin, Maurice Ronet and Romy Schneider are succeeded by Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Tilda Swinton, who has been something of a muse to Guadagnino since they first teamed on his 1999 feature bow, The Protagonists. Yet, while this slick thriller - with its titular allusion to the pool paintings of David Hockney - pays playful homage to Deray's cult classic, this slow-burning study of lust and power also contains echoes of Guadagnino's erotic drama, Melissa P. (2005), which was adapted from Melissa Panarello's semi-autobiographical novel, One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed.

As a series of flashbacks confirms, Tilda Swinton was once a Bowiesque rock star who could fill stadiums and set cultural trends. An operation on her throat, however, has prompted her to convalesce on the volcanic Sicilian island of Pantelleria with Matthias Schoenaerts, a video cameraman who is also on the road to recovery after crashing his car during a drunken stupor. In a bid to protect her larynx, Swinton speaks in a whisper and orgasms in silence. But the peace and quiet is soon disrupted by the unexpected arrival of her former producer and lover, Ralph Fiennes, who first introduced the couple six years ago. He is accompanied by Dakota Johnson, whom he claims (pending a DNA test) is the 22 year-old American daughter he has only just discovered he has.

Fiennes is brash and obnoxious and Schoenaerts is surprised when Swinton invites him to stay. He is even more put out when Johnson starts asking personal questions about his alcoholism and the crash. She is also as touchy-feely and as comfortable in her own skin as her father and Schoenaerts is discomfited by her casual nudity around the pool. He further bridles when Fiennes cooks and invites old Communist friends Aurore Clément and Lily McMenamy to share the meal. They suggest the quartet takes in the local festival of St Gaetano and lure Schoenaerts off the wagon with their delicious cocktails.

No longer able to resist temptation, Schoenaerts allows himself to be seduced by Johnson. They slip away to find a quiet beach, even though he suspects that Fiennes will exploit his absence to make a move on Swinton. Finding a secluded spot, Schoenaerts and Johnson are unsettled by an encounter with a party of illegal migrants. But they make love, nonetheless, and return to the villa for another interminable evening of Fiennes's boorishness, as he chunters on about ricotta cheese and his contribution to the Rolling Stones album, Voodoo Lounge (he even performs a wild dance to `Emotional Rescue' that rivals Denis Lavant's gyrations to `The Rhythm of the Night' in Claire Denis's Beau Travail, 1999).

However, a combination of fury and guilt gets the better of Schoenaerts and Fiennes winds up dead in the pool. No one is entirely certain whether it was an accident or not. But cop Corrado Guzzanti (who is preoccupied by the deaths of seven Tunisians) seems happy to accept Schoenaerts's version of events, as he makes arrangements for Johnson (who turns out to be 17 and fluent in Italian) to be discreetly spirited away from the premises. There is an anxious moment, when Guzzanti pays an unexpected calls and Schoenaerts and Swinton are convinced that he suspects foul play. But he has merely returned to inform Swinton that he is a huge fan and he leaves contentedly after she signs an album.

Closer in tone to Abigail's Party than the sophisticated French thriller that inspired it, this is a guilty pleasure that keeping nodding and winking at the audience in the hope it had noticed its insouciant cleverness. Although Johnson seems an obvious choice after Sam Taylor-Johnson's Fifty Shades of Grey (and Ludivine Sagnier's turn in François Ozon's Swimming Pool, 2003), the performances are admirable. Swinton invokes the ghosts of silent divas past, while Schoenaerts bristles with brittle machismo and Fiennes literally lets it all hang out in a display of blustering buffoonery that rivals his marvellous work in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Yannick Le Saux's lustrous photography is a match for Luca Bigazzi's imagery in Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, while production designer Maria Djurkovic makes astute comparisons between the rugged beauty of Pantelleria and the self-conscious luxury of the villa. Guadagnino also makes solid use of the raucous rock`n’roll on the soundtrack. He strains, however, to make a point about the conspicuous wealth of these ghastly people and the abject poverty of the North Africans washed up on the beach. Yet, despite the intellectual shallowness of David Kajganich's screenplay and the lack of psychological insight or suspense, this has an audacious panache that sweeps the viewer along in spite of themselves.

