Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 21/1/2018)

The late Johnny Hallyday makes his penultimate screen appearance in Guillaume Canet's Rock`n'Roll, a celebrity satire that seeks to be self-deprecating, but keeps slipping back into smugness. Canet plays himself alongside real-life partner Marion Cotillard, as a fortysomething actor facing the awful prospect of his stellar lustre fading after he is rebuffed by starlet Camille Rowe during the making of a movie in which he is cast as a middle-aged priest. With Cotillard preoccupied with perfecting her Québecois accent for a Xavier Dolan drama, the increasingly despondent Canet resorts to cosmetic surgery in a doomed bid to hold back time. Possibly inspired by the failure of his English-language debut, Blood Ties (2013), after being vaunted for Tell No One (2006) and Little White Lies (2010), this is a laudable bid to examine the personal and professional insecurities facing ageing (and gauchely egotistical) actors. But Canet and co-writers Philippe Lefebvre and Rodolphe Lauga clutter the action with in-jokes and hommages that lack snap. Canet and Cotillard send themselves up sportingly enough, but the gag has worn thin by the grotesque denouement.

Gilles Marchand has a fine track record as a screenwriter, but has yet to prove himself behind the camera. Coming after Who Killed Bambi? (2003) and Black Heaven (2010), his latest outing, Dans la Forêt/Into the Forest, sees him reunite with Dominik Moll, for whom he wrote the much-admired thriller, Harry, He's Here to Help (2000). The story couldn't be more straightforward, as Jérémie Elkaïm persuades ex-partner Sophie Quinton to take their sons, Timothé Vom Dorp and Théo Van de Voorde, on a camping trip in the woods outside Stockholm. But, as Van de Voorde has already told psychiatrist Mireille Perrier that he has had a premonition that things are going to go badly, it's only a matter of time before he becomes convinced that the manic Elkaïm is up to no good. It hardly helps that his older brother teases him about Elkaïm not being their real father or that he keeps having visions of a man with a gaping maw (Mika Zimmermann) prowling around the lakeside cabin. Yet, having whipped up plenty of Stephen King-style dread, Marchand and Moll seem to lose inspiration and many will find the finale frustrating. Cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie ably captures the sense of woodland menace, while Van de Voorde has an irresistible wide-eyed innocence that exposes the excesses of Elkaïm's crazed refusal to return to civilisation.

Best known as founder members of the rap combo, La Rumeur, Mohamed Bourokba (aka Hamé) and Ekoué Labitey hit the headlines in 2002 when Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully sued the former for libel. But, away from the limelight, the pair have been developing as film-makers, with the teleplay, Ink (2010), and the short, This Path Ahead (2012), preparing them for their feature bow, Les Derniers Parisiens/Paris Prestige. Edgily photographed with a restless handheld camera by Lubomir Bakchev, the action is centred on the Pigalle club to which Reda Kateb repairs after a two-year stretch behind bars. Co-owner Slimane Dazi wants nothing to do with his sibling, however, as he knows that trouble always follows in his wake. But, while he refuses Kateb's request to host a party to announce his return to the neighbourhood and get himself in with bigwig Bakary Keita, Dazi develops a crush on his brother's social worker, Mélanie Laurent. The area around the Moulin Rouge has always been renowned for its lowlife ambience and Hamé and Ekoué capture the seething sense of criminous opportunism that pervades the Maghrebi and sub-Saharan cotieries. But, while this neo-noir is strong on atmosphere, its macho scams and showdowns seem to have changed little since the days of Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura.

Small-town provincial France is rarely depicted on screen, but the debuting quartet of Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, Marielle Gautier and Hugo P. Thomas take an unflinching look at the daily doings in a Normandy backwater in Willy 1er/Willy the 1st. Partly inspired by the life of non-professional star Daniel Vannet, this episodic saga follows 50 year-old Willy after he decides to relocate to Caudebec after his parents threaten to put him in a home following the suicide of his twin brother (also played by Vannet in transluscent form). Guided by social worker Catherine (Noémie Lvovsky), Willy slowly comes to terms with independence and his new job at a supermarket. But the locals aren't always friendly and his cause is hardly helped by his friendship with another Willy (Romain Léger), a peroxided cross-dressing workmate with plans to emigrate to Germany. As graduates of Luc Besson's film school, the debutants show a keen appreciation of recent European screen styles, while cinematographer Thomas Balmès makes the most of the striking scenery. Well supported by Lvovsky and Léger, Vannet (who was illiterate until the age of 45) also impresses, as the genial lug struggling to fit in and realise his touchingly small dreams. Yet, while its insights into village insularity are well meant, this occasionally feels self-conscious in its left-field worldview.

