Parky at the Pictures (DVD 6/7/2017)

Several years ago, Isabelle Huppert and André Marcon had taken their children on the ferry from Saint-Malo to see the clifftop grave of François-René de Chateaubriand on the tidal island of Grand Bé. She had seemed distracted and slightly distanced from her husband during the visit. But they had muddled on to reach their silver wedding anniversary and still teach with distinction at different lycées in Paris. Indeed, Huppert is so dedicated to education that she marches through a student picket line and confronts the strikers intent on preventing her pupils from attending class.

This single-mindedness continues to inspire protégé Roman Kolinka, who is developing a reputation as a promising writer and, when they meet up after school, Huppert promises to recommend him to the company that publishes her own acclaimed philosophy textbook. When she visits editor Guy-Patrick Sainderichin, however, he suggests that Kolinka needs to tone down his radical idealism. He further upsets Huppert by introducing her to the new marketing team of Yves Heck and Rachel Arditi, who curtly inform her that her books are no longer selling and need to be redesigned. Huppert is unimpressed with the proposed covers and questions why a core collection of extracts and essays needs to be jazzed up.

On her way home, Huppert calls in on elderly mother Édith Scob and her black cat, Pandora. Scob keeps having panic attacks and calling her daughter in the middle of the night. But the onetime model seems sprightly when discussing the fact she has been cast as a corpse in an upcoming shoot and showing off the new clothes she has bought, even though she can hardly afford them.

Despite not being given to excessive outward displays of emotion, Huppert dotes on her mother and children Sarah Le Picard and Solal Forte, who have now left home. She is pleased to see them, therefore, when they come for supper. But she insists on making a fuss of Kolinka when he comes from getting into a fight on a demonstration to collect some books. Marcon can scarcely conceal his contempt when Kolinka openly criticises Huppert's new work on terrorism and, after he leaves, Marcon warns her that Kolinka is only friendly when it suits him. However, she jokes that he is jealous because she hadn't shown him the text and the fact that Marcon is unaware that his wife has published a new book betrays how estranged they have become.

A few days later, Le Picard meets Marcon after school and, during a walk in the park, she accuses her father of having an affair. She asks him to make a quick decision about his future and he looks sheepish. Across the city, Huppert has to abandon an outdoor seminar because Scob has texted to say she has turned on the gas in her apartment and the fireman at the scene lectures Huppert about the number of nuisance calls that Scob keeps making to the emergency services. She is stung by his suggestion that she is responsible for her mother and should put her in a home if she can no longer cope.

Arriving home exhausted, Huppert is confronted with Marcon's confession of adultery and his plan to move out. As Franz Schubert's `To Sing on the Water' swells on the soundtrack, she mutters that she thought he would love her forever, but snaps into pragmatic mode and remains phlegmatic when Scob suddenly decides to go into care. However, she is slightly surprised that Scob makes no mention of Pandora, who has to be prised from behind a radiator because she is so reluctant to leave. As she sits in the car with Forte outside the home, Huppert stifles a sob about the smell of death pervading the place before driving off.

Returning to the empty apartment, Huppert is furious to discover that Marcon has bought her flowers and she tries to stuff them into the pedal bin in the kitchen. When the bouquet proves too big, she stuffs it into a laundry bag and stomps down to the dumpster in the basement. But, having tossed the flowers away, she turns back to retrieve the bag, as it might come in useful. She regains her composure in time to meet Kolinka, who informs her that he is leaving Paris to live on a farm with some friends. He is surprised that she is so calm about her impending divorce and seems more concerned that she will no longer have access to the Breton holiday home she had spent so much time sprucing up because it belongs to Marcon.

A short time later, Huppert and Marcon go to Brittany and he is taken aback when she insists this will be her last visit and starts packing her belongings. She goes for a swim in the sea and ventures out on to the sands to try and get a phone signal. When she finally gets through to the care home, she discovers that Scob hasn't eaten for three days and takes a last wistful look at the scenery she had come to love as Marcon drives her to the station. Rushing to her mother's bedside, Huppert is relieved to find her alert and hungry. They eat chocolate while watching television and Huppert smiles when Scob says Nicolas Sarkozy is ugly and declares that Jacques Chirac used to make love with his boots on.

Eager to stay busy, Huppert invites some of her students to tea and is amused when they ask her to write for their new website. She sits on the sofa looking at the flowers they bought her and suddenly feels alone. On impulse, she goes to the pictures to see Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy (2010) and has to change seats when stranger Jean-Charles Clichet puts his hand on her knee. He moves to sit behind her and follows her through the quiet streets after the show. She tells him she is not in the mood and he leaves her alone. But, as she walks home, she gets a call to inform her that Scob has died after a fall and Huppert hails a taxi in a state of shock.

Huppert meets priest Olivier Goinard to give him some details of Scob's hard life to use in his oration. She recalls her lack of education and three marriages, but insists that her own father was the true love of her life. At the funeral, Goinard speaks touchingly about Scob giving Huppert the curiosity to become a philosopher and she reads a favourite passage from Blaise Pascal at the crematorium. But, despite her efforts to be brave, she is overcome with a sense of grief and loneliness while travelling on a bus across Paris and bursts into tears. Everything through the window seems to be a blur, but Huppert laughs bitterly aloud when she catches sight of Marcon and his mistress on the pavement.

Just as Huppert thinks things can get no worse, she learns that her textbooks are being discontinued and she fumes around the apartment when she discovers that Marcon has taken some of her books as well as his own. Needing a change of scenery, Huppert takes Pandora to stay with Kolinka. He picks her up at the station and they listen to Woody Guthrie's `My Daddy' while driving through the spectacular countryside. She frets when Pandora runs away and quickly comes to realise that she has little in common with Kolinka and his anarchist companions, as they are hatching ideas she first heard broached decades earlier. Thus, she goes to the kitchen to help girlfriend Élise Lhomeau with the washing-up rather than listen to a self-absorbed debate about authorship.

Having wandered out in the dark to find Pandora, Huppert is appalled when she wakes her the next morning with a dead mouse. However, she is so pleased to see the errant cat that she gives her a hug. After a walk in the hills, Huppert returns to breakfast and is hurt when Kolinka brands her a complacent bourgeois. She cries on the bed while stroking Pandora, but joins the party when they go swimming beside a waterfall. Still feeling fragile, she sits apart from the others and reads and makes up her mind to go home. She tells Kolinka there is a leak in her apartment building and he confides in Lhomeau that he has obviously said something wrong.

