Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 28/7/2016)

Entitled `By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon', Act I opens with an unreliable narrator (Michael Hordern) explaining how the young hero lost his father in a duel in the 1750s and was raised by his mother, Belle (Marie Kean), who turned down many suitors in order to devote herself to her son. Her adulation clouded his attitude towards women, however, and Redmond (Ryan O'Neal) struggled to understand the whims of his older cousin, Nora Brady (Gay Hamilton), who had flirted with him during a game of cards before throwing in her lot for the sake of the family coffers with John Quin (Leonard Rossiter), an English army captain whose disdain for Redmond after his hasty marriage prompts the Irish hothead to fight a duel that causes him to flee.

Robbed on the road by the notorious highwayman Captain Feeney (Arthur O'Sullivan) and his son Seamus (Billy Boyle), Redmond is gulled into joining the British Army by a recruiting officer (John Bindon) who turns his head with tales of glorious adventure and a generous pension. No sooner has he taken the King's Shilling, however, than Redmond learns from family friend Captain Grogan (Godfrey Quigley) that Quin had survived their skirmish because the pistols had been doctored so that Redmond would abscond and leave Nora to feather her nest.

Marching alongside Grogan, Redmond is sent to Prussia to fight in the Seven Years' War. His friend is fatally wounded, however, during an encounter with the French at the Battle of Minden and Redmond decides to desert after Colonel Bulow (Ferdy Mayne) accuses him of being idle, dissolute and unprincipled. He steals the uniform of an officer courier (while he is bathing with his male lover) and makes for the neutral Netherlands. Following a night with nursing mother Lischen (Diana Koerner), he is captured by Captain Potzdorf (Hardy Krüger), who sees through his disguise and gives him the option of returning to the British ranks and facing a firing squad or of joining the Prussian forces. Redmond chooses life and is rewarded for saving Potzdorf's life by his uncle, the Minister of Police, who secures him a position with the Chevalier de Balibari (Patrick Magee) so that he can spy on him.

A skilled gambler, Balibari proves such an agreeable master (as well as a surrogate father) that Redmond admits his mission and they team up at the tables to fleece the rich and foolish. The run into trouble, however, when the Prince of Tübingen (Wolf Kahler) accuses Balibari of cheating him and declares that he would rather fight than pay a penny to such a scoundrel. Redmond informs his handler, who decides that it would be safer to have Balibari deported and the pair concoct a scheme that enables Redmond to pose as the Chevalier and be escorted off Prussian territory while Balibari escapes under cover of darkness.

Now both at liberty, the duo descend on resorts and soirées across the continent, with Redmond acting as a strongarm to ensure all debts are paid. However, the faux glamour of his peripatetic lifestyle has little attraction for him and, when he encounters the Lady Harriet Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) at Spa, he decides to court her following the death of her elderly husband, Sir Charles (Frank Middlemass).

`Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon', Act II opens by explaining how Redmond took his wife's surname in 1773. But his 10 year-old stepson, Lord Bullingdon (Dominic Savage), realises that he is a sordid opportunist and provokes Lyndon into subjecting him to pitiless beatings. He gloats when Harriet gives birth to Bryan Patrick, but keeps his wife locked away while he indulges his carnal appetites and squanders her inheritance.

Years pass and Belle comes to live with her son. She warns him that he will be left destitute when Harriet dies because her fortune will pass to the disdainful Bullingdon. She suggests that he befriends Lord Wendover (André Morell) in the hope that he will be able to pull the strings to secure him a title. Lyndon invests heavily in cultivating a better class of friend. But, at a gathering to celebrate his wife's birthday, Lyndon is humiliated when Bullingdon regales the assembled with a litany of charges against his stepfather and the ensuing scuffle leads to Lyndon being ostracised by polite society.

With Bullingdon in exile, Lyndon devotes himself to Bryan Patrick (David Morley) and becomes such an indulgent father that he buys him a full-size horse for his ninth birthday. The wilful child disobeys his father's strict orders against riding unsupervised and dies shortly after being thrown from his mount. While Lyndon seeks solace in alcohol, Harriet becomes dependent upon the Reverend Samuel Runt (Murray Melvin), who had been tutoring her boys. Belle realises that he is poisoning the grieving mother's mind and, when she is left in charge of the estate, she dismisses Runt on the pretext of making economies.