Sexual tension impinges upon another small group in Stephen Fingleton's The Survivalist, a post-societal tale set in the near future that has been expanded from the 2014 short, Magpie. Indeed, the debutant also references his earlier treatise on Internet pornography, SLR (2013), to explore the extent to which the male sense purpose can be blunted by lust or love. But, while some may question the manner in which Fingleton tackles the significance of gender politics in a Darwinian scenario, there can be no doubting that this is a thoughtful and provocative addition to the recent roster of survivalist pictures that has included John Hillcoat's 2009 take on Cormac McCarthy's bestseller The Road, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road and its Oscar rival, Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant.

An opening animation explains in graph form how civilisation went into steep decline following the exhaustion of fossil fuels before the focus shifts to Martin McCann, a twentysomething Nortern Irish loner who has barricaded himself into a woodland hut, which he defends against interlopers with designs on the vegetable plot he has planted over the graves of those killed in his mantraps. His routine is simple and his sustainable lifestyle attracts the attention of Olwen Fouéré and her teenage daughter, Mia Goth. Fouéré offers to let McCann sleep with Goth in return for food and shelter and, because he was recently bewitched by the photograph of a young women he found in the pocket of one of his victims, he agrees and they forge an uneasy alliance.

Grateful for a little help in the garden, McCann begins to trust the newcomers. However, Fouréré is aware that the supplies will barely feed three people and she instructs Goth to steal the shells for McCann's shotgun. But, before Fouéré can strike him down, Goth is abducted by Douglas Russell and McCann is shot and wounded as he attempts to rescue her at knifepoint. Suitably grateful, Goth convinces her mother that they need McCann and nurses him back to health. Even after their crops are destroyed by another raiding party, Goth tries to show McCann more affection during their love-making. However, she discovers she is pregnant and attempts an abortion before anyone notices her condition.

Determined to protect her daughter, Fouéré orders her to murder McCann. But Goth starts poisoning Fouéré instead and, when she realises what is happening, she pleads with McCann to finish her off. Led by Michael Og Lane, the brigands return and catch McCann and Goth outside their stronghold. As McCann struggles to hold them off, Goth clambers through a hole in the roof to retrieve the store of seeds they need to grow more food. Fleeing into the woods, McCann confides the name of the brother who died seven years earlier in unexplained circumstances before perishing while creating a diversion that allows Goth to escape, as the hut is burned to the ground. Still carrying his child, she presses on alone and eventually comes to a commune populated by women and children, where she is proud to add her seeds to their stocks.

Ditching the browns and greys of the expected post-apocalyptic movie palette, Fingleton accentuates the verdancy of a countryscape that is flourishing in the absence of mankind. However, production designer Dick Lunn and cinematographer Damien Elliott also make use of small spaces and tight angles (and sometimes woodland and tall grass) to reinforce the sense that McCann and his new companions are fighting a rearguard that keeps them penned in with their backs very much to the wall. Some 15 minutes elapse before the first word is spoken and Fingleton makes no attempt to explain the neo-primitivist diegesis or provide the characters with backstories. But this economy works to his advantage, as the audience is immediately drawn into a milieu in which only the present matters.

As time passes, McCann and Goth make an increasingly touching pair. But they are upstaged by Fouéré, whose white hair, wicked streak and knowledge of folklore makes her feel more like a fairytale character than somebody in a spartan sci-fi fantasy. Fingleton enhances this ethereal effect by presenting the periodic visions of McCann's lost brother in stylised slow-motion passages that recall the sequential images achieved by Victorian photographer Eadweared Muybridge in his pioneering locomotion studies. Such flourishes strike slightly against the grim grain. But they add a poetic sheen to the assured sense of place and pace and confirm that Fingleton is a talent to watch.