Back in Paris with Pandora, Huppert begins to rebuild her life. A year passes and she hurries to the hospital to meet her grandson. She is miffed to find that Marcon has beaten her to it, but fusses over the infant until the melancholic Le Picard demands him back. Shortly before Christmas, Huppert takes Pandora to live with Kolinka and Lhomeau. They show her their new donkeys and she is pleased to see that Kolinka has mellowed a little. She smokes a joint and comes downstairs when she struggles to sleep. Smiling at the sight of Pandora sitting contentedly by Kolinka's desk, she watches him work while listening to Donovan singing `Deep Peace'.

Arriving home, she is surprised to find Marcon sitting in the dark. She demands the return of her keys and tells him that he no longer has the right to drop in unannounced. He lingers in the hope of being invited to a festive supper, but Huppert ushers him out so she can cook. She teases Le Picard and Forte when they fail to notice Pandora's absence and they indulge her pleasure in the fact that Kolinka has sent a collection of philosophy primers for the baby. On cue, he starts to cry and Huppert urges her children to finish their meal, while she sings a lullaby to her grandson that segues into `Unchained Melody' by The Fleetwoods, as the camera pulls out into the cosily golden-lit hallway.

Despite again revealing the influence of Eric Rohmer and husband Olivier Assayas, Mia Hansen-Løve very much emerges as her own film-maker with this beguiling saga, which earned her the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival. In addition to creating a role worthy of the peerless talents of Isabelle Huppert, Hansen-Løve also shows that it's possible for a woman to find fulfilment outside a man's embrace. During the course of a traumatic year, Huppert loses her mother, her husband, her holiday retreat and her publishing deal. She also sees her children leave the nest and her favourite student reject her teachings. Yet she refuses to buckle and arrives at a form of contentment rooted in the knowledge that she is as fine as she ever was: it's the rest of the world that's gone to pot.

Seemingly in a perpetual state of motion as Denis Lenoir's camera struggles to keep pace, Huppert bristles through the action with a quiet tenacity that contrasts with the contentious ideas (in which she fnds both challenge and solace) of such diverse thinkers as Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Arthur Schopenhauer, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Max Horkheimer, Slavoj Zizek, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Raymond Aron, Emmanuel Levinas and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. But she never allows herself to wallow in nostalgia or self-pity and keeps her focus fixed firmly on the future that she still hopes to affect by teaching those who will shape it to think for themselves.

Such is the brilliance of Huppert's performance that only Marcon and the scene-stealing Scob make much of an impression. But this reflects Hansen-Løve's natural preoccupation with a character based on her own mother, who separated from her father when the director was in her twenties. To some extent, therefore, this is also Hansen-Løve's story and one wonders how much she believes Huppert's casual claims, `I'm lucky to be fulfilled intellectually...that's reason enough to be happy,' and `So long as we desire, we can do without happiness.'

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.

Although he has become a familiar figure on the festival circuit with Human Comedy in Tokyo (2008), Hospitalité (2010) and Au revoir l'été (2013), Koji Fukada is still to become a fixture on the arthouse scene. That seems likely to change, however, with Harmonium, which casts a sinister shadow over the shomin-geki genre of everyday melodrama that was once the domain of Yasujiro Ozu. Exhibiting his own brand of formal restraint, Fukada stipples this comfort of strangers saga (whose original title translates as `Standing on the Edge') with dashes of Nagisa Oshima and Pier Paolo Pasolini-like provocation in order to explore the ramifications of the recent loosening of familial and friendship ties within Japanese society.

Having taken over his father's metal workshop, Toshio (Kanji Furutachi) has become increasingly detached from wife Akie (Mariko Tsutsui) and their 10 year-old daughter, Hotaru (Momone Shinokawa). She practices to a metronome on a harmonium in the house adjoining the business and says grace with her mother before a breakfast exchange about a type of spider that allows its young to devour it. Reading the paper, Toshio joins in with neither the prayer or the conversation. He proves more talkative, however, when old friend Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano) turns up on the doorstep after spending 11 years in prison. Without consulting Akie, Toshio offers Asano a job and lodgings for three weeks, while he gets his life in order. But he refuses to answer any of his wife's questions about the stranger living in her home.

Indeed, he remains reticent when Yasaka returns with his belongings at suppertime, although Toshio does ask Hotaru whether the baby spiders would go to Hell for eating their mother. Akie feels uncomfortable when Yasaka wanders into the living-room in his underwear after taking a bath and asks him to leave so Hotaru can continue her harmonium practice. But she is taken by his interest in the dress she is making her daughter for her first public performance and wishes him goodnight after he wakes from a nightmare because he cannot sleep in the dark.

The next morning, Yasaka eats his breakfast quickly and noisily and insists on washing his dishes. While out walking in his pristine white overalls, he sees Hotaru skipping her harmonium lesson and offers to teach her himself. Akie is surprised that he plays so well, but gets to know him a little better while walking home from the post office through their semi-industrial riverside neighbourhood. Yasaka asks if she is a Protestant and jokes that she is like a kitten who allows herself to be carried along by the scruff of the neck. But she takes the remark in good part, as she does a crude comment about how well he knows her husband.

The old pals share a cigarette on the terrace before Yasaka gives Hotaru another lesson. He also accompanies Akie to church, even though he doesn't believe in God. But he proves to know all about sin when he confides in a tea shop that he killed a man and spent his sentence wondering why the victim's mother had slapped her cheeks in court when the verdict was delivered and what she must have endured in losing a son and seeing his killer escape the death penalty. That night, she asks Toshio why he withheld the truth and warns him not to underestimate her. She also asks Yasaka if she can sew in his room while Hotaru practices and he lets her read the letter he is writing to the dead man's family. Akie is touched and invites Yasaka on a weekend outing and he accepts with a bashful smile.

Arriving at an idyllic riverside spot, Toshio and Yasaka go fishing while Akie and Hotaru clamber up a rock. The men chase after a hat when it falls into the water and Yasaka unnerves Toshio when he promises not to mention the fact that he was an eyewitness to the killing and left his friend to take the rap alone. Father and daughter doze off on a rug and Akie beckons Yasaka to lie beside them for a family photo. They go for a stroll and he shows her a scarlet hibiscus flower that blooms and dies in a single day. He imitates a crow cawing in the tree and she laughs before he kisses her and they hold on to each other more out of a need for human contact than any romantic desire.

