Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 3/8/2017)

Rasmussen is under the command of Pioneer Corps lieutenant Ebbe Jensen (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), who greets a party of callow POWs with a lecture on why more mines were laid along the West Jutland coast than anywhere else in Europe. Beating the youths across the knuckles with his baton, he trains them to burrow 15-20 centimetres into the sand, unscrew the mine cap and remove the detonation fuse. He reminds them of the price to be paid for making mistakes before taking them to a remote bunker to practice with live mines. Some prove adept at the task, although one has to overcome his nerves before the last in the group perishes in the small circle of sandbags. The eleven survivors are dispatched to the spot delineated by Rasmussen, who greets them with thinly veiled contempt. Living across from the outhouse to which they have been billeted, widow Karin (Laura Bro) ushers her young daughter Elisabeth (Zoe Zandvliet) inside, as the recruits identify themselves as Hermann Marklein (Tim Bülow), Rodolf Selke (August Carter), Friedrich Schnurr (Alexander Rasch), Johann Wolff (Julius Kochinke), August Kluger (Maximilian Beck), twins Ernest (Emil Belton) and Werner Lessner (Oskar Belton), Wilhelm Lebern (Leon Seidel), Ludwig Haffke (Oskar Bökelmann), Sebastian Schumann (Louis Hofmann) and Helmut Morbach (Joel Basman).

They all look alike in their ill-fitting uniforms and, when one of the brothers speaks out of turn, Rasmussen takes sadistic pleasure in slapping his face and barking intimidatingly as the frightened boy snivels. Accompanied by his faithful dog, Otto, he takes them through the dunes to the windswept beach and informs them that there are 45,000 mines in the area between the flags and that it will take them three months to clear them if they each defuse six mines an hour. Fortunately, they have location charts at their disposal and Rasmussen urges them to keep these up to date, as their safety depends upon precision. Crawling on their bellies, they use sticks to prod the sand and the first session goes without a hitch.

Allowed to stuff sacks with grass to make palliasses, the minesweepers chat in their rough-and-ready dormitory, with Schumann asking the others what they plan to do when they get home and snapping. When he mentions working as a mechanic, Lebern offers an apprenticeship in his father's factory. But the cynical Morbach mocks them for believing in illusions. Meanwhile, the twins spot Elisabeth eating bread and Ernst plays with her doll to distract her while he steals the crust.

Barricaded in for the night, the Germans complain about going two days without food and send Schumann to petition Rasmussen. He is indifferent to their plight and refuses to allow Ernst time off when he falls ill. However, when Lebern has his forearms blown off after vomiting on a mine, Rasmussen is compelled to take action and discovers that Morbach has stolen some feed laced with rat droppings from Karin's barn. She is delighted to have wreaked some revenge, but Rasmussen forces his charges to drink salt water to purge themselves before hosing them down. He also sees the sense in Schumann''s claim that they would work better if they weren't starving and steals some supplies after driving to the main camp to ask after Lebern.

Withholding the news of his death, Rasmussen delivers the meagre rations and commends Schumann on his initiative in inventing a wooden frame to protect him on the sand. Grateful for the bread and potatoes, the youths work well. On the way back to their barracks, Haffke tells the twins about longing for a beer and a girl when he gets home and they reveal their plan to become bricklayers, as so much of the country will need rebuilding that they will get rich quickly. That night, however, Jensen brings some friends to taunt the captives and Haffke is doused with petrol, while one of the others is threatened at gunpoint. Rasmussen asks Jensen to leave the kids alone, as he needs them all to complete his mission. He also puts in a request for some more experienced soldiers. But Jensen sneers at him for becoming so attached to his unit that he is willing to steal food for them.

Rasmussen's situation deteriorates when Werner is killed by a large mine and he has to give Ernst a sedative to calm him down. He stays by his bedside, strokes his forehead and promises that he doesn't hate Werner, as Ernst tries to go in search of his sibling. Leaving him to sleep, Rasmussen sits with Schumann, who makes him laugh by pretending that the cross around his neck is explosive. Feeling pity for a kid who has no idea if his family has survived the final onslaught, Rasmussen steals some more food and arranges a football match on the beach. During the game, newcomers Gustav Becker (Aaron Koszuta) and Albert Bewer (Levin Henning) arrive and they join in the fun. As they return, however, Rasmussen throws a ball for Otto to chase and he steps on a mine.

Back at the barracks, Ernst finds a pet mouse and is stroking it when he hears the explosion. The Germans are as distraught as Otto's master, but he takes his distress out on Haffke and makes him fetch the tennis ball in his mouth for not clearing his section properly. Schumann and Morbach try to intercede for him, but Rasmussen shouts them down and curses himself for being too soft on them. Furthermore, he requests two armed guards from base and forces the group to link arms and walk through the supposedly cleared area to ensure there have been no more mistakes. Morbach asks why he doesn't just shoot them and begins laughing hysterically. Rasmussen slaps him repeatedly across the face and orders him to act like a man before sending them off, with even Karin thinking that he is being unnecessarily cruel. Morbach is bent on desertion, but Schumann has him tied to the bed to prevent any reprisals. The next morning, all bar Ernst follow Karin when she finds Elisabeth playing in the middle of an uncleared zone and Rasmussen returns from base to find Schumann crawling over the sand to rescue her. Keen to keep the child from panicking, Ernst strides across to sit with her and they play with her doll while Schumann inches closer. But, having done his bit, Ernst refuses to follow them back to safety and blows himself up on the nearest mine.

Rasmussen urges Schumann to remain strong and promises that he will make it home. But, while four of the group are working on the beach, the others loading defused mines on to a truck are blown to smithereens by a rogue device and Rasmussen arranges for Schumann, Haffke, Morbach and Selke to be driven away. As he collects the black flags, he consoles himself with the fact the survivors are going home. But Jensen has already transferred them to Skallingen, where 72,000 unmapped mines await them and he derides Rasmussen for forgetting that they are Nazi scum. However, Rasmussen is a man of his word and he intercepts the quartet and drives them towards the German border and tells them to make a run for home.