Heartbroken at being separated from her confidante, Harriet makes a half-hearted attempt to poison herself. But Runt wastes no time in joining forces with the family lawyer, Graham (Philip Stone), to find Bullingdon and bring him home before Lyndon can bankrupt him. Now a dashing young buck, Bullingdon (Leon Vitali) returns to defend his mother and demands satisfaction for Lyndon's frenzied attack at the birthday party. He agrees to meet at the tithe barn at dawn and fires into the ground when his opponent's pistol misfires. But Bullingdon is in no mood for chivalry and reloads to shoot Lyndon in the left leg, which is so badly damaged that it needs to be amputated.

As he recovers at a nearby inn, Lyndon receives a visit from Graham. He informs him that Bullingdon has agreed to settle his debts and grant him an annual annuity of five hundred guineas, providing that he leaves England. Realising that prison is his only alternative, Lyndon accepts the terms and returns to Ireland with Belle. He soon becomes restless, however, and resumes his career as a gambler. But, as revolution threatens to spread from France in December 1789, he remains dependent on handouts from the wife he is destined never to see again.

While writing at length about this film in a MovieMail Crash Course article, it became clear how much Kubrick was dependent upon the expertise of his collaborators in realising this hugely ambitious project. Production designer Ken Adam perhaps deserves the greatest praise for persuading Kubrick to shoot in Ireland (although a number of exteriors were filmed in England, Scotland and West Germany), although cinematographer John Alcott cannot be far behind for the brilliant way in which he captured the look and feel of interiors illuminated by a mixture of beeswax candles and diffused mini-brute beams. The cast also merits mention here for coping with the restrictions imposed by the shallow depth of field, although their limited movements do reinforce the sense that life moved more slowly 250 years ago.

Kubrick remains relatively faithful to the spirit of Thackeray, as well as the many 18th-century artists whose styles he evokes throughout the 187 minutes of impeccably produced cinema. But this is no mere heritage homage to the period. Each composition is designed to place the viewer at the heart of the action to implicate them in the manners, mores and militarism that characterised Barry Lyndon's milieu. Michael Hordern's wry narration does much the same thing, while also allowing Kubrick to compete with and comment upon Tony Richardson's Oscar-winning take on Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1963), which had broken the mould of literary adaptation.

Although he had hoped to cast Robert Redford, Kubrick was always very loyal to Ryan O'Neal in defending his performance. At times, he lacks the rascally presence to keep viewers rooting for him, particularly once his rake's progress ends and he settles into becoming an abusive tyrant. But the support playing is magnificent, with Kean, Hamilton, Rossiter, Magee and Kruger standing out and the statuesque Berenson bringing a tragic grace to a role with only 13 lines of dialogue. The closing sequence, in which she signs the annuity cheque with a mix of sadness, resignation and regret, is deftly done and sums up Kubrick's understanding of both his characters and human nature. Moreover, it confounds the oft-repeated accusation that Kubrick left no room for emotion in his strictly ordered cine-worlds.

Having ventured into the Victorian era for his adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (2015), Thomas Vinterberg leaps forward into the 1970s for The Commune, a reworking of the stage play, Kollektivet, which he co-wrote with Mogens Rukov. Reuniting with screenwriter Tobias Lindholm, with whom he teamed on Submarino (2010) and the Oscar nominee, The Hunt (2012), Vinterberg makes nodding reference to his Dogma 95 drama, Festen (1998), as well as Lars Von Trier's The Idiots (1998) and Lukas Moodysson's Together (2000), which both explored the concept of communal living. Yet, while this is essentially an haut soap, it often recalls the cult American sitcom, Arrested Development, right down to Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen being cast as a watchful teenage daughter in the same mould as Maeby Fünke, who was played so impeccably by Alia Shawkat.