They kiss again after she finishes Hotaru's red dress, but Akie stops Yasaka from going any further when she hears Toshio opening the workshop grille. As a consequence, Yasaka eats his lunch alone. But the sound of a couple copulating on the riverbank stirs his passion and, having passed Toshio on the road home, he unzips his overall to reveal a red t-shirt underneath. Singing the words to the song Hotaru has been playing (about good times disappearing forever), he forces himself upon Akie and pushes her down on the kitchen table. But she struggles and he crashes into a cupboard on falling to the floor.

Rushing outside to regain his composure, Yasaka sees Hotaru in her new dress, skating along on her pink roller trainers. As dusk begins to fall, Toshio wakes Akie from a nap and asks after their daughter. When he goes in search of her, he finds her in the playground with Yasaka standing over her as she bleeds from a head wound. His distressed cries bring Akie running, but he refuses to listen as Yasaka tries to explain and is baffled when he suddenly vanishes into the warren of side streets.

Eight years pass and Akie has developed a hand-washing compulsion, while Toshio has hired a detective to search for the missing Yasaka. He has also taken on a new apprentice, Takashi (Taiga), to replace the departing Shintara (Takahiro Miura). He gets to meet Hotaru (Kana Mahiro), who is now brain-damaged and confined to a wheelchair, with her left arm curled up to her cheek. The guilt-ridden Akie lets no one else touch her. But, when Takashi buys her daughter a pair of earrings, she allows him to draw her. She also urges Toshio to stop searching for Yasaka, as the detective fees are costing them a fortune. However, he is determined to find out what happened in the playground and insists that it's too soon to give up.

One day, as they work, Takashi casually reveals to Toshio that Yasaka is his father. He explains that he has never met him, as Yasaka didn't marry his mother. But Takashi found his letters after she died and applied on the off chance for a job after seeing photographs of the trip to the river. Toshio orders Takashi to say nothing to Akie and slaps him across the face before rushing after his wife, who has taken Hotaru for some fresh air. He decides to keep the secret, however, and returns to the workshop as Akie cradles Hotaru to protect her from the rush of an oncoming truck.

Akie wears herself out tending to Hotaru and she is glad to sit and watch Takashi paint her. She leaps up, however, when he drops a brush on the floor and he jokes that his mother also had a phobia about dirt. She asks about his family and Takashi describes how he used to look after his mother when she became bedridden and kept asking him to help her die. Realising he might seem insensitive, he breaks off. But Akie is intrigued by his story and encourages him to go on. However, Hotaru needs attention and Takashi withdraws, only for Akie to knock his jacket off the top of the bookshelf and she sees the photographs he keeps in his pocket. She asks how he knows Yasaka and Takashi admits that he knows little about him other than the fact he was a yakuza.

He also lets slip that Yasaka was in prison for murder when he was born and never squealed on his accomplice. Akie is aghast at hearing this and rushes into the kitchen to phone her husband. She starts to wash her hands, but sees Takashi leaning over Hotaru on the close-circuit monitor and orders him out of the room. In fleeing, he dashes past Toshio, who is unable to rouse him when he calls at his digs. Several days go by and Akie imagines she sees Yasaka emerge from behind the sheets she has hung out to dry on the upstairs balcony. They float down to the street and Toshio collects them. He asks Akie if she is okay and, when she asks what he knows about Yasaka's crime, he confesses that he held the victim down as he was strangled. Akie covers her face, as Toshio wonders whether Hotaru's condition is his punishment for abandoning Yasaka and Akie's for sleeping with him. She slaps herself hard across the cheek and asks Toshio for a divorce in lambasting him for daring to suggest that their daughter's misfortune atones for anything.

Feeling ashamed, Toshio tells the detective to drop the case, even though his new investigator has taken pictures of a man who closely resembles Yasaka. But, when he calls Akie, she comes running back from a walk around the block and she insists on Takashi coming with them when they drive to the place where Yasaka has been spotted. He occupies the front seat beside Toshio, while Akie sits in the back with Hotaru. She tells him that they have invited him along so that Yasaka can watch them kill him and Toshio says he will do whatever it takes to make Akie feel better. They drive to a mountain village and Akie hears someone playing Hotaru's song on a tinny piano. But, when they gather outside the window, it quickly becomes apparent that the father teaching his daughter to play is not Yasaka.

As they drive home, Akie drops off to sleep and dreams that a healthy Hotaru comes to sit beside her on a bench in the playground. Suddenly, there are on a beach with the tide lapping against their shoes. So, when Toshio and Takashi stop for drinks, Akie takes Hotaru to a high bridge over a river and jumps off after imagining she receives an encouraging smile from a red-shirted Yasaka. Toshio dives in to rescue his wife and thinks he sees Hotaru make a miraculous recovery and swim to the surface. But, as he struggles to the bank with Akie, he realises that Hotaru and Takashi are dead. He slaps Akie back to consciousness before lying beside her on the bank in a tragically grotesque recreation of the snapshot with Yasaka. Determined not to give up, he tries to resuscitate his child, as the screen fades to black to the devastating strain of the harmonium melody.

Many will be reminded of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Creepy while watching this arresting and affecting drama. While Tadanabu Asano's interloper is nowhere near as maniacally dangerous as Teruyuki Kagawa's next-door neighbour from Hell, he has a similar effect on a disaffected couple whose outwardly contented petite-bourgeois union is little more than a sham. Indeed, Kanji Furutachi and Mariko Tsutsui don't even have their daughter in common, as they drift through an existence that's as soulless as their environs. But, just as Yuko Takeuchi fell under Kagawa's spell, so the lonely Tsutsui is drawn to Asano, whose feelings remain as shrouded as his motives for running away. Is he seeking revenge by seducing Furutachi's wife and harming his daughter or has he simply drifted back to his old stomping ground and been swept away by a series of unfortunate events?