It might come as a surprise to learn that this was one of the five features nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, as just about every aspect of the storyline is entirely predictable. Rasmussen's transformation from martinet to mentor is as signposted as the death of the dog and the endangerment of the child. It also doesn't take much to guess which of the Germans will survive to the end. Yet Zandvliet and co-editors Per Sandholt and Molly Malene Stensgaard manage to maintain the suspense on the sands and each accident catches the audience unawares. With a little help from Sune Martin’s cimbalom-inflected score, he even persuades us to feel pity for his cardboard cut-out characters, as we learn absolutely nothing about the Germans and Zandvliet does little to distinguish between them.

The death of twins who are scarcely older than Elisabeth is made more harrowing by their innocent game with a beetle they have named Tim Benny and Ernst's bid to replace his lost brother with a field mouse. But we have no idea what horrors they might have witnessed after being conscripted as cannon fodder in the final months of the war. Similarly, nothing is said about Rasmussen's experiences during the five-year occupation. Clearly, he has not been a red beret during this period, but Zandvliet lets nothing slip about his military record or whether he has been bereaved. Consequently, his bitter hatred of the retreating Nazis lacks the righteousness or depth that would give emotional heft to the tussle between his patriotism and his growing paternalistic realisation that the kids in his care are also victims of injustice.

Bristling behind a sandy moustache, Roland Møller holds things together with some aplomb. But compatriots Mikkel Boe Følsgaard and Laura Bro struggle to make much out of their caricatured supporting roles, although Louis Hofmann, Joel Basman and Emil Belton fare better as the most prominent prisoners. Making his third feature after Applause (2009) and A Funny Man (2011), Zandvliet doesn't always avoid the maudlin or the melodramatic. But he joins admirably with cinematographer-wife Camilla Hjelm Knudsen and sound designer Rasmus Winther Jensen to convey the wild beauty of a desecrated coastline that was only declared mine-free in 2012. Moreover, he raises some intriguing issues about the relatively little-explored thirst for vengeance that existed among the liberated in postwar Europe and the extent to which the Allies turned a blind eye to illegal practices like the Danish mine clearance.

Continuing the cinematic commemoration of the passing of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, Stephen Frears's Prick Up Your Ears becomes the latest gay-themed movie to return to cinemas. Adapted from John Lahr's acclaimed account of playwright Joe Orton's relationship with companion Kenneth Halliwell, this has acquired a certain cult cachet since its initial appearance in 1987. Markedly less politically abrasive than Hanif Kureishi's stance in My Beautiful Launderette (1985), Alan Bennett's elliptical screenplay is less concerned with the legal restrictions placed upon homosexuality than with the thrill of clandestine assignations and of sticking two fingers up to the establishment. Drawing on Orton's infamous diaries and dotting personal recollections among the flashbacking incidents, this sometimes seems to have more to say about the decade in which it was made than the life and times of Joe Orton (1933-67). Yet, even though there is no forbidding sense of Clause 28 waiting in this wings, this approach only makes the picture feel doubly nostalgic.

Giving away the ending in the opening scene, Bennett and Frears show the police breaking down the door of the flat at 25 Noel Road, Islington, where Joe Orton (Gary Oldman) lived with Kenneth Halliwell (Alfred Molina). Agent Peggy Ramsay (Vanessa Redgrave) comes to identify the bodies and squirrels away a volume of Orton's diaries, which she proceeds to hide, several years later, when John Lahr (Wallace Shawn) visits her office to interview her for his biography. As Anthea Lahr (Lindsay Duncan) starts to transcribe the tapes, Ramsay reminisces about Orton's sudden vogue after the success of his second play, Loot, which had prompted Brian Epstein (David Cardy) to inquire whether he would be interested in writing a screenplay for The Beatles.

However, Orton's rise coincided with a growing detachment from Halliwell, who wore a wig to hide his alopecia and spent his days fretting about Orton's serial infidelities and the prospect of being jettisoned. Yet, rather than trying to ingratiate himself with Orton, Halliwell complains about his lack of consideration and the boredom he has to endure while his lover is having a nude portrait sketched by Patrik Proctor (Derek Jarman). He also resents them having to pass the theatre en route to the opening of a small show of his collage work and one of the patrons urges Orton to ditch him because he is so paranoid and possessive.

Orton has no intention of leaving his friend and lucky charm, however, even though Halliwell loses his patience with a woman at the exhibition and launches into a tirade about Orton stealing his ideas for his plays and taking all the credit while he is viewed as a pitiable hanger-on. Halliwell continues to moan about the downside of being Orton's personal assistant as they take the Tube home. But Orton has spotted a potential conquest in the lift and they slope away together, leaving Halliwell to trudge home and call Ramsay to ask if she has seen Orton (who is skulking in the background) when he fails to return to the flat.

Ironically, Anthea Lahr feels equally undervalued in her collaboration with her husband and she is put out when Ramsay comes to supper to entrust them with Orton's diaries, only to treat her as little more than a home-making typist, as she devours melon and describes Orton's first sexual experience at a Leicester screening of the Bob Hope comedy, My Favorite Brunette (1947), when he was 14. She also gives them the Beatle script and we flashback to 1967, as Ramsay tries to set up a meeting with Epstein and Halliwell berates Orton for filleting ideas from the novel they wrote together several years before. They are interrupted by blowsy neighbour Mrs Sugden (Janet Dale) showing off her new frock and disclosing a little too much information about the unfortunate after-effects of a coffee spill. Her breathless chatter reduces the pair to giggling hysterics, but they are soon bickering again after Orton dismisses Halliwell's coy advances and upsets him by suggesting that he self-pleasures to alleviate his pent-up tension.