Rational architecture tutor Ulrich Thomsen is unimpressed when he inherits his childhood home from his estranged father. Newsreader wife Trine Dyrholm can see why he would want to sell it for a small fortune, but she and 14 year-old daughter Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen are so taken with the space and atmosphere that they talk him into moving in. Moreover, (as she has begun to feel a bit bored) Dryholm convinces Thomsen that it would be a good idea to share the property with some of their friends in order to manage the bills. Consequently, they contact his old friend Lars Ranthe, who is between jobs and residences and arrives with his worldly goods in a couple of carrier bags. He is all in favour of the proposal and suggests some potential housemates.

The first to be interviewed are Magnus Millang and Anne Gry Henningsen, whose six year-old son Sebastian Grønnegaard Milbrat has a heart condition that prompts him to declare that he wont live to be nine. His parents smile because he has learned to use this line to charm girls and he Milbrat flirts with Hansen by asking her age. The newcomers are welcomed with open arms, as is Julie Agnete Vang. But Thomsen takes exception to stranger Fares Fares, as he admits he doesn't have the requisite deposit and can't guarantee a steady income, as he tends to flit between odd jobs. Dyrholm and the others are dismayed by his hectoring tone and Thomsen relents when Fares makes to leave in tears.

A show of hands secures his place within the commune and everyone starts mucking into the business of sharing meals and chores. They also go skinny dipping together in the nearby sea. As they make preparations for Christmas, Dyrholm is pleased by the adult manner in which the group is approaching the project. But what really binds them together is a medical emergency when Milbrat collapses during a festive dance and Dyrholm proves unable to find out his condition when she calls the hospital. The boy survives and is pleased that Hansen fusses over him, but no one pauses to consider the limitations of their situation.

In an effort to demonstrate his commitment, Thomsen makes his cohabitants equal partners in the property. But he feels slighted when Ranthe (who regularly burns items that have not been tidied away) assumes the chair at house meetings and enquires whether the living arrangements are mutually suitable. Consequently, when third-year student Helene Reingaard Neumann invites him to kiss her while discussing an assignment, Thomsen readily responds and they quickly become lovers.

When Millang invites the residents to spend time in his Swedish holiday cabin, Thomsen and Hansen remain behind. She is supposed to be staying with a friend, but walks in on Neumann getting dressed in her parents' bedroom and Thomsen has to stand in his underwear in the bathroom doorway as his daughter chats to her mother on the phone. She doesn't betray him and he promises her that nothing will change. But Hansen dislikes the idea of keeping secrets from Dyrholm and Thomsen promises to tell her about Neumann as soon as she returns.

Not being the most tactful of men, he breaks the news in bed and Dyrholm is not only hurt by his infidelity, but also by the fact that Neumann is so much younger than she is. She tries to put on a brave face when Thomsen confides that he thinks the relationship could be serious and even makes a show of welcoming Neumann when she comes to the house for the first time. They go shopping together and sit and chat on a bench. But, while Dyrholm can see why Thomsen would fall for such a sweet and intelligent girl, she also realises that the threads of her idyll are starting to unravel and that she only has herself to blame.

Dyrholm reads the news about the tensions between Vietnam and Cambodia and reassures Vang and Henningsen that she is coming to terms with being cuckqueaned. But she starts drinking in the make-up chair and, when Thomsen (who is feeling more self-assured as he contemplates a switch from architectural theory into practice) suggests that he would like Neumann to join the commune, Dyrholm begins to cry during the countdown to a live transmission and has to be hurried off the set. She is distraught when the station fires her the following day and she drinks herself into a stupor in a posh restaurant. When she finally returns home a few days later, she pretends nothing untoward has happened, as Henningsen asks where she has been and why she has not been on television.

Feeling caught between her parents, Hansen throws herself at the older Rasmus Lind Rubin at a party and loses her virginity in his room. She approaches the relationship with considerable maturity, however, and is once more embarrassed when another meeting descends into a dispute about her father and his sex life. Thomsen is so furious when a vote he loses a vote about Neumann moving in on a trial basis that he orders everyone to leave because it remains his house because no one has honoured their side of his bequest. Ranthe tries to calm him down and they almost come to blows But, when Hansen urges Dyrholm to move out, she accepts that she has to go in order for the commune to survive.

