Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 23/6/2016)

Some of the biggest names in Italian cinema contributed to at least one of the peplum, spaghetti or poliziotteschi genres, including Fernando Di Leo, who set the tone for the latter with the Milieu Trilogy, comprising Caliber 9, Manhunt (both 1972) and The Boss (1973). Among his rivals was Sergio Sollima, who graduated from screenwriting to direct a couple of Agent 3S3 spy thrillers with George Ardisson before guiding Lee Van Cleef through the 1966 Western, The Big Gundown, and Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson through the gritty tale of hitman vengeance, Violent City (1970). Now, his son, Stefano Sollima, has taken over the mantle by following his excellent work on the TV series Romanzo Criminale (2008-10) and Gomorrah (2014-) with his 2012 feature bow, ACAB (All Cops Are Bastards), and his compelling sophomore outing, Suburra.

Adapted from a novel by journalist Carlo Bonino and crime writer Giancarlo De Cataldo (who respectively penned the sources material for ACAB and Romanzo Criminale), the action is set during a torrential downpour in 2011 and takes a few liberties with historical fact to provide its ominous backdrop to the `seven days leading up to the Apocalypse'. While Silvio Berlucsconi was finally forced to resign in November 2011, Benedict XVI didn't relinquish the throne of St Peter until February 2013. But why let such details stand in the way of a rattling good story?

Despite the crises paralysing the Church and state, a consortium of Roman crime families continues to negotiate a lucrative property deal in the seaside town of Ostia. Ruthless mob boss Claudio Amendola has plans to turn the development into the Italian Vegas and has the backing of corrupt politician, Pierfrancesco Favino. Despite starting out as a right-wing terrorist, Amendola has acquired a degree of respectability and has persuaded French cardinal Jean-Hugues Anglade to throw the Vatican Bank's weight behind the project.

In order to celebrate his success, Favino hires hookers Giulia Elettra Gorietti and Yulia Kolomiets for a kinky session in a swanky hotel room. Between couplings, the trio consume large amounts of drink and drugs and Kolomiets dies of an overdose. On realising she is underage, Favino panics and urges Gorietti to use her contacts to smuggle the body out of the hotel without anybody noticing. She calls on trusted Romany friend Giacomo Ferrara, who disposes of the corpse in the River Tiber.

Ferrara's family made its fortune from usury and he and brother Adamo Dionisi are more than ready to use violence to settle old scores. Among those indebted to the clan is Antonello Fassari, a pimp who arranges Bunga Bunga parties for the rich and powerful in his antique-crammed villa. When he realises that he will never be able to raise sufficient funds, Fassari kills himself and Dionisi makes grieving son Elio Germano an offer to cancel the account in return for the villa.

Always one to exploit an opportunity, Ferrara contacts Favino and threatens to expose his part in Kolomiets's demise unless he buys a consignment of drugs. But Favino has friends in high places and he secures the services of heavy Alessandro Borghi to teach Ferrara a lesson. Unfortunately, things get out of hand and Borghi ends up killing Ferrara and Dionisi vows to avenge his brother's murder. Borghi's father is a close confidante of Amendola and he is dispatched to the waterfront to intimidate the shopkeepers and other small business people who refuse to vacate their premises. However, he is distracted by the antics of his addict girlfriend, Greta Scarano.

Gorietti is frightened that she will be dragged into an inquiry into Kolomiets's disappearance and agrees with Favino to remain silent. She turns to Germano for protection and, when he discovers the full story, he informs Dionisi that he will give him the name of Ferrara's killer in exchange for the family villa. Dionisi sends henchmen to slay Borghi, but he survives the attempt and Amendola attempts to broker a peace deal between the families in order to protect his Ostia investment. However, Dionisi wants his cut of the action and terrorises Germano into betraying Gorietti in the hope of getting some inside information.

Desperate to save her own skin, she tells Dionisi that Favino is using his position to facilitate the property deal and he kidnaps Favino's son in the expectation of being given a sizeable percentage. However, Favino appeals to Amendola for help and, aware that the Vatican Bank is becoming nervous about the scandal starting to surround the project, he decides to eliminate Borghi and his family. But, while Borghi goes down in a hail of bullets, Scarano manages to hide.

Amendola contacts Dionisi about collaborating on the Ostia venture, even though he suspects he cannot be trusted. Germano comes to a similar realisation when Dionisi welches on his promise to return the villa and has his goons give Germano a salutary beating. A short time later, parliament gives its approval for the enterprise and Amendola, Dionisi and Favino are grateful to Anglade for his promise of backing. But, while they are luxuriating in their triumph, Kolomiets's body washes up on the riverbank and the furious Germano blames Dionisi for her death and unleashes his savage pitbull after reducing him to bloody pulp. Amendola also pays the ultimate price, as Scarano guns him down outside his mother's apartment, while the resignation of the prime minister leaves Favino at the mercy of the police, who remind him that he will lose his immunity once he is out of office.