Meanwhile, Anthea has to ask her mother (Joan Sanderson) to help decipher the shorthand that Orton used to conceal the sexual references in his diaries. As they toil, Lahr travels to Leicester to meet Orton's sister, Leonie (Frances Barber), who recalls him aspiring to become an actor and taking elocution lessons with Madame Ada Lambert (Margaret Tyzack), much to the dismay of their mother, Elsie (Julie Walters), who wanted him to become a civil servant. Shouting up the stairs of their tiny house, she opines that Dirk Bogarde's mother would never have to put up with soiled bedspreads. But she is silenced by a man from the council education committee knocking to insist that Orton auditions for RADA.

He is accepted after playing both Captain Hook and Smee in a scene from Peter Pan. Following him on to the stage, Halliwell recites `To Be or Not to Be' from Hamlet and is offered a place because he looks older than his years and would come in useful when casting in-house productions. The 25 year-old Halliwell amuses the 17 year-old Orton when he strangles an imaginary cat during an improv exercise and they enjoy the fireworks together during the 1951 Festival of Britain after Orton fails to persuade his girlfriend Janet (Charlotte Wodehouse) to have sex on the South Bank. As the more cultivated of the pair, Halliwell takes it upon himself to educate Orton and they move into the Sugdens' spare rooms in time to consummate their relationship while the Coronation is on the television.

While Lahr and Anthea visit Leonie and her plumber husband, George Barnett (Stephen Hill), avers that Orton was corrupted in London and made up the diary references to cottaging, Orton and Halliwell embark upon a novel. They send Lord Cucumber and the Boy Hairdresser to Faber, where an elderly publisher (Christopher Guinee) tries to let them down gently, while Orton asks to sit in TS Eliot's boardroom chair and Halliwell urges their bemused host to pass on their admiration for The Waste Land. Walking through the park, they catch the eye of Kenneth (Stevan Rimkus) and Orton follows him to his flat, where he watches the stranger kiss Halliwell, who is anxious that they are going to be late for the Proms.

As Ramsay takes up the story again, a decade passes, during which time Orton starts writing in earnest and the balding Halliwell begins covering their bedroom wall with pictures cut out of library books. Librarian Cunliffe (Charles McKeown) and his assistant, Miss Battersby (Selina Cadell), catch them defacing books and their rewritten cover notes to Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers are read out in court before they are sentenced to six months in prison. Orton uses the opportunity to work out and wind up psychiatrist (Richard Wilson) by informing him that he shares a room with Halliwell, despite being married with a child.

Liberated by being apart from Halliwell for the first time in a decade, Orton channels his experiences into a radio play, The Ruffian on the Stair, which we see being recorded for the BBC. Ramsay suggests to Lahr that the dynamic of the relationship had permanently changed, with Halliwell having to justify his continued usefulness now that Orton found sex elsewhere and no longer needed him to bolster his literary confidence. Ramsay takes him on as a client and changes his first name from John to Joe. She also exploits his bad boy past and Entertaining Mr Sloane opens to rave reviews at the New Arts Theatre in May 1964.

Unhappy at being sidelined during rehearsals, Halliwell is mollified by the purchase of a luxuriant wig. He is delighted when he thinks it makes him attractive to cruising males (when, in fact, Orton has bribed a man to flirt with him) and enjoys the thrill of nearly being caught in a police raid. But relations between the no-longer lovers have begun to deteriorate by the time that Loot becomes a smash. Indeed, Orton refuses to let Halliwell attend an awards ceremony and he is about to let the Fabs know where they can stick his Remington typewriter when Paul McCartney drops by in a white Rolls Royce and Halliwell is left on the wet pavement as Orton waves from the backseat.

Yet, while he misses out on the Evening Standard Drama Awards and the orgy in a darkened gents that follows, Halliwell does get to accompany Orton to Morocco, where they appear to be having a wonderful time with the eager locals. Orton even revels in joshing Epstein about the scenes in Up Against It in which his charges would be required to smoke a joint and share a bed with the same girl. But, when Orton insists on working, Halliwell loses his composure and throws the typewriter off the roof and declares their relationship at an end. Sneering, Orton retires to his room with a pretty youth and he is no more charitable when they return to London. Amused to find that Ramsay has sold the screenplay to someone else, Orton learns from Leonie that his mother has died and he orders Halliwell to see a doctor while he is away because he is sick.

Despising his mother, Orton shows no emotion as the undertaker prepares the corpse. Indeed, he steals her treasured false teeth and pities his father William (James Grant) because he knows they were rarely happy. He ogles one of the undertakers assistant's and has sex with a stranger at the bus stop before sending one of the actors on to the stage that night with Elsie's dentures.

Sadly, the end came shortly afterwards and Ramsay finds it hard to discuss the matter with Lahr. We see Orton suggesting that they should split up rather than find new digs and he derides Halliwell when he claims that Orton is his creation. As he rolls over to sleep, Halliwell curses his many misfortunes before bludgeoning Orton to death with a hammer. He leaves a note stating that his motive can be found in the diaries and takes a handful of Nembutal before stripping.

In a rather rushed finale, Ramsay tells Lahr that Halliwell was the first wife who made the sacrifices without getting the glory, while she is the widow who got to enjoy the spoils. She recalls that only three people attended Halliwell's funeral, while Orton's was packed. Leonie helped her commingle the ashes, which they scattered in a churchyard to the badly re-recorded climactic chord of `A Day in the Life'. As the ashes disperse, the drearily disapproving Barnett opines that they wouldn't do this kind of thing in Leicester.

Bristling with attitude, yet suffused with melancholy, this often feels more like a eulogy for Kenneth Halliwell than a memoir of Joe Orton. Brilliantly played by Alfred Molina and Gary Oldman, the mismatched pair clearly functioned as a double act for much of their time together and Frears and Bennett are right to prioritise their time as a couple over their backstories (for the record, Halliwell was from the Wirral and did, indeed, witness his mother's death from a wasp sting and find his father after he used the oven to gas himself). But, by opting to overlook the decade between Orton's RADA and radio days, Frears and Bennett leave a good deal of psychological baggage in lost property, while offering few insights into the effects that being closeted had on gay men at a time when active homosexuality was still a criminal offence.

