Welcome to the second part of the review of 2017. We left off in the early summer and return with a pair of contrasting British features, Christopher Nolan's lavish wartime epic, Dunkirk, and Freesia, Conor Ibrahiem's thoughtful shoestring study of Islamophobia. Elsewhere in July, Catherines Frot and Deneuve teamed effectively in Martin Provost's The Midwife, while Stephen Curry and Emma Booth made a terrifying twosome in Hounds of Love, Aussie debutant Ben Young's gruesome tale of abduction and abuse in the Perth suburbs.

While the undistinguished convoy of juggernaut movies rumbled through the country's multiplexes in August, Cary Murnion and Jonathan Milott demonstrated that it was possible to make an intelligent action flick with Bushwick. But this was a month for modest arthouse offerings like Gareth Tunley's The Ghoul, Stanley Tucci's Final Portrait, Oliver Laxe's Mimosas, Jorge Armand Thielen's Le Soledad, Amat Escalante's The Untamed, Justine Triet's In Bed With Victoria, Dome Karukosi's Tom of Finland and Martin Zandvliet's Land of Mine.

The standard was better still in September, as Midi Z's The Road to Mandalay, Vatche Boulghourjian's Tramontaine and Philippe Van Leeuw's Insyriated would all have made an end-of-year Top 30. Featuring a remarkably bullish performance by Emily Beecham, Peter Mackie Burns's Daphne is also unlucky to miss out on the final countdown, as are Carol Salter's Almost Heaven, Byung-gil Jung's The Villainess and Attila Till's Kills on Wheels. But Ivan I. Tverdovskiy's Zoology, Cédric Klapisch's Back to Burgundy, Hélène Angel's Primaire, Sarmad Masud's My Pure Land and Philip John's Moon Dogs also being worth a watch.

By contrast, Janus Metz's Borg vs McEnroe never quite hit its straps, unlike the year's other big tennis picture, Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's Battle of the Sexes, which starred Emma Stone and Steve Carell in a recreation of Billie Jean King's famous 1973 match against ex-pro Bobby Riggs. Staying in the realms of factuality, Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman boldly sought to reinvent the biopic with the hand-painted Loving Vincent, while Armando Iannucci tweaked the nose of history with The Death of Stalin.

October proved a good month for women directors, as Sally Potter's The Party, Marianna Palka's Bitch and Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch all left their mark. S. Craig Zahler's Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Sung-Hyun Byun's The Merciless did much the same, but in a much more bruising manner, while João Pedro Rodrigues's The Ornithologist and Óskar Thór Axelsson's I Remember You provided plenty to ponder over.

Moving into November, Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Sean Baker's The Florida Project, Dee Rees's Mudbound, Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats and Paul McGuigan's Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool arrived to deserved acclaim, while Paul King's Paddington 2 and Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express generated as much ballyhoo as genuine enthusiasm. There was more critical acclaim for Joachim Trier's Thelma and Alain Gomis's Félicité, but worthy items like Anne-Gaelle Daval's De Plus Belle, Nicolas Vanier's The School of Life, Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson's Heartstone, Arpad Sopsits's Strangled, Sion Sono's Antiporno and Marie Noëlle's Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge barely raised a flicker. Little attention was also paid to the British trio of John Carver's #Starvecrow, James Kermack's Hi-Lo Joe and Mercedes Grower's Brakes, which all fell short in laudably attempting to do something different.

Rian Johnson wisely stuck to the tried-and-trusted in rounding off the year with its biggest box-office behemoth, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But December also brought Takashi Miike's 100th feature, Blade of the Immortal, as well as three wholly admirable feature debuts: Ana Asensio's deeply unsettling Most Beautiful Island, Joshua Z Weinstein's drolly offbeat Menashe and Len Collin's equally considered Sanctuary, which refused to sentimentalise its subject matter or patronise its cast in accompanying a group with intellectual disabilities on an eventful cinema trip in Galway.

10) MY LIFE AS A COURGETTE.

While it can't quite match Michael Dudok de Wit's The Red Turtle for artistic style, Swiss debutant Claude Barras's My Life As a Courgette is the animated highlights of 2017. Adapted from Gilles Paris's 2002 novel, Autobiographie d'une Courgette, this is an inspired collaboration between Barras and writer-director Céline Sciamma, who has already shown a ready empathy with French youth in Water Lillies (2007), Tomboy (2011) and Girlhood (2014), as well as in her screenplay for André Téchiné's Being 17 (2016). But she is clearly on the same wavelength as Barras, who has consistently amused with such innovative shorts as Mélanie (1998), Banquise (2005), The Genie in a Ravioli Can (2006), The Holy Beard (2007) and Land of the Heads (2009).

Nine year-old Icare (Erick Abbate) lives in a garret room with his alcoholic mother (Susan Blakelee), who has given him the nickname, Courgette. He spends his days drawing on the walls with his pencils and crayons and collecting the beer cans that his mother leaves around the apartment. One day, he depicts the father who abandoned him as a superhero on a yellow kite and ties it to a chair leg, so it can fly out of the window. However, in standing on the chair to complete a tower of beer cans, Courgette knocks them through the opening leading to his room and, when his mother climbs the ladder to remonstrate with him, he slams the trapdoor shut and clings to his kite in dread in a corner.

Convinced he has murdered his mother, Courgette is interviewed by Raymond (Nick Offerman), a kindly cop who reassures him that he will be safe at a home for orphaned children run by Miss Paterson (also Blakelee). As he arrives at Fontaines in a police car with the kite flying from the backseat, Courgette sees lots of faces peering from an upper storey window. Raymond promises to visit, as Miss Rosy (Ellen Page) takes Courgette to the dormitory and he places his only belongings - the kite and a beer can - in the drawer under his bed. He is then introduced to his roommates, who are taking a class with Mr Paul (Will Forte), and Simon (Romy Beckman) not only mocks the newcomer for having a potato head, but he also pulls his chair away when he goes to sit down.

Simon also gives Courgette a hard time over supper and vows to discover the reason why he's been sent to the home. So, Courgette goes to bed early and is surprised when Rosy kisses him on the temple, as he is so unused to affection. However, Simon keeps him awake for most of the night by flashing a torch at him and, the next morning, he steals the kite to play in the yard with Ahmed (Barry Mitchell) and Georgie (Finn Robbins). They get into a fight and Simon is so impressed with Courgette for not ratting on him that they chat under a tree. Simon explains that his parents were drug addicts before revealing that Beatrice (Olivia Bucknor) was left behind when her mother was deported back to Africa, Georgie couldn't be left with an obsessive compulsive mom, Ahmed was made homeless after his father was arrested for shoplifting essentials and Alice (Clara Young) was rescued from the predatory dad, who is now behind bars. Having heard these stories, Courgette admits to accidentally killing his mother and Simon shrugs, as he concludes (while throwing a stone at a tweeting bird) that they are all at Fontaines because there is no one left to love them.

When Raymond comes to visit, Courgette describes his daily routine and how Georgie (who always has a plaster on his forehead) eats toothpaste and throws up in class. As he listens, Raymond gets water-bombed by Ahmed, who hates cops because they took his father away. But Courgette is distracted by the arrival of 10 year-old Camille (Ness Krell), who has been deposited at the home by her short-fused Aunt Ida (Amy Sedaris). She bundles Courgette into a cupboard in order to hide from Ida and he likes her even more when she gives Simon as good as he gets at dinnertime. He gets his revenge in the boys' dorm by teasing Courgette for being in love before launching into a hilarious account what grown-ups get up to in bed and how it involves a lot of male wiggling, female agreeing and body part exploding before they both fall asleep.

Curious to know why Camille is at Fontaines, Courgette and Simon sneak into the office after lights out and learn that she saw her father murdering her mother in a crime passionnel before killing himself. But, even though she has been through such a trauma, Camille soon comes to list herself as `sunny' on the mood indicator chart on the cloakroom wall before rushing out to join her new friends on a minibus ride to the mountains for a skiing trip with Paul and Rosy. A pushy mum accuses Ahmed of stealing her son's red-tinted goggles, but he cheerfully gives them away and Ahmed builds a snow bunny, while Beatrice and Alice make a snowman. However, Simon crashes into it during a sledge race with Courgette and Camille and everyone laughs at him.

As darkness falls, Paul plays DJ and the children dance beneath a glitter ball, with Simon trying to be cool with his moves. Unable to sleep. Courgette and Camille slip outside the chalet and he gives her a paper boat as a late birthday present. He admits to sneaking a look at her record, but she feels safe at the home and is glad to have met him. They lie in the snow before returning to the dormitory with armfuls of the stuff for an epic snowball fight. Courgette looks fondly out of the window when they drive away the next morning and kisses the snoozing Camille on the brow before holding her hand for the journey home.

In his next letter to Raymond, Courgette reveals that Rosy and Paul are going to have a baby and he includes a cheekily naive drawing of their carers in the all-together. He also enthuses about Camille. But she is less than thrilled (while reading Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis) to get a visit from Aunt Ida, who is keen for her to come home so that she can get her hands on some money. She hides in her cupboard and confides in Courgette that she would rather kill her aunt or herself than live with her. Consequently, when Courgette is allowed to stay with Raymond for the weekend, he smuggles Camille into his bag and it's only when they are halfway home that she gives herself away. Miss Paterson allows her to stay and they pay a visit to Courgette's old apartment before enjoying themselves at the funfair. Following a ride on the ghost train, Camille proves a sure shot on the rifle range and she wins a teddy bear. But she feels sad because her father taught her how to use a gun and she knows what they are capable of doing.

Raymond shows them the cactus-filled bedroom (which used to belong to the son who moved away with his mother) and they are playing on a swing outside when Ida arrives to drag Camille home. She vows to keep hold of her this time, but, even though, Raymond has other ideas, Courgette is too miserable to be consoled. The others are also upset, with Ahmed suggesting they go on hunger strike. But Simon has smuggled his mini-tape recorder inside the paper boat that Camille left behind and he persuades Ida to pass it on. She uses it to record Ida threatening her and plays it for the judge, who decides that Camille should stay at Fontaines.

During a fancy dress celebration, however, Simon overhears Raymond telling Courgette that he has arranged to foster him and Camille. But, even though he is sad to lose a buddy, he urges Courgette to take the chance because so few people want to care for kids after they're no longer small and cute. They hug, while striving to remain macho, and Simon keeps a stiff upper lip when the time comes to say goodbye. Yet, it's clear to see his pain, as he closes the gates and chases the others back inside. He keeps his mood marker on cloudy for a few days, but cheers up after Courgette sends a letter full of drawings and Rosy gives birth to baby Anthony (just as the chicks hatch in the nest in the courtyard tree) and the kids are amazed that she has every intention of loving him even if he turns into the smelliest, noisiest and most annoying child in the world.

Charmingly designed by Claude Barras and animated over three years in a pseudo-stop-motion style by Kim Keukelaire, the blue-haired, big-eyed Courgette and his pals are pretty irresistible and Céline Sciamma gives them plenty of trenchantly poignant and acerbically witty things to say. She also deftly sketches in characteristics like Alice using her fringe to cover a scar beneath her left eye, while Beatrice rushes to the door in the hope of seeing her mother each time a car pulls up outside. The bedwetting Ahmed and the plaster-wearing Georgie also have their quirks, as they try to stay on the right side of the temperamental Simon and provide Courgette and Camille with unstinting support. But Barras and Sciamma are also prepared to be a little risqué, with the nocturnal sex ed discussion presaging a stairwell glimpse of Aunt Ida's undies and some candid sketches of Rosy and Paul preparing to make a baby. However, there's nothing salacious about these impish details, which greatly enhance the sense of insecurity and innocence that cocoons the kids as they try to come to terms with their situations and emotions.

Having already added Césars for Best Animated Feature and Screenplay to its Oscar nomination, this considered slice of social realism (which Barras has dubbed `Ken Loach for kids') is destined to become a cult hit with children of all ages in this country. Some have criticised the easy way in which difficult issues are resolved. But Sciamma can hardly be accused of ducking the grimmer realities facing modern tweenagers, while Ludovic Chemarin's settings show the institution as spartan, but cosy and safe. With the amusing exception of Amy Sedaris's hissable aunt, the vocal work is admirably restrained, while the ghost train ride neatly satirises the gimmicky theme park POV sequences that have become de rigueur in Hollywood animations. There's even a cheeky homage to the Ice Age franchise in the form of the nut-scarfing squirrel during the piste episode. But it's the inspired correlation between concept, script and execution that sets this apart and will leave many hoping for a sequel.

9) THE HANDMAIDEN.

Having proved himself to be the master mamipulator with the seething trilogy comprising Sympathy For Mr Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Lady Vengeance (2005), Park Chan-wook stages a puppet show in a doll's house in The Handmaiden, a three-act saga that relocates the action of Sarah Waters's Victorian bodice-ripper, Fingersmith, to 1930s Korea. Joining Choi Dong-hoon's Assassination (2015), Cho Jung-rae's Spirits' Homecoming and Kim Jee-woon's The Age of Shadows (both 2016) in being set during the Japanese domination of the peninsula between 1910-45, this is a masterpiece of studio design, with Ryu Seong-hee's interiors drawing on the Gothic grandeur of Manderlay in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Xanadu in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) to lure the audience into making assumptions that rapidly require revision, as alliances crumble and deceptions are exposed.

As the rain hammers down on a slum neighbourhood in an unnamed Korean town, a gaggle of children taunt the Japanese soldiers on patrol as Nam Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) bids farewell to Bok-soon (Lee Yong-nyeo), the matriarch of a family of petty crooks who has doted on Sook-hee since she was orphaned as a young girl and who presents her with an ornate butterfly hairpin as a parting gift. The weather improves as Sook-hee travels to the estate of Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), who has added English and Japanese wings to the imposing manor in which he lives with his niece, Hideko (Kim Min-hee).

Hurrying along the maze of corridors, housekeeper Madame Sasaki (Kim Hae-sook) outlines Sook-hee's duties as Lady Hideko's handmaiden and informs her that she will now be known by the Japanese name, Tamako. She also explains that Hideko sleeps badly because of her nerves and Sook-hee is woken by screams in the night, as her mistress has a nightmare about the aunt (Moon So-ri) who hanged herself from a branch of the cherry tree that stands outside her bedroom window.

Lying beside Hideko, Sook-hee sings a lullaby, while delighting in hiding the fact she is an expert pickpocket with an eye for forgeries, who has been raised by the baby-farming Bok-soon in competition with the avaricious Kutan (Yoo Min-chae). They are in cahoots with Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo), a Korean con-man who poses as a Japanese noble in order to fleece the rich. He has discovered that Kouzuki is a Korean who acquired status as a translator for the occupying forces and married a rich Japanese wife. Yet, despite this façade of respectability, Kouzuki exploits his reputation as a bibliophile to dupe collectors into buying copies of rare manuscripts. Moreover, he plans to marry Hideko to maintain his grip on the family fortune. But Fujiwara plans to propose to Hideko himself and succeeds in securing Sook-hee the position of personal maid in place of Junko (Han Ha-na).

On her first morning, Sook-hee is overwhelmed by Hideko's beauty and her generosity when she gives her a pair of shoes from her own closet. Hideko also agrees to teach Sook-hee to read and leaves her to familiarise herself with her new surroundings while she prepares for a reading she is due to give to Kouzuki and his friends. Snooping in drawers, Sook-hee marvels at the finery of Hideko's possessions and is puzzled by a white rope coiled inside a hat box. But, as she wanders through the extensive grounds, she also wonders why she is so sad when she lives in such luxury. However, she gets an inkling when she enters Kouzuki's forbidding library and sees Hideko kneeling before her black-gloved uncle. She is also taken aback when a metal grille suddenly descends to stop her from going beyond a metal snake embedded in the floor that denotes the boundary of knowledge.