The Ireland of yesteryear is much to the fore in Stephen Bradley's Noble, a flashbacking account of the remarkable life of children's charity founder Christina Noble that draws in equal measure on the influence of Alan Parker's adaptation of Frank McLynn's Angela's Ashes (1999), Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters (2002) and Mark Robson's Gladys Aylward biopic, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958). As traditional as a teleplay, but markedly less mawkish, this is an unashamedly melodramatic picture that has been designed to tug on the heart strings while celebrating the indomitability of the human spirit. Yet, for all its cinematic conservatism, this remains an inspirational story that is capably told and mettlesomely enacted by a fine cast.

Born in Dublin in the mid-1940s, Christina Noble (Gloria Cramer Curtis) is one of six children left in the care of their alcoholic father, Thomas (Liam Cunningham), when their mother dies. Nursing ambitions to become a singer, Christina busks Doris Day songs on the streets to feed her family before Thomas loses custody and the city authorities dispatch her siblings to care homes across the country. Christina winds up in the west of Ireland in an institution run by strict Catholic nuns. However, the teenager (Sarah Greene) escapes back to the capital, where she takes a job in a commercial laundry and is briefly reunited with her father before becoming pregnant following a gang rape by some street thugs.

Forced by the nuns to give her son up for adoption, Christina follows old school friend Joan (Ruth Negga) to Birmingham. She gets a job in a chip shop and marries Greek Cypriot charmer Mario (David Mumeni) after a whirlwind courtship. However, he proves to be an abusive brute and Christina leaves him to raise her three children alone in London. Yet, even during her darkest hours, she cannot forget the recurring dreams that have haunted her since she first saw news footage of the Vietnam War during the 1960s. Consequently, in 1989, Christina (Deirdre O'Kane) flies to Ho Chi Minh City with the intention of doing what she can to help.

Arriving in the former Saigon some 14 years after the end of the conflict, Christina has no master plan. But she is distressed by the plight of the homeless children dismissed as `bui doi' or `dirt' by the local police. She smuggles a couple of them into her hotel room to give them a bath and some food and later takes a small group to a restaurant for a meal. However, her actions are viewed with suspicion by the immigration authorities, who are aware that foreigners like David Somers (Mark Huberman) befriend youngsters for sexual purposes.

Fortunately, Christina finds a sympathetic ear in Madame Linh (Nhu Quynh Nguyen), who runs an orphanage in the city centre. She agrees to help Christina with her scheme to open a shelter for kids squatting in the ruins. But, even though the Vietnamese give Christina a work permit, they insist she will be deported unless she has set up the facility within the next three months. Desperate to raise funds, Christina convinces oil executive Jerry (Brendan Coyle) to invest in her project. However, with time running out, he struggles to persuade his board to bankroll an initiative snafued with practical and bureaucratic difficulties.

Known to her charges as Mama Tina, Noble clearly suits her surname and Bradley sets out to portray her as a secular saint in this object lesson in how to channel personal misery into a greater good. His approach prompts the odd misjudgement, with Pauline McLynn making a cartoonishly malevolent mother superior alongside Eva Birthistle's kindly nun and Paul Hickey's pedantic priest. But, by and large, this is a sincere tribute to a woman who has worked tirelessly to protect thousands of innocent children. She is ably played by Cramer Curtis, Greene and O'Kane (who is Bradley's wife) across the time zones, which are deftly interlinked by editor Mags Arnold. Trevor Forrest's photography, Charlotte Walter's production design and Cristina Casali's costumes are equally assured, as is the score by Ben Foster and Giles Martin (who is best known for his work remixing his father George's work with The Beatles). But, while Noble's story is consistently compelling, the film-making is always rather conventional.

