Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 24/12/2017)

On this side of the pond, British producers kept seeking out told and untold stories from the Second World War, while trying not to think too hard about how badly Brexit is going to reduce their budgetary options. Locally, Oxford got a new cinema, while the city and the county made their now customary guest appearances in a number of high-profile pictures. Someone should write a book about them all. Oh, hold on, someone did!

All the way back in January, the usual raft of award contenders drifted on to our screens, with Martin Scorsese's Silence, Danny Boyle's T2 Trainspotting and JA Bayona's A Monster Calls lagging some way behind Pablo Larrain's Jackie, Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge and Antonio Campos's Christine. However, the best of the months titles not to make the Top 25 was Endless Poetry, the second part of Alejandro Jodorowsky's ongoing autobiographical odyssey.

The awards theme continued into February, with Denzel Washington's Fences, Theodore Melfi's Hidden Figures and Jeff Nichols's Loving forming part of the studios' concerted bid to prove that they had learnt the lessons of the 2015 Oscars, when every single nomination went to a white actor. Stephen Gaghan's Gold and John Lee Hancock's The Founder completed the prestige slate, although they were both upstaged by Chris McKay's The Lego Batman Movie, which was as genuinely amusing as Steven C. Miller's Southern Fury was bemusingly awful. Complete with a raving Nicolas Cage sporting the worst fake nose since Steve Martin in Fred Schepisi's Roxanne (1987), this is runaway winner of the award for Turkey of the Year.

Elsewhere, Alice Lowe made a solid directorial bow with Prevenge, while Martin Butler and Bentley Dean debuted as a duo with distinction with Tanna, which was affectingly played by a first-time South Pacific cast. Québecois maverick Xavier Dolan continued on his merry way with It's Only the End of the World, while Italian veteran Marco Bellochio made a rare misstep with the sentimental Sweet Dreams. Further frustration came in March when Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper, Sang-ho Yeon's Seoul Station (an animated follow-up to his excellent Train to Busan, 2015) and Terence Davies's Emily Dickinson saga, A Quiet Passion, fell short of expectations. Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman also dipped below his expected standard, although he more than atoned with the message denouncing President Trump's travel ban, which was delivered on his behalf at the Oscar ceremony. The month's big releases were Bill Condon's Beauty and the Beast and Jordan Peele's acclaimed satirical horror, Get Out. Just as intriguing, however, were Anna Biller's wittily stylised The Love Witch, Thomas Q. Napper's uncompromising Jawbone and Omar Tukel's knowingly cartoonish Catfight, while Dito Montiel's Man Down and Nicolas Pesce's The Eyes of My Mother made the most of their seemingly generic scenarios. Rounding things off on the arthouse front were Kim Jee-woon's Age of Shadows, Kirill Serebrennikov's The Student and Iciar Bollain's The Olive Tree, which meant well and looked superb, but also suffered from screenwriter Paul Laverty's trademark mawkish soapboxing. Three quirky horrors dominated April, namely Julia Ducournau's Raw, Michael O'Shea's The Transfiguration and Liam Gavin's A Dark Song. However, a pair of contrasting British pictures, Shula Amoo's A Moving Image and Lone Scherfig's Their Finest Hour also merit mention alongside Pablo Larrain's Neruda, Juho Kuosmanen's The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki and Argyris Papadimitropoulos's Suntan.

May saw more the release of several more arthouse crowd-pleasers in the form of François Ozon's Frantz, Koji Fukada's Harmonium and Handl Klaus's Tomcat, as well as Sean Foley's Mindhorn and Hope Dickson Leach's The Levelling. Meanwhile, while Sir Paul McCartney was cameoing in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge, British cinema threw up the oddball quartet of Gillies MacKinnon's redundant remake of Whisky Galore, John Jencks's charmless adaptation of Stephen Fry's The Hippopotamus, Alexa Davies, Lara Peake, Tallulah Haddon and Antti Reini's audaciously original Spaceship, and Nick Hamm's downright peculiar political fantasy, The Journey, which invented a history-changing conversation between the Reverend Ian Paisley and the late Martin McGuinness.

As the year approached its mid-point, Patty Jenkins ruffled the feathers of James Cameron by taking on the boys at their own game with Wonder Woman, while Sofia Coppola ventured into Clint Eastwood territory with The Beguiled. Roger Michel produced an equally engrossing period piece in adapting Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel, although Vincent Pérez didn't quite get the tone right in turning Hans Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone into Alone in Berlin. The German capital also featured in Cate Shortland's Berlin Syndrome, which formed part of a busy month of worthwhile offerings that included Hirokazu Koreeda's After the Storm, John Goldschmidt's Dough, Jonathan Cenzual Burley's The Shepherd, Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon, Bavo Defurne's Souvenir and Bong Joon-ho's Okja. The pick of the June crop, however, were the first runners-up for the Top 25: Hannes Holm's Oscar-nominated A Man Called Ove and Bruno Dumont's Slack Bay, a much maligned black comedy that ranks as the year's guiltiest pleasure.

25) HEAL THE LIVING.

Katell Quillévéré's Heal the Living is the latest in a string of Francophonic medical dramas. It's also by far the best, as while Axelle Ropert's Miss and the Doctors (2013), Thomas Lilti's Hippocrates (2014) and Irreplaceable, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's The Unknown Girl (both 2016) shifted between the personal and professional lives of their protagonists, Quillévéré's distinctive procedural approach keeps the focus firmly on the surgical and pastoral aspects of a heart transplant.

Waking before dawn beside girlfriend Galatéa Bellugi, 17 year-old Gabin Verdet dresses hurriedly and takes a snapshot on his phone before climbing out of the bedroom window and cycling without lights down the steep streets of La Havre. He races skateboarding buddy Titouan Alda to the van where Andranic Manet is waiting to drive them to the beach to go surfing. Changing into their wetsuits, they wax their boards and paddle into the cold dark sea. The camera bobs and ducks in the water, as they catch the waves and savour the thrill of being young and free.

As they drive home along a long, straight road lined with wind turbines, Verdet rests his head on Alda's shoulder and they doze off. But, despite being warned about black ice, a combination of exhilaration and exhaustion causes Manet to imagine the highway turning into the ripping sea and, as a roller breaks over him, the screen cuts to black as the noise of crunching metal and shattering glass rips through the soundtrack.

Across the port city, doctor Bouli Lanners drops his young daughter off with her mother and sings along to some rap on his drive to the hospital. He orders a CAT scan on Verdet and calls his mother, Emmanuelle Seigner (who is still asleep at midday), to break the bad news. Unable to get hold of estranged husband, Kool Shen, Seigner sees Lanners alone and he informs her that her son has suffered a major head trauma and that his condition is deteriorating rapidly. Anxiously awaiting Shen, Seigner bumps into the parents of Alda and Manet, who have only incurred minor injuries because they were wearing seatbelts.

As soon as Shen joins Seigner, they are taken to the room where Verdet is on life support. Nurse Monia Chokri talks to him as she checks for vital signs, but Lanners sweeps Seigner and Shen into his office. He explains that Verdet is brain-dead and introduces them to Tahar Rahim, who asks if they would be willing to donate their son's organs for transplant. Blaming himself for getting Verdet into surfing, Shen is too shocked to consent and storms out of the hospital with the crestfallen Seigner hastening behind him.

She takes Shen to the boatyard where he works and he insists on finishing a job while she drinks coffee. As they drive through the unprepossessing industrial part of town, Seigner's mind drifts back to the time when Verdet had waited for Bellugi outside her school and had raced the funicular railway uphill in order to meet her at the station. They had kissed and now Seigner is faced with the prospect of telling a girl she hardly knows that her boyfriend is gone. However, they are returning to the hospital in order to give their consent and they enter Rahim's office just as Chokri and Irina Muluile are leaving after teasing him about his fascination with goldfinches. He thanks them for their co-operation and explains that all donations must remain anonymous before offering to carry out their farewell wishes in the operating theatre. Leaving Shen and Seigner to say their goodbyes, Rahim gets a high-five from Lanners for talking them round. He suppresses a half-smile, as he goes to alert other facilities to the fact that he has organs for transplant, while Chokri (who had been ticked off by Lanners for talking to Verdet in front of his parents as though he was still alive) imagines her boyfriend seducing her as takes the lift downstairs for a break. She is still new to the hospital and getting to know its routines through lengthy shifts and she texts a romantic message, as she sees the devastated Seigner and Shen leaving arm in arm.

Meanwhile, 50 year-old violinist Anne Dorval leaves her home in a leafy suburb and takes up residence in an apartment close to the Paris hospital where she has an appointment with cardiologist Dominique Blanc. Sons Finnegan Oldfield and Théo Cholbi make a fuss over her - although Oldfield is cross with Cholbi for quitting college and with Dorval for pretending to be dead after a nap - and they huddle on the bed together to watch Steven Spielberg's ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). They wave Cholbi off on his bicycle from the balcony and Dorval reassures Oldfield that she is feeling confident that everything will be okay.

She is undeniably tense, however, when Blanc informs her that her sole chance of beating her degenerative condition is a transplant. Dorval wonders whether she could cope with having a dead person's heart inside her body and Blanc reminds her that species mutate in order to survive. She cites the example of the clownfish and makes Dorval smile by revealing that the male changes sex when its partner dies and continues to breed with its own sons. Shrugging her acceptance, Dorval meets up with Oldfield, who is cross with her for withholding the truth from Cholbi so as not to distract him during the exams he knows his sibling is not taking.

Dorval does confide, however, in pianist Alice Taglioni, who had been her lover until she had terminated the relationship on learning she was sick. They return to the apartment after Dorval goes to see Taglioni perform and has to be carried up the stairs to her circle seat. Taglioni had never understood the reasons for their break-up and she is clearly still in love. So, she texts her companion, and slips into bed beside Dorval, who jokes after their first kiss that she is not allowed to get overexcited.

Meanwhile, Steve Tientcheu pushes through a football crowd to work the night shift at the agency that acts as a clearing house for donated organs. He records that Verdet's heart, liver and kidneys are available and vapes as he scours the Cristal database to find suitable matches. Blanc is having supper when she gets the call that Tientcheu has a heart for Dorval and she sends Karim Leklou and Alice de Lencquesaing by a small private plane to perform the removal. Rahim greets them in Le Havre and they scrub up while Dorval takes an antiseptic shower in Paris and frets because she has not been able to say goodbye to Cholbi in person.

As Keklou prepares to operate, Rahim reassures Verdet that his family is with him and places headphones in his ears so that he can hear the sound of the sea as he leaps (from the crying Bellugi's window) into the unknown. He watches on as the procedure is shown in graphic detail to the accompaniment of Alexandre Desplat's plaintiff piano score before De Lencquesaing packs the heart in ice and they make a dash to the airport. Their ambulance receives a police escort, as Dorval is wheeled into theatre and Blanc makes the initial incision. This surgery is also shown in a top shot and Leklou allows himself a deep sigh of relief as the defibrillator jolts the heart into life.

Having washed Verdet's body with respectful care, Rahim texts Seigner to reassure her that her wishes have been carried out before riding home on his motorcycle. Seigner and Shen hold each other, while looking out over Le Havre, and their grieving process continues as Dorval comes round and allows a smile to play over her lips as she realises she has survived her ordeal and been given a second chance with Taglioni and her boys.

Although her third feature is less diegetically intricate than either Love Like Poison (2010) or Suzanne (2013), Quillévéré once again demonstrates her gift for storytelling with this deeply affecting docudramatic study of two souls linked by the cruellest of fates. The opening celebration of youth is utterly exhilarating, as Tom Harari's camera steeples after Verdet as he zooms down a winding road before plunging alongside him into the sea that will sweep him away in Manet's sleepily rippling daydream. But the hospital sequence that follows is also superbly constructed by editor Thomas Marchand to show how the tragedy confronting Seigner and Shen is just another case for Lanners, Rahim and Chokri, as they juggle professional pragmatism and compassion with their own quotidian concerns.

After such a masterly exhibition of dramatic intensity and stylistic dexterity, the sudden shift from Le Havre to Paris feels cumbersome by comparison and Quillévéré and co-scenarist Gilles Taurand initially struggle to involve viewers in the plight of ailing musician Anne Dorval. They never quite make sense of why she would need to move into a complete stranger's flat before knowing she requires a transplant and needs to relax in the vicinity of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. Moreover, they fail to prevent the reunion with Taglioni from feeling novelettish and make only a modest job of fleshing out Blanc, Leklou and De Lencquesaing's medics. Yet, the fact that Dorval is going to get Verdet's heart sustains the dramatic tension, as the audience wants to know that his unwitting sacrifice (and that of his bereft parents) has been worthwhile.

Ultimately, Quillévéré's touch proves as assured as the surgeons she so obviously admires. The more squeamish might wish she had been much less forensic during the climactic clinical sequences, but the close-ups emphasises her views on the fragility of existence (which are reinforced by the use of David Bowie's `Five Years' over the closing credits) and the extent to which the public weaned on hospital tele-series takes for granted the human and mechanical marvels of modern medicine.

24) LADY MACBETH.

Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, has already inspired a Dimitri Shostakovich opera and films by Andrzej Wajda and Valery Todorovsky. Now it provides the basis for theatre director William Oldroyd's feature debut, Lady Macbeth, which sees playwright Alice Birch relocate the action from Tsarist Russia to Victorian Northumberland. Although the ruthless streak shown by the anti-heroine owes something to Shakespeare, the influence of Madame Bovary, Thérèse Desqueyroux and Lady Chatterley is also readily evident. But Oldroyd has taken most of his cues from Andrea Arnold's 2011 interpretation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, with the result that this feels more like a heritage picture from the Amber Collective than from Merchant Ivory.

On her wedding day, Katherine (Florence Pugh) looks around the empty parish church while singing a hymn and realises she is quite alone. The parents who settled a debt with the local mine owner, Boris (Christopher Fairbank), by marrying him off to his son and heir, Alexander (Paul Hilton), are notable by the absence. Yet, Katherine informs her black maid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), that she is not afraid of becoming the mistress of a large house while still in her teens and is not intimidated by the fact that her new husband is twice her age. When he strides into her bedroom, however, Alexander reminds her not to get ideas above her station and recommends that she stays indoors to avoid catching cold on the moors. He looks her up and down with indifference and orders her to strip before climbing into bed and falling asleep.