Sook-hee has come to fetch Hideko to prepare her for a visit from Fujiwara and gives her a lollipop to suck in the bath. Unfortunately, it aggravates a troublesome tooth and Sook-hee files down the sharp edge with a thimble while trying not to let her eyes stray to her mistress's naked breasts. She manages to hide her arousal and proves equally circumspect when Fujiwara arrives. He summons her to his room and urges her to convince Hideko of the honourable nature of his intentions, even though he plans to have her committed to an asylum once he has embezzled her fortune. Flopping on the bed, Sook-hee implies that Hideko is too naive to understand seduction, but she promises to do what she can to make her think well of him.

Returning to present Hideko with a pair of blue spinel earrings, Sook-hee almost allows her knowledge of jewellery to give herself away. But she composes herself and escorts Hideko to dinner with a growing realisation she is becoming attracted to her mistress. This feeling intensifies when the tipsy Hideko insists on dressing Sook-hee in a corset and evening gown so she can experience being a lady, Shuddering at the touch of a gloved hand on her neck, Sook-hee muses to herself that being a maid is like playing with a doll. But she is aware she could easily become Hideko's plaything, as she allows her to undo the laces of her undergarments and undress her.

The next day, Sook-hee notices Hideko's apprehension as she waits for Fujiwara to give her a painting lesson. She also feels a pang on watching him flirt with Hideko and whisper that she is as ready for plucking as the peach in her still-life arrangement. Torn between doing her job (and securing herself all of Hideko's clothing and jewellery, as well as a cut of the fortune) and her rising emotions, Sook-hee pushes Fujiwara's case when she is alone with Hideko. But she also wants to delay the inevitable, so she can spend longer in her presence. As they walk in the woods, she lets slip that her mother was hanged. Yet, when Hideko blames herself for killing her own mother by being born, Sook-hee takes her face in her hands and reassures her (as Bok-sun had once done to her) that her mother would have died content that she had given life to such an angel.

As Sook-hee goes in search of mushrooms, they are joined by Fujiwara and Sook-hee is angry when he sends her back to the house. She also gets upset during an outdoor painting session when he sends her to fetch some oils and takes advantage of her absence to kiss Hideko. But Hideko chides her after the reading is interrupted by a power cut and she has to remove her make-up and undress by herself because Sook-hee has fallen asleep. She orders her to get into bed, as she feels a nightmare coming on. But she also wants to ask what the Count will want from her in bed and she is pleasantly surprised when Sook-hee kisses her so she can experience the sensation. Hideko protests that no man will want her because of her cold hands and she demonstrates by touching Sook-hee's breast. She suggests Sook-hee reciprocates so she can learn how to respond when Fujiwara touches her, but they give up the pretence of a tutorial when Sook-hee parts Hideko's thighs.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the women avoid eye contact during an art class the following morning. But Sook-hee disobeys Fujiwara's order to leave the room and she threatens to expose him if he rushes Hideko into making a decision. He is furious with her, but realises he needs her help to win Hideko's heart. Yet, when Sook-hee asks her mistress if she has feelings for Fujiawara, she hints that her heart belongs to someone else and slaps Sook-hee when she dares to suggest that she will grow to love Fujiawara.

Despite being hurt by the reprimand, Sook-hee continues to play her part when Fujiawara makes a show of leaving when Kouzuki departs to inspect a coal mine. The plan, however, is that Fujiawara will return to elope with Hideko. But she has insisted that Sook-hee remains her maid and the Count has little option but to agree.

Sliding open panel doors in the Japanese wing of the mansion, Hideko and Sook-hee slip past the cherry tree (which has a white rope dangling from a branch) to find Fujiwara waiting in a small boat. The women hold hands as he rows through the morning mist and Hideko clings to Sook-hee as Japanese sailors clamour around the ferry rails to catch sight of their homeland after three years away. Even on the train taking them to the mountain monastery where they will be wed, Hideko prefers the company of her maid, who notices how delicately she uses her chopsticks to eat single grains of rice during meals. Yet, even though Hideko turns round to look at Sook-hee while taking her vows, she finally finds herself alone in the marital bed and Sook-hee huddles in misery as she hears Hideko cry out with what she takes to be pain rather than pleasure.

The following morning, Sook-hee sees a spot of blood on the bed sheet. But Fujiwara has already gone to the city to make arrangements to transfer Hideko's inheritance into his own name. In his absence, Hideko asks Sook-hee if they can continue to play the maid game. But Sook-hee is desperate for her part in the scheme to be over and she is relieved when Fujiwara returns with a Gladstone bag full of banknotes. Yet, when they take Hideko to the asylum after Sook-hee tells a pair of doctors that her mistress needs to be protected from herself, Hideko assumes the identity of the maid and shoots Sook-hee a cold stare as she is restrained by the orderlies.

As Part Two opens, Madame Sasaki holds the young Hideko (Jo Eun-hyung) so that her uncle can punish her. He orders her to sleep alone from now on and Sasaki is busy telling her about the ogre that will smother her unless she behaves when he aunt emerges from the supposedly cursed door and lights a lamp so that Hideko will not be afraid. She teaches her how to read and suffers the same punishment of Kouzuki rubbing his gloves in their faces when they giggle while learning the names of body parts from an illustrated text. He later upbraids Hideko for reading an erotic story too quickly and she is made to watch as her aunt recites for a select gathering of gentlemen in tuxedos.

Yet her aunt hangs herself from the cherry tree and Hideko becomes convinced that her spirit passed into its bark. As a young woman, she used to hang from the branch by her hands and feel the power flowing into her. She channelled this into her readings for her uncle's clients. But, one night, she is taken by the handsome features of Fujiwara as she reads a Sadean story of flagellation and asphyxiation. Kouzuki similarly senses Fujiwara's interest in Hideko and he concludes the session by having her strike an erotic pose with a wooden mannequin while suspended in mid-air.

Snooping around the study after the others have left, Hideko sees Kouzuki commissioning Fujiwara to forge the missing illustrations from a rare tome and she is taken by the stranger who asks so bluntly why Kouzuki is so obsessed with the Japanese and why he divorced his wife (Sasaki) in order to marry Hideko's mother (Rina Tagaki). She is also impressed by the way he urges the older man not to force himself upon his niece if he wishes to win her affection.

Thus, when he suggests a nocturnal assignation in the garden, Hideko lures Fujiwara to her room and demands to know everything about him. He admits to being the son of a farmhand and he claims to have spent three years perfecting the crafts of bookmaking and painting in order to get close to her. She tells him that Kouzuki (whose tongue has been blackened by ink) murdered her aunt for trying to run away and has threatened to take her into the basement if she ever betrays him. Fujiwara offers her a vial of deadly opium as a wedding gift and she agrees that they should marry and split her fortune. She also suggests that he finds a gullible maid that they can lock away in a madhouse under her name and orders him to seduce Junko so that they have an excuse to fire her.

Although Fujiwara has informed Hideko that Sook-hee is a little simple and impetuous, she feels an immediate bond with her and slaps the maid who stole Sook-hee's shoe to humiliate her. She also invites her to share the tub after she has filed her tooth and follows Fujiwara's instructions to win Sook-hee over with baubles by giving her the spinel earrings and telling her how pretty she looks as a fine lady. Yet, when Sook-hee consoles her over her mother's death, Hideko starts to feel she could be a genuine companion and she rebuffs Fujiwara's clumsy attempts at canoodling to fool Sook-hee into thinking they are in love. Moreover, she realises during the power cut reading that she is becoming besotted and, after their first love-making session, they spend their nights exploring ways to pleasure each other without anyone discovering their secret.

At the height of passion, Hideko promises never to betray Sook-hee. But the latter is so in thrall to Fujiwara that she continues to plead his cause and gets slapped across the face for her trouble. Distraught at being trapped in her own fiendish plan, Hideko takes her aunts rope and is about to hang herself from the same branch when Sook-hee catches her. She confesses to being in cahoots with Fujiwara to put her in an asylum and divide her fortune. But Hideko reveals that she had also been plotting with him to incarcerate Sook-hee. They decide, therefore, to be true to their feelings for each other and turn the tables on the scheming con man. Having told Bok-sun about their plan, Sook-hee sets about destroying Kouzuki's library by slashing the books, as well as splattering them with ink and dropping them into an ornamental water feature.

Thus, by the time Part Three commences, Hideko and Sook-hee have turned the tables on the men who seek to exploit them and Hideko has to suppress a smile before she turns away from Sook-hee wriggling in the arms of the burly asylum orderlies. She also retains her sang-froid as Fujiwara announces that it would be better to kill Sook-hee than let her rot in the madhouse, as she knows that Bok-sun and her stuttering sidekick Goo-gai (Lee Dong-hwi) will rescue her from a fire in the kitchen and that she will use the butterfly hair pin to pick the lock of her manacles so she can escape. Meanwhile, Hideko gets the better of Fujiwara by asking him to teach her about sex and then drizzling opium-doctored wine into his mouth as they kiss.

So, while Hideko and Sook-hee are able to reunite in a secluded Kobe side street, Fujiwara is taken to Kouzuki's house, where he is strapped down in the basement beside a tank housing a large octopus (presumably a little in-joke for Oldboy fans). The old man gloats as he uses a paper guillotine to sever his fingers while he rattles off the titles of his favourite works of erotica. Fatefully, however, he allows him a last smoke while he describes how it felt to deflower his niece. As Fujiwara recalls Hideko masturbating on their wedding night and cutting her hand to smear the sheet, she disguises herself as a man to escape with Sook-hee by train to the ferry port. Once at sea, she discards her moustache and her wedding ring and they arrive at their new lodgings as Kouzuki and Fujiwara expire from the fumes of the latter's mercury-laced cigarettes. Free at last, the woman make love using the `minling' bells of passion that Hideko had inherited from her aunt.

Working in South Korea for the first time since Thirst (2009), Park allows echoes of his Hollywood debut, Stoker (2013), to reverberate around this intricately structured and slickly mounted allegory on subjugation and emancipation. Those familiar with the writings of Sarah Waters will recognise her pet themes, but Park and regular co-scenarist Chung Seo-kyung add a layer of specific political history that makes the focus on female rebellion all the more potent. Some may be discomfited by the need to depict so much misogynist objectification and the more gratuitous close-ups used during the bedroom scenes. But the nudity is hardly of a pinku-eiga calibre and feels less voyeuristic than it was at times in Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013) and some of the chauvinist curse is taken off by the playful nature of the tone and the final dawning that Hideko and Sook-hee were in control of their own destiny for much of the time.

As the maid and the heiress, Kim Tae-ri and Kim Min-hee make a splendidly contrasting pair, as do the urbane Ha Jung-woo and the depraved Cho Jin-woong. But, while we keep making fresh discoveries about the quartet and their peccadilloes, the characterisation remains somewhat shallow, as the demands of the perspective-shifting plot leave little room for delving too deeply. But, while the principals are primarily marionettes dressed in Jo Sang-gyeong's exquisite costumes, Park treats the mise-en-scène as a key player and Jung Jung-hoon's camera is forever alighting upon objects like the hair pin, the rope and the minling bells that initially seem insignificant but later turn out to be crucial. Thus, this is consistently compelling and feels over in a trice at 144 minutes. But it takes a second viewing fully to appreciate Park's mischievous finesse.

8) HOTEL SALVATION.

As one of the subcontinent's holiest cities, Varanasi has featured in a number of films in recent times, including Vijah Singh's Jaya Ganga (1996), Mohit Takalkar's The Bright Day (2012), Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan and Rajan Kumar Patel's Feast of Varanasi (both 2016). But its special atmosphere has been captured most affectingly by 26 year-old debutant Shubhashish Bhutiani in Hotel Salvation, which joins Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), Ismaël Ferroukhi's Le Grand Voyage (2004) and Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013) in following a son's determined efforts to please his ageing father before the opportunity passes forever. Presenting a very different India to the one seen in John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011), this should appeal to anyone who was moved by Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox (2013) and Aditya Vikram Sengupta's Labour of Love (2014).

Having dreamt of his mother calling him home through his deserted childhood village, 76 year-old Dayanand Kumar (Lalit Behl) informs son Rajiv (Adil Hussain) and his wife Lata (Geetanjali Kulkarni) and daughter Sunita (Palomi Ghosh) that he feels close to death. Consequently, he has made arrangements to travel to Varanasi to await the end. Under pressure at work, Rajiv is sceptical about his father's conviction. But he attends the cow donation ritual that Daya believes will bless his pilgrimage and mutters something about Sunita's forthcoming arranged marriage before rushing to the office, where he toils as an accountant for demanding boss Ratan Singh, who refuses to see why Rajiv needs to go all the way to Varanasi with his father when the Ganges must surely be sacred wherever it flows.

As Sunita films a farewell supper with Daya's sister and brother-in-law, Rajiv sulks about having to take time off (even though he has promised he will take papers with him to stay on top of his workload). He asks his aunt to talk some sense into her sibling, but she is too upset by their final parting to challenge him. Lata has no such qualms, however, and asks Rajiv how long he is going to be away, given that his grandfather died 10 days after making his own pilgrimage. While they bicker, Daya gives Sunita her grandmother's necklace and urges her to wear it on her wedding day.

Stung by Lata's suggestion he is skiving off on an extended vacation, Rajiv urges the taxi driver to put his food down. But Daya is in no hurry to meet his maker and insists on stopping en route to feed some ducks. Indeed, he seems in rude health and good spirits, as he rides a rickshaw to Mukti Bhawan, the rundown Varanasi guest house run by Mishraji (Anil K. Rastogi). He explains that people come seeking salvation, but urges Daya not to give any money to the local priests, as they can do nothing to help him whether he has lived a blameless life or not. Walking the pair to their room, Mishraji lists the house rules about cleaning rooms, eschewing meat and alcohol and checking out after 15 days. When Rajiv queries the time limit, Mishraji insists that he needs the rooms and can't have people dawdling over their deaths.

Daya settles in quickly and attends a prayer meeting, where he meets Vimla (Navnindra Behl), She offers to cook for them and reveals that she has been at Hotel Salvation since she was widowed 18 years ago. When they ask how she has managed to stay so long, she smiles that Mishraji lets her sign in under a new name every fortnight. Vimla invites Daya to the TV room to watch the soap opera, Flying Saucer, which is a firm favourite with the elderly residents. He soon becomes hooked and leaves Rajiv to get on with his work. However, Daya wakes him in the night to fetch water and Rajiv annoys Mishraji when he bumps into him in the corridor by asking if the hotel is haunted.

The next day, Daya bathes in the Ganges and interrupts a phone call with the boss to send Rajiv for some milk. He then criticises Rajiv's cooking when he is speaking to a client and shushes him when he tries to make him take his medication. Instead, Daya chats to his new friends about the appalling standard of obituary writing in the local paper and Rajiv starts wishing his father wasn't so hearty after he sees a couple of guests being borne away for their funerals. He asks Mishraji how he always seems to know when people will pass away, but he refuses to divulge his secret and reminds Rajiv not to mistake his generosity in letting other stay for charlatanry.

While rowing on the river, Daya and Vimla discuss how little time their children make for them. Yet, while Rajiv washes his clothes in the Ganges, he suggests that his father gave him a tough time as a child and failed to encourage his ambitions to become a poet. But Daya refuses to let his son blame others for his own shortcomings and Rajiv sighs when his father simply walks away from the conversation. That night, however, Daya develops a fever and he calls Lata and Sunita to come as quickly as possible. Leaving Vimla to keep an eye on Daya, Rajiv goes to the funeral parlour and is shocked by the piles of pyre wood in the courtyard and the gravity of the situation hits him when he peers over a wall and sees bonfires burning on the riverbank and mourners gathered to pay their last respects.