Shortly after they reach an amicable settlement, Milbrat dies in his mother's arms. They gather on the beach and Ranthe scatters his ashes (to the tacky accompaniment of Elton John's `Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'). But he is not the only departure, as Hansen moves in with Rubin and Dyrholm packs her bags to begin afresh elsewhere. She lingers in the hallway and is dismayed to hear a mealtime carrying on without her. Thomsen fights back the tears, but the others rally round and the commune continues - for now.

Havng been raised from the age of seven in a commune, Vinterberg clearly has a greater insight than most into the workings of a shared living space. But, while he, production designer Niels Sejer and cinematographer Jesper Toffner capture the look and feel of the homestead, Vinterberg and Lindblom peddle platitudes in concocting a sombrely implausible melodrama whose every twist and turn appears signposted at the outset. It hardly helps that the socio-political context is so sketchy and that none of the secondary characters are fleshed out sufficiently to invite anything but passing interest in their antics and opinions, while Thomsen's restless academic-cum-frustrated artist is a cruel boor who lacks the charisma to entice such self-assured women as Dyrholm and Neumann.

Dyrholm won the Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival. But there is nothing particularly remarkable about her descent into drink-fuelled despair, beside the peevishly envious glance she shoots pretty young make-up artist Lise Koefoed shortly before her meltdown at the newsdesk. Indeed, the most intriguing performances come from Sebastian Grønnegaard Milbrat (whose opening line to Neumann is a doozie) and Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen, whose measured response to the muddled middle-class madness going on around her puts the grown-ups to shame.

Just as Vinterberg is content to tell his story without delving into any great socio-political depth, the debuting duo of Femi Oyeniran and Kalvadour Peterson similarly resist exploring the reasons why gang culture exerts such a grip on so many young black British men in The Intent. Co-written by Oyeniran and Nicky Slimting Walker, this trades heavily in the clichéd iconography of the BritCrime genre. But Oyeniran clearly picked up some tips while acting in Menhaj Huda's Kidulthood (2006) and Noel Clarke's Adulthood (2008) and it would be interesting to see him take on a non-gangsta topic.

As a child in Birmingham, Dylan Duffus was fascinated by guns. His father owned one and he knew he would spend his life around villains dealing drugs and shooting each other because it was in his blood and his DNA. But, now. Duffus is an undercover cop monitoring the rivalry between TIC (Thieves in the Community) crew and their South London rivals, the Clappers. Despite the expletive-strewn lectures from superior Sarah Akokhia, Duffus is close to going rogue, as he has spent so long selling weed with Tayo Jarrett (aka Scorcher), Shone Romulus and Femi Oyeniran that they have become like brothers.

However, petty dealing is no longer enough for Scorcher, who gets such a rush out of stealing a watch and some bags of dope off small-time pushers Casyo Johnson and Karl Wilson that he suggests they step up a notch and start robbing convenience stores. Oyeniran has his doubts, but goes along for the ride. But, while they are forcing Pakistani shopkeeper Jade Asha to empty the till, Scorcher guns down her mother (Bhrina Bache) when she suddenly appears from the back room. Duffus tries to comfort her, but knows he has to flee without calling an ambulance because he will give himself away.

Scorcher and Romulus revel in their new-found status. But Oyeniran quits the gang and becomes a devout member of the local church. Duffus also has his misgivings, especially as Akokhia keeps threatening him to make progress with his investigation or face the consequences. Girlfriend Sharea Samuels is also unhappy about the broken promises that Duffus has made about settling down. But the angriest woman is Scorcher's mother, Michelle Greenidge, who gives him hell when he tries to hand her a brown envelope full of cash and orders him never to return, as he is no longer worth the sacrifices she made to raise him and sister Emani Joof.