Le Fémis graduate Léa Mysius returns to the Medoc coast of her childhood for Ava, which she has co-scripted with cinematographer Paul Guilhaume, whose adept manipulation of light, focus and colour brings an imposing visual confidence to a story that steadily descends into melodrama. As 13 year-old Noée Abita is suffering from a condition known as retinitis pigmentosa that will eventually render her blind, single mother Laure Calamy takes her to the seaside with the intention of having the best summer ever. However, she gets distracted by beach snack vendor Daouda Diakhaté, leaving Abita to be drawn into the orbit of Juan Cano, a Roma boy she meets after befriending his dog. Something of a rogue, Cano takes Abita on a gun-toting crime spree that leads to the cops tracking the duo down to a floodlit wedding. Shot in 35mm to convey Abita's fading eyesight, this is a combatively played and creditably frank discussion of alienated youth and the rising tide of right-wing sentiment in post-millennial France. But, despite channelling the spirit of Catherine Breillat and Andrea Arnold, Mysius allows her conspicuous stylistic choices to overwhelm the considered social realism of the early scenes.

Having earned an Oscar nomination for his animated short, Henry (2011), Canadian actor-cum-presenter Yan England makes his feature bow with 1:54, a well-intentioned study of homophobic bullying that always feels like a hot topic TV-movie. Although besotted with Québecois classmate Robert Naylor and keen to help him with his science experiments, 16 year-old Antoine Olivier Pilon fails to stand by him when Naylor is bullied by preening jock Lou-Pascal Tremblay. Heartbroken when Naylor commits suicide after outing himself, Pilon decides to exact his revenge on Tremblay the only way he can by resuming the athletics career he abandoned after his mother's death and breaking the 800m record targeted by Tremblay and coach Patrice Godin. There's an undeniable frisson, as Pilon steels himself to confide his feelings to Naylor. But this disappears once the focus shifts to the track rivalry and Pilon's growing friendship with Sophie Nélisse, who is happy to pose as his girlfriend in order to relieve the pressure of being stigmatised. Best known for his performance in Xavier Dolan's Mommy (2014), Pilon has presence. But this predictable saga makes too few demands on his talent.

The contentious issue of honour killing has been examined in a number of documentaries and fictional features and Stephan Streker has little new to add in Noces/A Wedding. Set in the Belgian suburb where traditional Pakistani father Babak Karimi owns a grocery shop, the story opens unexpectedly with 18 year-old Lina El Arabi debating whether to have an abortion after breaking up with boyfriend Bilel Ghommidh. Karimi and wife Neena Kulkarni are surprisingly supportive, but are also keen for her to marry Harmandeep Palminder, whom she only knows from Skype. Best friend Alice de Lencquesaing wants El Arabi to live her own life and encourages her romance with motorbike mechanic Zacharie Chasseraiud. But, while he loves his younger sister, brother Sébastien Houbani thinks she should obey their father and tragedy ensues when the pair fall out. Despite trying to present Karimi as a decent family man - his heated exchange with old friend (and De Lencquesaing's father) Olivier Gourmet is the film's highlight - Streker struggles to keep the clichés and contrivances at bay, with the result that the gravity of the situation seems trivialised and the estimable ensemble is left straining for effect.

Belgian star Virginie Efira received César and Lumière nominations for her performance in Julie Triet's genre-tweaking comedy, Victoria/In Bed With Victoria. She plays a lawyer who discovers that ex-husband Laurent Poitrenaux is trying to ruin her reputation after she agrees to defend old friend Melvil Poupaud on a charge of stabbing girlfriend Alice Daquet and hires reformed drug dealer Vincent Lacoste to babysit her young daughters, Liv Harari and Jeanne Arra-Beilinger. Brimming over with incidents and complications, this may not be a particularly engaging romcom, but it's certainly intriguing in its attempts to put a revisionist spin on the old battle of the sexes format. Following on from her improvised political satire, Age of Panic (2013), Triet has created something of contradictory anti-heroine, who reaches her happy ending as much by luck as by judgement. But, while not everyone watching will be entirely convinced that she has earned her fade-out embrace, Efira's interaction with the adorably mischievous Harari and Arra-Beilinger ensures that she deserves the benefit of any doubt.

Québecois first-timer Éric Gravel serves up a road movie with a difference in Crash Test Aglaé. When the owners of the car factory where she works as a crash tester announce that they are moving operations to India, workaholic India Hair accepts a transfer and sets out for the subcontinent in a creaky Citroën Visa with co-workers Julie Depardieu and Yolande Moreau, who have their own reasons for needing a change of scenery. Filmed in five countries and filled with diversions including a fruitless trek to company headquarters in Poland and encounters with a transvestite and a hospitably impoverished family, this is played with gusto by its estimable leads. Hair particularly stands out as the psychologically inflexible naif, who hopes that her passion for her job and an interest in cricket will help her settle into her new surroundings. But, while he keeps this eccentric odyssey moving, Gravel is more concerned with the somewhat contrived personalities of the travelling companions than he is with such matters arising as the impact of globalisation on the ongoing recession, the decline of union power and contrasting attitudes to the plight of the economic migrant.