Despite giving the appearance of being on his deathbed, Daya still manages to accuse the musicians performing a consoling ditty of singing out of tune. Yet, as Rajiv keeps a lonely vigil, Daya apologises for having been a poor father and they embrace. When he wakes with a start the next morning, Rajiv reaches out a finger to touch Daya's cheek. But he responds with a sneeze, declares himself fit as a fiddle and asks what's been happening in Flying Saucer.

Rajiv feeds Daya mandarin segments as they watch the soap, only for Lata and Sunita to arrive mid-episode. Daya is pleased to see his granddaughter and introduces her to Vimla, while Lata urges her husband to abandon this farce and come home. Over supper, Daya lets slip that he has taught Sunita to ride his scooter and Rajiv feels affronted that his wishes have been ignored. But Daya is in a rascally mood and he takes Sunita and Vimla to a café to sample Varanasi's famous marijuana lassi. That evening, the whole family take a boat to a prayer ceremony on a ghat crowded with pilgrims and tourists. They float candles on the water and eat ice cream and Lata shoots Rajiv questioning looks about Daya's newfound energy.

Back at Mukti Bhawan, Mishraji allows Daya to book in for another spell under an assumed name and Rajiv feels obliged to stay with him, despite Lata's evident annoyance. Mother and daughter depart the next day and, while Rajiv gives Daya a scalp massage, he is dismayed to learn that Sunita dislikes her groom and would cancel the wedding if she were not so scared of her father. His mood is scarcely improved by the loss of a client and he is anything but reassured when Daya insists another will soon come along. They sit on the steps by the Ganges and Rajiv asks Daya why he feels so sure he is going to die. He can't explain, but admits to being tired of the daily routine and they both laugh when he claims that he would like to be reincarnated as a kangaroo because their pouches would be useful for keeping his belongings handy.

The next day, Rajiv uses the cooking tips picked up from Lata to make Daya and Vimla a tasty dish. During the meal, however, he gets an urgent phone call from home and dashes off to find an Internet café. A tense and frustratingly intermittent Skype conversation follows, in which Sunita reveals that she has ditched her fiancée and found a job. She promises to pay Rajiv back for the cost of printing the invitations, but he is too stunned to speak and stalks off after accusing his daughter of showing them up in front of their neighbours.

Such is his despair that he locks Daya out of their room and he spends the night sleeping peacefully beside Vimla. When morning comes, Rajiv endures a rollicking from his boss and he is struggling to keep his composure when Mishraji reminds him that he would never forgive himself if he left and something happened to his father. Upstairs, Vimla says much the same thing to Daya, as she tries to coax him into having a meaningful discussion with his son. But she dies in the night and Rajiv rushes to the waterfront in time to see his father help carry her bier. That afternoon, he writes about encountering her spirit after consuming two glasses of lassi and she reveals that she feels free and only hopes that someone will plant a tamarind tree in her memory.

After a lonely night in Vimla's room, with only the mice for company, Daya decides that it's time for Rajiv to go home. He thanks him for everything he has done for him and alludes to the fact that he is either adopted or a stepson. Rajiv implores Daya to return to the city with him, but he insists he is like an elephant and needs to die alone. Realising there is no point in arguing, Rajiv packs and they take their leave with a mournful hug. Rajiv frets all the way home in the taxi and is given a frosty reception by Sunita, who can't believe he has abandoned his father under the pretext of being concerned for her future.

Unable to concentrate at work, Rajiv comes home to find Lata in bed and Sunita about to go out on her scooter. He helps her kickstart it and returns indoors, aware of his redundancy. A sleepless night follows before he makes a return trip to Varanasi. Daya has died and he fills in the date on the signature his father had scrawled on the wall of his room. He lies on the bed and covers himself with Daya's blanket, as Sunita wanders into the room. She finds her grandfather's notebook and reads his last poem about following one's heart. They laugh as she finds a note in which Daya declares himself an author and poet whose books can be found mouldering in dusty bookshops.

Lata enters and consoles her sobbing husband. But he regains his composure to help carry Daya's body down the steep steps to the water's edge. At one point, Sunita persuades her father to lay down his burden and clap his hands to the drums beating their path to the pyre. But he feels he must fulfil his last filial duty and resumes his place at the right front corner of the bier as the scene fades to black.

Having made a favourable impression with the shorts, The Star (2012) and Kush (2013), Bhutiani was inspired to make his first feature during a backpacking trip around India when he discovered the `bhawan' guest houses that offer sanctuary to those awaiting the spiritual emancipation of `mukti'. Production designer Avyakta Kapur has done a magnificent job of conveying the sense of shabby melancholy that pervades Hotel Salvation, while cinematographers Michael McSweeney and David Huwiler subtly offset the architectural contrasts of Varanasi (aka Benares) with the grimmer realities of the funeral business. Yet, while Bhutiani deftly laces the dolorous storyline with amusing incidents, Tajdar Junaid's guitar-led score sometimes seems a tad too jaunty.

The performances are note perfect, however, with Lalit Behl striking up a flirtatious rapport with his off-screen wife, Navnindra, while also encouraging Ghosh to use her talents and live her own life rather than conform to the expectations of her parents. Kulkarni makes the most of a rather shrewish role, as the wife who is forever nagging and disapproving in trying to ensure things turn out for the best. But the standout is the debuting Adil Hussain, whose toothbrush moustache quivers above forever-pursed lips, as his good intentions are repeatedly knocked back by family members, his boss and even Rastogi, who runs the hotel with a curious blend of commercial nous and humanist compassion.

Touching upon such recurring Parallel Cinema themes as the clash between tradition and progress, the social impact of religious belief and ritual and the status of women, Bhutiani tempers his political critique with a respect and affection that makes this so illuminating and delightful.

7) BY THE TIME IT GETS DARK.

The influence of Jean-Luc Godard can be felt in Anocha Suwichakornpong's By the Time It Gets Dark, a tantalising treatise on the film-making process, art's compromised capacity for capturing the past and the moral imperatives involved in portraying reality that will mesmerise some and baffle others. Expanding on the experiments with non-linearity she conducted in Mundane History (2009), her debut study of a paralysed man's relationship with his carer, Suwichakornpong seeks to establish new levels of cinematic consciousness that might edge the medium closer to conveying a modicum of lived truth. But, for all her ambitions, she remains fully aware of the camera's limitations.

From the outset, the emphasis is on perception and viewpoint, as a woman opens a window to let light flood into a dilapidated wooden house and a photographer moves to one side to get a better angle on a tree being blown by the breeze. As a small group of young people gather to pray beneath the tree, the scene cuts to some students being held face down and in a state of undress by some Thai soldiers. A megaphoned voice reveals this to be a film recreation of the Thammasat University Massacre in October 1976, when hundreds of students died. The director warns the victims not to fall asleep and urges the troops to be more brutal in their intimidation. One strikes a pose with a cigarette and a pistol, but the director wants them to kick the students to make the scene feel more real. As she calls the shots, a male photographer (Lek Kiatsirikajorn) crouches to take a series of monochrome production snaps that acquire a reportagist immediacy.

A young couple walk in the countryside. Their hands almost touch and, as they sit together in silence, the woman (Waywiree Ittianunkul) goes to say something to her companion (Natdanai Wangsiripaisarn), but decides against it. It's not made clear when or where this is happening, but another rural setting in the present sees film-maker Ann (Visra Vichit-Vadakan) arrive at a spacious dark wooden house with Taew (Rassami Paoluengton). An only child hailing from a small town, Taew had emerged from her shell as a student at Thammasat University in Bangkok and a flashback shows the student couple leading a discussion about the iniquity of the fact that the rector has accepted a cabinet post following a coup. She is angry about his motives for entering politics and persuades the others to help her make banners for a demonstration and they are seen pasting posters to the campus walls in the small hours of the night.

Ann and Taew go to the supermarket for provisions with their housekeeper, but Ann has trouble sleeping (amidst flashes of amber light that could be lens flare) and sits on the verandah as the insects chirrup. The next morning, they breakfast at a small café, where Nong the waitress (Atchara Suwan) is puzzled why Ann is scripting a film about Taew's life when she is also a writer and has a much better appreciation of her experiences because she actually lived them. Politely side-stepping the inquiry, Ann orders some locally grown mushrooms and Taew is relieved that the conversation has switched away from her, as she is very modest about her achievements.

Indeed, she finds it hard to talk about herself on camera and the next interview is seen though a window pane to reinforce the sense of detachment. Ann asks about the nature of the protest and Taew insists that people frequently took to the streets during this period to make their views known and she laments that there is a designer mob feel to many modern campaigns. She fends off questions about how her parents reacted to her becoming an activist and goes completely silent when Ann inquires about any romances within the movement.

A slight distance between them is suggested by a shot of Taew reading in the blurred background, as Ann does the dishes. But the pair get to chat when a power cut forces them to go in search of candles. They are reflected in the television screen, as Taew asks why Ann wanted to make a film about her. She replies that Taew has led a meaningful life, but the older woman insists she is less living history than a survivor and asks Ann to sing for her. Taken aback, Ann chooses a childhood song about the moon and Taew is surprised that she opted for such a traditional tune. Suddenly, the lights come back on and, with the spell broken, Taew announces she is going to bed and bids Ann goodnight.

The next morning, as Nong sweeps up at the café and takes rubbish sacks to the bins, Ann cooks herself breakfast. Feeling that the project might be beyond her, she leaves Taew to sleep and rides through the smoggy nearby town on a moped. With time on her hands, she goes for a walk in the woods and, through the trees, spots a young girl in an animal costume (Alisa Piyaarayanun). She follows when the child runs away and, after a while, is perplexed to see that she is actually chasing her adult self. Slumping down against a tree, Ann picks up a glittery mushroom and the scene dissolves into a point-of-view shot taken from a vehicle negotiating a winding country road at night. This could be the dream that prompts Ann to wake in tears, but she recovers her composure to wander into the main room to take tea with two elegantly kindly ladies (Viria Vichit-Vadakan and Yaowares Areeyamitr).

Not having much appetite, the following day, Ann does a piece to camera about her childhood experience of making a glass move by telekinesis. She recalls the thrill she felt, as the object moved across a table top. But she was left drained of energy and struggled to sleep as she contemplated her achievement. Much to her dismay, she has never been able to repeat the trick and she wonders if this is because she told her best friend about it. Shots of a solitary crawling insect, a rustling tree top and sprouting fungi are followed by the mushroom scene from Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902) before a POV shot takes us along a winding road in daylight.

The scene switches to a factory drying tobacco leaves and the camera records the various processes with documentary rigour. Peter (Arak Amornsupasiri) leans against a wall to smoke and he is followed, as he listens to a sentimental song on the car radio. Yet, as he walks across the tarmac to catch a flight, some female fans snap pictures with their phones and it becomes clear that he is not a worker, but an actor playing a role. Arriving back at his modest flat, he shaves off his moustache and sits down to read his next script.

In an alternative version of reality, a glamorous version of Ann (Inthira Charoenpura) and a grande dameish Taew (Penpak Sirikul) settle into their more lavishly furnished accommodation. The housekeeper leaves them to rest and we cut away to the student couple lying in bed in a high-rise apartment. He is naked and she lists what she likes about his body. But she merely smiles when he asks if she loves him. This scene gives way to an aeroplane cockpit, where Peter is playing a pilot. But he seems to be filming a music video rather than a drama, as he starts to sing and stagehands help him into a fish costume so he can `swim' against a painted underwater backdrop. During the course of the number, Peter climbs a rock wall, strums a guitar and swims in a transparent tank. This is situated on the roof of a luxury hotel, where Nong works as a cleaner and a neat split screen shows her doubled up scrubbing cubicles before she seems to disappear into a vanishing point. However, she returns to wander around the grounds filled with plaster meerkats and flamingos before she lunches by a decorative folly.

Meanwhile, Peter is enjoying seafood at a seaside restaurant with his pals and girlfriend, Chompoo (Sajee Apiwong). He breaks off from telling them about an indie project the female director has written specially for him to pose with the waiting staff. Returning to their room, Peter and Chompoo bump into Tak (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk) and her friend Pun (Vigrom Suvarnnapradip). She tells them about her latest project. They wish her well and retire to their room, with Peter teasing Chompoo because she has eaten too much. But something is bothering Tak, who looks mournfully out of her car windscreen as a passing street performer uses a bubble gun. However, this is all an illusion, as a freeze frame reveals Tak to have been playing a part in a film that is being viewed in a screening room. But, when the showing is interrupted by Ann (Soraya Nakasuwan) learning by phone that Peter has been killed in a car crash, they decide to finish the reel and see silent footage of Peter behind a wheel on a busy city road.

The mode of transport changes to a floating restaurant, as Nong scrapes plates in the galley. She gazes at a moonlit pagoda on the banks of the Chao Phraya River before heading home to fry an egg in the kitchen she shares with her mother. This scene of mundane domesticity cuts to a close up of Taew (Paoluengton) remembering the shock of seeing news footage of the students being brutalised by the military and having their corpses incinerated with burning tyres. Such was the horror of what she witnessed that she decided to leave the country.

Nong has also cut herself off from the world, as she now appears as a shaven-headed nun sweeping leaves before prayers in front of a large Buddhist statue. Cross-cut with close-ups of other scalps are shots of an avenue of festive lights before we see a long-haired Nong dancing her cares away at a trance disco. After a while, however, the digital footage begins to fragment and, when the pixels realign themselves, the view shows a lush green field being rippled by the wind. As the scene settles, it is colour corrected so that the pinkish tinge in the sky is replaced with pale blue, as if to suggests that life has got back to normal.

Those forewarned about the complexities of Suwichakornpong's stunning film might wonder what all the fuss is about for its first half, as Ann and Taew get to know each other and relive key moments from their very different pasts. But, even here, the action is so studded with flashbacks, digressions and self-reflexive allusions that the audience has to remain alert in order to keep the elusive non-narrative from slipping out of their grasp. However, things do become trickier to follow after the Méliès clip and it would be tempting to suggest that the sequences involving Peter and the alternative Ann and Taew are have something to do with that spangled mushroom than Ann finds in the woods.

Yet, by using different actors to play Ann and Taew and by having Nong take on lots of menial tasks, Suwichakornpong appears to be flagging up the problem cinema has in depicting both history and reality, as it has a tendency to succumb to superficial artifice and, consequently, keeps romanticising momentous events and everyday occurrences to the extent that they bear only a passing resemblance to the originals. In meandering with mischievous gravitas towards this conclusion, Suwichakornpong pays fleeting homage to film-makers as different as Luis Buñuel, Chris Marker, David Lynch, Claire Denis and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with whom she shares an editor.

Lee Chatametikool teams here with Machima Ungsriwong to shape the images photographed by Ming Kai Leung, which make acute use of the many windows, doorways, mirrors, lenses and reflective surfaces that often obscure or distort the views in Parinda Moongmaiphol and Vikrom Janpanus's production design. Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr's sound mix and Wuttipong Leetrakul's score also have a disorientating effect, as Suwichakornpong esoterically explores the unreliability of memory and the inadequacy of cameras that are capable only of producing facsimiles of people, places and the past.

6) ON BODY AND SOUL.