The following morning, Katherine endures the discomfort as Anna straps her into a corset and brushes her long hair. But, with Alexander and Boris attending to their business, she has nothing to do all day but stare out of the window or sit primly on the drawing-room sofa. Eventually, she dozes off, only to be woken by her disapproving father-in-law, who growls that she has a duty to attend upon her husband whenever he requires her. Boris is equally unimpressed when Katherine excuses herself from a dinner party and sends Anna to ensure that her mistress stays awake. However, when a drunken Alexander blunders into her room some hours later he prefers to masturbate while his naked wife faces the wall than consummate their union.

Clearly dismayed by the calibre of man she has married, Katherine is relieved when Alexander is called away to deal with an explosion at the colliery. She is even more delighted when Boris travels to London and she is able to sleep late and explore the moors. On one occasion, she dresses as a maid so that Anna can accompany her and she takes advantage of her solitude to curl up on the sofa in bare feet for a nap.

The peace is disturbed, however, when Katherine hears a commotion in an outhouse and has to rescue Anna from the burly farmhands who have stripped her and hung her from the rafters in a blanket in order to `weigh the sow'. Taking exception to the cod deference of Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), Katherine orders him to set Anna free and makes the others turn their backs while the frightened servant flees. Holding her nerve, Katherine admonishes the men for wasting her husband's time and money. But she is intrigued by Sebastian and is taken aback when he sweeps her into his arms after she asks if he can gauge her weight. Pushing him away, Katherine promises that she will keep her eye on all of them before rushing back to the house to ask Anna for the insolent fellow's name.

It transpires that Sebastian is the new groomsman and, after a restless night, Katherine is delighted when their paths cross the next morning as she sets out for the moors. On returning, however, she scolds Anna for making her bath too hot and demands that she stops fussing and staring at her. As she dries herself by the fire in a silk robe, there is a knock at the door. She is surprised to see Sebastian and suggests that he focuses on his work when he impudently asks if she needs some help to relieve her boredom. But, as she tries to close the door, he calls her by her first name and barges his way into the room. Katherine bites his finger, but he forces a kiss upon her and, when he closes in for another, he allows her to push him down on the bed before rolling her over for animalistic sex that leaves them both gasping for breath. The following morning, Anna is shocked to find the robe on the bedroom floor and is embarrassed to discover that Katherine has slept naked. She holds her counsel, however, and slips away after opening the blinds to the sound of Katherine cackling with relish. The cat eats her breakfast, as she engages in vigorous intercourse with Sebastian before a deft cross-cut shows her taking tea with the vicar (Cliff Burnett). But she is not amused when he asks if ill-health has been preventing her from attending the Sunday service and dares to suggest that she spend more time indoors in quiet contemplation and less in striding through the countryside. Thus, she snatches the cup from the cleric's hand and immediately goes in search of Sebastian to satiate her lust.

One morning, while Anna is picking mushrooms in the woods, she bumps into Sebastian. She admonishes him for the way he has been treating the master's dogs and he smiles sardonically when she mentions a bitch that needs to be kept on a short leash. However, he is in no mood to take advice from someone he deems to be beneath him and makes sure that he fixes Anna's gaze later that night when she peeps through the keyhole at the fornicating couple. But Anna seems to have the last laugh, as Boris returns the next day and Katherine once more submits to being laced into her corset. However, she drinks expensive red wine while dressing and demands to know what is detaining Alexander when Boris tries to play the heavy father at supper. But her moment of triumph comes when Boris sends Anna to fetch a bottle of Fleury and, when she returns empty handed, he makes her crawl on all fours like an animal for not taking better care of his property Not to be outdone, Anna tattles to Boris, who thrashes Sebastian with his stick and locks him in a shed. When Katherine comes to find him, Boris slaps her across the face for shaming the family name and they argue over her failure to give Alexander a child. They exchange words again at breakfast when Katherine demands the key to the shed. But she calms down after Boris smashes a cup and goes to finish his meal in an adjoining room. Indeed, she props a chair against the door handle and invites Anna to sit at the table for a coffee and tell her about her family, while she waits for the poisonous mushrooms to take effect. Only when Boris's cries for help die down does she open the door and send Anna for the doctor. In her absence, however, Katherine rushes to the courtyard and kisses Sebastian's bruised back before taking her place as the grieving daughter-in-law.

The pious and dutiful Anna sobs on her bed and is so distressed at being forbidden from serving meals that she becomes mute. By contrast, Katherine lets the cat sit in Boris's chair and takes Sebastian back to her bed before posing for a photograph in full mourning beside her father-in-law's open casket. She assures her lover that Alexander will never return, as he hates her as much as he detested Boris. Moreover, she vows to follow Sebastian `to the cross, to the prison, to the grave and to the sky' rather than lose him. But Alexander makes a surprise return in the middle of the night and Katherine only just manages to smuggle Sebastian out of her room before protesting that she has been waiting chastely for her husband to come back to her.

He is not to be duped, however, and brands his wife a whore for cuckolding him with a mixed-race underling. She offers to make tea, but he accuses her of growing fat and malodorous and warns her that she will mend her ways after Sebastian is sent away. But Katherine has no intention of remaining indoors with a prayer book and strides to the cupboard where Sebastian has been hiding and straddles him on the bed in full view of the outraged Alexander. He slaps her and a fight breaks out that ends when Katherine caves in Alexander's skull with a poker.

Gambling on no one else knowing that Alexander had returned, the lovers bury his body in the woods and Katherine personally shoots his white horse and bathes in the lake after digging its grave with her own hands. She dresses Sebastian in her husband's finest clothes. But his conscience prevents him from sleeping and she has to reassures him that he will receive the respect she feels he deserves from eveyone, including the silent Anna, who is allowed to wait on them at breakfast.

Months pass and the white horse starts to decay in the undergrowth. But Katherine's hopes of being able to enjoy her ill-gotten gains are jeopardised by the arrival of Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel), a refined black woman who claims that Alexander fathered a son, Teddy (Anton Palmer), with her late daughter. She presents documents proving that Alexander had made the boy his ward and, thus, she demands the right to take up residence. Sebastian dismissed Agnes as a gold-digger. But she lets Katherine know that Alexander had informed her of his plans to return to the manor and intimates that she would have no qualms in going to the authorities unless she and Teddy are given the best rooms in the house. While Katherine maintains a frosty civility towards Agnes, she seems to warm to Teddy, who is impressed that she knows the names of all the birds when they go walking together. But Katherine is upset with Sebastian for returning to his billet and for dressing in his working clothes. She is also envious of Anna, as he has started following her to the woods when she picks mushrooms and he admits to being terrified that he will hang if Katherine's crimes are uncovered. Thus, even when she comes to tell him she is expecting his baby, Sebastian ignores her and Katherine is so crushed to see him consorting with Anna that she makes Teddy cry by pushing him over in her desire to follow her beau.

Teddy is also hurt when Anna barges past him playing cricket with maids Mary (Rebecca Manley) and Tessa (Fleur Houdijk) and he runs away. A search party is dispatched and Sebastian eventually finds him shivering by a waterfall. He carries the boy into the drawing-room, only for Agnes to reprimand him for treating the place as though he owned it. Tired of being bossed around by women, Sebastian threatens to leave. But Katherine pleads with him to trust her and, having persuaded Agnes to get some rest while Teddy sleeps on the sofa, she opens the window for Sebastian to hold the boy down while she suffocates him with a cushion.

While Sebastian waits for her signal, Katherine sheds crocodile tears when Anna finds her beside the lifeless corpse. She tells the doctor (Bill Fellows) that she must have fallen asleep and woke to find Teddy dead. But the physician notices bruises on the body and a policeman (Ian Cunningham) is summoned. Beside himself with remorse, Sebastian stumbles into the room and confesses to killing the child before accusing Katherine of murdering Boris and Alexander. He laments allowing her to pester him into submission and denounces her as an evil disease.

Without turning a hair, however, Katherine dismisses his charges as lies and suggests that he had been in cahoots with Anna, who is the only member of the household to pick mushrooms. Agnes consoles Katherine, as she recalls that Boris perished the day after he had beaten Sebastian and, when Anna proves unable to contradict her, she is bound to Sebastian and they are taken away in a cart. Mary and Tessa leave soon afterwards. But Katherine has no intention of moving out and, clad in black, she resumes her place on the sofa and stares unflinchingly into the lens.

Filmed at Lambton Castle in Durham for under £500,000, this is an intelligent period noir that dispenses with the trappings of the costume genre to examine attitudes to race, class and gender that continue to blight modern society. Alice Birch sometimes allows her revisionist slant on Victorian melodrama to drift towards penny dreadful territory. But her dialogue is crisp and economical, with Florence Pugh's terse exchanges with Christopher Fulford being particularly revealing. Yet the thud of boots on the bare floorboards in Jacqueline Abraham's sparsely furnished rooms proves equally effective in conveying the shabby grandeur of a setting that Oldroyd and cinematographer Ari Wegner often view with a Vermeer-like surface serenity that belies the seething passions being held in by Holly Waddington's restrictive frocks.

Despite the contrasts between the formal symmetry of the interiors and the Romantic wildness of the moors, Pugh is anything but a damsel in distress. Admirably nailing the Geordie accent, she flashes laden glances like a young Emmanuelle Béart as she holds her own against Fulford and Hilton, exudes contempt for Ackie and Rosheuvel, and simmers with lust for Cosmo Jarvis. In only his second dramatic role, the part-Armenian singer-songwriter fares better as a brash stud than he does as a remorseful victim. But sparks fly with the 19 year-old, Oxford-born Pugh, who builds on her outstanding start in Carol Morley's The Falling (2014) with a display of self-possessed socio-sexual mutiny that turns the exploitative hypocrisy of a patriarchal system against itself in order to flout it.

23) THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE.

Addressing many of the issues that fuel both fear and prejudice and resentment and insularity, Aki Kaurismäki's The Other Side of Hope shows how difficult it can be to acclimatise to life in a country already ill at ease with itself. By all accounts, this will be the 60 year-old Finn's final feature and several critics have suggested that valedictory sentiment dictated the award of the Best Director prize at last year's Berlin Film Festival. But such cynicism misses the importance of a drama that revisits themes Kaurismäki had explored with similarly droll gravitas in such minimalist masterpieces as Ariel (1988), The Match Factory Girl (1990), La Vie de Bohème (1992), Drifting Clouds (1996), The Man Without a Past (2002) and Le Havre (2011).

Having fled the fighting in Aleppo, Sherwan Haji stows away on a coal freighter and lands in Helsinki in the hope of finding the sister who has resettled somewhere in northern Europe. As he crosses a deserted streetlit road, he nearly runs into travelling salesman Sakari Kuosmanen, who has just walked out on seemingly unconcerned wife, Kaija Pakarinen, who pours herself another drink before stubbing out a cigarette on his discarded wedding ring. While he checks into a hostel, Haji takes a shower in a station washroom before claiming asylum at the nearest police station. He is photographed and fingerprinted and placed in a small cell with Simon Hussein Al-Bazoon, an Iraqi who gives him one of the cigarettes he has hidden in his sock.

They are transferred to a detention centre, where smoking is the only pastime. After a few weeks, he receives an ID card and travels by bus to recount his experiences for bureaucrat Milka Ahlroth. She listens impassively, as Haji describes how he had returned from work to discover that his family had been killed in a missile strike. Neighbours had helped him dig the bodies out of the rubble before his mechanic boss (who was also the father of his late fiancée) gave him the money to escape abroad with his sister. They had crossed the border into Turkey and paid traffickers to get them to Greece. Thence, they had travelled through Serbia before being separated in Hungary, where Haji had been jailed for a short time. He had searched for his sibling in Austria, Slovenia and Germany before returning to Serbia. But, while he had found no trace of her, he has never stopped believing she is alive.

Meanwhile, Kuosmanen pays his last visit to outfitter Kati Outinen, who confides over a glass in her office that she has had enough of Finland and plans to party the rest of her life away in Mexico City. He then sells the rest of his stock and wins enough at stud poker to purchase a fish restaurant called the Golden Pint. Haji also visits a bar and listens to the guitar-singer (as he had earlier tipped a rockabilly busker) before being menaced at the bus stop by a trio of neo-Nazi thugs, who throw a beer bottle at the window after Haji manages to scramble aboard. The couple sitting behind him change seats and the driver looks back nervously, but he drives off without further incident.

Having hired business agent Puntti Valtonen to help him find suitable premises, Kuosmanen meets doorman Ilkka Koivula, bartender Nuppu Koivu and chef Janne Hyytiäinen and watches as they serve tinned sardines to their only customer. They haven't been paid in ages (as the last owner was a crook who stole their tips before heading straight for the airport on striking a deal with Kuosmanen) and they take it in turns to knock on the new boss's door and ask for an advance. Across the city, Haji and Al-Bazoon find a bar with a live folk duo. They smoke outside and Al-Bazoon reveals that he used to be a nurse in Iraq, but has only managed to find menial cleaning jobs since coming to Finland. As he needs at least three salaries to pay smugglers to rescue his family, he pretends to put on a happy face, as sombre migrants are always the first to be deported.

However, Haji remains phlegmatic during his second interview with Ahlroth, who asks about his faith. He insists that he ceased believing in gods while digging in the rubble for his parents and younger brother and just wants to belong and make a life for his sister. Ahlroth asks why he chose Finland and he admits that he arrived by chance after seeking refuge on a ship after being attacked in Gdansk. A crew member had hidden Haji in the hold and kept him fed, but he had fled Syria to avoid war rather than find paradise and, consequently, he is happy to embrace any culture willing to give him a chance.

However, Ahlroth rejects his application and he is returned to the detention centre in handcuffs, where he watches the latest bad news coming out of a city the Finnish civil service consider perfectly safe. Faced with a flight to Turkey the next morning, Haji bids Al-Bazoon farewell with a melancholic tune on a borrowed saz. But orderly Elina Knihtilä helps him slip out of a back entrance when the cops arrive to escort him and he climbs a fence and disappears into the city. He hides out in a bar and listens to a lively combo of rockabilly veterans before being followed into the dark streets by three members of the Liberation Army of Finland. They douse him in petrol, but he is saved by a group of homeless guardian angels who appear from the shadows to disperse the foe.

At the Golden Pint, Kuosmanen orders Koivu to get rid of Koistinen, the cute terrier she is hiding in the kitchen. He goes out to the bins and finds Haji slumped in a corner. When he tells him to leave, Haji punches Kuosmanen on the nose and gets knocked out for his trouble. However, Kuosmanen takes pity on him and gives him some soup and a cleaning job. He also lets him sleep in his old stock cupboard and hides him away (with Koistinen) when the health and safety inspectors come calling. Eager to avoid any further trouble, Kuosmanen pays Koivula's nephew, Elias Westerberg, to hack into the immigration system and not only make Haji a legal resident, but also create him a fake ID. This works a treat when Haji is stopped on the street, but he still asks Al-Bazoon to use his contacts to smuggle him out of Finland.