This tendency towards melodramatic contrivance takes the picture out of the realms of pure shomin-geki and into the outer reaches of the thriller. But there's something Sirkian or Fassbenderian about the way in which events conspire against principals, who are as much victims of societal forces as fate and their own flaws. Fukada has been here before in Hospitalité, a bleak comedy he has described as a dry run for this flipside of the same coin (interestingly, Furutachi played the intruder). But, while warning about the comfort of strangers at a time of alienation and solitude, he also ponders why Japanese people are finding it increasingly difficult to find friends, let alone life partners. He is ably abetted by a fine cast, who underplay to such a disarming effect that the twists in the storyline seem all the more unsettling. Kenichi Negishi's camerawork is equally restrained, as it uses natural light and shade to pick up the details dotted around Kensuke Suzuki's sombre interiors, at the centre of which is the dark wooden harmonium that provides Hiroyuki Onogawa's jauntily disturbing score.

A homoerotic undercurrent positively courses through the first half of Händl Klaus's second feature, Tomcat. A morality tale set in an Edenic Vienna, this won the prestigious Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival and seems destined to become a firm favourite in LGBT cine-circles. With its German title, Kater, also meaning `hangover', this meticulously made melodrama is very much a study in postlapsarian angst that is rooted firmly in the austere traditions of the Austrian New Wave. Indeed, Klaus (who prefers his name to be billed in the Hungarian or Japanese manner) acted for Michael Haneke in 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) and The Piano Teacher (2001). Yet, for all its stylistic poise, this intriguing, if fitfully involving saga never quite recovers from the demise of its scene-stealing feline star.

Lukas Turtur plays French horn in the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, which is managed by his lover, Philipp Hochmair. They share an idyllic cottage on the outskirts of Vienna with their handsome tabby cat, Moses, who goes where he pleases whenever he likes. Turtur is sure that he has caught a chill off Moses and allows Hochmair to fuss over him until he feels better. He has a burning ambition to play Mahler's Sixth Symphony. But, even though he has a good job, he still takes students to make a little extra cash.

They invite friends over for supper and sing with them during the car journey. One dislikes cats, but the others pamper Moses, who is declared `the pasha of the house'. Having tidied away, Turtur and Hochmair fool around naked to Miles Davis's `All Blues', as Moses stretches lazily on the window ledge. However, he has to spend New Year with neighbours Oswald Köhler and Brigitte Pototschnig, as the orchestra is playing a midnight concert. On their return, however, Turtur finds a frozen snake next to Moses's basket and he takes it into the snow-covered garden and covers it with a stone canopy so that it can thaw without inquisitive paws prodding at it.

As spring comes, Moses rouses himself from burying his nose under his paw to explore the garden. He chews long stems of grass and rubs against slender wooden stems. When Hochmair and Turtur plant some catnip, he brushes against them and takes a keen interest in the watering can. He also explores the rock-and-brick edifice Turtur had constructed for the snake, but the reptile has seemingly slithered away.

All seems perfect, as they chuck Moses under the chin and speculate about his life before they took him in as a stray. He brings them a mouse, which he bats across the cellar floor, and clambers over a pile of manuscripts while Turtur tries to practice. When they throw a summer party, Moses allows a toddler to ruffle his fur, while Hochmair and Turtur pick berries for their guests and sympathise with clarinetist Thomas Stipsits when his partner, Russian bassoonist Manuel Rubey, abruptly leaves without him. They chat on the terrace as some of the musicians play football on the grass and flop in the sitting-room for a group sing-song. Moreover, they allow Stipsits to watch as they make love on the sofa before bidding him goodnight to the sound of Moses defending his territory against an intruder.

The next day, while the naked Hochmair and Turtur idly discuss holiday plans over breakfast, Moses licks yoghurt off the latter's fingers. However, he suddenly bites him and Turtur snaps the cat's neck in a moment of reckless fury. Ashamed of his actions, he slips on some underpants (a sign that the Edenic idyll is over) and howls with anguish as Hochmair wraps Moses in his blanket and places him in his basket. Having turned away a pupil who had come for his music lesson, Hochmair buries the cat in the garden and ignores Turtur as he tries to apologise. He puts a collar and some treasured toys in the bottom of a dressing-table drawer and, as he cleans Moses's food dish and blocks up the cat flap, he wonders how his supposed soulmate could do something so cruel and brutal. Without speaking, he lets Turtur gather some bedding to sleep in the spare room and locks the door behind him.

Driving into the city the next morning, Hochmair ignores Turtur as he cries quietly in the passenger seat. He watches him rehearse, as though trying to assess if he is the same man he fell in love with, and decides to take the bus home alone after consulting a doctor about why someone would behave so aggressively at the slightest provocation. Meanwhile, Turtur is pulled over for driving too slowly and the cops conduct a full search of the vehicle because he is behaving so oddly. Frustrated at being made to sleep in the spare room, Turtur loses patience with Hochmair for playing loud music when he is trying to concentrate. He also struggles to find much enthusiasm for his young student, who keeps asking after Moses. After visiting a doctor and a cat rescue centre, Turtur declares himself a murderer and admits that he feels too sad to speak about what happened. But Hochmair has little sympathy with him and asks if he had considered killing the cat before he did. Turtur is hurt that he could ask such a question and can barely bring himself to speak to Stipsits when he comes for lunch. They go for a stroll and, when they see a poster for a missing cat, Stipsits tries to reassure Turtur that Moses will come back in his own good time. But he can't bring himself to tell him the truth and is left feeling more alone and upset when Hochmair attacks him while he is snacking from the fridge and he cowers on the floor in frightened remorse.

Returning to the rehearsal hall, Turtur puts jars of preserves on the seats of his friends and hands a spare one to a cellist practicing alone. He meets up with some pals to play football in the rain and they console him when he starts to sob hysterically and they show their solidarity until he is ready to resume the game. But Hochmair continues to suffer in silence and hides away when Turtur appears to masturbate in the cellar. He tries to get back into Hochmair's good books by making his favourite dish. But he eats without pleasure and, in climbing a tree to fetch some more plums to treat him, Turtur loses an eye in a fall. Hochmair rushes to his side and is helplessly bereft as the medical team arrive. He spends the night alone in the silent house and forgives Turtur with a lingering hug when he collects him from the hospital.