Stung by this rejection, Scorcher plans an audacious raid on a garage belonging to Fredi `Kruga' Nwaka, who is furious that so many of his mechanics were senselessly slaughtered in the loss of £1.5 million. Scorcher decides to flaunt his wealth and power by purchasing a flash car and drives past Clappers leader Ashley Chin, who is so apoplectic that this upstart is challenging his authority that he suggests a pact with Nwaka to bring TIC to heel.

One of Chin's acolytes, Fekky, reunites with cousin Nicky Slimting Walker after he took a two-year hit for the gang. They go to Birmingham to meet some girls Fekky has met online and Walker is worried about his parole until the girls come back into the room in their underwear. Walker is keen to get back in the game and talks Fekky into cutting a deal with Romulus. They meet in a rundown building and Walker is convinced that he recognises Duffus from somewhere. But, when Duffus leaves the room to take a phone call, Walker pulls a gun on Romulus and shoots him in the neck before fleeing with the drugs and the cash. Desperate to save his buddy, Duffus uses the police channel to call for back up and Romulus stares at him accusingly as he dies.

At the funeral, Scorcher picks a fight with Oyeniran for abandoning the gang. But he insists he has seen the light and wants nothing more to do with crime. Scorcher goes to see Joof to see if she will take the money their mother has spurned. She is hanging out with Asha and Scorcher recognises her from the shop. He spots her again when she and Joof are dancing in a nightclub and he takes exception to his sister cavorting with strangers. Asha tells Scorcher to mind his own business and he rushes after her. They kiss passionately in the washroom and Asha spends the night in his flat. The next morning, however, she finds the robbery mask in a cupboard under the bathroom sink and reports her findings to Akokhia.

She briefs Duffus that he will be regarded as a suspect unless he gets results. But, after wrestling with his conscience, he makes his decision. Chin has ordered Fekky to shoot Walker for his reckless theft. However, he is intrigued when Scorcher approaches him with a proposition to join forces on a bank heist. The crews go in together, but Scorcher and Duffus make their getaway with new recruits Johnson and Wilson, while Chin and Nwaka are busted by armed police. Back at the hideout, Scorcher falls out with Johnson and Wilson who pull guns and get back up from a hoodied Fekky. But everyone is caught off guard when Duffus reveals he is a cop and he and Scorcher are left wounded on the floor after a brief exchange of fire as a special ops team bursts into the room.

A closing coda repeats the opening scene of the tweenage Duffus playing with a gun. But, as it runs on, it transpires that he was the son of a copper, who had warned him in giving him a set of handcuffs to play with that firearms cost lives. This is the closest that Oyeniran and his collaborators get to a message in this capable, but unremarkable film. But such is the flimsiness of the plot and the sketchiness of the characterisation that it couldn't have borne anything more substantial. It might, for example, have been instructive to learn more about the socio-economic background of the TIC and Clappers gangs and how they impact upon the wider community. As it is, their crimes seem to have little effect on the tenements shown in the fleeting establishing shots, while the police seem curiously passive in their attempts to apprehend the dealers, thieves and killers running rampant on their patch. Moreover, it might have been interesting to consider the role played by women in this macho milieu, as the most potent scene in the entire picture is the face-slapping showdown between Scorcher and the no-nonsense Greenidge.

She is one of the few secondary characters to register, as several of the supporting cast (many of whom are rappers/musicians) struggle with the most basic dialogue. Akokhia also looks uncomfortable as the cursing cop, while Asha is denied the opportunity to flesh out a potentially contentious take on the Muslim girl who defies the father who wants to take her back to Pakistan by sleeping with a bad black boy. Scorcher and Duffus stand out among the gangstas, but the formulaic nature of the plot leaves them little room for manoeuvre.

Scott Sandford's photography is effective, but Oyeniran and Peterson create little sense of place and rely far too heavily on platitudinous hip-hop cuts on the soundtrack. They also glamorise crime through their use of slow motion and the fetishising of such trappings as motorbikes, cars and scarlet women. Yet, despite its flaws, this has a touch of personality and better things could well come with a sharper focus on the script and the world it seeks to depict.