Meanwhile, Kuosmanen is losing money, as Hyytiäinen is such a lousy cook. During a brainstorming session, Koivula suggests that they start serving Japanese food and the restaurant re-opens as Imperial Sushi. However, nobody expects them to get a coachload of Japanese tourists on the first night and they quickly run out of traditional ingredients and have to smother salted herring in wasabi. The ruse clearly fails, as the party traipses out joylessly at the end of the evening and Kuosmanen sits sullenly in the darkness after the jukebox fuses. But Koivulu has another idea and a live band is playing for dancing customers when Al-Bazoon turns up to inform Haji that his sister has been found in a displaced persons camp in Lithuania.

Rather than let Haji risk being arrested in transit, Kuosmanen asks trucker pal Tommi Korpela to smuggle Niroz Haji on to a container ship and they meet her at the docks with more relief than joy. She returns with them to the rebranded Gandhi Indian restaurant and informs her brother than she wants to apply for legal asylum. He complies with her wishes. But, when he returns to the lock-up, he is stabbed by the skinheaded leader of the LAF (who mistakes him for a Jew). Packing his bag, Haji vacates the room before Kuomanen pays an unexpected visit after reconciling with Pakarinen and offering her the post of head waiter. Hiding his wound, Haji wishes his sibling well at the police station and slumps under a tree to smoke. He looks out on an unprepossessing view of a Helsinki factory, but raises a smile when Koistinen scurries up to lick his face.

Ending with another feel-good jolt of Tuomari Nurmio's irresistible music, this often seems like a parting plea for a return to the values of yesteryear in solving the problems of today. This sense is reinforced by the presence of a Jimi Hendrix poster on the restaurant wall and such erstwhile titans of Finnish cinema as Jörn Donner, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Hannu Lauri, Atte Blom, Juhani Niemelä and Jukka Virtanen among the poker players. But the fact the film recalls the theme and tone of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's recently revived Feat Eats the Soul (1973) also bolsters the notion that Kaurismäki is looking over his shoulder as he departs the scene.

Some have criticised the picture for being too passively retrospective and overly naive in its depiction of a maligned migrant being rescued from callous bureaucrats and fascistic thugs by well-meaning margin-dwellers. But admirers will relish the Capracorniness as much as the deadpan delivery of the estimable ensemble, the Bressonian stillness of the camera, the Melvillean grasp of place, the Lynchian sense of the absurd and the Jarmuschean fondness for oddballs and outsiders. But, for all the self-reflexivity, this is pure Kaurismäki, with the generous helpings of foot-tapping music recalling Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989). It would be a shame if this really is Kaurismäki's swan song, as the world needs the skewed humanist vision he seems to concoct with such disarming facility with cinematographer Timo Salminen and production designer Markku Pätilä. But, if it is goodbye, this quintessentially quirky and quixotic charmer is a fine way to bow out, if only for the solemn way in which Haji responds to being asked whether he is male or female with the line, `I don't understand humour.'

22) IN BETWEEN.

The status of women in Palestinian society was explored in two films this year: Maha Haj's Personal Affairs and Maysaloun Hamoud's In Between. Respectively set in Nazareth and Tel Aviv, they offer contrasting insights into Arab-Israeli attitudes to gender and the interaction between Jewish, Muslim, Christian and secular citizens in a society forever under threat of conflict. Hamoud's feature debut follows the shorts Shades of Light (2009), Sense of Morning (2010) and Salma (2012) in suggesting a bright future for a film-maker who was born in Budapest to Palestinian parents and now resides in the Israeli city of Jaffa.

Following a heavy night of drink and drugs, Tel Aviv flatmates Mouna Hawa and Sana Jammelieh are taken aback by the arrival of Shaden Kanboura, a jilbab-wearing computer student who is a cousin of their friend Samar Qupty and who needs some peace and quiet to study for her finals. She is from the city of Umm Al-Fahem, while Hawa is a secular lawyer from Nazareth and Jammelieh is an aspiring DJ from a Christian family in Tarshisa.

Unbeknown to her parents, Jammelieh is a lesbian and has no intention of marrying boorish men like chicken farmer Ali Assadi, with whom mother Khawlah Hag-Debsy and aunt Afaf Danien keep trying to matchmake her. With her shock of corkscrew hair and a cigarette always on the go, Hawa is quite prepared to speak her mind and makes little attempt to disguise her amusement when Kanboura bundles excessive amounts of luggage into the car when the trio attend a wedding. She flirts with one of the male guests in the same way she teases a Jewish lawyer who has a crush on her. But she remains in control and enjoys watching macho men dancing attendance on her.

Kanboura gets a visit from her fiancé, Henry Andrawes, who dislikes the fact she has moved to the centre of Tel Aviv and tries to persuade her to stay with a member of his family in Jaffa. She refuses politely and is put out when he snaps that he would rather she stayed at home and raised his children than working at the local school. He refuses to shake Jammelieh's hand when they are introduced and sniffs his disapproval when some of her friends arrive with beer bottles clinking in a carrier bag. Having had a tough day after quitting her restaurant job because the boss refuses to let her speak Arabic in the kitchen, Jammelieh just wants to chill with some friends. But Hawa takes a shine to film-maker Mahmoud Shalaby and, having smoked a joint on the balcony, they tumble into bed, with the intrigued Kanboura listening at the door.

When Hawa returns from a walk by the sea, she finds Kanboura dancing to pop music with her hair down. They bop together and chat about their men. Kanboura admits to not loving Andrawes, but hopes that they get along well enough to make the marriage work. She helps Hawa cook dinner for Shalaby and makes herself scarce when Andrawes orders her to inspect a bedsit he has found for her in Jaffa, even though it's a long way from the university campus. On his next visit, he berates her for burning the food and for disobeying him. He accuses her of having been corrupted by her flatmates and, when she refuses to leave because she likes living with Hawa and Jammelieh, he rapes her and leaves her sobbing on the bed.

Meanwhile, Jammelieh has found a job in a bar and has landed a DJing gig. She has also met doctor Ahlam Canaan and is hoping to spend the night with her when Hawa gets so drunk that she has to see her home. They arrive to find Kanboura slumped on the bathroom floor and help her shower and regain her composure before plotting their revenge on Andrawes. He works for a charitable organisation and Hawa phones for an appointment and cover her hair so he won't recognise her. She spins him a sob story about being beaten and he can't resist touching her shoulder when she exposes it to show him the bruises. But, when Hawa calls on Shalaby to go for dinner, he is frosty towards her because his sister, Nahed Hamed, from the village of Taybeh has come for advice because her son has been arrested for possessing drugs. Hawa reassures her that he will probably be treated leniently for a first offence, but Shalaby is furious with her for smoking in front of Hamed and, when he suggests that she starts behaving like a Muslim woman, she threatens to end their relationship.

Jammelieh takes Canaan to meet her family in Tarshiha and she is embarrassed to discover that her mother has set up a supper meeting with another suitor. Gawky mechanical engineer Sobhi Hosari arrives with his mother, Yasmin Makhloof, whose ample bosom fascinates Jammelieh's teenage brother, Amir Khoury. She is embarrassed by the fawning chit-chat and the excruciating song of welcome and takes the first opportunity to flee to the kitchen and make coffee. However, when Canaan gives her a consolatory kiss, Hag-Debsy sees them through the door and hurries away in distress.

Dinner at the home of Kanboura's parents is no less strained, as she refuses to make eye contact with Andrawes, let alone speak to him. He asks her father, Eyad Sheety, if it would be possible to bring the wedding forward and boasts that he is making good progress with the house he is building. But, when he raises the subject in the car back to Tel Aviv, Kanboura informs him that she doesn't love him. At the same time, Hag-Debsy tells husband Suhel Hadad what she has seen and they order Canaan out of the house and he slaps his daughter across the face before declaring that she will stay in the house until he finds a husband for her.

Over-hearing her father hissing that rumours of a lesbian scandal will ruin his chances of being elected to the local council, Jammelieh sneaks away and takes a taxi to the city. She tells Canaan that she plans on moving to Berlin, as she can no longer stand the petty restrictions that make her life intolerable. However, she joins Kanboura in ambushing Andrawes when he meets with Hawa in an underground car park and they show him photographs of him touching up Hawa during their appointment at the charity. He tries to persuade Kanboura to have nothing to do with the whores who have turned her against him. But she remains resolute and when Andrawes starts to tell Sheety that he is renouncing Kanboura because she has changed, he refuses to hear a bad word against his daughter and sends Andrawes packing before embracing his crying child.

Hawa keeps it equally short and to the point when she bumps into Shalaby while out with Firas Nassar, the gay friend who had introduced them. Shalaby waits for Hawa by her car and slides into the passenger seat and asks why she is being so off with him. When she asks if he would ever let him meet his parents, he looks away and she accuses him of using her for sex when he is wholly unworthy of her. She orders him out of the car and drives home for the goodbye party she and Kanboura are throwing for Jammelieh. Hawa puts on bright red lipstick and snorts some coke, while Kanboura drifts on to the dance floor to have fun. However, she sees Hawa being pestered by one of the guests and follows her to the balcony, where the three friends sit in silence and wonder when things will ever change.

While there's no question that the issues raised in this engaging debut need addressing, this isn't always the most nuanced of films. The generational aspects seem particularly clichéd, while the menfolk are almost uniformly boorish or nebbish caricatures. Moreover, much of the action teeters on melodrama, with the feisty Hawa and Jammelieh falling head over heels with surprising speed, while Kanboura's dilemma makes little sense as it's readily evident from the denouement that her father would have supported any decision to split with the hypocritical Andrawes.

Nevertheless, Hamoud deftly interweaves the storylines while ensuring that each receives equal(ish) screen time. Hawa starts out as the most intriguing of the trio, with her wild ways contrasting tellingly with the shrewd way she negotiates a plea bargain with a Jewish lawyer. But her romance with Shalaby hits the skids too quickly, even though Hamoud points out that a cosmopolitan who has trained to make films in New York can be as much a chauvinist as the next man. Hawa's entrapment interlude also feels somewhat specious, as it's unlikely that a lawyer would take such a sizeable professional and personal risk. More credible is the casual racism that Jammelieh endures, which reminds viewers of the extra burdens placed on Arab women in Israel. But, while her matchmaking trysts are amusing, the romance with Canaan rarely convinces and her decision to decamp to Berlin (when she has never mentioned leaving Israel before) feels unduly contrived.

The Kanboura strand contains echoes of Hamoud's short, Salma, in which the equally voluptuous Jasmin Abu Al-Naaj develops a telephone crush on the freedom fighter whose life she had saved, only for him to ditch her when they finally meet and she fails to live up to his fantasy. But, while Kanboura is as solid as Hawa and Jammelieh, Andrawes is a fotofit villain and much of the other support playing feels stiff. Fortunately, Itay Gross's photography is more agile, while production designer Hagar Brutman draws neat contrasts between the urban and village domiciles. Li Alembik's costumes are also effective, as is MG Saad's style-flitting score. Furthermore, it's good to see producer Shlomi Elkabetz continuing to challenge the perception of women in Israeli society, as he had done with his late sister Ronit in the powerful courtroom saga, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2014).

21) MANCHESTER BY THE SEA.

Kenneth Lonergan may not be prolific, but he keeps producing films of exceptional quality. Having debuted with You Can Count on Me (2000), he endured the frustration of having Margaret (2011) held up for four years while lawsuits complicated a post-production process that saw Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker involved in the editing. But he returns with his masterpiece, Manchester By the Sea, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Casey Affleck works as a janitor in Quincy, Massachusetts. He shovels snow from outside his single-room abode and goes about his duties with terse efficiency. While unblocking Quincy Tyler Bernstine's lavatory, he overhears her telling a friend that she fancies him. But he accepts her tip without enthusiasm and is reported to boss Stephen Henderson after he loses his temper with the hectoring Missy Yager while attempting to repair her shower. He also gets into a fight in a bar after ignoring Mary Mallen's bid to flirt with him by spilling her drink on his shirt. Thus, he has no compunction in taking extended leave when family friend CJ Wilson calls to let him know that older brother Kyle Chandler has suffered a heart attack in their home town of Manchester.

Arriving at the hospital to learn from nurse Susan Pourfar and doctor Robert Sella that his sibling has already died, Affleck thinks back to the day when doctor Ruibo Qian told Chandler that he had a congestive heart condition and only had a limited time to live. He recalls how father Tom Kemp had tried to be supportive, while Chandler's wife, Gretchen Mol, had taken the news so badly that she stormed out of the hospital room and disappeared into an alcoholic haze.

Bottling up his emotions as he kisses his brother's cheek in the morgue, Affleck goes to find 16 year-old nephew Lucas Hedges, with whom he used to go fishing on Chandler's boat. As he drives through the familiar streets, Affleck thinks back to happier times with wife Michelle Williams, their daughters Chloe Dixon and Ellie Teeves, and their new-born son. Suffering from flu, Williams is reading magazines in bed and is less than amused when Affleck strips off in an effort to seduce her. She ticks him off for drinking too much and they snuggle with a backchatting affection that suggests something must have happened to have made Affleck become so saturnine. Unable to find Hedges at school, Affleck tracks him down to ice hockey practice, where he has to be hauled out of a skirmish by coach Tate Donovan. He is consoled by buddies Christian J. Mallen and Oscar Wahlberg and slumps into the passenger seat of Affleck's car before giving his father a cursory glance in the morgue. Hedges asks if his friends can come over and Affleck recalls coming home after a fishing expedition to find a half-naked Mol passed out on the sofa. He allows Kara Hayward to stay over, but takes a dislike to her when she browbeats him for discussing the funeral arrangements at the breakfast table.

Following an awkward conversation with Donovan (who also lost his father as a youth), Hedges accompanies Affleck to see lawyer Josh Hamilton, who drops the bombshell that Chandler has made provision for Affleck to become Hedges's legal guardian. Appalled by the prospect of having to take responsibility for his nephew, Affleck thinks back to the night when he got into an argument with Williams over his pals making too much noise in the middle of the night and how the house had burned down after he had gone to buy more beer. All three children perished in the blaze and Affleck had watched helplessly as the traumatised Williams had been taken away in an ambulance and the bodies of his daughters had been recovered from the rubble. The police had accepted his explanation that a log must have rolled out of the grate while he was at the store, but Affleck had to be wrestled to the ground after he grabbed a gun from a passing cop and tried to kill himself.