During the Communist era, Hungary was renowned for encouraging women film-makers to make their mark. Among those still revered are Marta Meszáros, Judit Ember, Livía Gyamarthy, Judit Elek and Ildikó Enyedi, who won the Camera d'Or at Cannes with her first feature, My 20th Century (1989). This surreal comedy of errors involving twin sisters was followed by Magic Hunter (1994), which made innovative use of a parallel story and a child's perspective to comment on the ménage involving a police marksman, a chess grandmaster and the latter's wife. But Enyedi settled for making shorts and TV shows after updating a New Testament story to modern-day Budapest in Simon Magus (1999) and surprised many by returning in triumph to win the Golden Bear at Berlin with her first feature in 18 years, On Body and Soul. However, this unsettling study of the animal instinct in human behaviour reveals that Enyedi has lost none of her thematic acuity or stylistic audacity.

Following shots of a stag and a doe (named Góliát and Picur, for the record) nuzzling in a snow-covered forest and cattle cramped in a lorry being delivered to a Budapest abattoir, finance director Géza Morcsányi has lunch in the canteen with human resources chief, Zoltán Schneider. The latter boasts about never letting women call the shots, but wife Éva Bata passes the table to order him to pick up the kids from school because she is going out with the girls. The bearded Morcsányi, who has a withered left arm, notices new quality inspector Alexandra Borbély at the service hatch, and sits at her table to introduce himself. His efforts at small talk fall flat, however, as the socially awkward blonde is plain spoken to the point of rudeness.

However, the exchange makes an impression on the obsessive compulsive Borbély (who also has an eidetic memory), as she returns home to use her salt and pepper shakers to recreate the conversation and add in a few unsaid thoughts. She leaves the cruet representing herself on the table, as she goes to watch an old war movie on television, while munching sweets from a glass. Morcsányi buys a couple of cans of beer from the corner shop and spends the evening alone.

Contrasting images follow of the deer roaming freely in the woods and a bullock being coerced into a gate to be executed, beheaded and eviscerated. Other animals wait patiently in pens, with classical music playing to keep them calm, as the workers gossip about the primly austere Borbély, as she goes about assessing the quality of the meat. However, the staff are unhappy that she keeps giving everything a B grade and Morcsányi breaks up an interview with cocky new recruit Ervin Nagy to ask Borbély why she has a problem with the cuts. She explains that they are fractionally over the limit for premium meat and he commends her eye for detail.

Having spent another lonely night in their apartments (and after another cutaway to the deer lying peacefully in the snow), Morcsányi and Borbély bump into each other again in the canteen. He is sitting with Schneider and Bata, so Borbély goes to another table and he notices how the other diners shut up the moment she sits beside them. Morcsányi also sees Nagy mocking her during a cigarette break and flirting with co-workers Nóra Rainer-Micsinyei, Rozi Székely and Zsófi Bódi. But - following another cervine reveries, in which the deer touch noses while drinking from a stream - Morcsányi's attention is distracted when detective Pál Mácsai and junior officer Barnabás Horkay come to the slaughterhouse because somebody has stolen a bovine aphrodisiac and used it to spike the drinks at a 50th reunion party. Suspicion falls on Bata, who runs the pharmacy department, but Mácsai keeps an open mind and recommends that the entire workforce has `mental hygiene' sessions with psychiatrist Réka Tenki to see if anyone gives themselves away.

Tenki catches Morcsányi looking at her breasts when she reaches back into a filing cabinet while preparing to interview him and he is put out when her first question is about his earliest wet dream. She remarks on 10 being young for such an occurrence and he requests that she sticks to the script. Suppressing a smile, Tenki urges him not to be embarrassed and quizzes him about his last dream. He describes the scene of the stag and the doe touching noses in the stream and is affronted when she asks if the animals mated. Struggling to retain his dignity, Morcsányi apologises for staring at her, but reassures Tenki that he has no desire to mount her. She scribbles on her form before fixing his gaze and inquiring when he lost his virginity.

As she waits outside, Rainer-Micsinyei teases bearded colleague Vince Zrínyi Gál about his subconscious thoughts and he tries to deflect attention by asking ageing cleaner Itala Békés about her dreams. She shocks them all with her graphic reply, but all eyes turn to Tenki when she bustles along the corridor to go to the lavatory and returns with a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

Borbély enters the office and Tenki asks about her first menstruation and is puzzled when she provides precise dates for this and a bout of chicken pox. Impassive as ever, Borbély pauses before describing her most recent dream, as she is usually too shy to share her innermost thoughts. However, Tenki thinks she has conspired with Morcsányi to undermine the process and Borbély is confused when Tenki asks why she is tormenting her. She calls them back after hours and plays a recording of Morcsányi's answer and Borbély is alarmed by how similar his dream was to hers. He tries to reassure her that coincidences happen, as they wait on a deserted railway platform. But Borbély is disconcerted by the incident and has to cling film her meticulously laid-out supper because she has lost her appetite.

That night, the deer and the doe watch each from opposite ends of a wintry pool. When lunchtime comes, Borbély sits at Morcsányi's table and asks about his dream. He lies that nothing came and she leaves to sit elsewhere. Schneider slips into her chair and confides his theory that Nagy stole the mating powder because he regards himself as such a stud. He also complains about Tenki messing with his mind before bluntly admitting that he fancies her. Eager to catch up with Borbély, Morcsányi hurries away and tells her about the round pond and she blurts out that she saw the same thing. That night, the deer meet in lush greenery and Borbély wakes to feel the sun on her skin, as she stands on her balcony.

She arrives at work to find Morcsányi waiting for her with a written account of his dream and he lingers while she produces her own. Looking up from the papers, they smile and agree to meet in their special world that night. But, when they hook up in the canteen to discuss why the doe ran away, they are interrupted by Nagy, who begins hitting on Borbély in a boorish manner. Leaving them together, Morcsányi waits until tea break to broach the subject again. He warns her that Nagy is a womaniser and she averts her eyes and nods. Yet, when he asks for her phone number, she informs him that she doesn't have a mobile and he backs away fearing he has overstepped the mark.

There is no sign of the stag that night and the doe looks at her reflection in the pool. Unsure what to do, Borbély consults her childhood psychiatrist, Tamás Jordán, who suggests that Morcsányi might not have believed her because everyone has phones. He also wonders whether he was jealous because he saw her talking to Nagy. Going home, Borbély finds a box of Playmobil medieval characters and uses a warrior and a maiden to rehearse what she might say to Morcsányi to reassure him that she thinks he is beautiful and that she has no time for Nagy.

The next day, Schneider slumps down at Morcsányi's table and asks if he has ever slept with Bata. He claims she has had affairs with half of the factory and has now tilted her cap at Nagy. As they talk, Borbély stops to tell Morcsányi that she is planning to buy a phone. However, as she can only think of her pre-rehearsed lines, she blurts out that she thinks he is beautiful and, much to the amusement of Schneider, he is mortified. But he denies that anything is going on between them and returns to his office to find Mácsai waiting for him. He asks why an abattoir would stock mating powder and Morcsányi has to give him a bag of free meat to stop him snooping. As he leaves, Nagy asks what the cop had wanted and this convinces Morcsányi that he spiked the school reunion drinks.

Neither Morcsányi nor Borbély sleeps that night and he is relieved when she calls to say she has bought a phone and he readily agrees when she suggests that they call to fall asleep together that night. Eavesdropping daughter Zsuzsa Járó asks Morcsányi whether he has a girlfriend, but he ignores her and her request to borrow some money. Borbély gets ready for bed early and is lying in her pyjamas when Morcsányi rings. He urges her not to be afraid of her and hangs up.

At lunch, the next day, Borbély sits at his table and Morcsányi thanks her for a lovely dream. She smiles when he invites her to lunch and one is left to suspect that the stag and the doe have mated for the first time. On returning to his office, he finds Tenki waiting for him. She reports that Schneider probably stole the aphrodisiac, but Morcsányi decides against letting her submit her findings to the police and says he will handle the matter. As she leaves, she asks if he and Borbély's dreams have ever synchronised again, but he lies that they had played a joke on her and she turns away disappointed that something she had found intriguingly romantic was merely a prank.

Schneider sees Tenki leave and barrels over to ask what she has unearthed. Morcsányi tries to be evasive, but Schneider's guilty conscience gets the better of him and he confesses to the theft and regrets trying to frame Nagy. Knowing he is under pressure with Bata, Morcsányi agrees to let the matter drop. But he makes a point of apologising to Nagy and they go for a beer together. On his way home, he pops into the corner shop and buys some aftershave for his lunch date and the manager smiles because Morcsányi has a beard. Back at work, Békés catches Borbély looking at herself in a mirror and gives her some tips on her posture and gait so she will make a better impression.

The usually busy restaurant turns out to be empty and Morcsányi is mildly rude to the oblivious waiter. They go somewhere else for supper and Morcsányi invites Borbély to a sleepover so that they can wake and share their dreams instantly. She agrees and takes the bed, while he bunks down on a mattress on the floor. However, with sounds coming in through the window, they struggle to sleep and get up to play cards. He is amused by her ability to read his bluffs and the fact she has remembered every word he says. Yet, when he reaches out to touch her hand, Borbély pulls away and he apologises for misreading the signs, as he has not thought about romance for a while and is out of practice.

She opts not to sit at his table at lunch the next day and tries watching porn online to see if that makes her feel better about being touched. When this fails, she consults a bemused Jordán, who is only used to dealing with children and feels awkward talking to Borbély about such grown-up issues. He suggests that she tries stroking her face or listening to music to relax, but she interrupts to ask if it's possible for two people to share a dream and he doesn't know how to respond.

On her way home, she drops into a record shop and asks Vivien Rujder if she can listen to some CDs before buying. She brings a large stack of discs to the counter and listens impassively on headphones to thrash mettle and easy listening before purchasing Rujder's recommendation of Laura Marling's `What He Wrote' .The heart-rending lyrics affect her and she turns them off. However, she tries to be more tactile and rests her hand on a plate of mashed potato before squeezing it with her fingers. At his flat, Morcsányi drops his supper on the carpet and angrily deflates the air mattress before fighting back tears in a café.

After dreaming of the stag running in the woods, Morcsányi sees a gaggle of workers watching Borbély stroking a bull's hide in its pen. She goes to the local park and enjoys the feel of the sunshine on her skin. Gauchely, she stares at a teenage couple kissing before lying on the grass and allowing the sprinklers to soak her as dusk descends. On her way home, she buys a cuddly panther and the camera creeps under the crisp white covers to focus on her eyes as she experiences the sensation of it being rubbed across her skin.

Meanwhile, Morcsányi sleeps with old flame Rainer-Micsinyei, who is put out when he refuses to let her stay the night and turns on her side and falls asleep. This seems to unsettle him and, when Borbély informs him in the lunch queue that she has brought her pyjamas for another sleepover, he brusquely informs her that things are not working out and that they should simply be friends. The camera peers through the dirty glass of the serving hatch, as she is stunned by the news and his uncharacteristic callousness. She goes home and throws a meat tenderiser through a glass panel and cuts her wrists in the bath listening to Laura Maring.

As she winces at the pain of the warm water on her gushing wound, the power goes off and is aghast at the sense of anti-climax. However, the phone rings and she rushes to answer it and exchanges pleasantries with Morcsányi as blood runs down her legs. He goes to hang up, but cries out that he loves her and she starts to cry as she declares her love for him. When he suggests meeting, she binds her wrist with gaffer tape and puts a plastic bag over her hand. However, she wipes the work top clean before going to hospital, Declining a bed or an appointment with a psychologist, Borbély goes to Morcsányi's apartment and they make love. His left arm hangs over the side of the bed, as she supports his weight with her hands. She shows little emotion as he rolls beside her, but she half smiles as she announces she feels sleepy and reaches over to lift his withered arm on to the mattress. The following morning, she slices a tomato for him at breakfast and they laugh when she squirts him with juice. He tears some bread and she instinctively brushes the crumbs into her bandaged palm. As he gazes at her, he asks whether they had dreamed and she looks startled on realising that she had not dreamt anything and the film ends whiting out from an empty snowy glade.

Keeping backstory detail to a minimum and making no effort to understand why Morcsányi and Borbély might share a dream before they have even met, Enyedi immerses the audience in their daily routines and the physical and psychological restrictions that hinder their full engagement with life. As a father who admits to having had a few too many lovers, Morcsányi is a gentle man whose is capable of speaking his mind and rushing to judgement. But Borbély is such a bundle of nerves and so cripplingly shy that it seems remarkable that she managed to get through university and embark upon such a demanding career. Yet, whether in her dreams or in the sordid reality of a slaughterhouse, she finds her soulmate in an equally damaged individual who had long considered himself too old for romance.

Subplots involving the stolen aphrodisiac and Schneider and Bata's unhappy home life root the somewhat fanciful central story in a recognisable reality. But this is a modern-day fairytale whose closing drift towards melodrama is arrested by a contrivance that is readily forgiven because it guarantees the happy ending that the majority of viewers will crave. However, Enyedi also uses the abattoir and the graphic scenes of butchery to explore the way humans treat other living creatures and the extent to which we are driven by our animal instincts.

Morcsányi and Borbély (in only her fourth film) do a magnificent job of making two such eccentric characters so empathetic, while Réka Tenki stands out from the supporting cast with her droll turn as the shrink enjoying her power over the factory workers and taking exception to being guyed by a couple she considers flawed. But Imola Láng's evocative interiors and Máté Herbai's sensitive camerawork are equally intrinsic to the contrasting senses of vulnerability and terror and exposure and trust that Enyedi weaves throughout this unusual and ultimately deeply moving fable, which reveals the extent to which the long shadow of Communism continues to cast its pall over citizens still coming to terms with the trappings and responsibilities of freedom.

5) AQUARIUS.

Audaciously interweaving storylines from across the age range and the class divide, Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds (2012) made innovative use of space and sound in exploring everyday life in the north-eastern city of Recife. Four years on, he returns with the more stylistically conservative, but equally thematically pugnacious Aquarius, which centres on a building on the Boa Viagem waterfront in order to comment on Brazil's economic and ethical crises, while also taking a side swipe at the kind of ruthless dynasticism that currently concerns certain observers of the White House.

Opening with a montage of monochrome images charting the development of Boa Viagem to the strains of Taiguara Chalar da Silva's 1969 hit, `Hoje', the first part of the story - `Clara's Hair' begins in 1980, as music critic Clara (Bárbara Colen) slips away from the birthday party being thrown for her beloved aunt, Lucía (Thaia Perez), in order to play Queen's `Another One Bites the Dust' for her friends on the beach. She returns to the Aquarius building to be ticked off by husband Adalberto (Daniel Porpino) for keeping everyone waiting and to assemble the children who have prepared a special speech for the occasion. As she listens to the compliments, however, Lucía catches sight of her old credenza and flashes back to 1940 when her younger self (Joana Gatis) had passionate sex on top of the cabinet with one of her many lovers.

She is touched and a bit embarrassed to be the centre of attention. But she lives up to her reputation as the black sheep of the family by reminding everyone that, while she may have gone to prison in the 1960s for resisting the military government, she is just as proud of her 30-year affair with a married man and wishes him to be remembered in the toast. However, Adalberto also wishes to speak, as Clara has spent the year battling breast cancer and he takes the opportunity to thank those relatives who stuck by them during a difficult time and to reassure Clara that she looks chic with a short hairstyle that makes her look like singer Elis Regina.