Led by a sparkling Vanessa Redgrave as Peggy Ramsay, the supporting cast is as strong as Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski's production design and Bob Ringwood's costumes, which refuse to fetishise quotidian 60s furnishings and fashions. Oliver Stapleton's camerawork is unshowily steady, but Stanley Myers's score occasionally feels intrusive, most notably during the fateful night of 9 August. Halliwell had suggested `Prick Up Your Ears' for the Beatle project, but Orton had responded that it was `much too good a title to waste on a film'. Three decades on, one is still forced to concede that Lahr's exemplary 1978 tome is still the superior work. But, it would be remiss to end this review of such a thoughtful study of unequal partners without noting that Lahr - the son of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz who took his Masters at Worcester College - ended up divorcing Anthea Mander and, in 1988, began dating future wife Connie Booth (ex-husband John Cleese's co-star and key collaborator on Fawlty Towers). Funny how things work out, isn't it?

There was a joke about `spoiler alerts' on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue last week. Host Jack Dee revealed that Lionel Blair had taken a small part in Richard Lester's Beatle romp, A Hard Day's Night (1964), and proceeded to issue an alert warning listeners that Blair spoils the film around the 38 minute mark.

Such is the current reverence for the plot twist that a growing number of film reviews (particularly online) tiptoe around story arcs for fear of incurring the wrath of readers who want to watch a movie without prior knowledge. By withholding information in such a manner, however, a critic can only do a fraction of their job, as they are only able to offer opinions on the action and how it has been presented up to the first significant kink in the storyline. This approach is rendered ridiculous by items like Gareth Tunley's directorial debut, The Ghoul, as the whole point of the picture is that it can be interpreted in at least two ways and it seems fatuous to appraise only one in order to appease those who, frankly, should avoid pre-screening reviews if they are so easily outraged by anything that might ruin their hermitic enjoyment.

Returning to London along the North Circular Road, Tom Meeten hooks up with cop pal Dan Renton Skinner to survey the hallway of an unremarkable suburban house in which an elderly couple had managed to keep moving towards their assailant in spite of being shot three times each. Following a troubled night's sleep, Meeten concludes that property manager Rufus Jones has something to do with the murder and his hunch seems well founded when Skinner discovers that he has disappeared. He has, however, been consulting psychiatrist Niamh Cusack and Meeten decides to pose as a potential client in the hope of gaining access to her filing cabinet.

Meeten explains the case to profiler Alice Lowe, who suggests that Jones might be a ghoul with an unhealthy obsession with crime scenes. She urges Meeten to back away and go back north, but he is determined to pursue his line of inquiry. And here is where the anti-spoilerists would draw a red line in the narrative sand, as, from hereon in, the viewer is forced to make a judgement about Meeten's own psychological state. Is he really a maverick copper going undercover in search of clues or is he really the ghoul, who exploits his friendships with Skinner and Lowe to live a fantasy life that is somewhat detached from reality?

Lowe suggests a depressive condition that Meeten could feign in order to intrigue Cusack and the action cross-cuts between Lowe's pep talk and the session in Cusack's sparsely furnished office. But, the fact that Lowe confides a post-coital regret that Meeten has returned to London should alert the audience to the fact that he is either trouble or troubled. Lowe even calls Cusack to lure her out of the consulting room and allow Meeten (who is wearing a wire) time to photograph Jones's case notes. Yet, as they read about her misgivings about his bipolar tendencies, Lowe teases Meeten about pots and kettles and notes that Cusack is considering referring Jones to her mentor, Geoffrey McGivern.

At their next meeting, Cusack asks Meeten to describe a typical day and we see him wandering the streets in a rundown area near the tower block in which he lives. As darkness falls, he seems to stare up at Lowe's window and returns to his flat in a state of frustration. But is this montage a true reflection of his daily routine or what he has told Cusack to keep up the pretence for over a month (which seems superfluous now that he has obtained the confidential information on Jones)? Eager to make progress, Cusack asks Meeten to let his guard down and he tells her about Lowe and how they met while students at Manchester University and how she is now dating his friend, Skinner.

Suddenly, Metten seems vulnerable and starts to look a little dishevelled. He is slapped on the face by neighbour James Eyres Kenward when they meet on the staircase and he shovels noodles into his mouth from a pan, as he huddles on his bed. He also gets a visit from Skinner (a rep for a drinks company rather than a cop), who gives him a bottle of vodka and urges him to find a reason to get up in the morning. Standing in the doorway of the whiffy apartment, Skinner admits that he and Lowe have had a few problems, but that they are happy enough and suggests that Meeten finds himself a bad woman to perk himself up.

During his next session with Cusack, Meeten confesses that he daydreams about being a detective who has been thrown off the force after taking the blame for something he didn't do. He imagines that he still solves crimes when he is actually signing on between bits-and-pieces jobs and that Lowe (who is really a teacher) is a psychological profiler who helps him crack the case. In fact, when he bumps into Lowe in the park, he becomes so tongue-tied that he returns to his tiny bedsit to kick the wall in anguish. The surprise on Lowe's face when she spots him by the pond suggests that the previous meeting about infiltrating Cusack's surgery was a figment of Meeten's imagination and also casts doubt over his visit to the scene of the pensioner shooting. But Tunley has no intention of letting the audience know which scenes are `real' and which are taking place in the overactive imagination of his abject anti-hero.

Despite insisting that he knows his lawman persona is a sham, Meeten still follows Jones when he runs into him at Cusack's. However, he makes such a cack-handed job of it that Jones confronts him and forces him to buy coffee to atone for stalking him. He mentions McGivern and, curiously, Meeten finds himself being transferred to him when Cusack announces she needs urgent treatment for a serious medical condition. Even more eerily, McGivern has the same front door as the crime house and Meeten is slightly taken aback by his new shrink's chatty geniality and the amount of fantastical paraphernalia around his upstairs room.