Hochmair snuggles up to Turtur as he naps. But he closes the shower door when Turtur comes into the bathroom to shave and he realises that the healing process still has a way to go. The gather mushrooms in Moses's basket and find a dead rabbit in the undergrowth before sitting beside a lake in the afternoon sun. Turtur reveals that his glass eye is being fitted soon and he says they can go swimming again. A further sign that things are slowly returning to normal comes in the form of Kathi, a white kitten belonging to Köhler and Pototschnig, who pads into the garden. They agree to care for her whenever the older couple are away and they look on indulgently as Turtur lets Kathi lick yoghurt off his fingers.

But the image proves too much for Hochmair, who jumps up from the patio table and rushes inside. They hold each other on the bed and Turtur nods sadly as Hochmair declares that they can no longer sleep together, even though he is still in love. Yet Kathi (who has a little black spot on her forehead) becomes a regular and playful visitor. Like Moses, she walks on the piano keyboard and enjoys chasing a bell-ball and a toy mouse. She also likes a little rough and tumble. But, when Turtur goes to kiss Hochmair after watching him teasing Kathi, he turns his face away. He admits to missing the intimacy, but still can't trust himself to commit in the old way and Turtur promises to do whatever it takes to keep them together.

The orchestra plays a concert and Stipsits and Rubey cook for their friends. However, the latter feels awkward in such boisterous company and makes his excuses. Arriving home drunk, Turtur tries to undress Hochmair, but he rolls over and hunkers up to fend off his touch. As they doze the following morning, however, Kathi jumps on to the bed and gives them a quizzical sniff before gamboling off. Hochmair is happy to have her around and lets her eat out of Moses's bowl. But he still feels uncomfortable around Turtur when he comes home to find him sunbathing in the nude. So, he asks how he is feeling and how his therapy sessions are going. Turtur admits to some childhood issues and a fear that he will do something stupid again that will cause Hochmair to leave him. Hochmair wonders if he killed Moses in a subconscious bid to break up the relationship. But Turtur insists he would never do such a thing and hopes them can remain an item. They hug.

As autumn comes and they bottle fruit in the kitchen. Turtur rehearses while Hochmair goes looking for Kathi. He can't find her and asks Turtur to put a record on while he searches the garden. The strains of `All Blues' filter outside and Hochmair comes in to find Turtur dancing. He holds him and, as they sway, he removes his lover's shirt. Turtur reciprocates and, even after the music dies away, they continue to shuffle in a small circle with their eyes closed and their bodies close.

Echoes of Ira Sach's Love Is Strange (2014) can be heard beneath the magnificent music that counterpoints this earnest tale. But, whereas deft brush strokes shaped the characters played by John Lithgow and Alfred Molina, Klaus devotes more time to establishing Hochmair and Turtur's milieu and showing off their erections than he does to exploring their personalities. Viewers are asked to take their passion for granted, therefore, with the consequence that they have too little invested in it when things turns sour. The central performances are as deft as Enid Löser's production design and Gerald Kerkletz's camerawork. But many will be too shocked by the casual viciousness of the cat's death to care much what happens to the lovers in its aftermath. Indeed, the departure of the majestic Toni leaves such a chasm at the heart of the drama that it fails to recover from it, even after the arrival of the mischievously cute Kathi.

This is often the problem with pictures with an animal to the fore, as the audience will always be more concerned about their well-being than that of the protagonists. Take Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard in Blake Edwards's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Who cares whether they kiss and make up? All that matters is that someone fetches Cat (played by the peerless Orangey) out of the rain.

However, in stinting on psychological intensity, Krauss also lays on the biblical symbolism a touch too thickly, with Turtur having his eye plucked out so that he can re-enter Paradise after sinning being the most egregious example. But the air of cultured smugness that pervades proceedings is also rather resistible, especially as the members of the orchestra are far too thinly sketched to make their badinage feel anything more than superfluous. Indeed, Stipsits and Rubey are little more than ciphers, with the former's presence during the sofa love-making sequence feeling creepy rather than inclusive.

Yet Krauss adroitly exposes the fragility of romantic perfection and the extent to which it's impossible to know everything about a loved one. Moreover, he paces the narrative beautifully, with his refusal to rush after the chillingly enacted and never satisfactorily explained felicide allowing the audience to share in the grieving process. He also ably captures the blissful aura of the rustic retreat and makes telling use of screen space when positioning the estranged Tartur and Hochmair within the frame. So, perhaps the problem is simply that this is one of those films that shouldn't be reviewed by a cat lover.

As devotees of the Exhibition on Screen series will know, the Impressionists caused quite a stir within the French art establishment from the 1870s onwards. But, while Phil Grabsky's intelligent documentaries ably convey this turbulence, most screen biopics of these inveterate iconoclasts tend to go down the heritage cinema route. Consequently, literate dialogue conspire with chocolate-box visuals to stifle any vitality the subject might possess. Thus, while Danièle Thompson's Cézanne et Moi is every bit as handsome as Gilles Bourdos's Renoir (2012), it's also just as melodramatically anaemic.

As the credits roll over the tools of the respective trades of Paul Cézanne (Guillaume Gallienne) and Émile Zola (Guillaume Canet), the painter pays the author a first visit since relations between the pair were strained following the publication of L'Œuvre, an 1886 novel in the Rougon-Macquart series that Cézanne felt exploited a friendship that dated back to boyhood, when a young Cézanne (Hugo Fernandez) had driven away the bullies attacking Zola (Lucien Belves) for his Italian name in an Aix en Provence schoolyard in 1852. Along with Baptistin Baille (Jérémy Nebot), they formed an inseparable trio who relished the wide open spaces where they walked, swam and hunted rabbits. And, as they grew into strapping young men (with Pierre Yvon now playing Baille), they also fancied their chances with the pretty girls who strolled around the fountain.

By 1860, however, Zola is forced to capture birds in the Parisian rain to feed himself and his widowed mother, Emilie (Isabelle Candelier), and he desperately wishes to return to Aix, where Louis-Auguste Cézanne (Gérard Meylan) confides in his wife Elisabeth (Sabine Azéma) that he considers Zola a bad influence on their son. However, Cézanne is bored working in a bank and high tails to the capital to meet Zola's artist friends, Camille Pissarro (Romain Cottard), Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Alexandre Kouchner), Anchille Emperaire (Romain Lancry) and Francesco Oller (Pablo Cisneros), as well as their paint supplier Père Tanguy (Christian Hecq). He listens as they bad mouth the Academy and the traditional artists who copy the styles hanging in the Louvre. But Zola is piqued when Gabrielle (Alice Pol), the flowergirl he has long admired from afar agrees to become a model.