Given that Netflix has commissioned a 10-part spin-off series, it's clear that this sinuously complex drama inspired by any number of true-life municipal corruption scandals, has already hit its mark. But, for all its modish box-set potential, this is a very much a throwback to the bullet-riddled glory days of Di Leo and Sollima padre. By taking its title from the district between the Viminal and Esquiline hills where ancient Romans went to let off a little steam, however, this also has its roots in the intrigues recorded in Latin tomes that are now primarily the concern of university scholars rather than pulp crime novelists.

Like Pasquale Catalano's electronic score (played by the French duo, M83) and Patrizio Marone's sharp editing, Paolo Carnera's evocative camerawork and Paki Meduri's inspired production design are very much at the service of Sollima's grand design to convey a sense of something rotten on every level of life in the rain-lashed Eternal City. Similarly, the screenplay by De Cataldo and Bonini, in conjunction with Sandro Petraglia and Stefano Rulli, is dedicated more to moving the principals between the major incidents without entangling them in too many loose ends. But, even though the characterisation is merely functional, the performances are outstanding, with Favino excelling as the wily politician convinced he is made of Teflon and Amendola chillingly capturing the air of respectability that belies the vicious instincts honed during his days as a terrorist.

Dionisi, Germano and Borghi also have their moments, as does Scarano, who needs keeping an eye on, as she rouses herself from her addled indifference to become the sole character with a moral compass. Indeed, Sollima makes astute use of the women in what is usually a men only milieu, particularly when he incriminates the audience in Favino's crime by only revealing that Kolomiets is underage after she has participated with glass-eyed relish in a ménage that is photographed with intrusive voyeuristic intensity. But what sets this apart is the way Sollima follows Paolo Sorrentino in The Great Beauty (2013) by showing how much the Roman élite has changed since Federico Fellini famously took a pot shot at it in La dolce vita (1960).

If Sollima embellishes gambits from the generic playbook, debutant Omer Fast attempts to turn the psychological thriller into conceptual art in Remainder, a teasing adaptation of Tom McCarthy's 2005 cult bestseller that reflects the themes of (un)reliable memory, reconstruction and the structure of imagery that the Berlin-based Israeli video maker explored in such provocative shorts as 5000 Feet Is the Best (2011). Wittily referencing Stanley Kubrick and Charlie Kaufman, this is a picture to test the patience, as the premise requires considerable suspension of disbelief, while the protagonist becomes increasingly resistible. But, with Adrian Smith's exemplary production design enabling Fast to retain rigid control of every frame, this is a puzzler to please admirers of such offbeat studies of amnesia as Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), Roy Ward Baker's The October Man (1947), Orson Welles's Mr Arkadin (1955), Alex Proyas's Dark City (1998) and Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000).

Under the watchful gaze of Cush Jumbo, Tom Sturridge wheels a suitcase through the City of London. As he hails a cab, a large object falls out of the sky and hits him with such force that he is left in a coma. On awakening, lawyer Nicholas Farrell explains that he has negotiated an £8.5 million culpability package that will be paid into his bank account the minute he signs an agreement never to discuss the accident again. Legal buddy Ed Speleers is delighted that Sturridge has been so handsomely compensated, but his enthusiasm makes Sturridge suspicious and he declines his invitation to celebrate his new wealth.

Instead, Sturridge hires fixer Arsher Ali in order to help him explain some recurring visions that have been troubling him since he regained consciousness. Once Ali has found a suburban house that resembles the one in his flashbacks, Sturridge asks him to find a contractor to renovate it to precise specifications and then cast people to play the neighbours in what Ali presumes to have been Sturridge's former rooming house. A pianist is urged to play a Chopin piece with the eager hesitancy of a beginner, while a woman is required to fry liver so that the aroma wafts to the upstairs flat. Even the black cats have to be perfectly positioned on the roof tiles and Ali has to arrange for them to be tied down to prevent them from sliding off.

While strolling in the streets nearby, Sturridge spots Jumayn Hunter hanging around a telephone box with his mates. He asks if he would be willing to play a role in his reconstruction and Hunter readily agrees, thinking Sturridge is some sort of eccentric. However, he is questioned by two men claiming to be cops, who are on the trails of a missing suitcase and seem prepared to do whatever it takes to retrieve it.