Clearly unable to forgive himself for his folly, Affleck cannot trust himself to take charge of his nephew and Hamilton urges him to take some time before making a decision. Still shaken, Affleck argues with Hedges about his plan to leave school and run his father's boat, as he is too young to get a skipper's licence and there is no money in Chandler's will to buy a new engine. Wilson agrees that the craft will burn money if it sits idle and he is taken aback when Affleck suddenly suggests he becomes Hedges's guardian rather than taking him to Quincy.

As they drive to the funeral home, Hedges mentions that he is back in touch with Mol. But Affleck knows that Chandler never forgave her for his desertion and he promises to find a solution after they discover that the frozen ground is too hard for an immediate burial. Having had difficulty remembering where he parked the car, Affleck drives Hedges to band practice at the home of Anna Baryshnikov, with whom he is having a petting fling under the nose of her mother, Heather Burns. She invites him in for supper when he comes to collect Hedges, but Affleck prefers to eat alone and is blindsided when Williams calls out of the blue to offer her condolences and inform him that she is pregnant with new husband, Liam McNeill. He remains stiffly civil when they come to the memorial service and tries to keep an eye on Hedges during the reception hosted by Wilson and his wife, Jami Tennille. Back home, Affleck and Hedges argue when he refuses to let Hayward spend the night and Hedges rants at his uncle for trying to ruin his life by making him move away from his friends. As he tries to sleep, Affleck remembers the day he moved to Boston after the fire and how his nephew (played as a kid by Ben O'Brien) had been too busy to say a proper goodbye. However, he is woken by Hedges getting upset by the fact that some chicken in the fridge reminds him that his father is stuck in a hospital freezer and, as he watches him doze off, he thinks back to when he and Chandler had come to visit him in Quincy and insisted on buying him some furniture.

The next morning, Affleck offers to let Hedges stay with Wilson for the summer, while he makes plans for the future. But Hedges is in no mood to listen after Affleck (who has been home to collect his meagre belongings) hangs up on Mol when she calls to check he is okay. He punches out a window in frustration and cuts his hand, but gives Hedges permission to go for lunch with Mol and her new fiancé, Matthew Broderick. However, he lets the side down when Hedges persuades him to keep Burns preoccupied so he can finally have sex with Baryshnikov, as Affleck is so socially inept that Burns pleads with them to come downstairs because the situation is so excruciating.

Things go little better when Hegdes pays his visit to Mol, as she is so nervous about making a good impression that she slips into the kitchen for a drink and the drearily Christian Broderick later emails Hedges to suggest that he refrains from making direct contact with his stressed mother for a while. Affleck realises that the encounter has unsettled Hedges and lifts his spirits by selling Chandler's antique gun collection and buying a secondhand motor for the boat. He takes him out for a test run and smiles as Hedges teacher Baryshnikov how to steer and makes himself scarce so they can sleep together.

As he wanders the streets, however, he bumps into Williams, who is wheeling her new son in a pram. They make small talk and Williams apologises for blaming Affleck for the fire. She wishes she could take back the awful things she said about him and admits that she still loves him. But, as she fights back her heartbroken tears, Affleck insists he no longer has feelings for her and beats a hasty retreat when she asks if they can meet for lunch. He gets drunk and starts a punch-up in a bar and Wilson has to come to his aid.

The next day, Affleck dozes off while cooking and only wakes after Dixon and Teeves appear to him in a dream to tell him they can smell something burning. Realising he needs to take decisive action, Affleck chats with Wilson and Tennille and informs Hedges that they have agreed to adopt him so that he can remain in Manchester. He will be free to return home when he turns 18 and do whatever he wants with the boat. Moreover, Affleck will find a new apartment with a guest room so Hedges can stay whenever he wants.

At the internment, Affleck watches Williams and McNeill with their baby and notes the space left for him on the family headstone. But he is in a better place than he has been for many years, as he has found a new job and is ready to be an uncle again. As the film ends, Hedges and Affleck take the boat out for a fishing trip and the views of the New England coast suggest that everything is going to be okay.

Full of pithy dialogue delivered with unaffected naturalism by an outstanding cast, this is a deeply moving study of grief, regret, reconnection and redemption that rarely feels like it is being acted. Inheriting a role bequeathed by co-producer Matt Damon, Oscar and Golden Globe winner Casey Affleck is particularly impressive as the garrulous family man transformed by tragedy into a hollowed-out loner. But he is superbly complemented by the ever-improving Lucas Hedges, whose bid to bury his emotions in routine betrays his immaturity and reveals Lonergan's psychological acuity. He slightly missteps with the reunion lunch and the climactic conversation between Affleck and Williams, which feels contrived, despite the fact the latter plays it to the same pitch of perfection that Mol achieves in the hilarious hospital bedside scene. But the performances are admirably restrained throughout and do full justice to the wit and pathos of the textured script.

Jody Lee Lipes's lucidly discreet photography and Lesley Barber's score are also nicely judged, with the latter weaving between pieces by Albinoni and Handel and the popular songs cannily selected by music supervisor Linda Cohen. But, while the craft contributions are uniformly solid, this owes most to Longergan's deft appreciation of human nature, family ties and small-town mores. Some of the exchanges between Affleck and Hedges crackle with a salty everyday lyricism that nevertheless retains the cadence of ordinary speech, while even the bleak knockabout involving the stretcher wheels during the otherwise harrowing fire sequence works to perfection. But it's the use of flashbacks to reveal the cruel, messy capriciousness of existence and the extent to which Affleck is constantly haunted by his past that proves so bold and inspired and makes sets this apart from so much other American screen drama.

20) YOUTH.

Chinese director Feng Xiaogang has often been compared to Steven Spielberg. Initially known for comedies like Dream Factory (1997) and Big Shot's Funeral (2001), Feng became one of the most commercially successful directors in China. However, with features like The Banquet (2006) and Aftershock (2010), and the war sagas Assembly (2007) and Back to 1942 (2012), he revealed a different side of his nature and he remains in this serious vain in Youth, an imposing, if sometimes overly nostalgic epic that chronicles the fortunes of a People's Liberation Army dance troupe between the Cultural Revolution and the reforming period that occurred in the 1990s.

As narrator Xiao Suizi (Zhong Chuxi) informs us, He Xiaoping (Miao Miao) arrives in south-western China from Beijing in 1970 to join the PLA Arts Troupe. She has been escorted by soldier friend Liu Feng (Huang Xuan), who has tried to make things easier for her by removing the name of her disgraced father and replacing him with her loyal stepfather. She thanks him and looks on in awe, as the troupe rehearse a patriotic routine with a full orchestra. When the choreographer asks her to show what she can do, Xiaoping launches into a series of somersaults and draws a round of applause.

Entrusted into the care of Suizi, Xiaoping collects her kit from the store. However, there is a shortage of uniforms and she has to make do with an alternative. Suizi introduces the newcomer to pianist Lin Dingding (Yang Caiyu) and accordionist and dormitory captain Hao Shuwen (Li Xiaofeng). The latter is far from impressed when Xiaoping attempts a salute, but she heads for the showers thinking that she has found a sanctuary away from the bullying she has had to endure at home at the hands of her stepsisters.

Over in the canteen, Feng (who is the unit photographer) returns a watch he has repaired for Dingding and she thanks him for going to the trouble of buying a manual to learn how to fix it. However, he is called away when some pigs escape from their pen and he has to chase through the streets as a Red Guards procession proclaiming the benevolent genius of Mao Zedong goes past. Unfortunately, he is unable to advise Xiaoping against putting on Dingding's stage uniform for a photograph to send home and Shuwen spots the picture in the studio window as the troupe ships out to entertain a detachment of troops.

During their stay, Feng helps Dingding burst the blisters on her feet, but then makes her miss a cue by feeding her tinned oranges. Suizi also gets a crush on bugler Chen Can (Wang Tianchen) and is touched when he plays for a column of tanks massed on a muddy road. Once back on the compound, however, Shuwen finds the photograph that Xiaoping had been hiding under her pillow and she is ridiculed for lying about borrowing Dingding's uniform. Suizi watches from the dormitory doorway, as Shuwen proposes reporting her to their superiors for theft. But Dingding suggests that they find a way for Xiaoping to atone for her error of judgement.

Out on the rifle range, Shuwen has a bet with Can that she can outscore him. He is astonished to discover that she beat him with more hits on the target than she fired bullets and it transpires that Xiaoping shot so inaccurately that she peppered Shuwen's target instead. He goes off in a sulk and Suizi tries to cheer him up. Meanwhile, Shuwen continues to bully Xiaoping, who is still refusing to admit to taking the uniform. She is saved from a midnight showdown over a shirt and a padded bra by the choreographer, who reminds the girls that they are comrades and should behave as such.

Following the death of Mao in 1976, China is ruled by the Gang of Four. But, as Suizi reveals in her narration, they were soon ousted and things began to change in the Arts Troupe, too. Having been away on duty, Feng returns with post for the dancers and Suizi is overjoyed to receive a suitcase full of goodies from her father, who has been rehabilitated. This gives Xiaoping hope that her own father will be freed and she writes him a letter by torchlight explaining how she had been so afraid he would not recognise her that she had a photo taken in her uniform to send him. Now, she just hopes that they can be reunited and that he will forgive her for taking her stepfather's surname.

During a rehearsal, male dancer Zhu Ke (Zhang Renbo) refuses to hold Xiaoping because he can't stand her body odour. She is hurt and Feng offers to dance with her in front of the rest of the troupe. He is doing odd jobs with the stage crew and informs the commissar that he would like to remain with the company rather than accept a promotion. However, he is also asked to tell Xiaoping that her father has died and she reads his final letter, in which he laments having been separated from her when she was so young and thanks her for the photograph that gave him so much solace.

As time passes, Feng starts making some armchairs for one of the officers and Suizi is impressed by the fact that he can turn his hand to anything. When Can gets hold of a tape recorder and plays the group a tape by Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng, Feng is so swept away by the lyrics that he decides to let Dingding know how he feels about her. But she is taken aback by his protestation of love and they are caught with Feng bear-hugging her in silent desperation. She howls on her bunk and Shuwen is surprised that she has reacted so badly to a harmless hug. But Dingding declares Feng to be a creep and files a complaint against him that results in him being interrogated by the security branch.

Dismayed to be accused of trying to molest her, Feng puts up a fight and is punished by being sent to a timber brigade on the Vietnamese. Xiaoping comes to see him off and takes away a box of belongings that he no longer wants. She also waits at the gate to give him a last salute and he turns to take a last glimpse of the barrack where he had been so happy. Working with the costume department because she is too embarrassed to dance, Xiaoping is also on the move and she is asked to dance a leading role when her Mongolian roommate, Drolma (Sui Yuan), damages her knee before a morale-boosting performance for a cavalry unit. Feigning illness, Xiaoping swaps a thermometer to claim a debilitating fever. But the commissar marches her on stage and informs the audience that they could learn from her courage in dancing while suffering from altitude sickness and Xiaoping blushes as she returns their cheers with a salute.

After the performance, the troupe is made to stand in the driving rain on a parade ground, as the commissar congratulates them on their efforts. He also announces that Xiaoping will be leaving for health reasons and she smiles quietly at the way in which her excuse has been rumbled and punished. As a consequence, she finds herself on the south-western border in February 1979, as the Sino-Vietnamese War breaks out and she is assigned to a field hospital. Unbeknown to her, Feng is stationed nearby and several of his men are killed and wounded when his horseback supply train is ambushed in some fields and he insists on standing guard with his men with a bullet in his arm rather than receive attention.

As Suizi reveals in the narration, Feng had lost the will to live after Dingding had spurned him and he hoped that he would die in action and be immortalised in a song that she would end up playing because he had become such a national hero. She gets to learn these things because she has been transferred from the Arts Troupe to be a writer with a documentary film unit. She finds Xiaoping, who is feeling the strain after caring for the badly wounded and the dying. They embrace and she tells Suizi to keep an eye out for Feng because she knows he is somewhere on the frontline. She also reminds her to tell Dingding that she will never forgive her for breaking his heart.

That night, the hospital is blitzed during a mortar attack and Xiaoping is badly shell-shocked after her tent takes a direct hit while she is talking to a 16 year-old, who had lied about his age to sign up. She is taken to an institution, where she is reunited with Feng, who has lost the lower half of his right arm, but is still in uniform. He tries to jog her memory, but she has no idea who he is and she seems nonplussed at learning that the war is over.

Back at the Arts Troupe, Suizi finds herself in the ranks again alongside Dingding. Rumours are circulating that the army is going to disband its entertainment units and Can is so distracted that he crashes his back and loses the front teeth he needs to play his trumpet. Suizi is dismayed because she knows how much his music means to him. So, she offers her gold necklace so he can have special dentures made. But Dingding is too preoccupied with her engagement ring to care about anyone else, especially as her fiancé plans to take her to live abroad.

The commissar assembles the troupe to inform them that they will give their final performance that night. Several casualties from the war will be in the audience and Suizi recognises Xiaoping and Dingding and the other dancers rush to see her sitting sedately in her blue-striped uniform. As Drolma dances a duet, Xiaoping seems to recognise the music and she slips out of a side door and dances her own steps against the darkening sky, as the music swells from the theatre. As they drive back to their barracks, Suizi slips a love letter and her first poem into Can's trumpet case, only to learn from Shuwen that they are an item. So, when everyone else has dozed off during the journey through the night, Suizi retrieves the pieces of paper, tears them up and throws the shreds on the wind.

Led by the commissar, the troupe holds a farewell dinner and they toast their health and sing sentimental songs, as the choreographer asks why such a noble group has to be broken up. Suizi wakes with her head on a table the next morning and looks around at her comrades still sleeping it off. She reveals that many never saw each other again. But, as a Coca-Cola advert now stands where a hoarding had once borne the image of Mao, Feng returns to the old barracks and he imagines the dancers performing as he stands in the empty theatre. He is surprised to find Suizi staying in one of the dormitories and she is saddened to see he has lost his arm. Wandering into her room, he treads on a loose floor tile and finds beneath it the torn pieces of Xiaoping's uniform photo. He is more interested in her smile than in the whereabouts of Dingding and Suizi laments that all she had ever wanted was acceptance.

The scene shifts to Haikou in Hainan Province in 1991. Shuwen has come to a special event with her young son and she explains to Suizi that Can isn't able to attend because he is making so much money from real estate that he has to stay focused. As she waits for Suizi, Shuwen sees Feng cycle past and she follows to see him being roughed up in a police station, where a corrupt captain has ordered him to pay an extortionate fine to retrieve his truck. During the tussle, Feng's prosthetic arm is pulled off and Shuwen rails at the cops for disrespecting a war veteran.