As the story shifts back to the 1880s, Zola and Alexandrine (as Gabrielle is now known) are unhappily married. However, she makes a fuss of Cézanne, even though she has little time for his lover, Hortense Fiquet (Déborah François). Zola has become tired of Alexandrine's acerbic chatter and only tolerates her presence as it gives him an excuse to gaze at her maid, Jeanne (Freya Mavor). Her singing, as she does the ironing, also cheers him up after Cézanne taunts him over the size of his house and the antiquated contents that contrast so starkly with the modernity of his writing style. He curses his own failure to make good as an artist and this resentment fuels the tearful fury with which he quotes from L'Œuvre.

He is just as angry in Paris in 1862, as he tosses portraits at Alexandrine and Zola and denounces his father for cutting off his allowance and leaving him with no option but to return to Aix. She is hurt when he pours black paint on her picture and breaks the canvas across his knee and he derides her as a hussy. But he is indifferent to her feelings and snaps at Zola when he castigates him for giving up too easily. Yet they meet again, the following year, at the Salon des Refusés, when Cézanne causes a ruckus with Renoir and Édouard Manet (Nicolas Gob) over the negative comments being made about the latter's `Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe'.

Cézanne wakes under a tree and shuffles off to find Zola. He has written an article in defence of Manet, but Cézanne complains that he made no mention of him, as one who was refused by the Refusés. Frustrated by his self-pity, Zola asks after Alexandrine and pleads with Cézanne to help him court her, as he has loved her for so long. But Cézanne merely makes a crude remark before stalking back to Aix, where he hikes into the red-stone hills to paint, as the words of an encouraging missive from Zola ring in his ears. He discards numerous attempts in his struggle to arrive at his style, but he persists in the knowledge that Zola believes in him and takes pride in their friendship.

At the Salon Officiel in 1867, Cézanne arrives drunk with a canvas and has a contretemps with Manet on the staircase. But he is in a better mood when he joins Zola and their friends - including Berthe Morisot (Carole Labouze) - for a picnic beside the river. Some of the men paint, while Zola snoozes and the womenfolk bathe topless in a nod to `Les Grandes Baigneuses'. When he goes out in a rowing boat with Cézanne, he tells him about the series of novels he is about to write and his determination to alert readers to the plight of the workers and outsiders. But Cézanne sneers that he has forgotten to mention the artists and jumps into the water, as his friend wonders whether he is dealing with a dog, a cobra or a butterfly.

The temper is still fierce during their reunion, as Cézanne accuses Zola of selling out and living like the bourgeoisie he claims to detest. But Zola strikes back and chides his friend for egotistically seeing himself whenever he writes about artists. He insists that he draws on the experiences of their wider circle and complains that Cézanne no longer reads his books, but judges them.

Back in 1867, Zola returns from having a play pilloried in Marseilles to find Cézanne buying materials from Tanguy, who has just sold one of his paintings, albeit a partial one for a pittance to a client who only liked the apple at its centre. He offers him some tube paints for outdoor work and commends him for painting in the daylight and not using as much black as his peers. But he keeps bemoaning his lot, even though Zola has just had his newspaper column cancelled and is struggling to make ends meet. He wishes Cézanne would stop provoking people and admit that he wants acclaim and would like nothing more than to ram his success down his father's throat. But he knows he will always want to do things on his own uncompromising terms.

Three years later, Zola brings Emilie and Alexandrine to L'Estaque, where Cézanne is painting Hortense beside a lake. The scenery is sublime and Emilie upbraids her son for discussing the fall of Napoleon III at the table. However, Alexandrine puts her foot in it by asking Cézanne when he plans to marry Hortense and he scoffs that he will never allow a woman to tame him. The friends walk in the hills and rekindle their bond. But Zola feels the need to return as the Commune grips Paris and he asks Cézanne to care for his wife and mother in his absence.

By 1877, five years have passed since Cézanne saw his parents and Zola delivers them a painting of his study in Batignolles. Louis-Auguste nods gruffly, but Elisabeth takes Zola for a walk in the garden and asks whether her son loves Hortense and their child. She also inquires whether he will ever achieve his goals as an artist and, shortly afterwards, Zola overhears an argument between Cézanne and Hortense, who is tired of being a model rather than a woman and pleads with him to quit painting so they can salvage some happiness. But he storms out vowing to work until he drops and Zola enters the cramped apartment to reassure Hortense that she should stand by her man no matter how difficult he is to live with. He gives her some money and explains that he also feels pain and self-doubt while working a new book. Moreover, he reminds her that her husband has talent and needs her support, even though he seems incapable of giving her the love she needs.

When he comes to stay with Zola in Médan in 1880, Cézanne appears to be in better spirits. He teases Zola about the extension paid for by Germinal and wonders how he can get any peace so close to the railway line. Alexandrine models for him, but Cézanne reminds her of her dubious past as Gabrielle and she launches into a stinging attack on the way he treats those close to him and he throws a piece of fruit through his canvas in a rage.

Guy de Maupassant (Félicien Juttner) comes to supper with Renoir, Baille and his new wife, Angèle (Flore Babled). But he takes exception to her middlebrow prudishness and, when she praises Théodore Géricault's `The Raft of the Medusa', he hurls an obscene insult at her before strutting out. Zola finds him smoking on the jetty and he urges him not to lose sight of his dream. Cézanne wishes he could paint as Zola writes, but he keeps losing his way. As Zola returns to the house, Maupassant wonders why he remains so loyal to such an ungrateful loser and Cézanne eavesdrops as Zola recalls the pity he felt for him when he finally had a picture accepted by the Academy and they placed it high above a giant canvas that dwarfed it. However, Alexandrine admits to having lost patience with him and insists on keeping his work in the attic between visits. Emilie finds Cézanne on the step outside the door and realises he must have heard everything and offers a consoling hand, as he loosens her dress because she is feeling unwell and overwhelmed.