Up in his flat, Sturridge receives a visit from Jumbo, who assures him that they once had a close relationship. He interrogates her and she leaves feeling slighted. When Sturridge bumps into Speelers, he warns him not to trust Jumbo, as she is his American wife and is only seeking him out to get her hands on the money. But Sturridge's curiosity has been piqued and he hires prostitute Sasha Frost to re-enact his encounter with Jumbo. However, she becomes scared when he becomes aggressive and his focus shifts on learning that Hunter has been murdered and that the gun planted on his body ties in with a bank robbery.

Having played Hunter in a reconstruction of his killing, Sturridge summons Ali to have the interior of a bank constructed inside an abandoned building. He also casts four actors as the gang conducting the heist to his exact specifications and, when they fail to live up to his expectations, he enlists celebrity gangster Danny Webb to train them into a crack unit. As at the boarding house, Sturridge proves meticulous to the point of maddening. But the quartet eventually carry out the raid with clockwork precision.

They are taken aback, however, when the arrive for work one day to find that Sturridge has transported them to a real bank in Holburn and has issued them with live ammunition for the ultimate re-enactment. This time, Sturridge joins the gang and, as they burst into the bank, he sees Jumbo behind one of the counters. She slips away to fetch a suitcase from a storage locker, while the cops who killed Hunter shoot each other knowing glances. One of the robbers is accidentally shot and his buddies panic on realising this is no longer a game. Without compunction, Sturridge guns them down and flees the bank with the suitcase he snatches from Jumbo. No one challenges him in the street outside and he calmly walks away to hail a cab. As he looks up, however, he sees a large metal object hurtling towards him and he makes no attempt to get out of its way.

This is one of those films whose interpretation will vary from viewer to viewer. Some may feel Sturridge is a dead man struggling to understand his demise, as in Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder (1990), or a time traveller, as in Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995). He may even have entered a parallel universe, as was the case in David Lynch's No Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), or fallen prey to the machinations of his alter ego, as Edward Norton did in David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). But it is just as likely that Omer Fast is playing self-reflexive games with the creative process while simultaneously having a little fun with the BritCrime genre. Whatever Sturridge's motive or Fast's artistic intention, this is a slick variation on the central conceit of Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (2008), which was actually produced after McCarthy's novel was published.

Many will find the premise too far fetched to be sustainable, especially as Sturridge's nameless sociopath is so smugly impassive and Ali's factotum is so unquestioningly accommodating. Some will be frustrated by the endless repetition of routines and rituals that are never given a satisfactory grounding in the narrative. Others will be irked by the occasional moment of dramatic manipulation and stylistic miscalculation, which betray the fact that Fast is a visual artist rather than a screen storyteller. Indeed, this supposition is reinforced by the thinness of the characterisation (which is partly the result of Fast so forensically filleting McCarthy's text), the disorientating twitchiness of Lukas Strebel's shallow focus camerawork, the calculating fussiness of Andrew Bird's editing and the relentless raging of German composer Schneider TM's electronic score. Doubtless, some will warm to the air of chilly detachment and may even plump for a second viewing to examine how Fast tinkers with noirish convention. But, for all its ingenuity, this never seizes the imagination and lacks the satirical edge to bring the laboriously arch tableaux vivants to plausible life.

Another debut that doesn't quite work, despite the dogged efforts of the director to make it as distinctive as possible, is Rachel Tunnard's Adult Life Skills, which the acclaimed editor of films like Nick Whitfield's Skeletons (2010) and Scott Graham's Shell (2012) has expanded from her 2014 short, Emotional Fusebox, which was part of the BAFTA Shorts programme that toured cinemas earlier this year. There's no doubting the quality of the performances or the efficacy of Beck Rainford's genially cluttered production design and Bet Rourich's affectionate depiction of the bleak beauty of the misty, sodden landscape. But the screenplay is sometimes a touch too left-field for its own good, while the soulful ditties composed by Americana singer Micah P. Hinson are wholly out of place in a picture that clearly has aspirations to be the successor to Richard Ayoade's Submarine (2010), but actually feels much more like a companion piece to Joe Stephenson's Chicken (2015).

Eighteen months after losing twin brother Edward Hogg in an accident, Jodie Whittaker has been struggling to come to terms with being an individual. Much to the frustration of mother Lorraine Ashbourne, she has taken to living in the garden shed, where she maintains Hogg's website and draws faces on her thumbs to star them in homemade sci-fi videos. Grandmother Eileen Davies wishes Ashbourne would cut Whitaker some slack about her unconventional dress sense and urges her to stop trying to pair her off with unsuitable partners like hairdresser David Anderson. But Ashbourne is determined to snap Whitaker out of what she feels to be unhealthy self-pity and announces that she wants her in a flat of her own before her 30th birthday.