Living rough is also the theme of Thomas Wirthensohn's Homme Less, a documentary profile of fiftysomething photographer Mark Reay that doubles as a cautionary tale about the streets of New York and the pitfalls of attempting to live the American Dream. Filmed over two years, this is clearly a personal project, as the Austrian director came to know his subject when they were male models together on European photo shoots in the 1990s. But times have changed and Reay now spends his nights under a tarpaulin on the roof of an East Village apartment block. During the day, however, he is a photographer in the Bill Cunningham mode, who is as comfortable coaxing strangers into posing on the pavement as he is flirting with models on a catwalk. Yet, even though he succeeds in presenting an intimate insight into Reay's existence, Wirthensohn avoids prying too deeply into the reasons for his reduced circumstances or why he insists on maintaining a charade that seems rooted more in affectation than desperation.

At the start of each day, Mark Reay slicks back his luxuriant grey hair, straightens his tie and the handkerchief in the top pocket of his well-cut suit. But, as he drags himself away from the mirror, Thomas Wirthensohn's camera reveals that the dapper 52 year-old is completing his ablutions in a public washroom. No one suspects that the charmer persuading photogenic passers-by to pose for his camera has been homeless for the last six years and keeps his meagre belongings in a locker at the local YMCA. It's here that he also does his washing and ironing, while he conducts his business using a mobile phone and laptop hooked up to the free wi-fi on offer at the nearest branch of Starbucks.

His principal employer is a magazine that carries his pictures in its street style section. However, Reay is a gadfly who flits between beaches, galleries and bars, as he networks into the wee small hours to ensure he always has somewhere to go and something to do. Yet, while he revels in his roles as flâneur and bon vivant, Reay also concedes that it's easier sleeping in the open when in a state of near exhaustion.

A graduate of the University of Charleston who tired of the faux glamour of modelling, he supplements his income by scuttling behind the scenes during New York Fashion Week and he also works as an extra on movie and TV shoots. He even had prominent parts in Woody Allen's Celebrity (1998) and an episode of Sex in the City. Indeed, his memberships of Actors' Equity and the Screen Actors Guild are vital, as the former entitles him to bank with the association's credit union, while the latter enables him to claim a discount on his health insurance.

Yet, despite moving in such exclusive circles, Reay is a hobo. He has to sneak up the stairs to his roof because a friend lives in the building and it would be deeply embarrassing to bump into him, as he entrusted Reay with a key to look after the apartment when he is out of town. To be on the safe side, he occasionally sleeps in a second shelter. But Reay clearly doesn't identify with the derelicts Wirthensohn shows rootling through dumpster or begging on street corners. In his eyes, they are unfortunates who have been cast aside by a callous society, while he insists that he is entirely in control of his destiny. He could get a regular job if he wanted one and rent a comfortable apartment. But he simply doesn't want to, as his income is unpredictable and by reducing the number of overheads he can eliminate the stress of being part of the rat race.

Yet, while such self-awareness is as admirable as his refusal to wallow in pity, Reay never comes across as a particularly likeable character. He candidly admits that he is incapable of giving or receiving love and there is a disdainful superficiality about his bonhomie. Evidently, he is aware that Wirthensohn's profile will expose the truth he has striven so hard to conceal and make it more difficult to sleep anonymously. But one suspects he factored this into the equation the moment his friend suggested making the film. Reay might not have it easy, but he could never be called a victim and, thus, the comparative aspects of Wirthensohn's thesis have a markedly hollow ring that occasionally threaten to drown out the achingly hip sax on Kyle Eastwood and Matt McGuire's jazz score.

The housing crisis sparked by the North Dakota oil boom was discussed by Jesse Moss in his 2014 documentary, The Overnighters. But it's the impact of the economic downturn on a once-thriving railroad halt that informs Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker's chillingly even-handed companion piece, Welcome to Leith. Examining the extent to which freedom of speech is an inalienable right in a brave new world of political correctness, this sometimes feels like a throwback to an old B Western or a found footage horror movie. But the duel curse of timing and timidity means that this riveting record ends up leaving a lot of questions unanswered.