In 1885, Zola returns to Aix and finds Cézanne in his retreat in the hills. They joke about the former's belly and the latter's receding hairline. But they also discuss Alexandrine and Hortense and the painter confesses that he has little to do with her because he has fallen in love with someone else. He shows Zola the billet doux he has composed for her and the writer offers to produce something less sentimental. They smile, as only old friends can. But Cézanne admits to feeling nervous because he has heard that Zola's next book will be about artists.

A year later, Zola is giving a public reading from L'Œuvre when Cézanne creeps into the back of the shop. He recognises the argument with Hortense about him making her look ugly on canvas and the scene shifts to the reunion, as Cézanne accuses Zola of being a voyeur, a rapist and a thief. Yet, almost immediately, they set to teasing each other about their girth and hairline and they manage to remain civil while playing billiards. But Cézanne can't resist a dig about the scene in which Lanthier overhears his friends criticising him and notes that it was the last time he saw Emilie alive. Zola thanks him for always being kind to her, especially when she was bickering with Alexandrine over the lack of a grandchild. Cruelly, Cézanne suggests that this was divine retribution for the daughter Alexandrine gave away and the pair are close to blows when Hortense and Alexandrine return from the theatre. As they chat, Hortense makes a thoughtless remark about motherhood and Cézanne angrily orders her out of the room.

The next morning, Zola finds Cézanne painting Jeanne as she does the laundry in the river. But they are soon feuding again, as the artist accuses the writer of stealing his life for his book. However, as they sit in Zola's study, he reveals that he withheld the story for 20 years in the hope that Cézanne would eventually become a success. But nothing changed, he continued to fail because he remained heartless and Zola laments that he had to publish now because he knows he will never repeat the triumphs of Germinal and Nana and needed to explore his own creative impotence and the face the reality that his life is coming to an end. He curses his juvenile crush on Jeanne, his vulnerability to critical rejection and the lack of courage that has prevented him from living on his own terms. But he most regrets wasting so much time and emotion on an undeserving brother.

A decade later, Ambroise Vollard (Laurent Stocker) comes to Aix to find Cézanne. He buys some abandoned canvases from the couple occupying his former bolthole and is accorded a warm welcome by Elisabeth and her daughter, Marie (Agathe Goussard). Cézanne is more guarded as he paints Vollard's portrait and explains that he stopped going to see Zola because it felt like visiting a head of state rather than a friend. Denying rumours of a rift over the book, he claims to love him as dearly as he detests the Impressionists.

Thus, a year later, when Emperaire informs him that Zola is in Aix, Cézanne rushes from the secluded spot where he has been painting to see his friend holding court outside the hotel. His celebrity has increased since the infamous Dreyfus Case and he informs the mayor that he simply wishes to show Jeanne and their young children around his old haunts. He is asked if he will dine with Cézanne and Zola wistfully declares him a stillborn genius and the heartbroken Cézanne stumbles into the street and leans heavily on his cane as he makes his way back to his easel.

Closing captions reveal that Jeanne brought Zola some unexpected happiness before a clogged chimney caused his death in 1902. Cézanne supposedly wept for days, but continued to paint until he succumbed to pneumonia four years later. Thanks to Vollard, he finally acquired some overdue recognition. Henri Matisse would go on to call him `a sort of God of painting', while Pablo Picasso considered him `the father of us all'. Yet, while 700 of the thousand paintings Cézanne produced are now on display in museums around the world, his revolutionary achievement is scarcely discussed in this deeply frustrating period soap. Indeed, apart from a neat match shot during the credit crawl melding a view of Mont Sainte-Victoire into Cézanne's interpretations, Thompson studiously avoids showing canvases and this decision feels hugely counterproductive (even though her hand might well have been forced by prohibitive rights costs), as the audience is given no insight into why Cézanne struggles for acceptance while the equally groundbreaking Zola finds fame and fortune.

Overlooking the fact that the title makes no sense as there is no `I' character, it makes a change to see Zola in a context other than the defence of Alfred Dreyfus, which informed Richard Oswald's The Dreyfus Case (1930), Milton Rosmer's Dreyfus (1931), William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and José Ferrer's I Accuse! (1958). But, rather curiously, Thompson's scenario bears a marked similarity that of Mike Akester's obscure offering, The Betrayal of Paul Cézanne (2013). However, by flitting between dates without truly establishing the depth of the friendship, she merely stacks up verbose set-pieces that afford the dishevelled Guillaume Gallienne the opportunity to rant and rave while Guillaume Canet puffs on his pipe and looks down his pince-nez. She tries to introduce some romantic tension through their rivalry over Alice Pol, but she is as thinly sketched as Déborah François's exasperated model and Freya Mavor's idealised maid. Consequently, the action keeps coming back to Gallienne blowing his top over his portrayal in a tome that serves more as a MacGuffin than a crucial plot point.

Although the direction is laboured and the dialogue is often garish, the craft contributions are exemplary, notably Jean-Marie Dreujou's shimmering images, Michèle Abbé-Vannier's well-researched interiors and Catherine Leterrier's character-revealing costumes. But Éric Neveux's syrupy score often feels intrusive and reinforces the overall sense of maudlin grandiosity that leaves one wishing that Claude Berry had cast Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu as Zola and Cézanne in the mid-1980s.

The week's final French film is an animation set in New York that has been saddled with an American voice track that will surely do little to sell many extra tickets. Despite the half-term release date, few kids will be clamouring to see Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol's Phantom Boy (even though it would appeal to a fair few intelligent 8-11 year olds). So, surely it would have made more sense to cater to the arthouse crowd hoping to hear Audrey Tautou and Edouard Baer in this much-anticipated follow-up to the Oscar-nominated charmer, A Cat in Paris (2010).

Each night, tweenager Leo (Marcus D'Angelo) reads bedtime stories about his favourite detective hero (and his nemesis The Exterminator) to his adoring younger sister, Lily (Rachel Salvatierra). However, she is sad because Leo is about to go back into hospital for his next course of chemotherapy and their parents (Eileen Stevens and Brian T. Delaney) hug them before lights out and promise them that everything will be okay.

A month of hair-shedding treatment later, Leo doesn't share their optimism. But, no sooner has his mother gone home for the night, than Leo's spirit leaves his body and follows her (through doors, walls and thin air) to the car park to drive home in the passenger seat. It upsets him to see her cry and he wishes he could make contact with Lily. However, as he flies back across the Big Apple to his hospital room, Leo knows that he has helped several of his fellow patients rediscover their will to live (even if they have forgotten their spectral encounters).