Estate agent Brett Goldstein feels bad about trying to find Whitaker a suitable property, as he has long had a crush on her. But he is too bashful to act on it, even though he drops in to see her every day at the Peak District activity centre where she drives boss Alice Lowe to distraction with her eccentricity. Lowe and Ashbourne hope that Whitaker will snap back to normality when best friend Rachel Deering returns from a year-long adventure in Asia. She is surprised to see Whitaker living in a cramped shed surrounded by mementoes of Hogg, but hopes to regain her trust by getting a job at the centre.

In fact, the person who gets under Whitaker's defences is eight year-old neighbour Ozzy Myers, who is left in her charge after his mother is rushed to hospital following a cancer relapse. Dressed in a cowboy outfit and as sardonic as he is sullen, Myers has no qualms about asking Whitaker the kind of personal questions everyone else avoids. So, she shows him some of the videos she made with Hogg and allows him to keep a couple of his badges.

Davies also takes a shine to the little scamp and makes him a holster for his cap gun and gives him one of Hogg's old pullovers that has shrunk in the wash. But Whitaker is dismayed by the gesture and hurts Myers's feelings by demanding its return. He draws her a picture and tries to tell her about his favourite book. But, even though she allows him the odd sleepover when his grandmother is at the hospital and his father is working as an explosives expert, Whitaker doesn't want to babysit a kid, especially as his situation reminds her too intensely of the pain of her own loss.

She also tries to back out when Deering suggests a night out. But, during one of her regular chats with Hogg by the dam they had made in the stream, he encourages Whitaker to get on with her life. Unimpressed by the flats she views and upset by a cull of the moles she has been counting by the boating sheds, Whitaker agrees to the club trip and is letting herself be carried away by the music when she spots Hogg in his trademark blue wetsuit across the dance floor. Rushing outside to hail a cab all the way home from the distant town, Whitaker is distraught to discover that Deering had left the shed door open and they argue after she realises that all her precious videotapes have been stolen.

In fact, Myers had taken them because he had been stung by the fact Whitaker had let his picture fall on the floor. Moreover, as an only child, he likes the closeness they reveal between Whitaker and Hogg. Indeed, such is his devotion to her that, when she tells him the body is forever regenerating, he follows her example on learning that his mother has died, by shaving off a clump of hair so that he will always have a part of himself that was alive when she was. But Whitaker is so angry with him for taking the tapes that she bawls at him that he is destined to have as miserable a life as she has had.

Overcome with fear at realising that the time has come to move on, Whitaker makes a clumsy play for Goldstein on learning that he is not gay (as she had always assumed). However, they regain their composure after falling into the hull of a boat and returns to her shed to find that Ashbourne has boarded it up. She also discovers that Myers has gone missing and feels guilty that her cruel words might have placed him in jeopardy. Arming herself with the walkie-talkie they had used to chat after dark, Whitaker searches the woods. She comes across Hogg by the stream and he reassures her that everything will be okay. Myers is woken by the exchange and is puzzled to find Whitaker talking to herself. She is so relieved to see him that she gives him a piggyback ride all the way home and, the next day, she asks Ashbourne if Myers's father can blow up the shed for her birthday present.

Deering comes to see her for a last hug on the sofa, amidst the boxes carefully labelled so that none of Hogg's possessions go astray. Goldstein also pops in to give her a special present of an `adult life skills' shirt badge before she emerges to find that Ashbourne and Davies have laid out some bunting and party food and they stand together to watch `Shed Zeppelin' (aka `Right Shed Fred' and `Dawn of the Shed') being reduced to splinters.

The shed gags rather sum up the awkwardly cutesy nature of much of the humour in a screenplay that is very light on backstory and secondary character depth and over-stuffed with girl-friendly pop cultural references that could almost be described as Tunnardtinoesque. But Tunnard has an ear for dialogue, especially where the excellent Whitaker and the other female cast members are concerned. Some of the badinage between Whitaker, Ashbourne and the sex-obsessed Davies is very funny, as is the beautifully observed scene in which Whitaker and Deering sit in a pub garden to drink their white wine even though it is dank and grey outside.

Myers also has some sharp lines, as the innocent wise beyond his years who listens earnestly to everything and is not afraid to speak his mind. Sometimes feeling like he has strayed in from The Last of the Summer Wine, Goldstein is less well served as the milquetoast who has returned after working away to concentrate on his novel. But the sense of place and community is neatly established and nicely sustained by a director whose editorial experience has evidently taught her much about the rhythms of daily life.

