Parky at the Pictures (Downloads 9/11/2017)

Japanese maestro Kiyoshi Kurosawa makes his French-language debut with Daguerreotype (aka Le Secret de la chambre noire), an intriguing exercise in millennial Gothic that exploits the fact that models posing for the photographic process devised in the early 19th century by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre have to remain still for an inordinately long time in order for the image to register on the camera's silver plate. As one might expect of a director renowned for the likes of Pulse (2001), Tokyo Sonata (2008), Journey to the Shore (2015) and Creepy (2016), Kurosawa expertly establishes the mood of this unsettling ghost story. But he fails to build on his promising premise.

Bereft following the sudden death of wife Valérie Sibilla, onetime fashion photographer Olivier Gourmet locks himself away in a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of Paris. Here, he devotes himself to posing his 22 year-old daughter Constance Rousseau for life-size daguerrotypes that require her to remain motionless for hours on end. Supported by a back brace that resembles an implement of torture, Rousseau is happy to indulge her grief-stricken father until he takes on a new assistant. Having no experience of working in a photographic studio, Tahir Rahim avoids asking the kind of awkward questions that Gourmet dreads. But, when he falls in love with Rousseau, Rahim vows to free her from her father's clutches and enters into an unholy alliance with Gourmet's associate Mathieu Amalric and shifty property developer Malik Zidi, who are eager to acquire the mansion.

Although it sounds as though it should have a fin-de-siècle setting and an MR James tone, this is very much a modern-day saga. Nevertheless, production designers Pascale Consigny and Sébastien Danos afford cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine plenty of scope for brooding images that are complemented by composer Grégoire Hetzel's mournful blend of harp and violin. A sequence in an empty church is particularly effective. Yet, Kurosawa becomes so obsessed with capturing the excruciating stillness of the photo sessions that he struggles to raise the pace when Gourmet starts to feel menaced by Sibilla's restless spirit. Indeed, even after a second character passes to the other side, Kurosawa seems more intent on sustaining the atmosphere than telling a story.

The usually dependable Tahir Rahim feels miscast as the assistant torn between passion and treachery, while Olivier Gourmet appears to have researched his role by watching black-and-white horror movies in which expression counted for more than restraint. In the thankless role of the put-upon muse, Constance Rousseau is porcelainly statuesque. But, while Kurosawa leaves plenty of room to examine themes like the relationship between artists and models, the ability of the photographic images to freeze a moment in time and the troubling power of memory, he mistakes melodramatic contrivance for psychological significance. Consequently, this increasingly feels like a 1950s Vincent Price vehicle, with the anticipated scares and pathos being submersed in arch sophistication.

Turkish director Asli Özge also makes her first film in a foreign language, as she peers behind the net curtains of a sleepy provincial German town in All of a Sudden. Markedly different in tone from her previous outings, Men on the Bridge (2009) and Lifelong (2013), this tale of a bourgeois scion striving to prevent his life from imploding after a chance encounter goes horribly wrong has a pronounced Chabrolian feel, albeit with a dash of Lynchian surrealism during the denouement. But, while Özge works hard to keep the audience from gaining a broad overview, she doesn't quite succeed in making the climactic twists emerge organically from the narrative.

Thirtysomething Sebastian Hülk has a cushy life in the Sauerland hill town of Altena. However, when girlfriend Julia Jentsch goes away, Hülk throws a party in their apartment and, at the end of the night, finds himself alone with Natalia Belitski. Pretty certain he didn't invite her, Hülk tries to coax the seemingly distressed stranger into leaving. But she is pretty and flirtatious and he soon finds himself kissing her. But Belitski suddenly collapses and Hülk makes the fateful decision to run to the nearby clinic for help rather than call the ambulance.

Panicking on finding the clinic closed, Hülk rushes home to discover Belitski's lifeless body. He calls for help and discovers that his failure to notify the authorities within 15 minutes of the seizure leaves him open to a manslaughter charge. Influential father Hanns Zischler secures the services of a good lawyer and endeavours to limit the damage to the family's reputation. But Hülk is demoted at the bank where he works to a post that curtails his contact with the customers, while Jentsch is understandably sceptical about his excuses, especially when Belitski's tights are discovered in the apartment. Moreover, during a dinner party thrown by friends Simon Eckert and Luise Heyer, Hülk realises how ostracised he has become. Then, however, he discovers that Belitski is the Russian wife of factory worker Sascha Alexander Gersak and Hülk confronts him in a bid to get the charges against him of gross negligence dropped.

Taking something of a risk by making Hülk such a resistible character, Özge deprives the audience of any easy empathy with his plight. Thus, it's only in the latter stages that he ceases to be a spoilt brat and emerges as someone one of his depth and fighting forces that don't play by what he would consider to be the rules. However, these crucial plot developments will frustrate some, as they seem to come out of nowhere and let Hülk off the hook a little too easily. Nonetheless, he makes an intriguingly flawed anti-hero, with his scenes with the scornful Jentsch being discomfitingly compelling.