Jones is also intrigued and invites Meeten to a party, where a dreadlocked Paul Kaye tells a rambling story about drug-dealing and the power of prayer. While under the influence, Meeten gets spooked by a conversation about whether he really is an undercover cop and has had his mind messed around so much that he doubts his true identity. A befuddling montage of road signs, flashing lights, hurtling trains and blurred close-ups in murky reddish light convey Meeten's sense of disorientation. He wakes the next morning in the bed of Rachel Stubbings, who brings him toast and gives him her number. But he has no idea how they hooked up.

At his next session with McGivern, Meeten asks about the Klein bottle on a shelf and he explains that, as a closed manifold with a non-orientable surface, it has no inside or outside. He compares it to a Möbius strip and uses a piece of torn paper to show how an ant would follow it and return to the same spot without ever crossing an edge or turning back on itself. McGivern admits to finding magick a useful tool and points out the sigil design on the wall that he created in the middle of a health scare a decade ago.

Ignoring messages from Jones to stay away from McGivern (and the fact that his new friend seems to have vanished), Meeten takes the train into the sticks and McGivern takes him to the local woods to declare one clearing to be the centre of the area's occult activity. As Meeten becomes more morose, he peeps on Lowe near her home and wanders the streets with no destination in mind. He questions McGivern's suggestion to give his clinical depression a name so that he can approach it from a new angle. When he finally opts to call it The Ghoul, McGivern reminds him that it has tried and failed to conquer him for many years and he implores Meeten not to give up the battle.

He attempts to draw his own sigil sign and is amazed when Lowe calls him the next day. She is upset because Skinner has cheated on her and Meeten is pleased that she considered him her shoulder to cry on. A meeting with Jones proves less enjoyable, however, as he has covered his wall with scribbled notes and he tries to convince Meeten that Cusack and McGivern are gods who are playing with them for their sport. It comes as a relief, therefore, when Lowe invites him over again and they reminisce about their student days before Meeten pleads with her not to leave London, as he needs her.

McGivern is pleased with Meeten's progress. But he warns him to stay away from Jones, as he fears he will try to manipulate his mind. Confused when Jones insists that McGivern is the dangerous character, Meeten feels abandoned when McGivern announces that he is going to take some time off to nurse a friend suffering from cancer. Worse follows when Lowe apologises for leading him on and Meeten gets drunk in his room as he strives to make sense of what is happening to him. Staring at the ceiling, he gets a vision of Jones's noticeboard, while the voices he hears while playing back his taped therapy sessions convince him that he has to act.

Acquiring a gun and distressed by the news that Lowe and Skinner are moving up north, Meeten breaks into McGivern's house with his mind repeating the exhortation to `use the loop'. Leaving Cusack in bed, McGivern comes downstairs to investigate the noise and tries to calm Meeten down as he points the gun at him. Cusack emerges on the stairs and Meeten begins to panic, as the pair seem to taunt him, even though he fires at them. Running out of the door, Meeten gets into his car and drives north at a breakneck speed until he crashes. Or does he, as the picture ends with him on the same road heading back towards London, as he was in the opening scene?

Toying obfuscatorily with the audience in much the same way that David Lynch often does and that Omer Fast did in his feature debut, Remainder (2015), Tunley makes an accomplished start as a writer-director after previously having acted in features like executive producer Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011). Indeed, the stamp of the Ealing Live comedy platform is as evident on this head-scratcher as it was on Steve Oram's Aaaaaaaah! (2015) and Alice Lowe's Prevenge (2016). But, while there's something undeniably incestuous about this offbeat cabal, its members are nowhere near as smug as those who formed Natural Nylon in the late 1990s.

Tom Meeten certainly allows himself no airs and graces, as he plumbs the depths of despair while being buffeted by just about everyone he meets. Yet, we get to know little about his past or the reasons for his decision to come south after such a prolonged period. But Tunley is careful not to leak too much tangible information, as this would limit his ability to yank the audience's chain at whim (which he does to decent effect without quite exhausting its patience). He is capably abetted in this regard by Benjamin Pritchard's skittish visuals, co-editor Robin Hills's slickly controlled assembly and Waen Shepherd's pulsatingly unsettling score. But Meeten is clearly the most crucial conspirator, as he plays each scene with a naturalistic immediacy that enables Tunley to conceal his hand past the closing credits.

Perfectly timed for the start of the new football season, Russian-born journalist Maya Zinshtein's Forever Pure charts the fall out from an Israeli sporting scandal that says a good deal more about the country than it does about the beautiful game. Taking its title from a banner brandished by the ultra-nationalist La Familia fan faction that occupies the East Stand at the Teddy Stadium in the Malha district of the capital and exploiting remarkable access to those on either side of the Beitar Jerusalem divide, this deeply depressing documentary exposes the ferocity of the hatred festering in a state whose politicians seem bent on widening rather than healing its divisions.

Founded in 1936, Beitar Jerusalem is the most controversial club in the Israeli football league, as it has never fielded a single Arab player. According to publicist Erel Segal, Beitar has always been the team of the Mizrachi Jews and those who consider themselves to be second-class citizens. Consequently, some 2000 fans in their yellow-and-black shirts attend pre-season training under coach Eli Cohen before the 2012-13 campaign in the hope this is the year they can pull away from the bottom after four seasons of disappointment after league and cup wins, but Beitar lie eighth in the table after six games and commentator Meir Einstein is optimistic ahead of a home game under floodlights.

Before the kick-off, however, the fans vent their fury at Israeli-Russian oligarch Arcadi Gaydamak, who has owned Beitar for seven years and has failed to invest in new players. He freely admits in an interview that he finds the obsession with football puzzling and only bought the franchise to curry favour with its huge fan base during his failed bid to become Mayor of Jerusalem in 2008. But he is cheering with the rest as the team go unbeaten for two months and rise to fourth in the table. However, tensions start to mount when a warrant is issued in France for Gaydamak's arrest in relation to the so-called Angola-gate arms deal and Segal suggests that he no longer cares about the club and has starved it of funding after his fortune was dented by some injudicious business deals.