Nothing director Daniel Gordon ever does will surpass his sobering, haunting documentary, Hillsborough, which aired on BBC 2 earlier this year. But he returns to the 1980s for a very different sporting story in The Fall, which recalls the media-manufactured rivalry between Mary Decker and Zola Budd that came to a head during the inaugural Olympic running of the women's 3000m final at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on 11 August 1984. Two women hit the track that afternoon. Nobody remembers Joan Hansen, who took a tumble during the fourth laps after clipping the heels of the runner in front. But, while she got up to finish eighth, all that people recall of that race is that a `plastic Britain' took out America's golden girl on what was supposed to be her special day. However, things were far from being that simple.

Born in New Jersey in 1958, Mary Decker discovered she could run when the family moved to Southern California in the late 1960s. After her father left home, she was raised by mother Jackie Baker and was only excluded from the 1972 US Olympic team because of her age. A dynamic performance against a world-class field in Minsk put her on the map in 1973 and the pigtailed dynamo broke the world record for the indoor mile later the same year. As author Kyle Keiderling points out, she found it hard to cope without a father figure and left home when one of Jackie's boyfriends picked her up and threw her across the room. But she continued to develop and was devastated when a stress fracture kept her out of the Montreal Games in 1976.

Known in the media as Little Mary Decker, she was anything but an innocent sweetheart and teammate Ruth Wysocki remembers being pleased when Decker lost her temper in a relay race and the world got to see the spoilt brat she knew when she hurled the baton to the floor and stomped off the track. Fellow distance runner Ron Tabb might have had similar feelings, but Decker's first husband is airbrushed out of the picture to retain focus on the frustration she felt when President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would not be sending a team to the Moscow Olympics of 1980 in protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Within a year, Decker had run the fastest mile ever by a female athlete. But she wanted an Olympic gold and Los Angeles 1984 seemed to be her last chance.

On the other side of the world in South Africa, Zola Budd was also starting to make a name for herself. Born in 1966, she had grown up outside Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State and claims to have known little about the policy of apartheid that had led to her country being banned from international sport. Competing in bare feet, Budd had started running as an outlet for her grief when her adored older sister Jenny died at the age of 24 from a dose of chemotherapy that was wrong applied to a non-cancerous tumour. As former nanny Maria Moahi and brother Quintus Budd reflect, Budd needed a way to boost her confidence and she soon started winning races. Moreover, `Little Flying Wing' started to close on Decker's world record for the 5000m and was hugely disappointed when the International Amateur Athletics Federation refused to acknowledge her six-second improvement on her idol's time at Stellenbosch on 5 January 1984 because of the sporting boycott.

As coach Pieter Labuschagne pushed Budd, Decker was benefiting from a new relationship with Dick Brown, who tried to channel the anger that sharpened her competitive edge. Fully fit and focused, she took the 800m and 1500m double at the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki. But, as she reveals during a trawl through long-forgotten trophies in the attic of an outbuilding at the Eugene, Oregon home she shares with British discus thrower Richard Slaney, Decker was only interested in topping the podium at her home Games. She knew of Budd, but didn't consider her a serious rival - until the Daily Mail intervened and the 5ft 2in teenager became the most famous South African after the imprisoned Nelson Mandela.

Reporter Neil Wilson reveals that Budd had an English grandfather and the Mail suggested that she applied for British citizenship so she could complete in the Olympics. Although mother Tossie had misgivings, father Frank was tempted by the £100,000 fee for Budd's story and exclusive access to her in the run up to the Games. Archive footage shows a very tiny and bemused 17 year-old (who considered English to be her third language) being whisked between television studios and photo shoots, as opponents of her passport gambit were allowed to call her every name under the sun.

Yet, the track and field community was becoming increasingly excited by this raw recruit, with BBC commentator David Coleman adopting a highly protective attitude towards her, as he sensed she was being exploited by the Thatcher government at a time of intense domestic tension. Sam Ramsamy, from the Anti-Apartheid Campaign Against South Africa, laments the naiveté of her answers to questions about the situation back home and remains convinced that Budd made a terrible mistake in accepting the Mail's filthy lucre. There is little doubt (as she looks directly into the camera three decades on) that she wishes she had listened to her mother and not Frank, who would abandon his wife before being murdered in 1989 by a man claiming to be defending himself against homosexual advances.