Although Özge tells her tale with stealth, she and editor Muriel Breton could be accused of obfuscation. Similarly, Tim Pannen's modish production design, Emre Erkmen's angular widescreen camerawork and Jan Schermer's sleek sound mix can seem a touch calculated. But this delves sufficiently deeply beneath the placid Teutonic surface to expose the hypocrisy, xenophobia, snobbery and corruption of a society supposedly built on liberal values.

The opposite end of the class spectrum preoccupies sophomore Marco Martins in Saint George. Coming a decade after his admired debut, Alice, this is a sobering insight into the impact of the global recession on the Portuguese economy. This can get a little involved and it's perhaps as well that Martins and co-scenarist Ricardo Adolfo provide a brief explanation of the troika bailout measures organised by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund and the effect that these had on the personal debts that were sold in bulk to collection agencies that would often use unscrupulous methods to protect their investments.

With the opening scenes conveying the sense of inertia that has paralysed Portugal since the credit crunch, it comes as no surprise to learn that unemployed boxer Nuno Lopes is struggling to make ends meet. No longer young enough to command decent fees in the ring, Lopes lives with his grouchy father-cum-coach José Raposo, whose pals are forever kvetching about their misfortunes and seeking someone to blame for bringing the nation to its knees. Lopes is married to black Brazilian Mariana Nunes, with whom he has a seven year-old son. David Senedo. Lopes dotes on the boy, but Nunes is running out of patience with his excuses for failing to land a well-paid job to provide for them and keeps threatening to return home unless he straightens himself out.

Desperate to keep Senedo close at hand, Lopes accepts work as a muscleman for a pair of debt collectors. His job is to look menacing and intimidate creditors into settling their arrears. But Lopes has a soft centre and is well aware that if it wasn't for his bulk that he would be in exactly the same situation as the neighbours he is threatening. It also pains him that folks like the owner of a fruit and vegetable delivery business are doing their best to make a living, but are forever being undercut by wealthy competitors or driven to the wall by the recession.

Ultimately, Lopes realises where his loyalties lie and few will be surprised by the way the story pans out. But Martins (who needed five years to bring the project together) follows in the footsteps of compatriots like Manoel De Oliveira, Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes in blurring the line between fact and fiction, as he fills the film with ordinary people discussing their everyday problems. This bold brand of unscripted neo-realism is made all the more authentic by Hugo Leitão's alert sound design, which also captures the ambience of the Lisbon settings and the thud of Lopes's fists when he is forced to dish out some punishment in order to avoid being sacked.

A palooka in the grand tradition, Lopes makes a sympathetic lead. But some of the secondary characters are less nuanced, while Nunes is a touch too shrewish. Moreover, Martins often allows the action to drift, with some of the digressions feeling as through they have been retained solely for their atmosphere. Carlos Lopes's photography might also have been a little less self-consciously murky. But the juxtaposition of the squalor in which so many people are forced to live and the close-ups registering Lopes's growing unease are admirably handled by editor Mariana Gaivão to ensure that narrative and milieu remain inseparable.

Completing this inaugural slate is Metalhead (2013), the latest feature from Icelander Ragnar Bragason, who announced himself with the twin features, Children (2006) and Parents (2007), and has since become one of the island's most decorated directors for his film and television work. Deftly balancing gauche (anti-)social comedy with psychological sensitivity, this study of a grieving family may err on the episodic side. But the insights into life in a remote and close-knit community are as thoughtful as the storytelling is brash and music is loud.

Having witnessed the tragic tractor death of her older brother when she was 12 years old, Thorbjörg Helga Dýrfjörd assumed his heavy metal lifestyle so wholeheartedly that she even took to wearing his clothes. Parents Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson and Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir were just as crushed by the blow and proved unable to prevent their daughter from going off the rails. But, while their rural neighbours were once prepared to put up with her tomboyish pranks, they no longer find it amusing when the adult Dýrfjörd keeps getting drunk and stealing their tractors or letting cattle loose in the middle of the night.

Despite Dýrfjörd frequently threatening to run off to the big city, Sigurðsson and Geirharðsdóttir have high hopes that new pastor Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson might be able to get through to Dýrfjörd. But, even though he sports an Iron Maiden tattoo, he reacts badly to Dýrfjörd's hamfisted attempt to seduce him after he is kind to her and she takes to the hills after burning down his church. But rather than censure Dýrfjörd, the community rallies round for a good old-fashioned church raising finale. Moreover, a trio of strangers have heard about her love of metal and venture into the wilds with a proposition.

With Dýrfjörd also conducting a relationship with childhood pal Hannes Óli Ágústsson, the narrative is undeniably busy. But Bragason eschews easy laughs and cheap emotions in adopting a social realist approach that roots the action in a recognisable milieu that benefits greatly from Sveinn Viðar Hjartarson's considered production design and August Jakobsson's gritty photography. The support playing is equally accomplished, but its Dýrfjörd's fearless performance that dominates proceedings, whether she is behaving boorishly, trying to make sense of her confused feelings and urges or simply thrashing out riffs that leave the long-suffering farmers both deafened and bemused.