As the revellers dance, the scene shifts to the present day, as Clara (Sonia Braga) does her morning exercises in the apartment she inherited from her aunt. She asks maid Ladjane (Zoraide Coleto) about lunch before wandering down to the beach to join in a laugh therapy group and defy the warning of doting lifeguard Roberval (Irandhir Santos) by swimming out from shore. On her return, she showers (with the effects of her mastectomy plain to see) and meets with a couple of female reporters asking about her new book. She surprises them by revealing that she is fine with downloads and streaming, but still prefers to own an object like the copy of Double Fantasy that she bought secondhand and was delighted to find contained a press cutting that predated John Lennon's murder on 8 December 1980. It amuses her when the photographer pipers up that she was born a fortnight later, but she is sad that modern methods of disseminating music preclude the possibility of finding such messages in a bottle with a history of their own.

Dozing in her hammock, Clara fails to spot Diego (Humberto Carrão) taking pictures of the Aquarius façade from the beach. But he knocks at the door with grandfather Gerardo (Fernando Texeira), who has bought the remaining apartments and is keen to strike a deal with Clara so he can start redeveloping the property. She is adamant, however, that she has no intention of selling and takes exception to the fact that Diego fails to show her due respect by calling her `Dona Clara' and seems to think that smiling persistence is the way to intimidate her.

At the outset of `Clara's Love', she rips up an envelope left on her doormat before nephew Tomás (Pedro Queiroz) picks her up for lunch with his parents, Antonio (Buda Lira) and Fatima (Paula De Renor). Her brother is a lawyer and he insists the Bonfims are doing nothing wrong in trying to negotiate with her. But Fatima is keen to whisk her off dancing with the girls. They get tipsy and gossip, with Clara enjoying teasing Leticia (Arly Arnaud) about her trysts with a younger gigolo. Now widowed for 17 years, Clara is not averse to romance and dances with an elegant silver-haired sixtysomething. But he pulls away after touching her breast during a smooch in the car and Clara returns home by taxi to boost her spirits by letting down her hair and dancing to Roberto Carlos's 1975 song, `O Quintal Do Vizinho'.

A few days later, Clara gets another nasty shock when her chat with Roberval about a drug dealer operating on the avenida is interrupted by Daniel (Bruno Goya). He is related to an Aquarius resident whose compensation payment has been delayed because of her intransigence. She apologises for the inconvenience, but he swears at her and curses her selfishness for holding up people's lives for six years. Later in the afternoon, Clara sees Diego chatting to workmen Josimar (Valdeci Junior) and Rivanildo (Rubens Santos) in the garage courtyard (where she feeds the stray cats) and she asks why he has brought a pile of mattresses into the building. He refuses to give her a straight answer and she is further put out when she sees workmen emptying a neglected grave when she pays Adalberto a cursory visit in the cemetery.

Back home, she entertains daughter Ana Paula (Maeve Jinkings) and sons Rodrigo (Daniel Porpino) and Martin (Germano Melo). She is annoyed when they point out the Bonfim stickers that Diego has placed on every door but hers and even more vexed when Ana Paula (who has recently divorced and could do with the money) asks why she is dragging things out when she has been offered a price way above the apartment's value. Clara snaps back that nothing can replace the time she has invested in the place and the memories it holds and she is stung when Ana Paula claims that her father paid the bills and even cared for them during the two years she was away. But Rodrigo shows her the book on composer Heitor Villa-Lobos that she dedicated to them and Ana Paula cries and hugs her mother, while calling her a stubborn old lady.

While she snoozes on her hammock that night, a group of strangers bustle into the house and start a loud party in the room upstairs. Clara tries to fight back by blasting Queen's `Fat Bottomed Girls' at full volume. But, having got drunk and smoked a joint, she feels horny after venturing to the next floor to see an orgy in full flow and phones Leticia's gigolo, Paulo (Alex Souza Lima) for some uncomplicated, unprotected sex. She pays for it with a hangover the next morning, when she also finds that the staircase has been smeared with excrement. Moreover, when she chats to Roberval, he asks if she is hitting on him and they have an awkward moment before they both laugh.

Tomás introduces Clara to girlfriend Julia (Julia Bernat). They walk along the beach and Clara points out the pipe pouring effluence into the sea and notes that this unofficially divides the swanky Pina neighbourhood from the rougher Brasilia Teimosa district that lies beyond it. They go to Ladjane's birthday party in the shanty town and Leticia asks Clara how her session with Paulo went. She thinks back on it (as Aunt Lucia had done three decades earlier), but isn't sure how she feels, especially when she looks across to see Tomás kissing Julia. Snapping out of her reverie, she joins in singing to Ladjane, who stands next to a large photo of her deceased son (but, as with so many minor details in this fine film, nothing more is said because it is taken as read that everyone has their own lives and their own history).

After a sleepless night, in which she thinks someone might have entered the apartment, Clara has a happy afternoon looking through old photos with Antonio and Fatima. She gets angry remembering a black maid who stole jewellery, but Fatima says theft is part of the deal for being exploited. Tomás and Julia are staying with Clara and they get up late and join them, just as Ladjane asks if she can show them the photo of her son that she keeps in her purse. Once more betraying a flash of class prejudice, Clara grimaces. But she cheers up when Julia plays Gilberto Gil's `Pai e Mãe' and she smiles as though seeing something of herself in Julia.

During her time in Aquarius, its front has been painted pink and pale blue. But, as `Clara's Cancer' opens, workmen arrive to give it a white makeover. However, Diego takes exception to her altering the building without his permission and sets about making life uncomfortable. While Clara is out walking her grandson, he arranges an evangelical prayer meeting on the upper floor and then had Josimar and Rivanildo burn mattresses in the courtyard. The fire blackens the paintwork and Clara and Ladjane confront Diego when he next visits. She tells him she is not impressed with his US college education and his greed is good mentality. But he criticises her for not extending any hospitality so they could discuss matters in a civilised manner. However, Clara snaps back that spoilt brats like him know nothing of courtesy and she mocks him for thinking himself better than the poor when he has never done a day's hard work in his life.

She decides to fight back and lunches with local newspaper editor Ronaldo (Lula Terra). He warns her that the Bonfims are powerful people and that Diego (who just happens to be his brother's godson) is vain and ambitious and wouldn't think twice about using Antonio's current political difficulties to harm her. But he gives her details of some documents that would embarrass Gerardo and Clara hires lawyer Cleide (Carla Ribas) to put a shot across their bows. He retaliates by charging her with altering the property without permission. But it is only when Josimar and Rivanildo stop her in the street that she discovers with Roberval's help that Diego has infested two upper rooms with termites to make the building uninhabitable.

Refusing to buckle (despite a nightmare in which she wakes to find the thieving black maid in her room and a stab wound in her chest), Clara goes for a swim in the sea and joins Antonio, Tomás and Cleide in the Bonfim boardroom. Gerardo and Diego think she has come to surrender and the older man is furious when she produces the incriminating documents. Diego tries to laugh them off and says she will be crushed by their legal department. But, as Tomás begins filming, Clara hauls a suitcase on to the table and tips out a rotting timber fragments filled with termites. She glares at Gerardo and Diego as they watch the insects crawl down to the carpet and threaten to bring down their empire.

In truth, this can only be seen as a pyrrhic victory, as Aquarius might already be beyond salvage and Clara will still have to move out. But it ends the picture with a mischievously bourgeois spin on the kind of underdog triumph that has become Ken Loach's trademark in partnership with screenwriter Paul Laverty, who brought us another variation on the theme last week in Iciar Bollain's The Olive Tree. Such Capracorn gambits might play well with the arthouse lite brigade, but they feel more than a little contrived, especially given the tone of what has gone before.

Mendonça Filho's scalpel is a lot sharper and more forensic than Loach's, however. He also has a steadier hand, as he deftly exposes the faultlines in Brazilian society, whether its the racial and class prejudice of the older generation or the impatience and elitism of the young. There are exceptions, with Tomás seeming to be following in the footsteps of Clara and Lucía in refusing to go along with the flow. Thus, Tomás and Julia discover the joys of vinyl, just as Clara recognises the validity, if not the value of downloads. By contrast, Diego is motivated solely by money and it's no accident that he is the grandson of a corrupt nepotist and a graduate of an American business school.

The potency of the characterisation owes much to the strength of the performances, with Sonia Braga in career peak form - indeed rivalling Paulina García in Sebastián Lello's Gloria (2103) - as the 65 year-old rebel with a cause. She is admirably supported by Humberto Carrão as her smarmily brash adversary and by Maeve Jinkings as the daughter who treats Braga like a maid and Zoraide Coleto as the domestic who considers Braga to be family. On the craft side, Juliano Dornelles and Thales Junqueira's production design and Pedro Sotero and Fabricio Tadeu's elegant cinematography are as outstanding as the evocative soundtrack selections. But it's Mendonça Filho's finesse in using space and place and in judging the tone and pace of both fleeting incidents and pivotal set-pieces that ensures this treatise on the consolation of memory, the duty to live without regret and the need to leave a worthwhile legacy that makes this as compassionate as it is compelling.

4) LOST IN PARIS.

A century ago, the cinema was dominated by the slapstick clowns who did their bit to keep spirits high during the dark days of the Great War. Nowadays, knockabout is regarded as antiquated and lacking in sophistication. But the silents produced with art, grace and impeccable timing by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Max Linder, Buster Keaton remain a source of endless pleasure. As do the films of the husband-and-wife team of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon, whose latest confection, Lost in Paris, is an absolute delight.

As in the case of L'Iceberg (2005), Rumba (2008) and The Fairy (2011), the emphasis is firmly on the kind of gentle knockabout perfected by Jacques Tati that allows sight gags to emerge at their own pace from a storyline pitching an innocent into a mean-spirited world. Played with a combination of burlesque beauty and deadpan insouciance and, in its own subtle way, bitingly satirical, this is, quite simply, an unmissable delight.

Forty-eight years after Martha (Emmanuelle Riva) told her young niece Fiona (Emmy Boissard Paumelle) that she was leaving their small Canadian community to live in Paris, a letter arrives from Monsieur Martin (Philippe Martz) informing Fiona (Fiona Gordon) that he find a letter addressed to her in a rubbish bin. Now working as a librarian, Fiona has to endure a howling gale and a flurry of snow as the postwoman (Céline Laurentie) braves the elements to make her delivery. She lingers as Fiona reads that Aunt Martha needs her help, as she doesn't want to be put in a home when she is perfectly capable of looking after herself. That said, a cutaway reveals that the 88 year-old walked right past the postbox to deposit the letter in a waste bin and Fiona feels she has no option but to fly to Europe.

Carrying a large red rucksack topped with a Canadian flag in the Métro, Fiona bumps into Bob (Frédéric Meert) and discovers that he is a Mountie on an exchange programme, as she struggles up the stairs while he glides along on an escalator. They wave across the empty platforms before Fiona catches the train to visit her aunt. There is no reply at her apartment, however, and Fiona manages to fall off a bridge while a jogger (Guillaume Delvingt) takes her picture beside the Eiffel Tower. She is fished out of the Seine by the crew of a bateau mouche and sails down river oblivious to the fact that the jogger is running along the bank in an effort to return her phone.

Back at Martha's place, Fiona learns from Martin that her aunt has been behaving oddly of late and had twice kissed him on the staircase in order to hide from her carer, Madame Gentil (Françoise Lauwerie). But he has no idea of her whereabouts and regrets that most of Martha's friends have passed away. Meanwhile, on the banks of the river beside the Statue of Liberty, a homeless man named Dom (Dominique Abel) wakes from a nice snooze in her tent. He urinates off the embankment and is photographed by tourists on the boat carrying Fiona into the city. Smoking a discarded cigarette butt, he goes searching for food in the wheelie bin outside a floating restaurant and is about to enjoy a roasted pepper when it is whisked out of his hand by an angler casting his line. Snipping the line with scissors, Dom follows the floating pepper downstream and almost become entangled with the various people minding their own business in his path.

At journey's end, Dom spots Fiona's haversack and fishes it out of the water, just as she is reporting the loss of her passport and belongings to an official at the Canadian Embassy (Olivier Parenty). He offers her a meal voucher and she uses it at the same péniche where the newly spruced Dom is spending the money he found inside her handbag. The portier (Fabrice Milich) makes him wear a tie on top of the yellow sweater he found in Fiona's luggage, while the waiter seats him at a table next to the toilet door. It is also positioned beside the sound system speakers and the DJ (Jean Loison) has to scramble over Dom in order to run a wire to his deck.

As the music begins to play, the bass resonates so deeply that it makes Dom bounce in his chair and he turns the speaker away so that a mother (Annabelle Cocollos), father (Bruno Romy) and daughter (Mika Romy Cocollos) dining at the next table begin to bounce too. Keen to dance, Dom goes from table to table seeking a partner and wakes the dozing Fiona, who is swept on to the floor for an eccentric tango that ends with Dom asking Fiona if she is a professional dancer. She tries to make her excuses to leave, but Dom orders three bottles of champagne and offers to walk her home. But, as he pays the bill, Fiona recognises her handbag and falls into the Seine again in trying to wrest it from Dom's grasp. The champagne bottles bob in the water, as Fiona dries off aboard Le Maxim's and makes another call to Martha's apartment. But there is no answer and she is forced to spend the night at a launderette, while Dom tears the photo out of her passport and realises he is in lover. Fiona's fortunes change slightly next morning, however, as her rucksack is handed in at the Embassy. But she is not best pleased to see Dom and he has to hide behind a newspaper (and peer through a hole in the page burned with his cigarette) in order to eavesdrop on an African dishwasher (Balla Gagny Diop) at a café near Martha's apartment breaking the bad news that she has died and that her funeral will take place later that morning at Père Lachaise. He gives her directions, but Dom helps guide her to the cemetery, even though she has ordered him to stop following her.

He steals a yellow flower to take to the chapel, where they are greeted by the woman officiating at the service (Brigitte Lucas). She asks Fiona to say a few words. But, while she declines, Dom comes to the microphone and launches into a tirade in which he brands Martha a penny-pinching racist who hated the homeless. Having not understood a word, Fiona applauds gently when he finishes speaking, while the deceased's agent, Cyril (Salifou Bangoura), expresses his shock at discovering this side of his client's personality. As they attend a small reception, however, it becomes clear that they are at the wrong funeral and the flustered Fiona knocks over a candlestick as she beats a retreat.

Her departure, however, coincides with the arrival of her aunt and we flashback to Martha lifting hand weights in the window of her apartment. When Madame Gentil calls, however, she fears she is going to try to put her in a nursing home and does a bunk. She dodges policemen in the street and wanders towards the river, where she encounters Dom searching through Fiona's bag. Martha trades a pair of heart-shaped earrings for a jar that reminds her of home and she polishes off the contents before throwing up behind a tree. Forgetting where she lives, she sleeps under a bridge, where she is found by the stray dog that has been following Dom around. On waking, she sees an article in the newspaper announcing the funeral of her friend, Marthe (Sarah Bensoussan) and she sets off for the cemetery, as Dom recognises Martha from the photograph that Fiona shows him at the reception.

While Dom finds a screwdriver to remove the lid of the casket before it descends to the furnace, Fiona tries to hold open the lift doors. However, they both end up stuck, as he gets his tie caught in the lid and she gets her face squashed by the closing doors. As they try to extricate themselves, Martha runs into her old friend Norman (Pierre Richard) and they sit on a bench to do a joyously improbable soft-shoe routine to `Little Man You've Had a Busy Day' before his carer from the nursing home tracks him down. Inside the chapel, Fiona is worried that Dom has been accidentally incinerated when Cyril hands her the urn containing Marthe's ashes and he confesses that no one has any idea where Dom has gone.