Tunnard also has a good eye for an image, although the videos attributed to Hogg and Whitaker are more than a little twee, while the bid to introduce a little profane profundity via the space-travelling thumb people feels a bit forced. Moreover, the symbolic detonation of the shed is as heavy handed as the caravan fire in Chicken. Nevertheless, Tunnard largely keeps the bathos at bay in persuading viewers that her heroine is a real person dealing with grief in her own way rather than a quirky construct whose whimsical antics have somehow been tolerated for almost two years by her family and friends without attracting the attention of a psychiatrist.

Having earned a Goya with his debut feature, Vacas (1991), Julio Medem became a critical favourite with such resolutely distinctive mixes of minimalism and magic realism as The Red Squirrel (1993), Earth (1996) and Lovers of the Arctic Circle (1998). Yet, since following the acclaimed Sex and Lucia (2001) with the documentary, The Basque Ball (2003), Medem's stock has fallen, with neither Chaotic Ana (2007) nor Room in Rome (2010) finding much favour. But he seems to have abandoned quirky individualism for mainstream mawkishness with ma ma, a study in noble suffering that feels like one of those `woman's pictures' that were produced in Hollywood in the 1950s to provide worthwhile roles for ageing stars like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Jane Wyman. Given the opening credit, `A Film by Penélope Cruz and Julio Medem', it's tempting to dismiss this as a vanity project for a star seeking to prove she can thrive outside the orbit of Pedro Almodóvar. But any serious message she might have been hoping to convey about women's health is deluged by the tide of contrivance and sentimentality that one rarely sees outside soap operas and three-tissue teleplays.

Married to philosophy professor Àlex Brendemühl, Madrid teacher Penélope Cruz is determined to stay strong for their son, Teo Planell, when she discovers that her husband has been having an affair with one of his students. Thus, she decides to visit gynaecologist Asier Etxeandia after ignoring the lump she has found in one of her breasts. The news is not good, however, and she is informed that she will need to undergo a course of chemotherapy before enduring a mastectomy.

Still in a daze, Cruz goes to watch Planell play football and is cheered when Real Madrid scout Luis Tosar assures her that her son has real talent. As they chat on the touchline, however, he gets a phone call and is crushed to learn that his daughter has been killed in a car crash that has left his wife in a coma. Cruz accompanies Tosar to the hospital and continues to see him following treatment sessions that she keeps hidden from Brendemühl and Planell.

Packing the latter off to stay with relatives, Cruz becomes friends with Tosar and, when he is widowed, they embark upon a tentative relationship. She feels sorry for Etxeandia when he tells her that his marriage is over and that this will put paid to his hopes of adopting Siberian orphan, Anna Jiménez. But he also reveals that Cruz is in remission and she starts making plans for the future, buoyed by the fact that Tosar has had a positive effect on Planell, who is much less sullen and devoting himself to his studies, as well as his sport.

Fate proves cruel to Cruz, however, as her cancer returns and Etxeandia warns her that she only has four months to live. However, he also informs her that she is pregnant and Cruz finds the inner strength to carry the baby to term, only to die in giving birth to a healthy daughter. Tosar and Etxeandia agree to name her after Jiménez and even Brendemühl rallies round in caring for Planell and his new sister.

Evoking memories of Sophia Loren in her heyday, Cruz gives a heartfelt performance that requires her to shave her head and bare her body to hard win any credibility this torrid tale might have. The usually dependable Tosar is less fortunate, although his sketchy supporting role is more substantial than the ciphers essayed by Brendemühl and the 70s pop-singing Etxeandia, who are required to do little more than idolise Cruz as she struggles nobly to beat both her illness and the odds against delivering her child.

In addition to the oddball symbolism involving sand crabs and preserved nipples on ice, Medem also has to take responsibility for the dismal scenario, which deprives characters of backstories that might coax the audience into taking them seriously. The decision not to give Cruz any friends of her own gender to share her troubles is a major miscalculation. She might have reassuring chats with nurses Silvia Abascal and Virginia Ávila and having recurring visions of Jiménez at the beach and by her bedside, but Cruz is little more than an object of adoration for three hunks increasingly in touch with their feminine side. Perhaps the aim was to explore the crisis in masculinity in recessional Spain. But this paean to womanly courage and mother love is not the way to go about it.

The frequent use of bright light and white décor by production designer Montse Sanz and cinematographer Kiko de la Rica encourages speculation that the latter half of the film takes place in the dying Cruz's imagination and describes how she would like her life to end. However, Medem employs bathetic soft focus so frequently during these reveries that he runs the risk of rendering them as ridiculous as the CGI shot of Cruz's pulsating love-filled heart. He also has to carry the can for Alberto Iglesias's glutinously intrusive score, which often makes the movie feel like a commercial for an anti-wrinkle cream or a new brand of detergent. Doubtless some will be moved to tears by Cruz's plight and her indomitably heroic response. But the majority will shake their heads in disbelief that a once-intriguing film-maker could produce something so awash with sham sincerity and so detached from everyday reality. Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder must be spinning in their graves.

The Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman killed herself on 5 October 2015. Just a few weeks earlier, boos had greeted the closing credits of her final feature at the Locarno Film Festival. No conclusive link has been established between Akerman's demise and the reception accorded to her documentary tribute to her dying mother. But Natalia Akerman had written the missives that her daughter had read out over the views of New York City in her 1976 film, News From Home. Moreover, Akerman had described her masterpiece, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), as a sort of love letter to the woman who had fled Poland in 1938 and survived Auschwitz in order to raise her and sister Sylviane. There's little doubt that Akerman would have been affected by the catcalls that greeted the screening of No Home Movie, but the loss of her mother and a history of depression are the more likely causes of her suicide, as it's clear from this deeply personal film that one of the few safe harbours in an otherwise peripatetic existence had been lost.

Much of the filming takes place in Natalia's apartment in Brussels, with Akerman carefully setting the camera down on a flat surface before walking into the scene and keeping her back to the audience as she engages her mother in conversation. They also chat on Skype, with Akerman moving the lens closer to the laptop screen to blur its images into thousands of indistinct pixels. But the opening sequence centres on a spindly tree being buffeted by a stiff breeze in the Israeli desert. The gale howls into the microphone of the Blackberry that Akerman used to shoot the footage, which she constantly reframes to keep the focus on this doughty tree in a barren wilderness that serves as a metaphor for both Natalia's ability to bend in the wind and Akerman's own sense of always having to struggle to get her films and installations made, seen and appreciated. Even the setting is symbolic, as had Natalia decided to go to the newly formed state of Israel in 1948 instead of settling down in the Belgian capital with her husband, Alexis, Akerman's destiny would have been completely different.

Back among the verdant parks of Brussels, maman and daughter mooch around the apartment. Now in her mid-80s, Natalia has a home help. But she is able to get around and almost mischievously introduces the subject of whether potatoes taste better with or without their skins, as she is fully aware of the iconic scene in Jeanne Dielman in which housewife-cum-hooker Delphine Seyrig takes her time peeling the potatoes at the table of her spartan kitchen. They also hark back to the young Chantal tying her shoelaces and how her father decided to withdrew her from her Hebrew school because he had socialist inclinations and wanted to distance himself from orthodoxy.

The need to keep moving is reflected in the second shot of the wind-blasted tree, which is taken from a moving vehicle and contrasts with the eccentric image of an upside down chair in a Brussels courtyard. Akerman coaxes Natalia into recalling her own mother, who was a feminist long before the word was coined. She also explores her feelings as she fled Poland in 1938 and the fears and emotions she had to cope with as she was taken to Auschwitz and then lived to testify about her experiences.

Yet, the octogenarian remains guarded, as though she is willing to share these recollections with her child, but not with the world. Indeed, Natalia's struggle to understand Akerman's artistic motives comes across during a Skype exchange that reveals how close and how detached mother and daughter have become. Akerman is in Oklahoma and is keen to show how their ability to see each other as they converse on opposite sides of the planet proves that distance has become an irrelevance. But Natalia doesn't seem convinced by the validity of the concept and her pride in Akerman's achievement is tainted by a lack of comprehension that drives a wedge between them that distresses them both.

With each visit, Akerman notices that Natalia is becoming increasingly frail. She develops a persistent cough and their silences become longer, as they take solace in merely being together. As before, the static camera records from the periphery and Akerman and editor Claire Atherton allow the encounters to play out at their own pace and rhythm. But the audience comes to appreciate that time is running out and, during a leisurely sequence in which Akerman sits on the bed to tie her laces, we suspect as she rises to open the curtains on an otherwise empty room that she is now very much alone.

The melancholy that pervades this coda is made all the more crushingly potent by the knowledge that Akerman herself will soon have departed the scene. But there is no self-pity or sentimentality in a study that comes closer to one of Jafar Panahi's house arrest pictures than a home movie. Indeed, Akerman would dispute that she ever had a place to call home, as she had spent her life travelling since the early 1970s in order to make and promote films that sought to expose the extent to which independent women (particularly lesbians) have no place in the nonconformist scheme of things.

Unlike other recent actualities in which family members have been subjected to intrusive scrutiny by film-makers seemingly bent on rattling skeletons out of cupboards, this is a much more consensual record of a mother and daughter preparing for an inevitable farewell. Clearly, Akerman acolytes will derive more from it than casual viewers who try to see everything their local arthouse screens. But, even though there are few compelling revelations on offer about either the Holocaust or the Akerman clan, it's humbling to eavesdrop on the sincere affection between two women who may not always have seen eye to eye, but who never lost the sense of trust and gratitude that had bridged the gap whenever they has been apart.