Founded in Grant County in 1910, Leith was named after the Scottish port and prospered until the closure of the railway line in 1984 left it cut off from the outside world. Now, just 1.24 square miles in size, Leith is home to a mere 16 people. Or at least it was until September 2012 when an unkempt, grey-bearded stranger begins inquiring about the availability of empty properties. The son of a millionaire businessman, Paul Craig Cobb purchases a property amid hopes that he might be able to do something to revive the city's fortunes. But it quickly transpires that Cobb is a white supremacist who aims to acquire as many dwellings as possible and sell them at bargain prices to fellow travellers who could help him take over the machinery of local government and establish a neo-Nazi haven on the Great Plains.

Although Mayor Ryan Schock is contacted by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, he is powerless to prevent Cobb from buying 12 plots and passing them on to member of the National Socialist Front, a neo-Nazi group that claims to be fighting for the civil rights of Americas increasingly marginalised white population. Among his black-shirted cohorts is Kyman Dutton, who arrives with girlfriend Deborah Henderson and promptly starts hoisting swastika banners and other inflammatory symbols of Aryan nationalism around Leith. Schock seeks legal advice on how to respond to the threat and is informed that Cobb and his acolytes have the right to express their views in any way these chose, providing they remain within the law.

As the sole African-American resident, fiftysomething welder Bobby Harper fears for himself and his white wife, Sherrill. Iraqi War veteran and council member Lee Cook is also dismayed by developments, as he had moved to Leith with his wife to recover from the trauma caused by the brutal murder of their teenage daughter. He is aghast when the Hitler-moustachioed Dutton starts yelling `sieg heil' at a council meeting and worse follows when those voicing their opposition to Cobb's crew have their names, addresses and images posted on extremist websites.

Racist and anti-Semitic paraphernalia proliferates, as plans advance for the future of Cobbsville. Cobb appears on television and scoffs with typical articulacy at chat show host Trisha Goddard when she reveals that a DNA test proves he is 14% sub-Saharan African. But it is only when he and Dutton lead a parade down a public highway toting loaded rifles that the authorities are able to intervene and charge the pair with terrorising the neighbourhood. Despite Henderson filming the encounter to provide untainted evidence in support of the NSF cause, Cobb and Dutton and detained without bail. While they are behind bars, the council passes legislation that permits the demolition of properties without running water or adequate sewage systems. As a consequence, the supremacists drift away and order is restored.

Nichols and Walker bend over backwards to present an objective account of the battle for Leith. Yet they devote little time to analysing the democratic methods employed by Schock and his allies to protect their community. This failure to examine the flipside of freedom (especially where the legal ownership of firearms is concerned) doesn't necessarily detract from their laudable efforts in recording for three-week stretches at various times throughout the three-year stand-off. But it does leave it open to accusations of bias that are otherwise confounded by the remainder of their material.

Some of the footage is genuinely disturbing and it might have been wiser to let it stand alone, without the ominous sounds generated by avant-garde electronic artist Tim Hecker. Nevertheless, this sends out a timely warning about the dangers posed by fascist organisations and the unnerving ease with which they can manipulate the system to their advantage. Moreover, it captures the melancholy that pervades the defiance of a ghost town whose dirt tracks, overgrown scrub and boarded up buildings evoke memories of a lost frontier.

Extremism of a more brutal kind comes under the spotlight in Bill Guttentag and Michael Ware's Only the Dead, which chronicles the reign of terror that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi inflicted upon Iraq after George W. Bush foolishly declared `mission accomplished' in May 2003. Culled from the 100 hours of camcorder footage that Ware recorded while embedded as a journalist with Time magazine and CNN, this offers a grimly intimate insight into life on either side of the front line following the fall of Saddam Hussein. However, such is the floridly melodramatic and platitudinous tone of Ware's narration that this feels more on a par with Matthew VanDyke's wretched Libyan odyssey, Point and Shoot (2014), than more restrained first-hand conflict accounts like Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Restrepo and Janus Metz Pedersen's Armadillo (both 2010).

