Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 30/6/2011)

Following the failure of the Green Revolution, the strict codes dictating life in Iran have been quietly reinforced while the world has been distracted by the Arab Spring. Asghar Farhadi examines their use and abuse in A Separation, the first feature from the Islamic republic to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Sparked by a divorce plea, a dereliction of care and a miscarriage, this densely plotted and morally complex drama exposes fissures on several levels of Iranian society.

When bank clerk Peyman Moadi refuses to emigrate, wife Leila Hatami moves back with mother Shirin Yazdanbakhsh and begins proceedings for a divorce and custody of their 10 year-old daughter, Sarina Farhadi. Frustrated by losing control in his own household, Moadi hires Sareh Bayat to look after his father, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, whose advancing Alzheimer's means that he requires constant supervision.

Unknown to Moadi, the devout Bayat is pregnant and has to bring four year-old daughter Kimia Hosseini to the apartment, as she has not told conservative husband Shahab Hosseini that she is working alone with a man who is not a relative. However, he finds out about the arrangement after Bayat is rushed to hospital after Moadi pushes her into the corridor after discovering that she allowed Shahbazi to escape on to the street. Moadi is sufficiently concerned to come to the emergency room. But the unemployed Hosseini takes this as a sign of bourgeois guilt and, when Bayat loses her baby, he presses charges of manslaughter and Moadi counters with accusations of wilful neglect.

All now turns on whether Moadi knew that Bayat was pregnant. He insists that her chador had hidden any physical manifestations and denies overhearing a conversation about gynaecologists between Bayat and Farhadi's teacher, Merila Zare'i. But, as judge Babak Karimi tries to ascertain the truth, it becomes increasingly clear that lies are being told on both sides.

Using Mahmood Kalari's restless camera to place equal emphasis on what is and isn't said, Farhadi reveals the envy and suspicion that pervades a nation that is nowhere near as united as its leaders would have the wider world believe. He also considers notions of justice, honour, truth and duty and how patriarchal predominance in both the domestic and judicial spheres affects the status of the wives and daughters caught up in the show of strength between males divided by class, cultural inclination and attitude to religion.

The performances are excellent - with Moadi and Hosseini and Hatami and Bayat sharing the Berlin acting awards. The director's daughter also impresses as the intelligent tweenager whose loyalties lie with her father until she realises that he has lied to her and the glance she exchanges with Kimia Hosseini in the courthouse corridor sums up the sorry situation. But Bayat stands out, as the clash between piety and poverty prompts her to deceive her husband and bring a law suit she suspects may be false. Indeed, the godliness that persuades her to call a helpline to seek advice about washing Shahbazi after he soils himself ultimately prevails when Hatami asks her to swear on the Qu'ran before making a blood money payment.

Some may find the plotline a touch melodramatic. But those familiar with documentaries like Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini's Divorce Iranian Style (1998) will recognise the authenticity of what might seem legal contrivances, while Farhadi's insights into the invidious position occupied by the secular middle-class reaffirm those in such trenchant earlier outings as Fireworks Wednesday (2006) and About Elly (2009). Consequently, this is both a compelling piece of storytelling and an astute assessment of the problems that ordinary people are forced to deal with on a daily basis while the theocratic hierarchy continues to deny they even exist.

Jan Svankmajer once had to operate under equally restrictive conditions in the former Czechoslovakia. Now, however, he has complete freedom of expression and is allowed to experiment with both content and form. Making his first feature in five years, Svankmajer makes audacious use of photographic cut-outs in creating the real and dream worlds experienced by Václav Helsus in Surviving Life (2010), an uncompromisingly complex, but surprisingly accessible psychological satire that succeeds in telling a rattlingly good yarn while also commenting upon recent Czech history. Dismissed in some quarters for lacking the macabre humour of earlier outings, this still has a sharp edge to match its surreal incisiveness.

The picture opens with Svankmajer explaining how a lack of funding influenced his aesthetic choices and apologising for producing a comedy that not everyone will find funny. However, it soon becomes clear that this is not only a film of deceptive intellectual depth, but also of astonishing creative ingenuity, as familiar symbols and fresh concepts jostle for space in a dystopic fantasy bursting with ideas and wit.

Middle-aged and mediocre, Václav Helsus has been married to Zuzana Krónerová for 25 years and seems content enough, even though she keeps nagging him about buying lottery tickets. He works with little enthusiasm with bored colleague Marcel Nemec for the tyrannical Karel Brozek, whose snarling sidekick has a dog's head on a human body. But everything changes when Helsus has a dream about Klára Issová and becomes so besotted with her that he begins seeking ways in which he can spend more time asleep and gain greater control over his subconscious thoughts.