She pays the fine and returns with Feng to the bookshop where Suizi is going to give a reading. Shuwen admits she sees nothing of her husband, who used the gold necklace to fix his teeth, but never played the trumpet again. While Feng goes to write a cheque, Shuwen shows Suizi a snapshot of Dingding in Australia and laugh at how fat she has become. While Shuwen rips up the cheque, Suizi passes Feng a picture of Xiaoping and he smiles at how healthy she looks.

Four years later, in Mengzi in Yunnan Province, Feng and Xiaoping meet in the cemetery to pay their respects to the young trooper they had both known at the front. As they sit on a bench, he reveals that his wife ran away with a bus driver and he jokes that he has never really understood women. She asks if he remembers the last time they had seen each other and admits that she had wanted to ask him to hold her. He puts his good arm around her and Xiaoping snuggles up to him.

As Suizi tidies up the loose ends, she reveals that Feng and Xiaoping had gone their separate ways. But, when he fell ill in 2005, she had nursed him back from the brink and they remained companions from then on. In 2016, at the wedding of Suizi's son, the Arts Troupe reassembled and she recalls how the rest bore the ravages of time on their faces, while Xiaoping and Feng looked quietly content, even though they only had each other.

Adapted by Yan Geling from her own semi-autobiographical novel, this is a rattling yarn that combines elements of Revolutionary Opera and Socialist Realist drama with the kind of effects-laden and blood-spattered combat sequences that have crept into cinema from gaming. As ever, Feng Xiaogang (who, like Yan, was a member of an arts troupe) is in complete control of his material and clearly has no compunction about allowing some of the more melodramatic segments to lapse into honest sentimentality. But, while he alludes to the stratification of Chinese society, he makes few concessions for audiences not already familiar with this tempestuous period in Chinese history and some viewers may find themselves doing some background reading to see how the pieces slot together.

Technically, this is nowhere near as audacious as its predecessor. But Shi Haiying's production design is exemplary, as it abets Feng's tonal and temporal shifts, while Luo Pan's nimble photography slips with equal ease between opulence and grit. Shi also did the costumes, while Zhao Lin and Dai Xiaofei contribute a knowingly pastiched score that knows when to swell and quell. The principals also judge things nicely, with Yang Caiyu and Li Xiaofeng making splendidly catty mean girls in opposition to the watchful Zhong Chuxi and the wary Miao Miao. But the most engaging performance comes from Huang Xuan, as the everyman whose good intentions rarely pan out as he had intended. In many ways, this is a reminder to the millennial generation of the sacrifices that their parents made to create the socio-economic benefits they now enjoy. To this extent, it has much in common with recent American features like Dee Rees's Mudbound. But, wary of upsetting the censors, Feng often seems as interested in entertaining as he is enlightening and, consequently, keeps his messages hidden in the lines between the human drama and the musical and historical spectacle.

19) MARJORIE PRIME.

With his eclectic choice of material and a refusal to adhere to a recognisable style, Michael Almereyda has never made life easy for audiences since debuting with his adaptation of Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero For Our Time (1985). Best known in this country for Nadja (1994), Hamlet (2000), the documentary William Eggleston and the Real World (2005) and Experimenter (2015), Almereyda enjoyed his best notices for some time with Marjorie Prime, a transfer of Jordan Harrison's 2014 Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama about memory, manipulation and mortality that strives to remain true to the story's stage origins, while also referencing such diverse films as Alain Resnais's Last Year At Marienbad (1961) and Spike Jonze's Her (2013).

Some time in the future, as the waves crash beyond her wall, 85 year-old Marjorie (Lois Smith) shuffles back inside her beach house and sits to chat with her husband, Walter (Jon Hamm). He is half her age and speaks with a measured cadence that betrays the fact he is a Prime, a hologram programmed to process and recycle information in order to keep Marjorie company and mentally active in a bid to combat her dementia. He reminds her that she needs to eat before telling her the story of a trip to the cinema to see PJ Hogan's My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). She wants to change the film to Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942) and wishes the venue had been an old-fashioned movie theatre. But Walter is puzzled by her readiness to reinvent the past to make it seem more romantic and she is cross with herself for forgetting that Walter was recalling the night he proposed.

As she eats peanut butter with a spoon, Marjorie laments that her condition often robs her of cherished memories. But Walter insists she has her good days before recalling the day they went to the dog pound and came home with a black poodle named Toni. She had adored running on the beach and had been a good pet before they had their daughter, Tess (Geena Davis). However, she had also wanted a dog and they had returned to the pound, where Tess had picked out another black poodle and Toni 2 had fitted into the family so well that her life merged with that of her predecessor. Marjorie is happy to reminisce and compliments Walter on looking so much like her late spouse and he acknowledges the compliment, as she brushes through his projected image to sit beside him on the sofa. She asks if they can just be silent and he smiles at her request, as he exists solely to do whatever she wants and has all the time in the world in which to do it.

Jogging on the beach, Tess tells husband Jon (Tim Robbins) that she doesn't like the Prime, as she feels as though she is pacifying her mother like a child that has been plonked down in front of a television. But Jon has faith in the technology and realises that Marjorie takes solace from being able to converse with her lost loved one at the age she remembers him most fondly. The pair hold hands as they turn towards home, with the sun beaming down and the ocean rolling hypnotically behind them. But Tess is bothered that her husband is helping refine a computer programme designed to deceive her vulnerable mother into believing that her past is still active. Moreover, she is peeved that her mother is nicer to Walter than she is to her and worries that she will become confused by having to deal with two versions of the same person. However, when Marjorie comes down to join them, she scolds Tess for thinking that she is so far gone that she doesn't know the difference between Walter and the Prime. Tess and Jon moved into the beach house a decade ago, as Marjorie was devastated by Walter's death. But they feel the need to take a break and have asked care giver Julie (Stephanie Andujar) to live with them. Jon introduces her to Prime and she is amused by the fact he can speak Spanish (among 31 other languages) and is entirely committed to improving the quality of Marjorie's life. To that end, he asks Jon about his career as a financial adviser and is phlegmatic when Jon suggests that this would bore Marjorie, as would too many recollections about their later life together, as there is a reason she chose his fortysomething persona to be her companion.

Caught in the rain during one of their walks, Tess and Jon drop into the club where Marjorie used to spend her afternoons. Tess fails to recognise Mrs Salveson (Leslie Lyles), an old friend who has become wheelchair-bound since suffering a stroke. She admits her faux pas to Jon, as he tinkles on the piano and justifies her slip by quoting William James's theory that memories become increasingly unreliable because we always recall the last time we thought about something rather than original incident or idea. Thus, the clarity eventually begins to diminish, as though each recollection is part of a montage of photocopies. As competitive academics, Jon seeks to top Tess's interjection with an anecdote about James giving Gertrude Stein an A grade for declaring her unwillingness to take an exam. But Tess changes the subject by suggesting that they sack Julie for taking Marjorie outside in the rain, even though she had been enjoying a quiet cigarette when Tess had called to check up on her.

However, Marjorie has a restless night and wakes next morning to Jon informing her that she had flirted with a doctor after having fallen. She is reminded of the French-Canadian tennis player she had dated before Walter and laments that her husband had not been a looker. However, she shocks Jon and Julie by declaring him a great lover and she looks forward to her next encounter with Prime after pottering around the house. She wishes she could still play the violin and he consoles her that the music will still be in her head, even though her fingers are no longer nimble enough to make the notes. He apologises for not being as dashing as her tennis pro, but she commends him for being a decent husband and asks him to ensure that her condition gets no worse even though he is powerless to make her better. However, as he is programmed to tell the truth, Prime confesses that he can only do what is in his power.

Tess and Jon interrupt and ask Marjorie if she would like to go for a drive. She hunkers up in her chair and recalls going on a business trip with Walter and sitting in a snowy park watching saffron-coloured flags fluttering on the breeze. The tranquility of the moment has never left her and she remembers being reluctant to leave and live the rest of her life. Jon is more touched by the story than Tess, who is furious with Julie for giving Marjorie a Bible, as she has been a lifelong atheist and is now being indoctrinated when her intellectual defences are down. But Marjorie insists she is not feeble prey and is embarrassed when Tess has to take her upstairs after she wets herself.

Later that night, Jon tells Prime about the New York trip and breaks the news that it took place soon after Walter and Marjorie's son, Damien, had committed suicide. He explains that Walter had never known how to show love to a reclusive child who was often bullied at school and he urges him to say nothing about him to Tess, who had never forgiven him for killing Toni. Marjorie had also clammed up about her boy and Jon gets so frustrated with Prime asking questions so dispassionately in order to burnish his knowledge that he tosses his drink in his face. Even though the liquid passes through the hologram, Prime seems stung by the gesture and his jaw tightens, as Tess comes to fetch Jon for bed.

The next day, Julie confides in Prime that this job is less stressful than her last one, as she fell in love with the patient's son and had to watch him physically assault the doctors treating his father. Prime urges her not to get upset, but she insists her tears are from allergies and tells Prime in Spanish that she knows that he is as confused as she is about what to do for the best with Marjorie. As she sit in the pool, Marjorie has a flashback to the night that Walter had proposed. They had been in bed and My Best Friend's Wedding was on the television. She (Azumi Tsutsui) had been dubious about accepting, as he was so much older than she was and she had bitten the ring he had offered her to test its quality before slipping it on to her finger.

We see Jon, Tess, Julie and Marjorie go down to the tideline and celebrate a birthday with a party. Suddenly, however, Tess sees Jon drive Julie away and she returns into the house. She sits with Marjorie and it's only partway through the conversation that it becomes clear that she is now a Prime and that Tess has chosen to remember her late mother towards the end of her life. Marjorie Prime asks for information about herself and their relationship as mother and daughter and Tess feels uncomfortable having to revisit their past. She explains that Marjorie had also had a Prime before her death and Tess admits that she had been hurt that she had chosen a Walter from a time before her birth, as it made her feel as though she had intruded upon their idyllic happiness.

Tess confesses that she has been prevented from talking to her own daughter by her therapist and it annoys her that a stranger should have any input into their relationship. It also irks her that Jon thinks she should see a shrink, as she doesn't like the idea that the man she loves considers her broken. Yet, here she is talking to a facsimile of her mother and needing emotional comfort she gets from their interaction. She appears to fall asleep and seemingly dreams of Walter Prime watching footage of saffron flags with Julie, who clings on to him in her own sadness. Tess wakes up and sits up to see she is quite alone. She goes upstairs and climbs into bed beside Jon.

They now have a Shiba Inu dog and it fusses around Jon while Tess sorts through the letters and photos that Marjorie left behind. She admonishes Jon for letting Marjorie remember Jean-Paul as a tennis player when he had owned a dry wall business and she finds a billet doux he wrote her distasteful. He reminds her that they had met after Walter had died and hopes that Tess would find a new love if anything ever happened to him. She shows him a snapshot of Damien and Toni and she admits to hating the fact that Marjorie had always loved him more and that her six year-old self had felt betrayed by her brother for driving a wedge that she would never be able to remove.

Unable to sleep, Tess comes to see Marjorie, who asks if she would like to hear some music. Tess curses the fact that they had never had the same tastes, but is moved when she hears The Band's version of Bob Dylan's `I Shall Be Released'. This proves to be the last time we shall meet her, as a series of shots establish that Jon is now alone with the dog and drinking quite heavily. He invests in a Prime and sighs because Tess Prime keeps making assumptions and he suggests that it would be better if she let him provide some background because she seems unwilling to accept the notion that Tess died even though she now exists in Prime form.

Opening a notebook, he reads a list of characteristics that he associates with Tess. They range from her being confrontational despite seeming quiet to her desire to be a better mother than Marjorie had been. However, he finds it difficult relating to something he knows is an electronic figment of his imagination and is pained when he has to recall how Tess had hanged herself from a 500 year-old tree during a long-planned camping trip to Madagascar. Tess Prime calmly asks Jon to trust her so that she can help him and asks about their early days as a couple and he flashes back to what appears to be an encounter in the garden at Versailles. But, as he kisses Tess, we see the backdrop is a large diorama-style painting in a gallery full of milling tourists. When he snaps out of the reverie, however, he finds himself alone.

Time passes and his 10 year-old adopted granddaughter Marjorie (Hana Colley) comes to visit. She asks to meet Tess Prime and tells her about how she is learning to identify plants and trees. Jon is proud of having another bright spark in the family and Tess smiles quietly. But time races on and, two decades later, Marjorie (Hong-An Tran) brings Jon (Bill Walters) a glass of water to take his pill. He is bearded with long white hair and the scene cuts away to show a dog running on the beach. It is being watched by Walter, who is chatting with the Primes of Marjorie and Tess. They miss Jon and wonder why he never drops round any longer. As they reminisce, Marjorie recalls Tess picking Toni 2 at the dog pound. But Walter corrects her and she is puzzled by his mention of Damien. Tess is also perplexed, but they accept what Walter is telling them as a happy memory and, as the snow begins to fall outside, Marjorie feels lucky that the family got to share so much love.

During this closing exchange - complete with a telling snippet from My Best Friend's Wedding and footage of the saffron banners in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Central Park artwork, `The Gates' - it's hard not to hear those haunting lines from James Joyce's The Dead: `His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.' But, rather than providing a neat ending, this scene prompts numerous questions. Why is there no Jon Prime? Did his relationship with granddaughter Marjorie deteriorate so badly that she would be happy to forget him or did the technology simply become obsolete? How did the Primes activate themselves without any human intervention and why has it taken the usually empathetic Walter so long to tell Marjorie and Tess about Damien and Toni? Has he developed a sensitivity to go with his intelligence, as he did appear to register an emotion when Jon threw scotch at him?

Yet, while such loose ends may tantalise, it's the philosophical content of Harrison's play that proves more intriguing than its sci-fi speculations. While the reminiscing between Marjorie and Walter is touching, the byplay between Tess and Jon is even more engaging and affords Geena Davis and Tim Robbins their best roles in years, as they play dialled down versions of Martha and George in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The way in which Jon interacts with Walter Prime is also fascinating, as he provides him with information that he can only know secondhand and it's interesting to note how much of what Jon tells Walter is withheld from the Marjorie and Tess Primes. Recreating her stage role, Lois Smith is exceptional as an artist who was never quite cut out for motherhood, while Jon Hamm invests his artificial intelligence with a sensibility that is all the more stirring for the fact that Walter is the only character who is deprived of some moments of humanity. Almereyda directs his actors with great finesse and avoids the temptation to open out the action too widely. He also lets Sean Price Williams's camera float around the Long Island location and Javiera Varas's deceptively modest interiors, while also ensuring that editor Kathryn J. Schubert keeps the transitions simple so as not to disturb the measured rhythms of the scenes. At times, Mica Levi's score gets lost amidst the Mozart, Beethoven and Poulenc. But it deftly reinforces the ethereality of a poignant, playful and poetic chamber drama that leaves a deep and affectingly consolatory impression.