There seems to be a grim irony in the fact that Dochouse has chosen this weekend to release Erik Gandini's The Swedish Theory of Love, as its reflections on independence and interdependence will ring hollow for many following the EU referendum. Never one to shy away from provocation, the Italian-born, Swedish-based documentarist is known in this country for Gitmo: The New Rules of War (2005), which he co-directed with Tarik Saleh, and Videocracy (2009), which respectively focused on Guantanámo Bay and the socio-moral legacy of Silvio Berlusconi. However, he seems unsure precisely what he's trying to say in this slick, but superficial assemblage of pretty pictures and aimless anecdotes.

In 1972, a book called The Family of the Future persuaded the Swedish authorities that true love could only be brought about by the eradication of the class and generational interdependency that prevented people from standing on their two own feet. As a consequence, a range of self-sufficiency initiatives were introduced to help people establish `authentic human relationships'. However, as historian Lars Trägårdh uses the Inglehart-Welzel cultural map of the world (which categorises national values along axes comparing the traditional and the secular-rational and survival against self-expression) to demonstrate to an audience of EU functionaries that this philosophy and its attendant welfare reforms merely produced a populace that no longer felt the need to invest in the communities that had once been the bedrock of society. As a result, however, the creed of individualism that prompted 40% of Swedes to live alone also brought with it a sense of alienation and isolation that Trägårdh and Henrik Berggren explored in their 2006 book, Is the Swede Human?

This question clearly intrigues Gandini, who follows Maria Helena Fjalläs on her morning jog to learn why she is happier raising her two children by herself rather than with a partner whose unswerving commitment to her enterprise can never be guaranteed. Danish entrepreneur Ole Schou was quick to recognise the money-making potential of this `go it alone' approach to motherhood and opened the Cryos sperm bank to cater for the growing market of single women wishing to become pregnant without direct male participation. Gandini juxtaposes a droll sequence of fit young men masturbating to softcore pornography with images of an aspiring mother-to-be taking receipt of her donation and following the voiceover instructions to self-inseminate using a syringe. But, while Schou is content to provide this pragmatic and eerily sanitised service, he is less sure about the future of a gender who can now be all-but bypassed in the reproductive process.

Government official Anni Stavling is no stranger to people feeling so disconnected from society that they are able to disappear when supposedly in plain sight. She specialises in tracing the loved ones of those who die alone and she and colleague Luis Ferro are shown mooching around the apartment of a suicide who had been dead for two years before anybody realised there might be something wrong. Gandini allows the camera to rove around the flat, as Stavling and Ferro wonder why no one noticed the smell of decay. Ferro condemns the efficiency of a welfare payments system that doesn't require claimants to put in a periodic appearance at the benefit office. But the pair also despair that none of the victim's neighbours in a block overlooking a shopping precinct took the trouble to check up on him.

Syrian refugee Nhela Ali is convinced that such a thing could never happen within her ever-growing enclave. She teaches Swedish to new arrivals and tries to help them understand a national psyche that sets great store by punctuality and brevity. However, she also warns about a trademark lack of approachability and Gandini identifies this as a prime reason why so many migrants take up to seven years to find a job or fully integrate. Nhela drops in on a weaving workshop in a next-door classroom and tries to smile while the four middle-aged women bent over their looms complain about spiralling levels of immigration. She assures Gandini that they are merely being individualistic rather than racist, but not all viewers will concur with such a generous interpretation.

Venturing into the snowy woods, Gandini reveals that one of the fastest growing social activities in Sweden is the people tracking. The Missing People group, for example, boasts over 25,000 volunteers, who give up their time at weekends to search for those who have slipped through society's cracks. But not everyone in the forest feels so desperate, as Gandini comes across a part-time commune, whose members meet periodically for touchy-feely sessions designed to generate feelings of contentment rather than the security that the state supposedly provides.

But Gandini hardly seems convinced by such retro hippiness. Consequently, he travels to the province of Wollega in Ethiopia, which Trägårdh has identified as being Sweden's diametric opposite. Here, he meets Dr Erich Erichsen who has settled in a remote village with his wife Sennait and who makes light of his limited resources to use bicycle spokes, hair clips, plumbing rings and rechargeable drills to operate on patients suffering from everything from broken legs to spear wounds. He reunites with a young girl who lose her tongue and lower jaw to a monstrous tumour and their mutual affection is undeniably touching. But there is something uncomfortably patronising about Erichssen's contention that he would rather deal with Ethiopia's material poverty than his homeland's spiritual bankruptcy.