Having eaten too much rich food before bedtime, Helsus makes himself sick and doctor Frantisek Polata recommends a visit to psychiatrist Daniela Bakerova. He also finds a book on dreams in antiquarian Jan Pocepický's shop and rents a shabby room from landlord Pavel Nový so he can slumber in peace while sucking the handle of his dead mother's handbag. However, the more he dreams, the more troubling the scenario becomes and the portraits of Freud and Jung on Bakerova's office wall begin fighting with each other as she debates whether Helsus is suffering from an Oedipus Complex or from an over-assertive anima.

Helsus himself has little clue what is going on, as Issová keeps changing her name each time they meet and he has to compete for her attention with a boorish husband (who bears an uncanny resemblance to himself) and a young son (Jakub Frydrych). But rather than rejoicing at the elimination of these rivals, Helsus becomes increasingly guilt-stricken and, as Issová suggests they have a child together, he finds himself being browbeaten by superego Emília Doseková, who looks like a bag lady, but lays claim to being any number of deities, historical heroes and theoretical titans.

Eventually, Krónerová becomes suspicious and she discovers that not only has Helsus lost his job, but he has also won 90 million crowns in forged banknotes on the lottery and has been communing on a regular basis with both Issová and Bakerova. Thus, when she gives her husband an ultimatum, he has to decide once and for all whether he wishes to exist in the real world or in his imagination. But it takes the intervention of photographer Miroslav Vrba for Helsus to understand finally about his relationship with his parents and the significance of his mother (also Issová) teaching him to swim in a pool of red water.

Whether it involves huge bouncing apples, ravenous snakes, naked women with chicken heads, giant tongues French kissing across a street or buildings with applauding hands, there is so much going on in this dazzling reverie inspired by one of Svankmajer's own dreams that it's impossible not to admire its ceaseless ambition, acuity and artistry. Constructed from enactment and decoupage, the performances are splendid, as are Juraj Galvánek and Jan Ruzicka's cinematography, Ivo Spalj's sound mix and Aleksandr Glazunov and Jan Kalinov's score. Animators Eva Jakoubková, Martin Kublák and Jaroslav Mrázek also deserve enormous credit. But it's Svankmajer's auteuristic individuality as writer, production designer and director that makes this so idiosyncratic, compelling and accomplished.

The manner in which the disparate details of Helsus's dreams slot into place is as slick as any master detective's case summation, while there's an unforced canniness about the equation of his parents with the authoritarian powers that shaped Czech destiny. But even those unfamiliar with the psychological and allegorical aspects can still enjoy the boldness, inventiveness and vibrancy of the storytelling and acknowledge the visionary brilliance of its technical proficiency.

Despite sounding like a creature feature in the Godzilla mould, Jessica Oreck's Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is actually a quirky study of Japan's obsession with entomology. A docent at the Museum of Natural History in New York City rather than a film-maker, Oreck is as keen to encourage Westerners to revise their attitude to insects as she is to celebrate their impact on Nipponese culture. But, in conjunction with anatomist Takeshi Yoro and cinematographer Sean Price Williams, she has created a considered study that is as visually innovative as it is intellectually revealing.

Opening with shots of a young boy pestering his father to buy him a new beetle from the bewildering selection available at a downtown store, Oreck immediately captures the closeness that has arisen between the Japanese and insects of all kinds. Indeed, Williams's lens so magnifies the various kinds of coleoptera that he seems to entopomorphise the collectors as much as humanise the insects. But this is not a wildlife documentary or a sardonic study of Oriental eccentricity. Instead, it's an attempt to understand the mono no aware philosophy that celebrates the transience of beauty and the gently melancholy of its fading and suggests how beneficial its tenets could be if applied in less quiescent and contemplative societies.

Oreck relies heavily in this regard on Dr Yoro's commentary, which harks back to Jimmu, the fabled first emperor of Japan, who called his realm the `Isle of the Dragonflies'. It also comes forward to the 1800s when crickets became prized possessions and insects had a considerable influence on art and literature, with Yoro asserting the importance of beetles to the evolution of the haiku. However, Oreck backs up these theses with glorious images of makimono and kakemono paintings, as well as Buddhist temples and Shintoist shrines, which contrast amusingly with the pop culture references in manga, movies and video games and the sequence in which a beetle hunter goes in search of quarry like a cross between David Attenborough and Indiana Jones.

Yet, for all this aesthetic fascination and reverence, the fanciers rather behave like insects as they jostle for vantage points at bustling marketplaces that are packed with stalls showcasing their wares in plastic containers and vending machines. Thus, even where creatures inspiring such wonder, devotion and creativity are concerned, the consumerist instinct is still strong.