Suddenly, in January 2013, Gaydamak decides to take the squad to Chechnya for an unscheduled friendly. The players admit to being nervous on the plane, as Beitar's anti-Muslim reputation precedes it. Prior to the game, Gaydamak meets with head of state Ramzan Kadyrov, who insists over lunch that he is keen to establish economic ties with the Jews. Former sports minister, Haydar Alhanov, reveals that Kadyrov is determined to improve the Chechen image through sport and he treats his visitors to a lavish reception after a goalless draw in Grozny.

A few days later, Beitar chairman and ex-player Itzik Korenfine was dismayed to discover that Gaydamak had done a deal to sign 19 year-old defender Dzhabrail Kadiyev and 23 year-old striker Zaur Sadayev. As they drive into Jerusalem from the airport, Sadayev says they will visit the Al-Aksa mosque every day to pray for success at Beitar. But Cohen makes no bones about being furious with the development and 24 year-old goalkeeper and captain Ariel Harush is forced to welcome his new teammates at a hastily convened press conference. With the menorah as the club crest, his assertion that race and religion won't matter if the newcomers play well is gracious rather than committed and he poses with a rictus smile that is matched by the patently uncomfortable Chechens.

After phoning home from their heavily guarded hotel room, they go to training, where Cohen's changing-room welcome is decidedly half-hearted. However, there is real hostility from the La Familia brigade that has gathered in a rickety stand and Sadayev and Kadiyev try to laugh off the fact they are insulted as Arabs. Oshri Kriaf (whose brother Ofir plays for Beitar) declares his country to be broken and insists that every Israeli flinches when an Arab gets on a bus. He refuses to accept Muslims at the club and joins in the furious chants that greet Sadayev and Kadiyev when they start on the bench for the next game. However, the crowd also turns on Harush and Korenfine for extending a hand of welcome and the goalkeeper is particularly hurt to have gone from hero to foe in such a short space of time.

Sadayev suggests fans are fickle everywhere, but Kadiyev wants to go home and fellow defender Ofir Kriaf admits to finding it difficult betraying beliefs he has held since he first attended a Beitar game when he was six years old. He is substituted when Kadiyev makes his debut (with his mother watching next to Gaydamak) and the mixed reaction within the ground suggests that some Beitar fans are embarrassed by the racist catcalling coming from the East Stand. Argentinian player Dario Fernandez tells Zinshtein finds it difficult to understand how Jews can be so prejudiced after what they have been though and wishes they would give the Chechens a chance.

During a State Cup tie against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Kadiyev is abused by the away fans while warming up near the dugout and is sent off without kicking a ball. The commentator laments that he lost his head in front of his mother, but concedes his is merely a kid caught up in a maelstrom. Fan Itsek Alfasi decries the behaviour of the 3000-strong phalanx that brings shame to the club, but Oshri Kriaf celebrates in the stands because he knows his brother will regain his place during Kadiyev's ensuing suspension.

Cross-cutting between shots of Kadiyev praying in his hotel room and Harush praying at home, Zinshstein asks about a meeting he had with La Familia leaders and he reveals that they agreed to ease up on him if he condemned the signings. A former idol of the fans now threatening to rape his daughter, Korenfine opines that the East Stand is a microcosm of Israeli society and notes that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and state president Reuven Rivlin have both feted the club in order to win the hearts of the supporters. The latter insists he has warned about the silence of the political class legitimising the bigotry of La Familia and Gaydamak concurs that many aspiring candidates ignore the racist incitement in order to win votes.

As the season progresses, Beitar slip to seventh and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman makes a very public appearance at Teddy Stadium. However, he chooses the night Sadayev becomes the first Muslim to score for the club and his celebration leads to an exodus from the East Stand. The TV commentator inists the team will be better off without such xenophobes, but the `Beitar Pure Forever' banner upsets Korenfine as much as it amuses Gaydamak because he had signed the Chechen pair to expose such intolerance within the fan base and within Israeli society as a whole. However, it seems clear that the more religious members of the team also have a beef with Sadayev and Kadiyev, as they make a point of praying together before a meal in the hotel and Fernandez admits he is finding it puzzling why they would make such a flagrant show of animosity.

Caretaker Meir Harush shows Zinshtein his shirt collection and says that he will add Kadiyev and Sadayev without hesitation if they make a presentation. However, they have gone to visit Abu Gosh, a village where 95% of the residents can trace their families back to Chechnya. Sadayev (who has grown a beard) jokes that none can speak the language and their guide points out that their ancestors settled here 500 years ago. He wishes Godspeed to those who walked out after his goal and hopes the ordeal will soon be over. But things get worse after Chechen brothers perpetrate an atrocity at the Boston Marathon and the team arrives for its next home match to find that La Familia has organised a mass boycott of the ground.

They lose the game and go on a winless streak that sees Beitar drop to the foot of the table. Cohen puts it down to a fear factor that has been caused by the fans and bemoans the empty stadium when true supporters would be getting behind their team. However, Kriaf backs La Familia on social media and is suspended for a breach of club discipline. Zinshstein interviews him, as he blames Gaydamak for trying to score points against people whose lives revolve around a club he treats as a plaything and his father backs him up, shouting down his mother's assertion that he meant well, but was a little naive.

While Kriaf is lauded wherever he goes, Harush is denounced and his stock falls further when he backs Korenfine's decision. Days later, however, there is an arson attack and Meir Harush is distraught that his carefully curated club museum has been ruined. Prime Minister Netanyahu condemns the fire, but is criticised for failing to speak out before now, as the anti-Arab bigotry is deep-rooted among Beitar followers. But the timing of the blaze seems deliberate, as the final game of the season is against the league's sole Arab team, Bnei Sakhnin, and Beitar need to avoid defeat to avoid relegation.

On the bus, the players listen to a radio phone-in and learn that La Familia have suspended the protest to support the teams during this crucial game. But the tensions within the squad are evident when Sadayev asks his translator if this is like a local derby and an unnamed teammate snidely remarks that he should enjoy playing in the Doha Stadium, as it will seem like a home game to him. Security is tight around the ground, as the Bnei fans loathe Beitar with a passion that adds to the venom of the chanting at either end of the ground.