A closing encounter with 90 year-old Polish sociologist Zygmundt Bauman is clearly intended to summarise and commend Gandini's findings. He waves his pipe while delivering aphorisms about happiness only being valid if it is rooted in surmounted strife. But there is nothing revelatory about his conclusion that the modern obsession with social media and the Internet increases isolation and dissipates social skills or his conclusion that collectivism is highly preferable to self-serving individualism.

Trading to an inevitable extent on national stereotype, this makes for interesting comparison with Michael Moore's impression of Scandinavia in Where to Invade Next. But there is little anthropological heft here, with the Swedish snapshots providing only fleeting glimpses of the country as a whole, while the African digression appears to be a context-free throwback to the outmoded colonialist theories of the white man's burden and the noble savage. Not one of the Ethiopians featured is allowed to express an opinion. Even Sennait Erichsen is required to do no more than smile and stand elegantly by her man and this gross miscalculation ruinously undermines Gandini's observations on the Swedish mindset.

Alarms bells should start ringing the moment you realise that Matthew Miele's Crazy About Tiffany's has been `fully authorised' by the famous jewellery firm that started life as a stationery store back in 1837. Those who remember Miele's previous documentary, Scatter My Ashes At Bergdorf's (2013) will already know what to expect. But that fitfully revealing outing and Patrick Mark's Fabergé: A Life of Its Own feel like models of objectivity beside this vulgar, feature-length advertisement for conspicuous capitalism and vacuous celebrity that should be confined to a corner of the Fifth Avenue premises in Manhattan, where is can play like a grotesque form of votive gallery installation.

How one wishes Miele had taken the historical route, as there is much to learn from the account of how founders Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young changed the nature of their business after they invented the world's first mail-order catalogue, the so-called Blue Book. It would also be nice to learn more about Tiffany's being largely responsible for the introduction of the engagement ring in 1866 and the role played by the Empress Eugénie of France in the selection of the company's trademark blue box. Similarly, more might have been made of how Louis Comfort Tiffany began experimenting with ceramics, stained glass, enamels and metalwork when he inherited the story in 1902.

More on the genesis of the Tiffany lamp and the making of the clock at Grand Central Station would not have gone amiss, either. Or the artistry of designer Jean Schlumberger, who joined the company in 1956 and counted the Duchess of Windsor, Greta Garbo, Gloria Vanderbilt, Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy among his clients. A few more snippets about presidential patrons like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy would also have been nice, as would a more detailed discussion of how Tiffany & Co. came to create the logo of the New York Yankees baseball team from a Medal of Valour presented to NYPD officer John McDowell (who was shot in the line of duty in 1877) and how it got the commission for the Vince Lombardi Trophy that has been presented to the man of the match at the Superbowl since 1967.

Instead, Miele gives us a claque of chattering fans, including actresses Jessica Biel and Jennifer Tilly, film directors Baz Luhrmann, Rob Marshall and Sam Taylor Johnson, photographer Fran Liebowitz, fashion designers Catherine Martin and Rachel Zoe, jewellery designer Elsa Peretti, art historian Amy Fine Collins, Halston fashion director Cameron Silver, DJs AndrewAndrew and Harper's Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey. Tilly jokes about her readiness to take parts in Z grade movies to indulge her love of big jewellery, while television journalist Katie Couric gushes disarmingly about the thrill of having her 50th birthday in the store that Tiffany's first took over in 1940. But there is something depressing about watching Veronica Beard boast about the latest gift she received from her husband, while her teenage daughters Helaina and Scarlet coo about a diamond's size denoting a man's love. Neither girl is bothered about the provenance of the diamonds and Miele is in no mood to broach such a topic. But the fact he is willing to exploit his sister and nieces in such a way will leave many viewers feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

As Henry Mancinis `Moon River' meanders through proceedings, Helaina and Scarlet giggle over being in the store immortalised by Audrey Hepburn in Blake Edwards's 1963 screen adaptation of Truman Capotes's novel, Breakfast at Tiffanys. But they seem oblivious to the true nature of Holly Golightly's profession and Miele seems equally convinced that she is some form of Givenchy-clad goddess whose iconic image will forever top that of Reese Witherspoon, even though Patrick Dempsey did propose to her inside the store in Andy Tennant's Sweet Home Alabama (2002). TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City are also name-checked and there is even a tiresome digression to allow Todd Pipes to explain how he composed `Breakfast at Tiffany's' for his band Deep Blue Something in 1995. Oh for more dissenting voices like Cornell business student Erica Sutton questioning the relevance of Tiffany to anyone but America's much-resented 1%. Even a bit more on Gene Moore's window designs would have prevented this from seeming quite so vapid and insufferable.