Meanwhile, Decker was getting tired of being asked about Budd and had to endure the embarrassment of being beaten by Wysocki in the 1500m at US trials. Vowing to atone in the first running of the 3000m, Decker also had to field inquiries about the fact that the Soviet Union had exacted its revenge on Washington by boycotting the LA Games. But the rivals kept winning races as the summer progressed and, while Budd tried to keep a low profile after jetting in with Team GB, Decker found herself on every billboard as the poster girl of the XXIII Olympiad.

All of which made the events that transpired on 11 August so indelible. Around the 1700m mark, Decker knocked against Budd's leg, but she managed to retain her balance. Five strides on, however, Decker and Budd brushed together again. But, as Budd stumbled into Decker's path, the American spiked the Briton's unprotected heel and, in a reflex action, her leg shot out across Decker, who grabbed despairingly at Budd's shirt number as she fell.

Clutching her right thigh in a mix of shock and pain, Decker was inconsolable as the field ran away from her and her dream died. Thus, after fiancé Slaney had carried her out of the arena, she was in no mood to accept Budd's crestfallen apology. Having been booed for the remainder of the race, she was well aware that she would be blamed for what had happened and simply wished to go home. Such was her sense of dejection that Budd had finished seventh behind winner Maricica Puica and British silver medallist, Wendy Sly. Indeed, she even had to accept the shame of being disqualified before Olympic officials reviewed the footage.

But Decker was devastated and wanted to lash out. Unwisely, she attended a press conference and accused Budd of being in the wrong. Wysocki was astonished that the side of Little Mary she had always known existed had finally been exposed to the public gaze. Yet the US media continued to castigate Budd for tripping Decker, even though it was clear that the collision had been an accident, with Decker's inexperience at running in the pack causing her to get too close to the athletes in front of her. Budd had certainly not hindered her deliberately and, after indulging her grief in a round of TV interviews, Decker acknowledged the fact following a much-hyped rematch at Crystal Palace in July 1985, which she won.

No mention is made of this race in the film, as it would spoil Gordon's big finale, in which Decker-Slaney and Budd (who is now Zola Pieterse) return to the Coliseum for the first time since 1984 and embrace on the pitch before reminiscing about the clash that will link their names for eternity. Now mothers in their middle age, they chat politely and even go for a jog, even though Decker rarely runs because of arthritis. It's almost as though she has accepted it's time to let go and move on. But the tears she holds back during her recollection of the incident suggest the pain is still very real.

Resembling Salute (2008), Matt Norman's account of the 200m medal ceremony at Mexico City in 1968, and Gordon's own Ben Johnson profile, 9.79* (2012), this is a solid piece of sports reportage. Editor Matt Wyllie ably slips between the archive material and the laudably honest interviews, in which Decker and Budd reveal a little more of themselves than they possibly intended. There are many poignant moments, not least of which is Decker's meeting with some young girls training in Orange County, California who don't seem entirely sure who she is as she urges them to persevere and rattles through some of her personal bests. But Wysocki's gracious animosity is often amusing and it's just a shame that Gordon couldn't persuade Wendy Sly to take part, as she was right at the heart of the action from the moment Budd set up home in Guildford.

Finally, there's more scandal, albeit of a literary nature, in Jeff Feuerzeig's Author: The JT Leroy Story, the second study of the hoax perpetrated by Laura Albert after Marjorie Sturm's The Cult of JT Leroy (2014). Having refused to co-operate with Sturm, Albert is very much front and centre in this bid to justify her actions in creating JT LeRoy, the HIV-positive, teenage, transgender ex-prostitute who became a media darling and a beacon of hope to thousands of confused outsiders following the publication of Sarah (1999) and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2001), only to be exposed as the figment of the lively imagination of his fortysomething confidante. Having profiled a similarly psychologically scarred misfit in The Devil and Daniel Johnston (2005), Feuerzeig seems the ideal director for this tricky assignment. But, with an arch manipulator like Albert calling some of the shots, this proves to be a frustratingly evasive sales pitch that raises more questions than it answers.