Cohen does what he can to get them fighting for the cause, but Sadayev gets carried away in a tetchy match and is sent off. With the Beitar fans chanting for Kriaf, it's Harush who keeps the team up with a heroic display in a 0-0 draw. After the match, Sadayev accepts a copy of the Quran from a Beni delegation and he smirks for the cameras with a red scarf around his neck. He is swept straight to the airport with Kadiyev and there is little emotion among the other plays when they bid their farewells.

During the close season, Gaydamak gave the club away for free and was relieved to sever his ties. After being greeted with death threats on the first day of pre-season training, Harush signs for bitter rivals Hapoel Tel Aviv. By contrast, Kriaf was made the youngest captain in the history of the club and his cult status intensified after the team qualified for the Europa League. Sadayev moved to Lech Poznan in Poland, while Kadiyev had to make do with FC Terek-2 Grozny. The new owners sacked Cohen and Korenfine, but a worse fate awaited Gaydamak, as he turned himself into the French police in 2015 and was sentenced to three years for money laundering. After just four months, however, he was moved to house arrest.

The last of the closing captions reveals that a group of moderate Beitar fans formed a breakaway club, Beitar Nordia Jerusalem, as a result of the 2012-13 season. Yet, while the state president pledged his allegiance, La Familia announced it was moving into the political sphere and is now seen as a growing right-wing force. Such developments make the enmity between Glasgow's Old Firm seem like light-hearted banter. Indeed, there won't be a football fan across the British Isles who won't feel revulsion at Zinshtein's findings. Yet, most will also recognise the basic tribal misanthropy that underpins most team rivalries and there is no reason to feel complacent that our own sports are immune from such excessive partisanship. After all, where are all those British Asian footballers?

Editors Justine Wright and Noam Amit do a solid job of piecing together the action on and off the pitch. However, the debuting Zinshstein might have made more of Beitar's relegation battle by identifying opponents and providing scorelines, as well as by showing league tables in full as the team slid towards the trapdoor. She might also have mentioned that the Chechens were only signed on loan until the end of the season, as this makes the vehemence of the outcry even more revealing and reprehensible. But the socio-political concerns clearly matter more than the sporting ones and the film makes its points about racism, mob rule and Israel's widening divisions with insight and acuity. Perhaps it might have been useful to speak to a few more members of La Familia on camera, while some objective press input might not have gone amiss. It might also have been interesting to see how UEFA handled the issue or if it got involved at all. But this makes for compelling viewing and should be seen by as many football fans as possible.

Finally, this week, comes a documentary with more than a little local interest. Yet, while the title suggests its focus will fall primarily on the owner of the Formula One team based at Grove near Wantage, Morgan Matthews's Williams also offers shrewd insights into the contributions that Sir Frank Williams's late wife Virginia and fortysomething daughter Claire have made to both his career in motor sport and his recovery from the 1986 road accident that left him a quadriplegic in need of round-the-clock care.

Opening with a notification that certain scenes had been reconstructed to help tell the story, the documentary takes a time to settle into a narrative pattern. Amidst the din of a racing garage, we are introduced to Frank and Claire (who became deputy team principal in 2013) and learn that the Williams F1 team has not won the world championship since Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 and haven't topped the podium at a Grand Prix since Pastor Maldonado became the first Venezuelan to win at this level in Barcelona in 2012. What Matthews doesn't mention, however, is that Williams hadn't tasted victory for eight years and it's clear that without Sir Frank's passion for the sport, the team may well have folded.

Without Ginny, however, the end would have come much more quickly, as she nursed her husband through the six weeks that he clung on to life after his crash and continued to do so until she succumbed to cancer in 2013. Friend Pamela Cockerill shows Matthews the dictaphone tapes containing the conversations they had in 1989 when Ginny decided to write a book about her life. Claire admits that she thought her mother was having an affair, as she spent so much time being furtive and Matthews uses a soft-focus sitting-room scene to recreate the cosy tête-à-têtes that Ginny and Cockerill enjoyed during the writing of A Different Kind of Life.

Frank and Ginny met a few weeks before she was due to marry another man. He was into motor sport and introduced his 20 year-old fiancée to the aspiring driver who simply took her breath away. The feeling was entirely mutual, but she went ahead with the wedding and tried to make the best of her new life. But, as her brother Jamie Berry and Frank's best mate David Brodie recall, they were destined to be together, as she used to stalk him around the garage in Slough in the hope of bumping into him.

Raised by a single mother in Jarrow, Frank had endured a tough childhood and found in motor-racing a camaraderie he had not known as a boarder at St Joseph's College in Dumfries. Almost as soon as he left, he bought a racing A35 and moved into a flat in Harrow with a group of aristocratic petrolheads, including Piers Courage, Roger Bunting and Charles Lucas. Engineer Frank Dernie remembers them being good-time toffs, but Frank had to earn a living and Brodie reveals that he used to buy and sell parts and recondition cars for clients in Italy in order to keep the newly separated Ginny in the style to which she had become accustomed.

Despite having a reputation as a speed merchant on the saloon car circuit, Frank was also known for being reckless and he admits to having rolled a fair number of road and racing cars. So, when the chance came to build a Formula One car for Courage to drive in 1969, he took it with both hands and driver Howden Ganley and future Williams sponsorship manager Peter Windsor remember the dashing Courage and the dogged Frank being a formidable team. But, following a second spot at Monaco, Courage was killed at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort in June 1970 and Sir Jackie Stewart recalls the incident with a grimace of regret and kind word for his widow, Sally. Brodie also reflects on the toll the loss took on Frank, who blamed himself for the death of a friend in his car, as he would do again when Ayrton Senna was fatally injured in a Williams car at Imola in May 1994. Claire recalls being told by Ginny to control her emotions at the funeral, but Frank admits shedding tears for Courage and Senna.