Early in his commentary, Australian reporter Michael Ware concedes that he would have done anything to escape the sleepy Brisbane suburb in which he was raised. But that's about the limit of the backstory he confides as he launches into his deeply personal and frustratingly scattershot memoir of being embedded with both US troops and insurgent jihadis. There's no doubting Ware's courage, as he heads towards Baghdad from Kurdish country as the hostilities commence. But there's something decidedly resistible about his annoyance at being late for the party and this blend of swagger and sincerity jars recurringly as he goes in search of stories that afford him a taste of adventure.

While in Baghdad, Ware befriends Russian journalist Yuri Kozyrev and they set up house together with an array of local guides, fixers and translators. In August 2003, Ware films the aftermath of the car bombing of the Jordanian embassy and incurs the wrath of those he films recovering bodies from the wreckage. This commitment to duty over circumspection comes to characterise Ware's approach and it attracts the attention of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who sends him video footage of the beheading of American hostage Nicholas Berg.

Guttentag and Ware show more of these hideous images (and later examples of human piñatas) than is strictly necessary, while rather disingenuously evading any discussion of the ethical conundrum of being an honest broker for each side. At great risk to himself, Ware pays nocturnal visits to insurgent hideouts and gets to film them launching mortar attacks on US positions. But he opts not to explore his emotions in any detail, other than to admit that the savagery of al-Zarqawi's tactics makes him more intriguing.

On one occasion, Ware is cruising the dangerous Haifa Street in the centre of Baghdad when his car is pulled over by one of al-Zarqawi's loyalists. As he was forced to stop filming, Ware relates how he was dragged out of the vehicle and taken into an alley, where he fully expected to be executed. But he was spared because his guide threatened that his boss (who is never named) would provoke a ruinous turf war if anything happened to his friend. This threat seems to have been sufficiently potent to secure Ware's deliverance and he explains how he spent the next three days in bed. He further reveals how the thought of having his throat cut made shaving an uncomfortable experience, but he avoids any analysis of the incident's deeper psychological impact - just as he omits any mention of the fact that he undertook assignments in other parts of the world during this period and was not, therefore, trapped in the heart of darkness, as the narration rather archly implies.

Equally stung by the death of the son of one of the Time team, Ware takes himself off to Fallujah and Ramadi to witness the American efforts to Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He recalls a patrol to root out six insurgents hiding out in some abandoned buildings and how he followed Sergeant David Bellavia into the darkness and emerged without his fear of death. He also encounters Corporal Nathan Buck, Lance Corporal José Tasayco and Second Lieutenant Joe Walker, as they combat snipers in scarred neighbourhoods. Ware also films an American unit leaving a badly wounded foe to die without doing anything to alleviate his suffering. But he lacks a cogent thesis to tie his observations together and, as a consequence, his documentary peters out without any reference to the part this jihadi rearguard played in the rise of Islamic State.