In fact, he had been rescued by Gabriel the cremator (Grégory Legeai) and Fiona slaps him for making her so worried. Guided by a blind man (Marc Le Gall), Fiona finds a police station, where Bob the Mountie is based. They gain access to Martha's apartment, just as Martin is collecting some clean clothes to take to his neighbour, who is hiding out in the launderette. Seeing the cops arrive, she scarpers and finds herself down by the Statue of Liberty, as Dom polishes off the champagne bottles he had found floating in the river. They chat about Fiona, who is looking through a photo album and piecing together how Martha, Marthe and Norman once danced together under the name Le Trio. As they sleep, the screen splits to show Fiona and Dom dreaming of each other. However, Marthe is lying beside Dom and when he kisses her thinking she is her niece, she responds with enthusiasm and the tent lifts off the ground as they canoodle. Creeping outside for a post-coital cigarette, Martha finds Fiona's phone in a dustbin and calls her apartment. Fiona answers and is surprised to hear that her aunt has been drinking champagne and making love with a handsome man. But they are cut off when a police patrol passes and Martha tosses the phone away.

Wearing only a nightdress, Fiona takes a taxi to the Île aux Cygnes and pays with the coins inside Martha's piggy bank. She is dismayed to discover that Dom has slept with her aunt, but realises he is her best hope of finding Martha and allows him to tear a strip off the nightie so that his canine companion can get the scent. The dog takes them to a ladder propped up against a tree and this leads to the lower levels of the Eiffel Tower. As they take the lift to the observation deck, Dom and Fiona kiss. But she apologises for her impulsive action and goes off in search of her aunt. However, she soon requires Dom's assistance again, when the ladder she is climbing comes away from its mooring and he catches her and teeters along a girder so that she can ascend to the aerial deck, where Martha is sleeping soundly.

They embrace and laugh when Martha finds a twig caught in her clothing. She tells Fiona that Dom is a nice man, but calls him Norman when they sit on a ledge and watch the sunrise over the city. However, this turns out to be Martha's last hurrah and it rains so hard when Dom, Fiona and Martin gather by the Statue of Liberty to scatter her ashes that the biodegradable urn turns to mush in Dom's hands and he tosses it unceremoniously into the Seine. Fiona turns to say goodbye and Dom kisses her on both cheeks. But she decides to stay a little longer so that he can teach her French.

Few films generate laughter with such regularity, ingenuity and whimsicality as those of this inspired duo. The Australian Gordon exploits her gawky elasticity to beguiling effect, while Abel tempers his Hulotian naiveté with a touch of Chaplinesque rascality. But their comedy is always rooted in character and milieu, even when the pratfalls seem gleefully contrived. They are also generous in portioning out the gags, with the peerless Emmanuelle Riva (in her penultimate picture) and fellow veteran Pierre Richard (in a role originally intended for Pierre Étaix) revelling in their gleeful bit of sedentary business at Père Lachaise.

Such landmarks occur regularly, but there's nothing touristy about Claire Childeric and Jean-Christophe Leforestier's photography, as they follow the madcap antics with the discretion one associates with a Fred and Ginger dance number. Abel and Gordon once again prove themselves to be accomplished dancers, while their splendid choice of soundtrack music is encapsulated by the recurring use of Kate and Anna McGarrigle's version of `Swimming Song'. Let's hope we don't have to wait six more years for their next outing.

3) ELLE.

Now in his 80th year, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven seems as eager to confront taboos as he was in his heyday. Having veered off into the realm of collaborative experimentation with Tricked (2012) - which he made in conjunction with the crowd-sourcing platform Entertainment Experience - Verhoeven returns to conventional features a decade after producing the wartime drama, Black Book (2006). Adapted by David Birke from Philippe Djian's award-winning novel, Oh… (2012), Elle is a provocative study of rape that sparked as much controversy as such notorious outings as Spetters (1980), Basic Instinct (1992) and Showgirls (1995). But, while many branded this a revenge thriller, it's much too nuanced to fit such a convenient label.

Under the dispassionate gaze of her grey cat, Marty, Isabelle Huppert is brutally raped in her suburban Parisian home by a masked assailant who makes his unhurried escape through an open door. Rather than calling the police, the battered and bruised Huppert cleans up the crockery that got broken during the assault before throwing away her black dress and taking a bath (whose bubbles discolour with blood). She nonchalantly orders Chinese food and teases son Jonas Bloquet about his latest dead-end job and his relationship with the pregnant Alice Isaaz, who was raised in an artist collective and has had many lovers before moving in with Bloquet.

Having slept with a hammer on her pillow, Huppert chairs a meeting of the video game company she runs with old friend Anne Consigny. She is unhappy with the reaction of the princess being molested by a monster and gets into an argument with Lucas Prisor, a gamer who resents being ordered around by a woman with a publishing background. Colleague Arthur Mazet backs Huppert, but Consigny jokes that he is the only member of staff who doesn't actively hate them.

After taking a blood test, Huppert has a coffee and informs lover Christian Berkel (who just happens to be married to Consigny) that she can't see him this evening as she is not in the mood. She pops in to see mother Judith Magre and catches her in flagrante with her latest toyboy, Raphaël Lenglet. Delighting in discomfiting her daughter, Magre asks Huppert how she would feel if she remarried and smiles when she threatens to kill her. However, they are both aware that Huppert's father is up for parole and neither is thrilled by the prospect of him being released, as he committed a series of brutal murders that caused a national scandal because he implicated his 10 year-old child in the crimes (hence a stranger cursing and spilling her drink over Huppert in the café).

On arriving home, Huppert bumps into neighbours Virginie Efira and Laurent Lafitte, who ask her to get involved in a residents' campaign. She speaks briefly to the workman changing her locks before feeding Marty, whose loud miaows trigger a flashback to the attack, as the intruder burst in through the patio doors after she opened them to let the cat inside. But she regains her composure as readily as she dismisses the fender bending she has outside the restaurant where she is meeting ex-husband and struggling novelist Charles Berling for supper. She starts to ask him about an abusive text she received from her assailant, but they are interrupted by Consigny and Berkel, who are appalled when Huppert casually mentions her ordeal and her decision not to call the police because of the mistrust that dates back to her treatment around the time of her father's arrest. But she can't resist taunting Berling about his broken bumper, as they walk to their cars, and wastes few words in rejecting his proposed game scenario.

The next day, Huppert meets Bloquet to view the apartment he hopes to rent with Isaaz. But his mother and girlfriend have a row and he pleads with Huppert to stop trying to control his life because he has finally grown up. She returns to the office to find Berkel waiting for her because he knows Consigny is out of town and she provides him with joyless hand relief. Working late, however, she gets another text from her attacker that suggests he can see her because it makes reference to the colour of her blouse. But the only other person around is Prisor and he is busy taking photographs in the studio.

Huppert meets with Magre for coffee and she complains that a man threw pizza at her because a TV channel broadcast a documentary about her husband prior to his parole hearing. But, even though Huppert wants nothing more to do with her father, she watches the programme about the events that occurred in Nantes some four decades earlier and forever tainted her reputation. She also has another flashback, but this time manages to subject the masked man to a frenzied counterattack. But her reverie is disturbed by Marty pouncing on a bird that has flown into her doors. She puts the dead sparrow in a box and is dropping it into the outside bin when she sees a suspicious car parked across the quiet street. Taking the axe and pepper spray she recently purchased to protect herself, she smashes in the driver window, only to sting the eyes of Berling, who is concerned that she is in danger.

As he recovers over a glass of wine, Berling lets slip that he is dating Vimala Pons, who invited him to speak at a seminar on Simone De Beauvoir. Huppert gleans from Bloquet that Pons is also a yoga teacher and she is Googling her when she receives an email with an attachment showing her head affixed to the princess being raped in the video game in development. She asks Mazet to investigate and he speculates that the clip could have been produced by an old employee with a grudge, as the company system has recently been hacked.

Tracking down Pons, Huppert apologises for smashing her car window and invites her to a Christmas party with Berling. He is dismayed by her snooping when they meet up at the maternity unit where Isaaz has gone into labour. Feeling far from overjoyed at the imminent arrival, Huppert gives Bloquet and his black buddy Stéphane Bak a meaningful stare when she sees the colour of the child. But Isaaz glares back without shame and Huppert confides in the midwife that she has never felt close to her son and wonders if he has a stronger bond with Consigny, as they first met the night they gave birth together and Huppert agreed to let Consigny breastfeed her baby after her own was stillborn.

Arriving home to see police cars outside her building, Huppert is informed by Efira that Lafitte chased away an intruder in a ski mask and she insists that her husband escorts Huppert to her apartment. He takes a quick look round and apologises for letting the prowler escape, but Huppert is charmed by his awkwardness and is embarrassed when she blurts out that she has just become a grandmother. The following morning, she discovers that Prisor skis and asks Mazet if he will teach her to shoot at the gun range where he practices. She also offers him a large reward if he can identify the perpetrator of the video clip and he jokes that weird things often turn up when you hack into someone's computer.

Having masturbated while using binoculars to watch Lafitte arrange a Nativity scene in his back garden, Huppert invites him and Efira to her festive soirée. She revels in telling Berkel to mind his manners and serving Pons a starter with a toothpick inside. But she also tuts at Bloquet as Isaaz orders him to take care of the baby and lets slip his disdain when Magre and Lenglet announce their engagement. Moreover, she plays footsie with Lafitte under the table as Efira says grace and Berkel takes a pop at him for being an investment broker. After supper, she arranges to have lunch with Pons and leaves Efira and Magre watching midnight mass on TV and the others playing scrabble while she flirts with Lafitte. She tells him how her father murdered their neighbours when they stopped him making the Sign of the Cross on their children's forehead's. Patting his knee, she jokes that he killed several animals as well as 27 humans and, yet, he spared a single hamster. She recalls him coming home covered in blood and throwing all their possessions on the fire. Caught up in the moment, she has started helping him and was photographed covered in ashes when he was arrested. She regrets being dubbed the psychopath's daughter, but is more frustrated by people's refusal to accept her innocence and the pain she endured at the hands of the police.

Huppert goes to fetch Lafitte a cognac and argues with Magre about her mocking laughter at the table. She tells her mother that neither of them is sufficiently drunk to have this conversation. But it proves to be their last, as Magre collapses and just about manages to tell Huppert to visit her father before she lapses into a coma in the ambulance. Unable to hold her hand, Huppert asks the doctor is the seizure is genuine, as Magre is something of an attention seeker. But she is reassured that her mother is dangerously ill and Huppert returns home in something of a daze with Consigny.

They share a bed and Consigny smiles as she asks if Huppert remembers the time they experimented with lesbianism on holiday. But it's Berkel who wakes her with a hand under her nightie the next morning and Huppert informs him that their affair is over. She goes to see Magre and chides her for trying to manipulate her on her deathbed. But, as Huppert changes the TV channel, Magre goes into cardiac arrest and dies as the electronic doors slide across to leave Huppert outside looking in helplessly. Driving home alone, she gets a shock when Marty jumps on her. But worse is to come when she finds semen on her bedding and an apology on her open laptop.

A few days later, Huppert goes to scatter Magre's ashes in her favourite park. Isaaz gives Bloquet a mouthful for forgetting the baby's dummy and Huppert asks why he puts up with such abuse when he is clearly not the child's father. In denial, Bloquet swears at her and Consigny runs to calm him down, as Huppert scatters the ashes on the breeze. Later that night, however, as storm has blown up and Lafitte offers to help Huppert with her shutters. She flirts with him and allows him to fondle her after struggling with an upstairs window. But Lafitte gets cold feet and scurries away in shame.

At the office, Huppert has another stand-off with Prisor over the new game and is disappointed when Mazet finds nothing incriminating on his computer. But she does find something on Mazet's PC , however, and forces him to drop his trousers in a order to humiliate him. On arriving home, she finds a parcel on the doorstep and is admiring the baby seat she has bought when she is attacked again by the masked man. She puts up a struggle and stabs him in the hand with a pair of scissors before ripping off the mask to reveal Lafitte, who rushes away in terror. The next morning, however, he leaves for work as usual and shoots Huppert a nervous glance as she collects her post.

Feeling the need to get things off her chest, Huppert goes to visit her father in prison. However, she learns that he hanged himself in his cell with a sheet shortly after hearing she was coming and she gloats over his corpse in the morgue. While driving home, however, a reporter calls for her reaction and she sweves off the road into a tree when a fox bounces off her windscreen and she sprains her knee. Unable to move, she calls her friends, but only Lafitte is available to help her. He pulls her out of the window and cleans up her wounds back home. But, when Huppert asks if he enjoyed raping her and what motivated him to do so, he merely insists it was `necessary' and stalks away.

Forced to walk with a stick while her knee is in a brace, Huppert puts Magre's apartment up for sale and catches Longlet with another woman. She order him to leave and he accuses her of being her father's willing accomplice. Keeping her cool, Huppert repeats her demand that he moves out and he sneeringly shoots back that he defiled her mother. As she leaves, Huppert agrees to a last assignation with Berkel and arrives home to find that Isaaz has thrown Bloquet out for resigning his burger job. She is aghast to see he has brought the baby with him and takes Isaaz's side when she comes to collect the child. However, she feels sorry for Bloquet, as she knows he had been trying to protect the boy from his mother and had put up with a good deal in order to be a good father.

While out shopping, Huppert and Bloquet run into Lafitte, who invites them to dinner. Efira gone to see the Pope in Spain and left him masses of food and Bloquet gets drunk on red wine. He passes out and Lafitte offers to show Huppert the wood burner in the basement. She knows what is coming and lets Lafitte know it is okay to seduce her. But he insists that there has to be an element of coercion and Huppert is sufficiently aroused to consent.

At work, she congratulates Prisor on the quality of the game he has designed and he nods in gratitude. However, Consigny ushers Huppert into her office to reveal that she knows Berkel is having an affair and claims to have recognised the perfume on his clothing. But Huppert offers nothing but detached support and she keeps well away from Barkel when she throws a launch party for the game. She asks Bloquet to cater it to earn some money and feels so sorry for Berling when he tells her that Pons had mixed him up all this time with another novelist that she hooks him up with Prisor to discuss his game idea. But she also confesses to Consigny about her affair and ask Bloquet to tend to the guests while she drives home with Lafitte.

En route, she tells him that she is tired of lying and intends reporting him to the police. He says nothing as Huppert closes her gate and goes inside. But the masked Lafitte bursts through the back door and pounces on her. He rips her dress, while slapping her across the face. Huppert tries to resist, but he is too strong for her until Bloquet arrives and caves in his skull with a piece of wood. Whispering, `why?', Lafitte collapses and Huppert tells the cops she has no idea why such a quiet neighbour would suddenly become such a beast.

As Huppert supervises the decorators giving the downstairs rooms a new look, she notices Efira putting the crib figures into a removal van. She asks how she is coping and Efira says she can always find solace in her faith. Huppert wishes her luck and is taken aback when Efira thanks her for helping a decent man with a tormented soul find what he was looking for, albeit for a short time. Before the full import of the words can sink in, Huppert sees the reunited Bloquet and Isaaz arrive with the baby. However, she slips away to the cemetery to leave flowers at memorial plaques to her parents. Consigny finds her and reveals that she has thrown Berkel out. But she needs somewhere to live during the house sale and Huppert offers her a bed, as they walk along the avenue.