Following footage of Winona Ryder introducing her good friend JT LeRoy, Laura Albert launches into an achronological talking-head account of her own life and that of her infamous alter ego. Born in Brooklyn in 1965, Albert carried the scars of her broken home to San Francisco in the late 1980s, where she met aspiring musician Geoff Knoop. Having performed as an acoustic duo with little success, they formed the band Daddy Don't Go. But, with Albert self-conscious about her weight, she found it easier promoting the combo than performing live. Indeed, such was her talent for one-to-one communication that she began working in phone sex and filled her spare time reviewing pornography websites for an online magazine.

Having engaged in a lengthy phone friendship with cult author Dennis Cooper, Albert started placing calls to Dr Terrence Owens in the guise of Terminator (aka Jeremiah - hence JT), a 13 year-old boy with a host of problems that fascinated the empathetic tele-therapist. Unbeknown to him, Albert tape recorded their conversations (a habit that provides Feuerzeig with a wealth of priceless audio material), as Terminator unburdened himself about his West Virginian past as a heroin-addicted, self-mutilating truck-stop hustler. Owens suggested that the boy wrote down his experiences to help him process them and the emboldened Albert contacted agent Ira Silverberg about getting them published.

Intrigued by LeRoy's reclusive nature, the literati fell hook, line and sinker for the ruse and believed that the lurid bestsellers were deeply rooted in fact. Film director Gus Van Sant optioned Sarah and Asia Argento pitched to make The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things her first English-language outing behind the camera. The only problem was, while LeRoy's celebrity fans like Billy Corgan and Courtney Love were happy for him to remain an enigma, those seeking to adapt his works wanted more. Consequently, Albert persuaded 21 year-old sister-in-law Savannah Knoop to don a wig and some sunglasses to play LeRoy in a series of carefully choreographed public appearances.

In order to provide moral support, the compulsive Albert posed as social worker Emily Frasier, an Englishwoman of no fixed accent, who began calling herself Speedie as she became more addicted to the reflected limelight. Geoff also came along for the ride under the moniker Astor, as his wife played Svengali to his hapless half-sister's Trilby. But things became complicated when Argento and Savannah took their relationship to a new level and numerous hangers on began pleading with LeRoy to ditch Speedie and start living his own life. Albert was also feeling the pressure and she confided her secret identity to Van Sant and David Milch, after she started writing for his hit HBO Western series, Deadwood.

However, the vultures were already circling and shortly after Stephen Beachy questioned LeRoy's authenticity in New York magazine in October 2005, New York Times reporter Warren St John published two articles outing Albert and exposing the whole LeRoy phenomenon as a scam. As her famous admirers melted away, Albert found herself fighting various legal battles before the fuss started to die down and she was able to stabilise her life without the Knoops. But she is on pugnacious form throughout this slippery, self-serving diatribe, which in which Albert occasionally pauses for breath to allow Feuerzeig to consider such pertinent issues as fame/infamy, celebrity flim-flammery and the thin line between fact, fiction and pure fantasy.

A little of Albert goes a long way and she gets a very easy ride in terms of analysing her psychological state in delivering what is essentially a monologue whose veracity is subjected to no sort of scrutiny. Abetted by accomplished editor Michelle M. Witten, Joshua Mulligan and Stefan Nadelman contribute some deft animated illumination, but it's a shame that Feuerzeig couldn't have coaxed some of those heard only in audio to sit in front of the camera and explain how and why they allowed themselves to be taken in to the point of endorsing LeRoy and (in some cases) falsely claiming to have an intimate relationship with what turned out to be a phantom. Naturally, many would be too sheepish to admit to their folly in public, but it would be instructive to learn how they now view texts they once extolled, if only to see if they genuinely believe them to have any literary merit or whether they were simply duped by the mendacious hype.