Writing with former Newsweek executive editor and now partner Justine Rosenthal, Ware understands the emotive power of words and has a remarkable eye (given the circumstances) for a telling image. But, even though co-director Guttentag has Academy Awards for his short documentaries You Don't Have to Die (1988) and Twin Towers (2003) - as well as nominations for three more - this blend of handheld footage and news clips deftly woven together by Jan Moran supports a muddled mix of reminiscent reportage and mulled impression. Given he has had around seven years to work out what to do with the reels of video he stored in a bedroom at this mother's house, Ware might have devised something more considered and substantial. Not everyone can be Adam Curtis, but this self-promoting video diary lacks trenchancy and feels like something of a missed opportunity, as Ware was forced to resign from CNN in 2010 after the network refused to give him time off to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Finally, this week, Phil Grabsky continues his excellent series of art surveys with Exhibition on Screen: Renoir - Revered and Reviled. Breaking with tradition by focusing on a permanent collection rather than a specially curated show, this runs the risk of stirring up controversy by concentrating on the latter and less vaunted period of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's career. Although Grabsky visits various museums and such key locations as Les Collettes, the farm near Cagnes-sur-Mer where Renoir spent his final years, he primarily bases himself at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which is home to 181 Renoir paintings acquired with the fortune amassed by chemist Albert C. Barnes from the sale of the antiseptic drug, Argyrol.

Drawing on film-maker son Jean Renoir's 1962 biography, Renoir: My Father, the picture begins by briskly sketching a portrait of the artist as a young man. Born in Limoges in 1841, Renoir first demonstrated his talent by designing plates at the local porcelain factory. At the age of 21, he went to study with Charles Gieyre in Paris and his early works bore the influence of such leading lights as Charles-François Daubigny and Gustave Courbet. However, during his numerous visits to the Louvre, Renoir made the acquaintance of such budding talents as Alfred Sisley and Claude Monet and, as Grabsky revealed in The Impressionists and the Man Who Made Them (2015), they gradually began to challenge the preconceptions of the Salon around the time of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune thanks to the efforts of art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.

But, while Grabsky provides details of such familiar canvases as `The Swing', `Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette' (both 1876) and `Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1880-81), he pays much closer attention to such nude studies as `Before the Bath (c.1875), `Bather Drying Herself' (c.1908), `Nude in a Landscape' (c.1917) and `Composition, Five Bathers' (c.1918). These are considered worthless daubs by Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott and his New York Times counterpart, Ken Johnson, who can barely bring themselves to discuss Renoir without grimacing. They find a partial ally in Augustin de Butler, the editor of Renoir's correspondence. But Kennicott is particularly blunt in his accusation that Renoir was a misogynist whose images of young models like Andrée Heuschling (who later married Jean and reinvented herself as the actress Catherine Hessling) betray a lust for their flesh and a contempt for their intelligence.

While conceding that it is possible to view Renoir as `a dirty old man', these charges are vigorously refuted by Martha Lucy, the Deputy Director and Curator of the Barnes Foundation, who is joined in her defence by such colleagues as Thom Collins (Executive Director), Barbara Buckley (Senior Director of Conservation) and archivist Barbara Anne Beaucar. Artists Damian Callan and Bill Scott also rally to the cause, along with Colin Bailey (The Morgan Library & Museum), Dorothy Kosinski (The Phillips Collection), Mary Morton (The National Gallery of Art, Washington) and Chris Riopelle (The National Gallery, London). But more might have been made of this line of enquiry and it's a pity that the speakers appear separately rather than engaging in what clearly would have been a heated debate.

In seeking to defend Renoir's reputation, his champions point out the extent to which the works of his later years influenced such emerging painters as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. But a bid to see if Renoir had painted himself out of `The Artist's Family' (1896) proves to be a fruitless detour, as x-rays reveal no hidden evidence to support the long-standing rumour. A session with Callan using a palette knife to assess Renoir's technique is more useful, but a lengthy sequence eavesdropping on members of the public as they wander the galleries is also of dubious value, even though the remarks do support the thesis that ordinary art lovers are more forgiving than feminist critics when it comes to the ageing Renoir's fleshly preoccupations.

As always, however, one is left feeling much better informed about the man, his milieu and his legacy. Grabsky has arrived at an accessibly authoritative style that caters for novices and specialists alike and it's reassuring to know that there are several more outings in the pipeline. It will be interesting to see whether future features will follow the example of this compellingly rigorous analysis of Renoir by allowing detractors to have their say, as well as the devotees.