Across the city, Detective Alex Tanner (Jared Padalecki) is getting it in the neck from Captain Simon (Bill Lobley) for causing a building to blow up after trapping a couple of gun-toting crooks at the local 7/11. Journalist Mary (Melissa Disney) is quietly impressed by Tanner smearing a tomato on his chest to make the robbers think he had been hit by a stray bullet. But he hadn't realised that the pot shot had pierced a gas pipe and the rest was kaboom!

Feeling sorry for himself after being transferred to the waterfront, Tanner eats pizza in his car unaware that a criminal mastermind known as The Man With the Broken Face (Vincent D'Onofrio) is about to unleash mayhem. Watched by his henchmen, The Little Guy (Fred Armisen) and The Big Guy (Joey Camen), The Face steers a giant crane over the skyline to tap on the window of the mayor (Phil McGlaston) with a mobile phone at the end of the boom hook. Opening the window, the mayor takes a call in which The Face demands $1 billion or he will let loose a computer virus that will paralyse New York.

Plunging the city into darkness to validate his threat, The Face cackles menacingly. However, he is interrupted by his tiny, but ferocious Yorkie dog, Rufus, who needs to find a lamp post. Unfortunately, in giving The Big Guy the slip to shelter from the rain under Tanner's car, Rufus attracts the cop's attention. Following a stand-off, Tanner knocks The Little Guy into the dock and his buddy out cold. But he is left for dead following a confrontation with The Face and a falling packing crate.

Confined to a wheelchair with a badly broken leg, Tanner winds up in the same hospital as Leo, who is excited at getting to know a real-life cop. However, Tanner is in a foul mood because Simon refuses to act on his tip-off about The Face's headquarters. But he is intrigued when Leo shows him how to float outside his body and takes him on a brief tour of the ward. Thus, when Mary comes to visit and offers to check out a lead in a building downtown, Tanner is relieved that Leo is able to follow her and relay what he sees through his own slumbering body in Tanner's room.

When she calls Tanner from an elevator, Mary is slightly spooked that he seems to know exactly where she is. But she drops her phone in trying to escape from The Face and his goons when they ambush her in a car park. However, the excitement takes its toll on Leo, who notices his hands starting to glow with a bluish light that means he has to return to his body as quickly as possible. He is back before Mary reports to Tanner, however, and looks on as Tanner contacts a shady safecracker named The Mole (Dana Snyder), who owes him a favour.

Mary is unimpressed by the smell in The Mole's car, as they stakeout the docks after getting a tip from the owner of a strip club (where Tanner ordered the 11 year-old Leo to avert his gaze while making his way through the bar). But Leo is feeling unwell and can't keep tabs on Mary, who is abducted by The Face after The Mole goes for a recce and can't resist the temptation to steal a little desk safe. This comes back to haunt him when he tries to sneak up on The Face, as it knocks him senseless when it slips out of his hands and he is deeply ashamed when he calls Tanner to let him know that Mary is in danger.

Despite struggling with the effects of his treatment, Leo insists on covering the waterfront to find The Face's lair. As they have Mary's phone, however, the gang knows precisely what he is doing and The Face taunts Mary that she won't be able to benefit from the biggest scoop of her career. Being cool under pressure, however, Mary puts The Face off his guard by refusing to listen to his sob story about how he lost his looks and tricks him into revealing that his master plan depends on his computer. She also gets a clue to the password. But Tanner is powerless to help her as not only can Leo not find her, but they are also under attack from The Big Guy and The Little Guy, who have found Tanner's whereabouts from Mary's phone.

The snarling Rufus helps them get past hospital security, but Tanner traps him in the drawer of his bedside cabinet, while he deals with The Little Guy. Leo only just manages to get back to his body in time because The Big Guy had kidnapped him, but he insists on following the fleeing Rufus back to the docks to find where Mary is being held captive. He tells Tanner the name of the boat where The Face is hiding, but Captain Simon refuses to send back-up and promises to fire Tanner if he bothers him again.

Fortunately, Mary manages to steal back her phone while The Face is preparing to put his plan into action. So, when she escapes on to the deck, Tanner and Leo are able to guide her to safety. But, even though The Face has detonated bombs to sink The Vizir, Mary is determined to try and crack the password and returns to the cabin with flames streaking the Manhattan sky. Concerned that Mary is putting herself in unnecessary danger, Tanner urges her to flee. But she succeed in working out how the password could be right in front of her eyes and stops the computer programme with seconds to spare, as The Face escapes across the harbour in a motorboat.

He is furious that the city has not been plunged into chaos and returns to the ship to punish her. However, he falls foul of one of Rufus's temper tantrums and they are too busy fighting to prevent Mary from diving into the water and swimming to a waiting police launch. Leo realises his powers are fading and flies back to the hospital without seeing Rufus reach the shore after a final explosion sinks The Vizir. However, his energy runs out before he can return to his body and Tanner has to summon help when the boy's body slumps forward in his chair.

As Leo's life hangs by a thread, Lily comes to sit by his bed. She has been learning to read and is able to work her way through the first page of her brother's favourite book. Earlier, Lily had plucked Leo out of the story scenario to ask him to explain the action. But, this time, she urges him to get better and sends his ace detective through a rooftop door that leads to Leo opening his eyes and smiling at the sight of his family and his new friends, Tanner and Mary (who are now an item). Introducing a supernatural superheroic element to appeal to the kidpic crowd, this is essentially an animated reworking of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), which saw wheelchair-bound photojournalist James Stewart take a watching brief while intrepid girlfriend Grace Kelly secures the evidence to convict wife-murdering neighbour, Raymond Burr. In truth, the storyline and characterisation don't stand close scrutiny, with The Face being a disappointingly tame villain. The vocal work isn't particularly distinguished, either. But this is an enjoyable adventure that has the feel of an old-fashioned radio or movie serial.

With their fine art meets comic-book influence (The Face has a Cubist visage), the hand-drawn graphics are considerably more sophisticated. Yet Felicioli and Gagnol can't resist the temptation of having Leo perch on the Statue of Liberty's torch and allow more than a hint of sentiment to creep into the denouement. But the symbolism of a young boy fighting crime as he battles a life-threatening illness is potent and should prompt some interesting conversations with younger viewers as the credits roll.