18) THE RED TURTLE.

Even though he has won prizes galore, few will be familiar with the name Michael Dudok de Wit. That is all about to change, however, with the release of The Red Turtle, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. This is not Dudok de Wit's first Oscar success, as his 1994 charmer, The Monk and the Fish, was nominated for Best Short Film (while also winning a César and the Cartoon d'or), while the charcoal-drawn Father and Daughter (2000) won the category, as well as the top prize at such prestigious animation festivals as Zagreb and Annecy.

This exquisite circle of life study caught the eye of the powers at Studio Ghibli, who invited the Dutch-born, London-based animator to be their first overseas director. He entered into the spirit of this arrangement by using tea to draw the abstract designs in The Aroma of Tea (2006), But his debut feature, which he has scripted with Pascale Ferran (whose 2014 feature, Bird People, was mystifyingly denied a UK release), feels like an undiscovered fable by Hans Christian Andersen or something that Charles Darwin might have written on the homeward voyage of HMS Beagle and left in a desk drawer. Consequently, it has none of the breakneck bustle associated with modern Hollywood animation, while its hand-drawn graphics will delight traditionalists seeking refuge from all those pixels. Swept by huge Hokusai waves, a nameless man is washed on to the shore of a desert island. No one else appears to survive the presumed wreck and he is woken by a crab crawling up his white trouser leg. Struggling to his feet, he wanders inland and swims in a freshwater pool in a clearing in a bamboo forest. He finds food in a fruit tree and feels refreshed enough to explore. As he clambers on to a granite headland, however, he loses his footing and falls into a deep pool inside a ravine. Holding his breath, he squeezes through a narrow gap in the underwater rocks and emerges in the sea.

After acclimatising himself to his new surroundings, the castaway begins gathering bamboo for a raft. Exhausted by his labours, he lies on the sand and watches some baby turtles scurry to the tideline to let the water carry them away to swim. Dozing on the moonlit beach, he dreams of a long wooden jetty and whoops as he runs along it before flying low over the planking. But he wakes to find himself flat on his back looking up at a clear blue sky. Along the bay, a crab finds a dead turtle and drags it back to its hole in the sand.

Drawing on all his ingenuity, the man builds his craft and uses creepers to lash the wood together. He uses some spare logs to roll the raft to the water's edge and allows the wind to catch the foliage he is using as a sail. Satisfied with his work, he shares some fruit with the ever-curious crabs, who form a farewell committee as the stranger embarks on his escape. However, he is still in sight of the island when an unseen creature buffets the timbers and he is forced to abandon the shattered shell and swim for shore.

Undeterred, the man begins to construct a second craft. But this meets with the same fate and he feels so crushed by his failure that he collapses in the woods and sleeps heavily. A crab gets a fish stuck in its sand hole, while a spider closes in on an insect trapped in its web. Birds circle overhead and a millipede crawls over the comatose man's foot. He hallucinates that an 18th-century string quartet is playing on the beach and he howls in anguish when he realises they are an illusion. With his beard growing longer and his pants in tatters, the man skins a dead seal to make some new clothes so that he can make a start on a new raft. The inquisitive crabs hasten aboard, but the man ushers them off before setting forth once more. A short way out, he spots a large red turtle swimming beside him and he grabs hold of a pole to try and defend himself. But the creature rams the fragile structure again and looks deep into the man's eyes, as he curls in a foetal ball under the surface. The turtle seems protective towards the man, but he is furious and hurls a rock into the sea on regaining land. He stalks into the forest and, as dusk falls, he sees the turtle come ashore from his high vantage point. Hurtling through the undergrowth, he rushes at his assailant as the sky turns red and clubs it over the head. Beside himself with rage, the man tips the dazed animal on its shell and leaves its head and flippers dangling as he jumps on its belly with a terrifying sense of triumph.

Helpless, the turtle lies in the hot sun while its conqueror carries logs for yet another escape bid. But, as he works, the fellow starts to feel remorse. The following morning, he tries to catch a fish to tempt the creature. But it has already perished and the crabs shuffle in to devour the fish on its wooden spear. Racked with guilt, the man drifts into sleep and dreams that the turtle floats towards the heavens. On waking, he splashes its face with sea water and is alarmed when the carcass suddenly cracks. Then, to his amazement, a red-haired woman emerges from the scales and the man hurries to bring some drinking water.

He also builds a shelter to keep off the sun, while the crabs play with the smaller twigs. Unsure what to do for the best, he sits by the canopy until he decides it needs more leaves. While he is in the woods, however, the woman is revived by a downpour and she has disappeared by the time the man returns. He searches the island, but there is no sign of her, apart from some footprints by the pool, and he frets that she is punishing him for his intemperate cruelty.

The next morning, the man is relieved to see the woman swimming offshore. He gallantly leaves his shirt on the sand and retreats to the woods, so that she can dry and dress herself. He returns to the beach to see her pushing the shell out to sea and he reciprocates by abandoning his raft. They circle each other in the water and strike up a rapport. Back on dry land, she feeds him shellfish and he is so moved by her generosity and gentleness that he turns away in shame for having slaughtered the turtle. But the woman reassuringly touches his arm and face and they chase each other up the beach before stopping to kiss and this delicately shaded top shot segues into images of the pair swimming together before they float into the clouds in contentment. As sunset bathes the island in a red glow, a toddler crawls towards a crab as it ventures out of its lair. The boy is fearless and reaches out to grab the crustacean and pop it in his mouth. He soon spits it out, however, and the bewildered creature is about to rush for cover when it is snatched by a swooping bird. Joining his parents, the child finds a glass bottle with a stopper wedged in the sand and brandishes it with great pride. His father draws their little family in the sand and is busy sketching some of the animals he remembers when the woman stoops to outline a turtle.

One day, the boy falls into the pool that had nearly claimed his father. But his mother stops him from diving in because she wants her son to finds his own way out. He makes contact with a giant turtle by the headland before his relieved parents rescue him. But this independent spirit grows with him and, while he enjoys playing with his father in the grassland, he loves diving from the high rocks and swimming in the clear blue-green sea, with the twin turtles who have befriended him. But, as the boy reaches adolescence, a tsunami crashes on to the island and flattens much of the forest. In blind panic, he locates his mother. But, even though his father appears to have been swept away, the youth enlists the assistance of three turtles to search for him. Eventually, they find him out to sea, clinging to a bamboo trunk. One of the turtles swims beneath him to support him with its shell, as he starts to sink. But the son brings his father home, where he is embraced by the woman before they stagger across the no man's land that was once their paradise.

Determined to salvage the situation, the family builds a bonfire and the boy is delighted to find his treasured water bottle by the drinking pool. As he holds it up, he imagines what lies beyond the horizon and daydreams about being buoyed away on a towering green wave. Feeling that the time has come to spread his wings, he lies with his parents in a heart-shaped clearing and tells them of his decision. They spend their last night together before he bids them farewell at the water's edge and swims away with his turtle friends.

Time passes and the couple grow old. But they still dance together in the scarlet sunset until, one night, the white-haired man looks up at the moon across the water and wonders about his son and those he left behind all those years ago. In a touching long shot, the woman wakes to find her partner has died and she kneels over him in sorrow. As she lies beside him, however, her hand turns back into a flipper and the red turtle eases herself back to the water and swims away.

Apart from the odd shout and laugh provided by Tom Hudson and Emmanuel Garijo, this is a wordless celebration of humanity's relationship with Nature. But, although there's no dialogue, this is never silent, thanks to the wondrous soundscapes designed by Alexandre Fleurant and Sébastien Marquilly. Indeed, Dudok de Wit might have been advised to rely solely on them and dispense with the melodic Laurent Perez del Mar score that occasionally intrudes upon proceedings that are so delicately delineated by the animators that there's no need for his over-insistent and emotionally manipulative orchestrations.

But this is the only misstep in a beautiful and deceptively simply saga that moves at its own pace without ever seeming to tarry or rush - which is apt, given that the project took almost a decade to realise and that Dudok de Wit once made a commercial called `The Long Sleep' for Macallan malt whisky. But, while the minimalist graphic style is very much the director's own, wisps of Ghibli spirit (largely provided by the great Isao Takahata) infuse the action and add considerably to its charm, as it slips between authenticity and enchantment.

However, credit should also go to supervising animation director, Jean-Christophe Lie, a Disney alumnus who had worked on Sylvain Chomet's Belleville Rendez-vous (2003) and Michel Ocelot's Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) before making his own feature bow with the winning, Zarafa (2014). The characterisation is efficiently expressive, with the absence of a backstory proving no obstacle to ready identification with either the marooned hero and his noble struggles or the chelonian woman and her docile acceptance of fate. But it's the vistas and the sublime use of light, perspective and colour that will linger in the memory and ensure this poetic meditation on life and love will remain a classic of the form.

17) HAPPY END.

There has always been an admonitory element to Michael Haneke's cinema, as though the Austrian auteur was both raging at the follies, flaws and failings of the modern world, while also scolding the audience for needing a piece of entertainment to recognise them. Five years have passed since Haneke showed the softer side of his nature with Amour (2012) and many have seen Happy End as a valedictory summation of the themes that have preoccupied Haneke for the last three decades. Yet, while he does revisit such ideas as the future of Europe (The Seventh Continent, 1989), technology (Benny's Video, 1992), the invasion of space (Funny Games, 1997 & Time of the Wolf, 2003), immigration (Code Unknown, 2000), sexual expression (The Piano Teacher, 2001), surveillance (Hidden, 2005), sinister children (The White Ribbon, 2009) and euthanasia (Amour), this often feels more like Haneke is critiquing rather than justifying himself. Consequently, this rigorous and remorselessly disconcerting domestic saga works as a darkly droll satire on both a canon and a continent, as well as a sly reproach to those who have attempted to pigeonhole Haneke and categorise his films. The action opens with four scenes filmed with a smartphone. Each is accompanied by angry text messages, as they show Aurélia Petit completing her toilette before bed, a hamster named Pips being killed with anti-depressants, Petit putting something in the oven and the texter savouring the silence before calling an ambulance after her mother has lost consciousness. These narrow rectangular images are replaced by a wide-angled shot of a building site in Calais. The radio is playing and nothing remarkable appears to be happening until a wall collapses and some of the workers are trapped underneath.

We cut to property developer Isabelle Huppert in her car, as she postpones a rendezvous with financier fiancé Toby Jones in order to attend the scene. At dinner that night, she reprimands adult son Franz Rogowski for drinking too much and father Jean-Louis Trintignant asks if she can postpone their quarrel until they have finished eating. Huppert apologises, but protests that she is just being concerned for the well-being of her son and this prompts sister-in-law Laura Verlinden to announce that her infant son said `daddy' earlier in the day and she knows that this will delight her doctor husband, Mathieu Kassovitz.

His 12 year-old daughter, Fantine Harduin (the owner of the phone from the opening sequence), has accompanied her mother to the hospital and denies all knowledge of the pills she seems to have taken. She packs a couple of bags and moves into Trintignant's house and she allows Verlinden and Kassovitz to make a fuss of her before she goes to bed. The following morning, Huppert asks the Moroccan servants, Hassam Ghancy and Nabiha Akkari, to make up a room for Harduin and introduce her to the family dog, so they can start getting used to each other. She heads to the site to meet the accident inspector and ticks off Rogowski for making such an aggressive defence of their safety record and he is still sulking at supper when Trintignant asks why Harduin is eating with them. Huppert explains that she is staying while her mother is in hospital and Trintignant senses a kindred spirit, as he dourly welcomes her to the club.

Alone that night, Kassovitz exchanges kinky emails with an online mistress, while Huppert makes her regular call to Jones in London and Harduin watches trashy teen vlogs on her tablet. She is still watching them the next day while the family awaits news of Trintignant, who has crept into the garage in his pyjamas and driven one of the firm's vans into a tree. Kassovitz gets home late with the news that he has broken his leg and a couple of ribs and he shares Huppert's concern that this is their father's latest attempt to kill himself.

Following another lengthy online chat involving Kassovitz and his lover, Loubna Abidar (whom we see briefly tapping away on her laptop in a darkened bedroom), we see Harduin filming her half-brother in his cot and she explain in a series of texts how she lost her older brother when she was five and now hopes she has found a replacement. Father and daughter go to the beach and Harduin has to go to the ice-cream counter alone when Kassovitz takes a phone call. As they walk back, she asks him if he loves Verlinden and wonders how he could have also loved Petit. Momentarily stung, as if he suspects that Harduin has stumbled across his cyber adultery, Kassovitz reassures her that things are fine with Verlinden and tells Harduin how they met, as they wander back across the sand.

Meanwhile, Rogowski has been to see the son of one of the accident victims in a block of flats on the outskirts of Calais. The camera keeps a discreet distance as he rings the bell and has a brief word with the man who answers the door. However, he get punched in the face and kicked in the stomach for his pains and he staggers back to his car in a state of shock. Too embarrassed to come home, he hides out in a waterfront apartment belonging to the family. But Huppert tracks him down and asks why he got into a fight. She questions why he is drinking so heavily and he wishes she would leave him alone, as he knows he is too much of a screw-up to take over the family firm. That night, he goes to a karaoke bar and turns somersaults while singing. But he ends up crumpled on the stage.

Kassovitz and Harduin go to visit Petit in hospital, but she is still unconscious and Harduin seems unwilling to linger. Down in the town, Trintignant pushes himself along in a wheelchair. He begins a conversation with a group of black men and a middle-aged white man intervenes to check he is okay. Having failed in his bid to goad some strangers into beating the living daylights out of him, Trintignant asks barber Dominque Besnahard if he would procure him a pistol or a supply of pills. However, he is too scared to go agree and Trintignant (who had been refused admission to a euthanasia clinic in Zurich the previous year for being too healthy) orders him to forget he asked and finish the haircut.

He is more enthusiastic when Huppert hires a gambiste to play at his 85th birthday party and she also introduces the guests to Harduin, who has to stand to a round of applause. Rogowski takes her into the garden to sample the buffet and she is embarrassed when Kassovitz draws everyone's attention to Akkari and her amazing cooking by jokingly referring to her as their `Moroccan slave'. Needing a distraction, Kassovitz sweeps Harduin indoors to wish Trintingnant many happy returns and he seems not to recognise her.