One can almost imagine Claude Chabrol and Luis Buñuel arguing in a celestial screening room over who should take the most credit for this devastating dissection of bourgeois hauteur and Catholic hypocrisy. Roman Polanski, Michael Haneke and Claude Sautet might also recognise the odd trope, while Mia Hansen-Løve would probably spot similarities between Huppert's Oscar-nominated performance and her equally brilliant work in Things to Come. What seems in little doubt, however, is that this is the kind of film that Alfred Hitchcock would be making if he was still active - hence Anne Dudley's lushly atmospheric score paying such fulsome homage to Bernard Herrmann. He had taken tentative steps in this direction in Marnie (1964) and Frenzy (1972) and one can only speculate on how Huppert might have responded to his direction in exploring the damaged psyche of a victim who feels herself to be complicit in the crimes committed against her.

Emma Stone is wonderful in La La Land, but Huppert leaves her standing with this typically courageous exploration of desire, dominance and danger. As one might expect, Verhoeven makes demands that test her mettle. But she seems to relish roles that take her to the edge and even brings a darkly comic touch to some of the more shocking scenes, as though daring the audience to engage with the action rather than simply spectate from behind a protective barrier of cosy PC preconceptions. Thank goodness Verhoeven abandoned plans to make this in Hollywood because he couldn't think of a single English-speaking actress who could handle the part.

The supporting cast is also splendid, with Consigny, Magre and Isaaz being the standouts and it's a shame that more was not made Efira's pious spouse, especially as she seems to have known all about Lafitte's activities and kept quiet in order to protect herself and her spotless reputation. A little more of the ever-urbane Berling would also not have gone amiss, particularly as Huppert would seemingly not have divorced with him had he not struck her (although she is somewhat submissive in her elicit relationship with the resistibly chauvinist Berkel). Then, there's Huppert's relationship with Bloquet, as well as Consigny's surrogate affection for a man child whose desire to be a good parent makes him blind to his girlfriend's evident shortcomings. And let's not get started on the content of the video games and Huppert's dealings with Prisor and Mazet. Or her father!

Verhoeven owes much to production designer Laurent Ott and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine for giving the action an elegance that is both sinister and satirical. But he is more indebted to David Birke, who does as good a job in translating Philippe Djian to the screen as Jean-Jacques Beineix did reworking 37°2 Le Matin as Betty Blue (1986). This is much more grounded in reality than that cinéma du look classic, but it shares its incendiary sense that one person's normality is another's aberration. Birke deserves great credit for keeping the subplots and red herrings in the air long enough for Verhoeven to establish the principals and generate a bit of suspense. But it's the stinging wit and precision of the dialogue that most impresses, as Verhoeven and Huppert demonstrate that `shame isn't a strong enough emotion to stop us doing anything at all'.

2) I AM NOT MADAME BOVARY.

A populist who has often been compared to Steven Spielberg, Feng Xiaogang is one of China's most commercially successful film-makers. Born in Beijing in 1958, he started out as a stage designer with the Beijing Military Region Art Troupe before moving into television as an art director in 1985. He made his directorial bow with Lost My Love (1994), but came into his own by exploiting the `Hesui Pian' or `New Year Celebration' genre with Dream Factory (1997). A string of similar comedies and satires followed, including Be There Or Be Square (1998), Sorry Baby (1999) and Big Shot's Funeral (2001), which saw him become the first Mainland director to have a film backed by Columbia TriStar's short-lived Hong Kong production unit.

Feng also proved he could handle melodrama with A Sigh (2000). But he forged an international reputation with Cell Phone (2002), a media satire that helped make a star of Fan Bingbing (more of whom anon). Having reworked William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts for the period epic, The Banquet (2006), Feng returned to lampooning nouveau riche mores in If You Are the One (2008) and If You Are the One 2 (2010). In Aftershock (2010), however, he also started to explore darker topics like the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, although this approach led to clashes with the censors (he considers submitting films for approval a torment) and a group of online critics, whom he branded `cultural Nazis' after they attacked his war sagas Assembly (2007) and Back to 1942 (2012).

More recently, Feng reunited with favourite leading man Ge You for the wish fulfilment comedy, Personal Tailor (2013), and he remains in a satirical mood in I Am Not Madame Bovary. Adapted by Lin Zhenyun from his own novel, this has been rather clumsily retitled for Western audiences, as the original Chinese refers to the murderous adulteress Pan Jinlian, whose name has become synonymous with female wantonness. Moreover, while this bureaucratic dramedy has nothing to do with Gustave Flaubert's unhappy heroine, it does bear a marked resemblance to Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju (1992).

Following a brief prologue montage of paintings recapping the myth of Pan Jinlian, the story harks back 10 years (in a circular mask that persists for much of the picture) to show Lian Xuelian (Fan Bingbing) arriving by boat in a downpour to meet with Guangming County Justice Wang Gongdau (Da Peng). She explains in a roundabout manner that they are tenuously related and presents him with some unwanted gifts before revealing that she wants a divorce from her truck-driving husband, Qin Yuhe (Li Zonghan). The only problem is, she has already secured a legal separation as part of a plot to force Qin's tea company bosses to give him a better apartment. But, having moved into the new property, Qin promptly married another woman and left Lian without a husband or a home. She wants Wang, therefore, to sue Qin so that the divorce can be annulled in order for her to ditch him again with interest.

When the case comes to court, Qin fails to appear. But Gu Daxing (Yin Yuanzhang), the Civil Affairs assistant for Guaiwan Town testifies that the divorce was genuine and he admonishes Lian for lying to him and the government. This persuades the judge to declare the divorce valid. But, as narrator Feng Xiaogang confirms, Lian refuses to accept the verdict and badgers a retired chief justice (Feng Enhe), as he leaves a party to celebrate his golden wedding to a wife whose mantra for a happy marriage is `tolerate until it hurts'. Standing in the rain, Lian summarises her situation and is dissatisfied when the venerable judge advises her to go to appeal. When he drives off, Lian turns her attention to Justice Xun (Liu Xin), despite the police chief (Zhao Yi) testily urging her to leave them alone and take her case to the municipal intermediate court and report her suspicion that Wang took bribes from Qin to the procuratorate.

Pushed into a puddle, Lian bounces straight back up and, the following morning, throws herself in front of the car of county chief, Shi Weimin (Zhao Lixin). She holds up a cardboard sign and draws a crowd, as she requests Shi's help in bringing law suits against Qin, Wang and Xun. However, he pretends to be his own secretary and gives her the slip by switching coats with an underling and disappearing through the back door of his office. Undeterred, Lian goes to Ping'an City to stage a sit-down protest outside the headquarters Mayor Cai (of Jiang Yongbo). He wants her gone before Governor Chu Jinglian (Huang Jianxin) arrives to open a civilisation exhibit and his sidekick calls some heavies to abduct Lian and force her to take a refresher course in civic duties at the National Stability Office.

However, as is often the case when Chinese whispers echo down the corridors of power, someone gets hold of the wrong end of the stick and Lian is detained by the Public Security Bureau in order to appease the mayor. She pours out her woes to the cow she keeps in the backyard and decides to drop the case. But she insists on making Qin face up to the distress he has caused her and confronts him while he is drinking with his mates. She asks him to admit that he reneged on their deal, but he refuses to incriminate himself and, when she accuses him of divorcing her to have sex with another woman, he drags up the fact that she was not a virgin when they met and shocks his pals by comparing her to Pan Jinlian.

Outraged by Qin's slur, Lian asks her brother Yingying if he would be willing to kill Qin. But he refuses to risk jail, while pork butcher Lao Hu (Liu Hua) declines a one-sided deal involving a night's passion in return for five murders. Concluding that all locals are fools, Lian decides to go to Beijing to seek redress. As she travels by motor tricycle and bus, the aspect ratio switches from an iris mask to an Academy frame. But her options remain limited, as the National People's Congress is taking place in the capital and her coach is stopped and searched before it is allowed to continue.

Lian does have a trump card, however, as classmate Zhao Datou (Guo Tao) is now a chef at the NPC building. He lets her sleep in his storeroom and takes her round the miniature landmarks exhibit at World Park (where the Twin Towers still adorn the Manhattan skyline). She feels guilty at taking up so much of his time, but her ears prick up when he tells her that Governor Chu will soon be attending a meeting with the Party Chairman (Gao Ming). As the delegates file into the debating chamber, the governor and the chairman take their places at the top table. Much to the former's dismay, the latter reveals that he has met a woman from his county and has been appalled by the buck-passing negligence of officials at every level.

Keen to watch his own back, Chu fires Xun, Cai and Shi. But, as she prays at a Buddhist shrine, Lian insists that she will not rest until Qin pays for duping and insulting. The screen returns to its circular shape as Lian returns home and the narrator informs us that she has spent the last decade pursuing Qin and making an annual pilgrimage to Beijing to petition the NPC. Wang comes to visit her at the small restaurant she runs in the town and begs her to drop the suit or he will lose his job. He calls her cousin and outlines how closely they are actually related. But she swears that she has lost interest in the case and is not going to the NPC this year.

Wang is unconvinced and goes to see new county chief Zheng Zhong (Yu Hewei), who is inspecting the fire extinguishers at the wax museum. He believes that Lian has a right to pursue her claim, but Wang explains how she has come to represent four symbolic women in Little Cabbage, Pan Jinlian, Dou E and Lady White Snake and that she represents a palpable threat to their futures in all in each guise. They agree to persuade Lian to sign a guarantee that she will drop the case. But their solicitousness makes her suspicious and she not only refuses to sign, but she also declares that she may well go to Beijing after all.

New mayor Ma Wenbin (Zhang Jiayi) chides Zheng for his clumsy tactics and pays Lian a visit at her restaurant. He praises her home cooking and sends Wang to fetch oil for the lanterns when there's a power cut. But he is surprised when she explains that the cow convinced her to drop the case. However, there is a difference between the cow fearing she will lose and the mayor hoping she won't win and, therefore, she will delay her decision until the NPC is about to start.

Realising Lian will go her own way, Mayor Ma decides to put pressure on Qin to remarry and agree to a divorce on Lian's terms. But he is no position to back down, as his current wife has been subjected to a decade of finger-pointing because of Lian and she has threatened to sue him if he ever shows his ex any mercy. Datou is also keen to move on and marry Lian. But, while she keeps stalling him, she does allow him to announce their engagement so that she can get the four police bodyguards imposed on her by the community drunk enough to slip away by raft during the night.

Zheng is livid with the police chief for letting Lian escape. But he is also aware that Ma will be after his hide and he conspires with his secretary (Tian Xiaojie) to speak to the mayor alone. Stopping Zheng in his tracks as he tries to save face through self-criticism, Ma warns him of the consequences of letting Lian reach Beijing. But she has had a change of plan after Datou rapes her in a hotel near Huangshan Mountain and she feels so like a new woman that they agree to stay for a few days and let her enemies chase their tails.

As the county chief leans on the police chief and he complains to Wang, Zheng is sought out by court justice Jia Congming (Zhang Yi). He has been helping Datou with an issue with his late wife's will and has managed to coax him into marrying Lian in return for a good job for his son and the money that will enable him to open up the small hotel above her restaurant. Jia shows Zheng the photographs that Datou has been snapping of Lian and he is cock-a-hoop at the prospect of boosting his own profile as the man who kept her away from the NPC.

However, Lian overhears Datou arguing with Jia on the phone and throws a vase at him. He pleads with her through the locked door that he cares more for her than his son and that it's still possible for them to outwit the authorities. But Lian wants nothing more to do with him and stalks out of the hotel with renewed determination. As she walks through the snow-covered streets, however, she realises that her aim now is to remove the Pan Jinlian stain from her reputation, especially now that Datou has sullied it for real.

Travelling without papers (as the screen rectangles again) and convincing a cop searching the coach that she is seriously ill, Lian finds herself in hospital outside the capital. Needing money to pay her healthcare bill, she is escorted to the Beijing street market to find the cousin who runs a nut stall. But she is pounced upon by Wang, who detains her long enough for her to learn that Qin has died. Bawling with frustration that he has ruined her life and left her with an indelible stigma, Lian is led away and the good news is relayed to Ma on the last day of the NPC. Instead of being delighted, however, he is annoyed that it took a random occurrence rather than meticulous planning to solve their problem and he deduces that this is a poor way to govern. He wonders what drove her to persevere for 10 years when the court's initial decision had been fair. But he also concedes that the establishment's timidity had contributed to the saga dragging on and, while it was good that the law had been upheld, it didn't reflect well on anyone.

Trudging through the countryside in despair that she has become a laughing stock, Lian tries to hang herself in an orchard. But owner Guo Nong (Fan Wei) stops her, less out of concern for her well-being than the fear that no one will want to work in the scene of a suicide. He suggests she uses a tree belonging to his rival and Lian smiles and looks up into the sun. As the frame expands to widescreen, we learn that a year has passed and that she now runs a restaurant in Beijing. One of her customers reveals himself to be Chief Shi and he explains that he went home to Hunan to become a carpenter are he was fired.

He asks whether the second apartment was worth all the fuss and Lian reveals that they were trying to bypass the law on second children and thought they could register a second baby to her as a single woman before they remarried. But Qin deceived her and she miscarried and vowed to fight for her unborn child. Smiling sadly and urging her to treat the past like smoke. But as the narrator concludes, Lian never quite came to terms with what she had been through, although she was relieved that people stopped telling her story as a nudgeworthy joke.

Much has been made of the distractingly gimmicky nature of the periodic shifts in frame size. But these transitions are handled with an unimpeachable diegetic logic and with such stylistic finesse that they greatly enhance a film whose gentle satirical wit is slyly driven home by the restrained performances that almost give the action a docudramatic feel. Following in the dogged footsteps of Gong Li's Qiu Ju, Fan Bingbing's Lian is a pugnaciously tenacious character, although many will raise eyebrows at her acquiescence in Datou's rapacious assult in the country hotel room. But the wry smile in the orchard is exquisitely judged, as is the simple confession of her true motive for pursuing her treacherous spouse. Drawing on classical Chinese art for the look of the circular and oblong images, production designer Han Zhong and cinematographer Luo Pan succeed in creating some of the most striking visuals of recent times. The spherical compositions are particularly mesmerising, as they recall the painted glass slides used in magic lantern shows. But Wu Jiang's sound design and Du Wei's score are equally affecting, as they provide an audio equivalent to the majestic mise-en-scène. Yet, even though they capably reinforce the extent to which Lian is becoming increasingly boxed in by her ruinous obsession, the aesthetic choices often feel inelegantly arch and a touch gratuitous for a realist exposé of the hypocrisy, corruption, incompetence, indifference and the face-saving and self-preservatory instincts of Chinese officialdom.

A very different side of China emerges in Joe Piscatella's documentary, Joshua: Teenager vs Superpower, which launches this week on Netflix. As with Piscatella's debut outing, #chicagoGirl: The Social Network Takes on a Dictator (2013), the focus falls on a teenage rebel combating an implacable foe. But, while 19 year-old Chicago college student Ala'a Basatneh sat in her bedroom and used Facebook and YouTube to co-ordinate opponents of the Assad regime in Syria, 13 year-old Joshua Wong took to the streets of Hong Kong to challenge Beijing's bid to impose a national education curriculum on the Special Administrative Region in 2012.

As South China Morning Post contributor Jason Ng avers, Wong made a momentous impact because of his youth and media studies specialist Clay Skirky draws comparisons with Joan of Arc. Indeed, he had yet to be born when Britain ended a 150-year association by handing Hong Kong back to China on 1 July 1997. Martin Lee, who served in the Legislative Assembly, recalls the promise made by President Jiang Zemin to follow a `one country, two systems' policy that guaranteed the territory a 50-year transition period, during which all democratic institutions would remain in place, along with freedom of the press and the right of assembly. And Ng and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom remember being surprised that little changed during the first phase of the transition.