The latter theme recurs in Maryam Goormaghtigh's pseudo-documentary, Avant la Fin de l'Été/Before Summer Ends, which accompanies three Iranians on a road trip across France before one of their number returns to Tehran. Known only as Arash, Hossein and Ashkan, the boys enjoy the trappings of everyday life that would be denied to them back home, in particular drinking beer and ogling girls. But Arash is determined to leave Paris after a five-year study period of study and his buddies hope that a final fling might just persuade him to stay, especially after they hook up with flirtatious musicians Charlotte and Michèle. Contrasting the pleasures of exile (including the prospect of missing out on military service) with wistfully remembered home comforts, this is far from a nostalgic wallow, as the triumvirate are forced to confront a number of harsh realities about life at home and abroad. But Goormaghtigh (in only her second feature after Le Fantôme de Jenny M, 2009) coaxes relaxed `performances' out of her friends, who improvised throughout the two-week expedition around the Midi. The results are not always riveting. But the hulking Arash, the poetic Hossein and the sex-mad Ashkan make genial travelling companions and there is much to like about Marc Siffert's score.

Making his second feature, music video specialist Olivier Babinet creates his own brand of hybrid documentary in Swagger. which centres on a housing project in the Parisian suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois to assess the hopes, fears and dreams of 11 youths living on the margins of society. Photographed by ace Finnish cinematographer Timo Salminen, this mixture of vox pop and stylised dramatisation takes note of the difficulties facing banelieue kids. But this is anything but a sober-sided socio-political tract, as Babinet encourages Aïssatou Dia, Mariyama Diallo, Abou Fofana, Nazario Giordano, Astan Gonle, Naïla Hanafi, Aaron N'Kiambi and Elvis Zannou to express themselves freely, whether they are discussing colonial history, racial prejudice, immigrant insularity, school, friendship, romance or the future. One girl dreams of winning the lottery, another about her family being shot, while another teen envisages a neighbourhood once known as a riot hot spot being attacked by aliens. Elsewhere, fashionista Régis N'Kissi imagines himself strutting his stuff to adoring gazes, while Salimata Gonle wonders what it might be like to be Barack Obama dropping bombs on his enemries and the umbrella-twirling Paul Turgot loses himself in a Gene Kelly-like dance routine. A few more films as committed and compassionate as this one and Marine Le Pen wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Despite its title, Antonin Peretjatko's Lo Loi de la Jungle/Struggle for Life is a cornball comedy that takes its inspiration from an infamous bridge-building project that was designed to link French Guyana to Brazil. Keen to leave La Patrie to avoid a pesky tax official, thirtysomething schlub Vincent Macaigne accepts a posting from the Bureau of Standards to supervise the construction of an artificial ski resort in the Amazon rainforest. With boss Mathieu Amalric clearly incapable of keeping his eye on the ball, Macaigne finds himself being ferried around by Vimala Pons, a forestry engineer who resents being treated as a dogsbody. But her initial disdain gradually disappears after the pair get lost in the jungle and they have to rely on their wits to survive. Billed as a romp in the Jerry Lewis mould, this could easily be a companion piece to Éric Judor's equally unfunny Problemos, as it mixes fish-out-of-water slapstick with broad swipes at bureaucratic incompetence, postcolonial indifference and institutional chauvinism. It's slickly made, with the gags (some of which are disarmingly surreal) coming thick and fast. But few will be amused by the sight of the supposedly poised Pons throwing herself at her hirsutely hapless companion.

Complementing the feature slate are a pair of genuine classics, François Truffaut's Le Dernier Métro/The Last Metro (1980) and Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde's C'est Arrivé C'est Arrivé près de Chez Vous/Man Bites Dog (1992). Set during the Nazi occupation of Paris, the former centres on the relationship that develops between Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu when she casts him in a new play after taking over the running of the Théâtre de Montmartre after her Jewish husband, Heinz Bennent, goes into hiding. The former is a masterly monochrome mockumentary that chronicles the crimes of Poelvoorde's seemingly urbane, but actually misogynist and xenophobic serial killer, who has a penchant for bumping off postmen and the elderly.

There's also a familiar title at the head of the shorts list, as François Ozon's Une Robe d'Été/A Summer Dress (1996), which reveals how a chance tryst between Frédéric Mangenot and Spanish tourist Lucia Sanchez improves his love life with boyfriend, Sébastien Charles. All of the short films are free to watch, so why not feast on Axel Courtière's Belle à Croquer/Delectable You; Tristan Lhomme's Lazare; François Paquay's Le Scénariste/The Screenwriter; Emmanuel Marre's Le Film de l'Été/The Summer Movie; Romane Guéret and Lise Akoka's Chasse Royale; Antoine de Bary's L'Enfance d'un Chef/Birth of a Leader; Vincent `Winshluss' Paronnaud and Denis Walgenwitz's La Mort, Père & Fils/Death, Dad & Son; Holy Fatma's Please Love Me Forever; Morgane Polanski's La Caresse/The Stroke; Mélanie Laleu's Noyade Interdite/No Drowning; Aude Léa Rapin's Que Vive l'Empreur/Long Live the Emperor; Pier-Luc Latulippe's Le Goût du Vietnam/A Taste of Vietnam; Momoko Seto's Planet Sigma; Marietta Ren's Phallaina; and Simon Bouisson's Wei or Die.