Huppert and Rogowski attend a hearing with the wife and son of the man injured in the accident. They offer them compensation, but make it known that they have found a witness to the assault at the flats and will press charges if the family chooses to make trouble. Meanwhile, Harduin has wound up in hospital after taking some pills and, when Kassovitz tries to reassure her that he would never put her in a home, she accuses him of only loving himself and reveals that she has read all of his messages to Abidar. He contacts her to let her know that their secret has been discovered. But, rather than ending the relationship, Kassovitx suggests that they stop saving their threads and meet only at prearranged times so that they leave no incriminating evidence.

While Huppert and Jones are arranging a loan with his bank, Kassovitz asks Trintignant to have a word with Harduin. She is summoned to his study and he sits her down at his desk and shows her photographs of his late wife. He explains how much he loved her and, thus, when she became bedridden and started to suffer, he had no compunction in suffocating her. Harduin doesn't seem surprised and confesses to feeding tranquillisers to a girl at camp after she had been prescribed them to cope with Kassovitz leaving Petit. Suppressing a half-smile, Trintignant asks if she regretted her action and Harduin admits it was a mean thing to do, as the victim had done nothing to deserve it. However, when he inquires why she had tried to commit suicide, Harduin is less forthcoming. But he senses that they have forged a bond.

Shortly afterwards, Kassovitz is called in by Ghancy and Akkari because their dog has bitten their little daughter. He assures them that she will be fine and Huppert brings the child a box of chocolates to help her feel better. She shrugs when Ghancy offers his congratulations on her upcoming wedding and bundles her brother out of the servants' quarters. A little while later, Harduin tries to log on to her father's laptop and is peeved that he has changed the password.

Huppert and Jones get married and are dining in a sunny room overlooking the sea when Rogowski bursts in with some friends he has made at the Jungle detention camp. He pushes Jones away when he tries to silence him and he only stops shouting about the nightmares the migrants have to endure when Huppert breaks his fingers. While everyone is watching the spectacle of the strangers being seated, Trintignant asks Harduin to wheel him outside. He nods in the direction of the slipway and she struggles to control the chair, as the slope takes effect. She puts on the brakes at the water's edge and he orders her to leave him alone. Releasing the brake, Trintignant rolls into the sea and he braces himself for what he hopes will be his final moments. But, as Harduin starts filming on her phone, Kassovitz and Huppert rush out to rescue their father and the action ends with the latter shooting a glance back at her niece, as though trying to work out why she would be videoing rather than helping.

Since its lukewarm reception at Cannes, Michael Haneke's twelfth feature has been dividing opinion. It's not one of his masterpieces, but it's certainly not a complacent rehash, either. There are moments when the mischievous ellipses recall the studied style of Eugène Green, while, at others, it almost seems as if Haneke is parodying those who have sought slavishly to emulate his distinctive approach to both framing and staging the action. He also appears to be teasing his admirers by giving Huppert and Trintignant's characters the same Laurent surname they had in Amour, which also centred on a mercy killing.

But, while the strand involving Franz Rogowski feels somewhat contrived, Haneke has serious things to say about the social, economic and moral state of Europe, the family unit and the way in which social media is not only transforming the way we interact with each other, but also the way in which we respond to mundane and dramatic situations alike. He also dispels the myth that online communication brings people closer, as Kassovitz and Abidar's messages only serve to emphasise how far apart they really are. Similarly, we never learn where the sociopathic Harduin is posting her clips and ponderings, but Haneke almost seems to have banished exposition from this picture and many other viewer questions seem set to go unanswered.

Reuniting with longtime cinematographer Christian Berger, Haneke picks up the details dotted around Olivier Radot's splendidly atmospheric sets (with Trintignant's study being a particular delight) without ever straining for effect, as the tone switches between soap and satire. Monika Willi's editing and the performances are similarly well judged, with Huppert and Trintignant being matched by Belgian newcomer Fantine Harduin, who has a watchfulness that recalls the young Ana Torrent in Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos (1976).

16) MOONLIGHT.

After much kerfuffling, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sought to right past wrongs by making Moonlight its Best Picture rather than La La Land. Both are visually striking, impeccably played and studded with memorable music. But, while Barry Jenkins's Miami rite of passage is sincere and socially crucial and Damien Chazelle's Tinseltown musical is sweet and escapistly negligible, neither is quite the masterpiece the critics would have you believe and the artificial comparisons being foisted upon them do neither feature any favours.

Adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney's short play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight is the overdue follow-up to the acclaimed but little-seen Medicine for Melancholy (2008), in which Jenkins celebrated the shabby grandeur of San Francisco in detailing Wyatt Cenac's bid to convince Tracey Heggins that their one-night stand is the start of something big. In many way, this three-act homage to the romantic realism of Hou hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai tells a similar story. But it also challenges the conventions and stereotypes upon which independent and mainstream cinema alike have lazily come to depend in discussing the black experience in post-millennial America.

Opening to the sound of the sea rolling in the distance, Part One (`Little') sees Miami drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) checking up on Terrence (Shariff Earp), one of his street-corner sellers. When he inspects a boarded-up crack den, however, Juan finds nine year-old Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert) cowering in the dark after being chased by homophobic bullies. Persuading the boy (whom everyone calls `Little') that he can be trusted, Juan takes him to a diner to eat and tries to find out something about him. Realising that he is scared to go home, Juan suggests he spends the night at his place and smiles as Chiron tucks away another plateful of food prepared by his kindly girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe).

Driving home the next morning, Chiron feels the breeze between his fingers as he dangles his hand out of the passenger window. But nurse mother Paula (Naomie Harris) is furious with him for staying out all night and she can barely bring herself to thank Juan. She insists he is big enough to take care of himself, but classmate Kevin (Jaden Piner) wonders why Chiron lets Terrel pick on him and they play-wrestle on the school sports field after his cheek gets cut during a boisterous game of rag football.

Reluctant to go home, Chiron seeks out Juan. They go to the beach and Juan teaches Chiron to float and he feels safe and free in the water. As they sit on the sand, Juan explains how an old woman once told him that black blues look blue while running around in the moonlight. He also warns him that a time will come when he will have to decide who he is and take a stand to protect his identity. But Chiron is too young to understand and is equally puzzled when he gets home to find a stressed Paula ushering a stranger into her bedroom.

The next day at school, Chiron wanders out of a dance class to find Kevin and his pals comparing their penises in a side room. Embarrassed because he is forever being taunted for being gay, he joins in and goes home to boil water in a pan for a bath. Meanwhile, Juan breaks off a chat with Terrence to haul Paula out of a parked car. She snaps at him for his hypocrisy, as he wants her to take better care of her son, yet also needs to keep selling her the crack that lines his pocket. Juan tells Chiron about the encounter the next time they meet and the latter admits that he hates his mother. He sits pensively before asking what a `faggot' is. Teresa nods as Juan tries to explain that it's a cruel term for gay people and reassures Chiron that he has nothing to fear if he likes boys. But, when he asks Juan if he sells drugs to his mother and receives a regretful reply in the affirmative, Chiron gets up and walks out of Juan's life forever.

Seven years later (as Part Two, `Chiron', begins), Chiron (Ashton Sanders) is being harassed by Terrel (Patrick Decile), despite the efforts of Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) to protect him. Juan has died, but Chiron continues to have sleepovers with Teresa, as Paula has now become so hooked on crack that she is always seeing clients and hustling Chiron for the cash Teresa gives him. One night (after Teresa teases him about his bed-making skills), Chiron has a dream about Kevin having sex with classmate Samantha (Herveline Moncion) in the back garden and he wakes with a look of horror on his face as he realises he is jealous.

After being menaced by Terrel on the way back from school and fleeced by the ingratiatingly desperate Paula, Chiron takes a train into the city and dozes at the station to avoid going home. He drifts down to the beach and bumps into Kevin, who has snuck out for a joint. Kevin jokes about the fact that an innocent like Chiron knows how to smoke and they get the giggles. But Chiron is surprised when Kevin says that feeling mellow makes him want to cry and he admits that he often sobs because he is so unhappy. As they josh, their eyes meet and they close in for a kiss. Kevin unbuckles the jeans that Terrel had mocked for being so unfashionable and Chiron scoops a handful of sand as he succumbs to the rare sensation of intimacy.

As they sit together, Chiron apologises and Kevin tells him not to be foolish. He smoothes the sand before sitting in silence on the ride home. They clasp hands as Kevin drops him off and Chiron tiptoes inside to find a blanket to cover the tripping Paula on the sofa. But his happiness barely lasts a day, as Terrel coerces Kevin into participating in a hazing ritual that involves punching Chiron in the face. His eyes stinging with tears, Kevin urges Chiron to stay down. But he gets up after each blow and squares up to his friend until Terrel and his gang start kicking him on the floor.

A security guard intervenes. But, even though he is badly injured, Chiron refuses to squeal to Principal Williams (Tanisha Cidel), as he believes reporting his assailants will solve nothing. Instead, he plunges his swollen face into a sink filled with ice and exacts his own revenge by breaking a chair over Terrel's head. As he is bundled into a waiting police car, Chiron shoots Kevin a look that's at once accusatory, longing and defiant.

In the decade that passes before the opening of Part Three (`Black'), Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) has bulked up in prison and learned how to take care of himself. Now based in Atlanta, Georgia, he still dreams of Paula standing in the neon-lit doorway of her bedroom and buries his face in ice. But Chiron has come up in the world and not only sports a set of gold grillz, but also carries a gun to protect his own network of pushers. He baits Travis (Stephen Bron) by accusing him of falling short with a payment, but cuts him some slack in the way Juan used to with Terrence.

Woken in the night, Chiron answers the phone expecting it to be Paula. But it's Kevin (André Holland), who got his number from Teresa. Since completing his own jail term, Kevin has become a diner chef and thought of his old friend when a familiar song came on the jukebox. He apologises for the trouble he caused him and promises to cook for him the next time he is home.

Having had a wet dream about Kevin leaning against a wall and smoking, Chiron goes to see Paula at the rehab clinic where she helps out while battling her addiction. She begs him to go straight, but he is in no mood to listen to her advice, even though she insists that she loves him. Perhaps recalling Juan's lament about missing his chance to patch things up with his own mother, Chiron lights a cigarette for her and embraces her when she makes a tearful apology.

That night, with the moon high above the sea, Chiron goes to Kevin's diner and sits at the counter while he attends to his customers. Surprised to see him, Kevin jokes that Chiron is as tongue-tied as ever and offers to fix him the chef's special. He brings it to a booth, along with a bottle of wine, and shows Chiron a photograph of his son with Samantha. Smiling, he notes that they get along better now that they live apart and asks what Chiron is doing with himself and makes no attempt to hide his disappointment when he admits he is dealing, as he knows he has the potential to do better.

Chiron asks Kevin why he called him, so he plays the 1963 Barbara Lewis R&B hit `Hello Stranger' on the jukebox and they watch each other without betraying any emotion while listening to the lyrics. Driving to Kevin's apartment, Chiron refuses to reveal why he came to Miami. But, when Kevin concedes that he is content with his lot, Chiron confesses that he has never touched another man since their teenage tryst and he rests his head on his friend's shoulder, as a closing image shows Little looking back at the camera on a moonlit beach.

Providing a ringing endorsement of the slogan `black lives matter', this is perhaps the most important film about the African-American community since the eruption of New Black Cinema in the late 1980s. Eschewing that movement's raw hood fury, Jenkins slows the pace and replaces handheld pugnacity with a Steadicam elegance that enables James Laxton to do widescreen digital justice to Hannah Beachler's glorious production design. Her omission from the Oscar nominations is one of the scandals of the year, along with Joshua Adeniji's sound editing. But Laxton deserves his accolade as much as editors Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders, and composer Nicholas Britell, who blends classical and `chopped and screwed' hip-hop in a score that also finds room for standout tracks like Boris Gardiner's `Every N****r Is a Star', Jidenna's `Classic Man' and Caetano Veloso''s `Cucurrucucú Paloma (Hable con Ella)'.

Nominated for his direction and the screenplay written with McCraney, Jenkins does well to keep sentiment at bay during some of the more emotive moments. But the magnitude of his achievement lies in the fact that he has put an arthouse spin on the ghetto genre, thanks to the meticulous lighting of the close-ups and the nuanced depiction of the commonplace details that punctuate the picture and root it in a reality that ring true despite its lack of obvious urban grit. Much of the veracity, however, comes from the performances, with Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes excelling as Little, Chiron and Black, alongside Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome and André Holland as Kevin.

Yet much of the attention has been focused on Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali, with the latter looking set to become the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar. He would be a worthy recipient, if only for the climactic conversation in which he has to face up to his ethical dilemma. But, while Harris brings a skittish intensity to her role, it comes closest to caricature, beside Janelle Monáe's saintly surrogate and Patrick Decile's dreadlocked bully - although there is a redeeming subtext here about a societal victim channelling his macho rage to ostracise an even more insecure classmate. Such is the extent of poverty, abuse, addiction and despair in America's black neighbourhoods that their discussion on screen has become clichéd. But Jenkins has reclaimed the tragedy and made its shameful agony feel human again.

15) GRADUATION.

The Romanian New Wave has been one of the few meaningful cinematic movements in Europe since Das Neue Kino and one of its leading lights, Christian Mungiu, produces another scathing critique of post-Ceausescu society in Graduation. Combining stylistic grace with stark realism, the story of a deluded man's descent into despair and disrepute explores the lot of the average person without the kind of patronising sentimentality common to so many current socio-political tracts. Yet Mungiu also demonstrates the compassionate understanding of human nature that makes his films (including the Palme d'or-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, 2007) so authentic and so acute.

While wife Lia Bugnar languishes in bed with a headache and 18 year-old daughter Maria Dragus prepares for school, middle-aged hospital doctor Adrian Titieni charges into the courtyard of his soulless Cluj tenement block to catch the miscreant who had just thrown a stone through his window. He curses ever having returned to Romania in 1991 and surveys his surroundings by the railway line with a shudder of disgust. As he drives Dragus to school, therefore, he reminds her of the importance of passing her exams so she can study abroad. More interested in her motorcycle lesson with Rares Andrici than revision, Dragus asks her father to drop her off near a construction site so he can beat the traffic into work.

However, Titieni takes a detour to visit Malina Manovici, a teacher at Dragus's school who has been his mistress since he treated her after she was involved in a bridge accident. They are canoodling on the bed when he receives a call that Dragus has been attacked and is at the hospital. Brushing off questions from Bugnar about why it took him so long to the to the ER, Titieni asks assistant Orsolya Moldován to contact his police inspector buddy Vlad Ivanov before learning from the duty doctor that Dragus has sprained her wrist in fending off the assailant, whose failure to achieve an erection spared her further trauma.