Then, in 2012, Beijing announced the National Education scheme that was designed to dissuade students from thinking in an unpatriotic way. However, Wong detested this effort to impose nationalist sentiments on the former colonists and he founded Scholarism as a focus for teenage protest against what he considered to be a form of brainwashing. He found an able deputy in Christian Fellowship classmate Derek Lam, who proved an ace recruiting sergeant by invoking the spirit of Bruce Lee and suggesting that the best way to defeat Darth Vader was by training Jedi.

As CY Leung was sworn in as the new chief executive in March 2012, however, it became apparent to other activists groups that Wong's campaign could enable them to prepare for opposing other Communist dictates. But, when Wong met Leung at a Facebook event, he was dismayed by the CEO's dismissive attitude to Scholarism and began handing out flyers and holding impromptu street corner sessions to try and raise the movement's profile so that he would be forced to take it seriously. In May, Wong organised the first rally and was encouraged by the turn out. But the interviews he gave at the end of the day went viral on YouTube and 100 new members signed up, among them Agnes Chow, who quickly came to respect the focus and energy of her 14 year-old leader.

Radio stations also began clamouring for interviews and Wong's profile raised sufficiently for the police to monitor Scholarism's meetings. Law professor Michael Davis and historian Steve Tsang note how Hong Kongers were hesitant about provoking Beijing, as they didn't want a repeat of the Tianenman Square Massacre in June 1989. But Wong was fearless and organised a camp in the area in front of the administration's headquarters and Leung was forced to come to Civic Square to meet him in front of the waiting media. He hoped to use the exchange as a PR exercise. But, as the rain began hammering down, the older generation felt shamed by the commitment of youth and the support for the campaign began to snowball.

Day Four of the protest marked the first day of the National Education scheme and Wong was encouraged by the sudden arrival of a large crowd to join in chanting slogans against the reform. Leung again felt duty-bound to put in an appearance, but the black clothing protest on Day 9 brought an angrier mob of 120,000 on to the concourse and, on 8 September, Leung amended the act to let schools decide whether to accept the curriculum or not. But, while his parents proudly show off their scrapbook and Wong enthuses that student power forced Beijing to back down, Chew admits that she was as nervous as she was excited.

Her fears started to be realised soon after Xi Jinping became Chinese president in 2013 and he started putting the squeeze on Hong Kong. The various experts note that this provoked fears that the universal suffrage that had been promised in 1997 would never be delivered and law professor Benny Tai responded by founding the Occupy Central Movement and organising a referendum that saw 800,000 people voting to send a message of President Xi. But, in August 2014, he called Tai's bluff by agreeing to let the populace vote, but only for pre-approved candidates.

In order to reinforce the occupation of the Central commercial district on 1 October, Wong calls a student strike and Nathan Law helps with the planning. After four days of marches and sit-ins, Wong decided that the crowd of 1500 at a night rally on 26 September would be sufficient to ensure another raid on Civic Square. But the police were ready for them and Wong, Lam and Law were among those arrested. Calls for their release were swift and the latter pair were free within four hours. Wong remained in custody for 46 hours, but his scaling the fence outside the government offices prompted Tai to launch Occupy With Love and Peace before his planned launch date and Wong admits that he has a better understanding of how social movements work than his older comrade.

Dressed in riot gear, the police responded with tear gas. But, while there were casualties, the protesters were not intimidated, as they used umbrellas to fend off the smoke. Their numbers grew on the second day and a chopper shot shows the extent of the turnout, as the umbrella became a symbol of defiance and other areas of the city came out in sympathy, including Mong Kok. This neighbourhood held firm for 61 days until business leaders began to lose patience with falling profits and 150 were arrested as the police helped bailiffs tear down the street camps. Once again, Wong was singled out, as he had now become the international figurehead for the movement and he exploited his celebrity by going on hunger strike to keep the protest alive after Tai handed himself over in the hope of preventing bloodshed. After five days, Wong had become so weak that he was forced to eat and Leung told the press that all forms of resistance in Hong Kong would be futile.

The sense of failure after 79 days crushed Wong and his supporters. But they came out in force when he was summoned to a police station in January 2015 and made a defiant victory gesture as he rode the upward elevator. By the end of the year, he was facing possible prison time for a number of charges relating to unlawful assembly. But Hong Kong had a new concern, as five booksellers disappeared for selling volumes critical of Xi's increasingly dictatorial regime. Aware that they were possible targets, Wong, Lam and Chew decided to disband Scholarism and announce plans to form a new political party to run in the elections for the Legislative Council.

Following a farewell party for Scholarism (at which Wong proved to he hopeless at video games), he launched Demosisto in April 2016, with Lam, Chew and Law in the ranks. They believe fervently that Xi is scared of the younger generation (the name `Joshua Wong' has been blocked on all Mainland search engines) and that they have what it takes to fight to the end. Despite being found guilty of unlawful assembly, Wong was spared jail and he was able to celebrate Law being elected to the Council. He hopes to run himself in 2020 - when he is old enough.

Despite providing a cogent account of the Umbrella Movement, this engaged and energetic documentary rather wastes its unique access to Joshua Wong by failing to disclose much about his personality or his relationships with his fellow freedom fighters, one of whom describes him as `robotic'. His commitment to the cause is clearly unwavering and Piscatella and editor Matthew Sultan make effective use of news reports, social media posts, phone clips and original footage to piece together his involvement in a pair of epochal campaigns with a pugnacity and sense of urgency that reflects Wong's modus operandi. But we learn little about a remarkable young man, who appears nerdishly devoid of charisma until he addresses a crowd or confronts an adversary.

It might have been interesting to hear from classmates not engaged in Scholarism or from some of the teachers whose lessons Wong was missing in order to crusade for their democratic rights. Similarly, it could have been instructive to assess the leadership dynamic, as it's sometimes possible to detect a little tension in Law's reflections on Wong as an iconic figurehead. Otherwise, the talking heads make sense without resorting to hyperbole in putting the astutely indomitable Wong's achievement in its wider political context, while Piscatella ably conveys the David and Goliath nature of the pro-democracy struggle and the very real danger that Wong faces from Xi's increasingly impatient authoritarianism. But, as a character study, this barely scratches the surface.

1) THE DEATH OF LOUIS XIV.

Originally conceived as an installation for the Pompidou Centre, Albert Serra's The Death of Louis XIV is closer in tone to Roberto Rossellini's The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966) than the BBC costume romp, Versailles. Moreover, despite sharing the theme of mortality with Story of My Death (2013), which saw Casanova encounter Dracula during a journey through Transylvania, the action errs more towards the droll detachment of Serra's first two features, Honour of the Knights (2006) and Birdsong (2008), which respectively revisited the stories of Don Quixote and the Three Wise Men. But, by working with a star for the first time - and one who became the face of the nouvelle vague after his teenage innocence was captured in the climactic freeze frame of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) - Serra adds a layer of self-reflexivity that makes this feel more like a commentary on the history and future of French cinema than an authentic recreation of a 300 year-old moment in time.

Originally conceived as an installation for the Pompidou Centre, The Death of Louis XIV is closer in tone to Roberto Rossellini's The Rise to Power of Louis XIV (1966) than the BBC costume romp, Versailles. Moreover, despite sharing the theme of mortality with Story of My Death (2013), which saw Casanova encounter Dracula during a journey through Transylvania, the action errs more towards the droll detachment of Serra's first two features, Honour of the Knights (2006) and Birdsong (2008), which respectively revisited the stories of Don Quixote and the Three Wise Men. But, by working with a star for the first time - and one who became the face of the nouvelle vague after his teenage innocence was captured in the climactic freeze frame of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) - Serra adds a layer of self-reflexivity that makes this feel more like a commentary on the history and future of French cinema than an authentic recreation of a 300 year-old moment in time.

Following a gentle wheelchair trip around the gardens at Versailles in the summer of 1715, Louis XIV (Jean-Pierre Léaud) returns to the palace to view the evening's revels from his couch. The camera keeps his profile in a tight close-up, with the shallow depth of field suggesting that the king no longer cares too much about the blurred figures milling around the salon. Indeed, he is much more interested in the dogs he has not seen for 20 days because Dr Fagon (Patrick d'Assumçao) disapproves. But, when three young ladies come to request his company, Louis remembers the duties of the métier he undertook to neutralise his feuding nobility and summons Blouin (Marc Susini) the valet to fetch his hat. He sits up to perch it on his voluminous wig and doffs it to the curtseying beauties, who applaud his civility.

Fagon uses a box of china eyeballs and a magnifying glass to examine Louis's pupils and declares that donkey's milk would help him regain his strength. He also indulges in a little gossip about two of the female courtiers after Louis inquires about their naked bodies. But, while he recommends them both, he suggests one is a little more discreet if Louis was thinking about amusing himself with them. However, his public role always takes priority and he manages a couple of spoonfuls of boiled egg and a small biscotti to reassure the assembled aristocrats that his appetite has returned.

In spite of his indisposition, affairs of state still revolve around the Sun King and he is shown plans for some coastal fortifications by the Duc d'Orleans (Francis Montaulard) and promises to give the choice of stone his careful consideration. But the sheer effort involved in walking a few steps while leaning on the arms of his servants leaves Louis exhausted and he wakes in the night with an excruciating pain in his leg that causes him to throw back the sheets and call for water. When an inexperienced footman ventures into his bedroom, Louis chides him for not bringing a crystal glass and bellows for Blouin before wearing himself out.

Nevertheless, the next morning, Louis insists on hearing mass in his chapel and he is helped into his wheelchair. Left alone with Fagon, Blouin asks if the king's sugary diet is hindering his recovery and joins with Mareschal (Bernard Belin) in suggesting that they invite doctors from the Sorbonne to examine him. But Fagon quotes Molière in dismissing them as charlatans who are better looking after books than patients. But he is concerned by Louis growing incapacity and the agony he endures while having ointment and bandages applied to his game leg. He cancels a meeting with Le Pelletier (Alain Lajoinie) so that the king can rest, but he senses a growing disquiet within the king's inner circle after Louis gets ready to meet his ministers and then decides he needs to rest.

Fagon allows him to keep a caged bird beside the bed. But, as he and Blouin try to nap in an antechamber, he is annoyed when the valet asserts that birds carry germs after he had disobeyed his orders by letting the king see his hounds. He dismisses the theories of Blouin's mother and warns him against challenging his authority by trying to smuggle in Dr Lebrun (Vicenç Altaió), who has a reputation among Fagon's friends in Marseilles for being a quack. In a bid to keep him away and aware that the black marks on Louiss leg signify the onset of gangrene, Fagon consents to letting five physicians from the Sorbonne (Olivier Cadiot, Philippe Crespeau, Alain Reynaud, Richard Plano and José Wallenstein) examine him. They mutter among themselves that things appear grave, but promise their sovereign that they will do everything they can for him.

Louis rallies on hearing drums and oboes from Saint-Louis and Madame de Maintenon (Irène Silvagni) suggests that some Italian musicians come to play for her lover after he struggles to swallow his broth. Père Le Tellier (Jacques Henric) concurs, but the king feels nauseated by the stench in the room and wishes he could vomit. Yet he recovers his poise in time for a visit from his five year-old great-grandson (Aksil Meznad). He urges him to be his own king and not to succumb to his own fondness for war. As he hugs the boy, he reminds him to keep the people faithful to God and sinks back on his pillow, telling his rosary, as he closes his eyes.

During the night, however, the pain in his leg is so extreme that Blouin is woken by Louis's moans. He insists on confessing to Le Tellier and Fagon is so distressed by the black marks on the skin that he allows Lebrun to administer his elixir, even though he is certain its mix of bull's sperm and blood, frog fat and distilled brain fluid will prove useless. Indeed, he orders Lebrun to drink a draft to prove it has no ill-effects and asks about his qualifications, as he shows the empty glass to the Sorbonne masters. Yet, even though Louis blenches on tasting the liquid and refuses more than a sip, Lebrun insists that his health and youth are returning, as the put-upon monarch drifts off to sleep.

The following morning, Louis seems calmer and Fagon wonders whether they potion might have worked after all. However, the Sorbonne scholars scoff at Lebrun when he explains that the patients respond better to natural remedies than human intervention because of the connection between the body and the earth. They remind him that they have cured the king of past problems, including syphilis, and shakes their heads in disbelief when he compares the disease to roses in wintertime and cites Arnau de Vilanova's On the Physiology of Love as his bible.

While they expose Lebrun, the Duc d'Orleans returns to Louis's bedside to persuade him to finance the defence plans. However, he is interrupted by Cardinal de Rohan (Philippe Dion), who has been summoned to administer the last rites. However, Louis reassures him that he merely felt dizzy and is not yet at death's door. Nevertheless, Madame de Maintenon and the chancellor (François Bosselut) help the king burn some documents that he does not wish to leave to posterity. Blouin burns his fingers, but he is still present when Rohan comes to celebrate mass and receives communion along with Le Tellier. Louis, however, has a biscotti and some wine from Alicante, as the Kyrie is sung.

Having asked that his heart is mummified like his father's was before him, Louis asks for a pot of hot-cold poultry. Fagon and the other doctors are puzzled by the request, but take it as a good sign. But they have no idea what he is trying to say when he starts to babble in a language they don't understand and the close up of the king's blackened foot suggests that his time is drawing nigh. Eager to ensure that they cannot be blamed for failing to save him (as they wonder whether they should have amputated the leg), they agree to declare Lebrun a scoundrel and recommend that the king has him thrown into the Bastille. They retire to allow Rohan to give him Extreme Unction and he forgives Louis's sins in hoping that he can depart in peace.

After repeated attempts to tempt the king with food and wine, Fagon presses a small bottle to his lips. Orleans, who will act as regent, stands beside the bed, as Fagon announces that Louis has died. The assembled courtiers shed tears from a combination of distress and decorum, as the doctors conduct an instant autopsy. They marvel as the size of the deceased's intestine and detect further evidence of gangrene in the stomach. Fagon apologises for not being advanced enough to have saved Louis. But, as he looks into the lens, he promises that they will do better next time.

Working with three digital cameras and a restricted budget, Serra and Jonathan Ricquebourg match the efforts of Stanley Kubrick and John Alcott in Barry Lyndon (1975) in creating visual magic from a limited light source. In particular, they capture the rich textures and the sumptuous reds and golds in Sebastian Vogler's sets and Nina Avramovic's costumes. Hair stylist Antoine Mancini also merits mention for the astonishing wig sported by the sublime Jean-Pierre Léaud, who delivers in relentless close-up a display of subtle wit and faded glory that is all the more remarkable for its selfless lack of vanity. Whether drawing on his last reserves of divine right regality or acquiescing in the inevitability of his human fallibility, Léaud evokes memories of his seminal 60s performances as Truffaut's alter ego, Antoine Doinel, and his later reinvention as Jean-Luc Godard's subversive everyman. And, in the process, he allows the Catalan Serra to pay homage to a form of personal film-making that is in grave danger of being eclipsed in an industry ever more concerned with the bottom line.

Patrick d'Assumçao and Marc Susini provide wonderfully natural support as Fagon and Blouin, while Vicenç Altaió limns Fabrice Luchini at his most feckless as the despicable Lebrun. But, while Serra and co-scenarist Thierry Lounas (who have based their script on contemporary medical records and the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon) manage to say a lot in a few words about the Bourbon court, they leave plenty of space for Jordi Ribas and Anne Dupouy to pick up every telling sound, from the panting and chirruping of Louis's pets to the sonorous ticking of clocks and the increasing shallowness of the expiring ruler's breathing, as his 72-year reign draws inexorably to its close.