Lifting the gloom, Matthews lurches forward to show Finn Valtteri Bottas getting third place in Mexico in 2015. Claire reveals that Williams runs on an annual budget of £110 million, but she refuses to see herself as an underdog and regrets that Ginny never got to see her running the team with her father. But she smiles at the memory of Frank leaving his pregnant bride and going back to work after their registry office wedding and refusing to go on family holidays, while Williams Engineering Director Patrick Head suggests that he was always a bit of an oddball, who used to run round each circuit to stay fit.

But he was also single-minded and this determination got Williams through a lean patch in the mid-1970s when they survived because Ginny sold her London flat (much to the dismay of her parents). However, while it seemed as thought the corner would be turned when oil magnate Walter Wolf bought out the debt in 1976, Frank found being a junior partner an uncomfortable experience and he fell into a depression after he was locked out of the factory and the renamed Wolf car won its first race in South American. Ginny and Brodie sustained his spirits and he landed the opportunity to re-enter the sport with driver Patrick Neve through a deal with the Belle Vue Belgian beer company that allowed him to open a factory in an abandoned carpet warehouse near Didcot.

This bouncebackability is clearly a Williams hallmark, but Claire feels only pain when Bottas and Felipe Massa miss the chance to triumph at Silverstone in 2015 and end up coming fourth and fifth. How the team could do with a Patrick Head, who had brought a new reliability to Williams cars from 1977. Indeed, Frank calls his appointment his best decision after marrying Ginny. Dernie and driver Alan Jones remember the impact that Head's pioneering use of `ground effect' had on the car. Yet because Jones broke down while well ahead at Silverstone in 1979, it was No.2 driver Clay Regazzoni who had the distinction of securing the first Williams Grand Prix win after a decade of trying. However, it was Jones who went on to become world champion and two more drivers' and constructors' crowns followed in the early 1980s.

With success came temptation, however, and Brodie and F1 hospitality maven Lynden Swainston hint at the odd indiscretion from the groupies known as `screwdrivers'. But Ginny took the infidelities in her stride, even though it annoyed her when Frank used to lie in the face of accusation. Claire admits she wouldn't put up with such treachery, as Matthews explores how much the sport has changed to enable her to rise to such a prominent position within Williams. But, as she reveals at a press conference, she didn't seek a job and her father had nothing to do with the appointment, which has clearly caused a degree of familial friction with her older brother, Jonathan, who runs the team's heritage department. No mention is made of their middle sibling, Jaime, as we see home movies and old photos, while Uncle James Berry suggests that Ginny could have sorted the feud. But it continues to fester and Claire puts it down to the fact that Jonathan resents being gazumped by a pushy girl.

Veering back to F1, Dernie remembers the problems the team had working with Nigel Mansell in the mid-80s and how many of the backroom crew preferred his new teammate, Nelson Piquet. But during pre-season testing in the South of France, Frank and Peter Windsor were involved in a crash because the former was speeding to get home to run in a half marathon. Piquet, Dernie and Mansell sped to the spot and the latter went in the ambulance to ensure Frank received the best care. Ginny and Head flew in the next day and Windsor remembers the French doctors being prepared to let Frank die. However, she arranged a flight to London and remained at his bedside, with Head claiming she resuscitated him on three occasions when he had clinically died. Even the medics at the Royal London Hospital sought permission to switch off the life-support machine, but Ginny kept the faith and Frank lived to fight another day, albeit in a wheelchair.

With Frank in intensive care, Head ran the team and Piquet won the Brazilian Grand Prix to kick-start the season. However, he and Mansell detested each other and the internecine bickering was used to motivate Frank to make a full enough recovery to come and referee the feuding superstars. To this day, Piquet remains convinced that British bias prevented him from winning a third world title, but Dernie insists that Mansell was so unpopular that nobody actively sough to tilt the balance in his favour. Archive footage shows Frank being helped out of a car and into his chair, as the narrator explains that he was paralysed from the neck down and carer Michael Waldher concurs that he somehow found the ability to propel the wheels with arms that had no feeling. But, while she highlights the pain he endures on a daily basis, Claire seems frustrated that Frank has never read Ginny's book, which she had written so that he could see what she had been through to keep him afloat (as emotion was never up for discussion in the Williams household). Cockerill, Swainston and James Berry also resent his refusal to acknowledge the depth of her sacrifice, but he clearly has no intention of reading his late wife's innermost thoughts on the events that transformed their relationship.

Back on the track, Frank attended the 1986 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch. Mansell edged out Piquet in a thrilling race and Ginny was allowed on to the podium to collect the constructors' cup. Claire now gets to play a major part in the running of the team and she enjoys teasing Frank about his detachment from the real world because all he thinks about is F1. This evidently became the case after Ginny died and her brother (who comes across as a disapproving presence throughout) hopes that he came to realise how much he loved her. Dernie and Brodie suggest as much by revealing that Frank now sleeps in his flat at the factory because there was no one to go home to. Yet, when he pays a visit to Claire, she reads an extract from the book that reduces her to tears and Frank is clearly moved by Ginny's words about his condition and how much she misses the infuriating man she married.

Ending touchingly on a shot of Frank waking with a start to the roar of an engine after dozing off in the pits, this is very different to such other F1 actualities as Asif Kapadia's Senna (2010), Paul Crowder's 1 (2013), Hannes M.Schalle's Lauda: The Untold Story (2015) and Roger Donaldson's McLaren (2016). Sports fans might complain about the gaps that Matthews leaves in the Williams team story, particularly in connection to Damon Hill and Ayrton Senna. But, as a snapshot of a family negotiating an extraordinary series of problems, this works surprisingly well.

The armchair chat and the hospital recovery sequences are a miscalculation, although it could be argued that they are a necessary storytelling evil and that Matthews manages them sensitively enough. But the affectionate contributions of the talking heads and the unflinching honesty of Frank, Jonathan, Claire and the tape-recorded Ginny make this unexpectedly potent and compelling.