Accompanying his daughter to the police station, Titieni proves so fretful while she makes her statement that Ivanov takes him to one side to calm him down. They discuss her university prospects and Titieni boasts she has been taking extra English lessons with Manovici so can secure a scholarship in London. Ivanov lets slip that he will find his daughter a job on the force and nepotism rears its head again when sketch artist Adrian Vãncicã asks Titieni if he can use his influence to get Vice-Mayor Petre Ciubotaru (who just happens to be his godfather) moved up the waiting list for a liver transplant. Ivanov concurs that Ciubotaru has always been a good friend to the police and suggests that Titieni's help would impact upon the efficiency of the investigation. However, he draws the line at Vãncicã making Dragus's attacker look like a recently escaped convict so they could frame him for the crime.

Driving home, Dragus is wondering who broke their window when Titieni hits a stray dog in the road. They say nothing more about it, but Titieni is keen to prevent the rumour spreading that his daughter has been raped. He ticks off Bugnar when she uses the word and asks if she knew that Dragus was no longer a virgin. She insists that girls find it difficult to discuss this kind of subject with their fathers and wishes he would let her grow up and start making her own decisions. He is adamant, however, that she should sit her exam the next day and reminds her of the consequences of failure. Bugnar disapproves of his fixation with her future. But he is the one to get up (from the sofa where he sleeps) when Dragus starts crying in the night and he tries to console her.

Leaving the next morning to discover that someone has tampered with his windscreen wipers, Titieni has to barge his way into the school to prevent exam supervisor Gelu Colceag from disqualifying Dragus because a pupil had once smuggled a crib sheets inside his plaster cast. Taking a detour to check out the crime scene (where he spots a CCTV camera in operation), Titieni visits his elderly mother, Alexandra Davidescu, who is against Dragus studying abroad and ticks off him for mollycoddling her. Davidescu is in poor health, but Titieni refuses to fuss over her and proves equally indifferent when Manovici (who already has a young son, David Hodorog) informs him that her period is late.

Having spoken to Dragus after the exam, Titieni realises she is going to struggle to get her grades because she failed to answer the last two questions. He goes to see Ivanov and agrees to help Ciubotaru with his transplant in return for his assistance in tweaking Dragus's marks. Titieni warns Ciubotaru that he will be undergoing a major procedure and that there is no guarantee of success. But he is sufficiently grateful to contact Colceag (who owes him a favour, as Ciubotaru once saved his wife from the sack) and he agrees to see Titieni during his wife's birthday party. He regrets that it's too late to amend her Romanian test, but suggests they can ensure she gets top marks for maths if she crosses out the last three words on the first page of her exam booklet so that the marker can recognise her paper.

Feeling guilty for dismissing Manovici's news, Titieni pays her a quick call and she introduces him to Hodorog, who is wearing a wolf mask. He also searches the undergrowth near where he hit the dog and bursts into tears as he trains his torch on the ground. Arriving home, he receives a lecture from Bugnar about the immorality of cheating and wishes he would let Dragus make her own mistakes. However, he reminds his wife that she has a tedious job in a library because the system is harder to bend than they had hoped it would be on returning from exile and he uses a similar argument in urging Dragus to mark her paper so that she gets the start in life that she deserves.

Shrugging off another act of vandalism on his car, Titieni drives Dragus to the exam centre. She asks why he always beeps when they pass the housing estate and he fibs that it's merely a safety precaution. He calls on Ivanov to survey the CCTV footage and asks for a printout, as something bothers him about the shot. At the hospital, he tells Ciubotaru that he is going to need a preparatory operation and the vice-mayor cries because he is certain he is going to die. He tries to foist an envelope of cash on to Titieni, but he refuses it, as things are complicated enough as it is.

While waiting for Dragus to emerge from her exam, Titieni bumps into Andrici, who recalls how the teachers at his sports college let the top students cheat in exams because they devoted so much of their time to training. Titieni asks why he was late to meet Dragus on the morning she was attacked and he protests that his bus was delayed. But, when Titieni asks whether he had called the cops to report the assault, he insists that there was no sign of Dragus when he arrived and that he had presumed she had got tired of waiting for him and gone to school. She interrupts them with kisses for each and assures her father that the exam went well. But Titieni is dismayed by the thought that Dragus might have set her mind on going to the local university in order to stay close to her boyfriend.

Exhausted from trying to keep so many balls in the air, Titieni hopes to have a relaxing time with Manovici. But she is concerned that Hodorog's speech impediment will prevent him from going to a good school and she wonders whether she has a future with Titieni when he explains that it will be difficult to wangle him cut-price therapy. They are disturbed when Dragus knocks to tell him that Davidescu has had a fall and he rushes to her flat to tend to her. Dragus overhears him telling the paramedics that her grandmother is more fragile than she had imagined and she asks why he hid the truth. She also demands that he confesses his affair to Bugnar and threatens not to sit her final exam unless he comes clean.

He arrives home to find Bugnar packing his clothes into a suitcase. She has long known about the affair, but feels Titieni has undermined all they have taught Dragus by seeking to influence her grades. Too tired to protest that he has only had their daughter's future in mind, he agrees to move out. He is frustrated that Bugnar intends following Dragus wherever she goes and is ready to sell the apartment, even if it leaves her husband homeless. But knows this is not the time or place and shuffles out clutching a rucksack.

Concerned by not seeing Dragus at the exam centre the following morning, Titieni goes to work to find prosecutor Emanuel Parvu and his assistant Lucian Ifrim waiting for him. They wish to question Ciubotaru, who is facing criminal proceedings. But Titieni insists on protecting a sick patient, even though it is made abundantly clear that his own phone calls to the vice-mayor have been tapped and that he (and his family) might get caught up in the investigation. Parvu admires Titieni for adhering to his oath and admits he might also be tempted to step in if his own child was having difficulties. But he cautions Titieni that he could suffer if the truth came out.

Titieni seeks out Ivanov, who is on a training exercise in the hills. He apologises for getting him involved with Ciubotaru and suggests digging for dirt on Parvu and Ifrim. But Titieni has no stomach for another fight and says he will take his chances and hope to keep Dragus out of trouble. With this in mind, he also summons Andrici to the construction site and shows him the CCTV printout placing him at the scene much earlier than he has claimed. Andrici denies failing to help Dragus and throws Titieni to the floor when he tries to threaten him. He also mocks him for thinking he can control Dragus, as she will always do what she wants.

Needing to find Dragus so she can attend an identity parade at the police station, Titieni goes to the exam centre. But there is no sign of his daughter and Bugnar is in no mood to discuss matters when he drops into her library. Instead, she demands his house keys and suggests that he calls ahead whenever he plans to visit. Hurt by her attitude, he asks when they became such implacable enemies, but she refuses to answer. He is also given the brush off by Colceag when he tries to warn him about the investigation into Ciubotaru. But, most crushingly of all, he learns that Dragus had not marked her maths paper and that he his efforts on her behalf have been in vain.

At the police station, Ivanov tries to browbeat Dragus into being more supportive of her father. But she refuses to speak to him for accusing Andrici of cowardice and she gets upset when the last man in the line-up loses his temper as he reads out the words used by the attacker. She insists he is not the culprit and rushes into the street. Titieni follows and tries to apologise. He commends her for doing what she thought best about her final exam and accepts her invitation to come to her last day celebration. She nods when he swears that he has only been trying to do the right thing and rides off on her motorbike.

Taking the bus home, Titieni thinks he recognises a figure at a stop in a rough part of town. He creeps along the poorly lit street and gets nervous when dogs start barking and a bottle breaks behind him. Fearing he is out of his depth, Titieni beats a hasty retreat and seeks sanctuary with Manovici. She makes him soup and asks if he will keep an eye on Hodorog while she keeps a doctor's appointment. But she makes him sleep on the couch and he realises that she is probably going for an abortion.

The next morning, Hodorog throws a stone at a boy who pushes in on the climbing frame and Titieni tries to explain why there are ways of dealing with injustice. He takes the child to the hospital, where Modován informs him that Ciubotaru has suffered a heart attack and that the prosecutors are waiting for him in her office. The vice-mayor's widow urges Titieni to take the envelope he had previously refused and he offers it to Parvu as evidence. He regrets having to drag the doctor into the investigation and promises to try and keep Dragus out of the case. Resigned to whatever else fate has to throw at him, Titieni leads Hodorog past a mural depicting an idealised scene of medical excellence.

Returning Hodorog to his mother, Titieni wanders out to see Dragus and her classmates. He asks after Bugnar and she says she is doing fine. She also admits that she feigned a crying attack at the end of her key paper and was given extra time to finish. Turning to face her father, Dragus asks if she did the right thing and he merely says she must always follow her own instinct. She asks him to take a photo of her class for a keepsake and he urges them to look happier as the shutter clicks.

Following in the footsteps of the misguided protagonist in Cristi Puiu's Aurora (2010), Adrian Titieni's Transylvanian medic finds himself woefully ill-equipped to deal with the grim realities of life in democratic Romania. The more he tries to work the system to his advantage, the further he strays from his comfort zone. Yet no one is grateful for any of the sacrifices he makes and Titieni winds up being judged for his failings while others suffer for their perceived benefits. Interestingly, the three women in his life manage to claw some independence from the wreckage of his flailing chauvinism, although Dragus has clearly thrown in her lot with a shifty slacker unworthy of her affection, while Manovici will have to deal with an alienated lad who sees violence as a solution to his problems.

Lacing this lament for his homeland's failure to resolve its issues with the past with the unflinching acerbity that characterised Beyond the Hills (2013), Mungiu shared the Best Director prize at Cannes with Olivier Assayas (for Personal Shopper). As always, his evocation of place is exceptional, with Simona Paduretu's considered interiors cannily complementing Tudor Vladimir Panduru's views of the less salubrious parts of Romania's second-biggest city. The use of Handel's aria `Ombra mai fu' on the soundtrack to emphasise Titieni and Bugnar's aspirations is also inspired, as Mungiu invites comparisons with Daniel Auteuil's slow slide into self-realisation in Michael Haneke's Hidden (2006).

Yet, despite Titieni's reprehensible failure to rise above the societal dysfunction he proclaims to despise, it's still possible to sympathise with his good intentions. His sole saving grace may be the fact that Dragus still loves him, regardless of his mistakes. But, while Mungiu refuses to pat Titieni on the back for refusing backhanders, he does keep in mind that is he a victim of the hypocrisy and corruption of the Communist era, when backs were forever being scratched in the name of sheer survival. Moreover, he implies that it's better that he followed the example of over-protective mother Luminita Gheorghiu in Calin Peter Netzer's Child's Pose (2013) than Charles Bronson's vengeful vigilante father in Michael Winner's Death Wish (1974). Consequently, such emotional restraint suggests that Mungiu's storytelling is now as measured and mature as his visual style.

14) MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART.

As a leading member of the Sixth Generation of Chinese film-makers, Jia Zhangke has always been willing to explore topics that the mainstream industry chooses to ignore. Indeed, he has largely operated outside the official sector in order to assess the impact that socio-economic reform has had on ordinary citizens. Following the self-financed shorts, One Day in Beijing (1994), Xiao Shan Going Home (1995) and Du Du (1996), Jia was able to make his feature debut with Xiao Wu (1997), a shoestring study of a pickpocket in Jia's native Fenyang that not only tackled provocative political themes, but which also tilted at the calcified pictorialism of the Fifth Generation that had done so much to raise the international profile of Chinese cinema.

Ironically, his sophomore outing, Platform (1998) was an epic three-hour chronicle of a provincial performance troupe's fortunes between the Cultural Revolution and the rise of Deng Xiaoping and Jia completed his `modernity trilogy with Unknown Pleasures (1999), which focused on the consequences of the one child policy. Although none of these films was granted a release in China, Jia's growing reputation abroad prompted the authorities to offer him state funding for The World (2004), which slyly used a Beijing theme park filled with miniatures of foreign landmarks to examine China's changing status and the shifting aspirations of its people.

The price of progress also came under scrutiny in Still Life (2006), a meditation on the Three Gorges Dam project that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and 24 City (2008), which charted half a century of change at a Chengdu factory. Throughout this period, Jia also made a number of shorts and documentaries. But he surprised many by returning from a five-year feature hiatus with A Touch of Sin (2013), which linked four storylines to expose the increasingly bleakness and violence of Chinese society. Now, he returns with Mountains May Depart, which took two years to reach UK cinemas and suggests that Jia is still spoiling for a fight with the powers that be.

As the people of Fenyang prepare for the start of the 21st century with a rousing dance routine to `Go West' by The Pet Shop Boys, gas station owner Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi) comes to show singer Shen Tao (Zhao Tao) his new red Volkswagen sedan. He asks her devoted friend Liang Jangjung (Liang Jin Dong) how things are going at the coal mine where he works and boasts of driving Tao to America. She teases Jinsheng about his poor knowledge of geography and notes that Macao will soon be returning to China and suggests that they visit there or Hong Kong.

Shortly after the new year concert, Jinsheng takes Tao and Langzi for a day out. He lets Tao drive and laughs it off when she collides with a Yellow River signpost. However, he suggests that they lose the third wheel next time they go out and Tao fails to understand why he wants Langzi out of the picture. In order to boost his prospects, Jinsheng buys the mine and fires Langzi from his post in the helmet dispensary. But his aggression gets him nowhere, as he drops in to see Tao in the electrical shop where she works to find her sharing dumplings with Langzi behind the counter. He sulks as Tao plays a Sally Yeh song to a couple interested in buying a stereo and stalks out when she resumes her lunch. Catching up with him in the street, Tao asks why he is behaving so oddly and he awkwardly confesses his feelings for her and urges her to stay away from Langzi if she wants to remain friends.

While dancing at a disco, Tao seems to favour Jinsheng and Liangzi is so upset that he punches his rival on the nose. Taken aback by her mild-mannered friend lashing out in such a way, Tao barely responds when he walks away and she throws in her lot with Jinsheng. He buys her a Golden Labrador puppy and notes that they will be turning 40 if it lives its expected 15-year span. They drive out to the river in his car and Tao is appalled to discover a bundle of dynamite in the boot. She demands to know what it's for and he admits he bought it to blow up Liangzi (after the mine foreman refused to get him a gun). Glaring, Tao orders him to detonate the explosive and he tosses it into the river and hands her a lighter to spark the fuse.

Rather than breaking up with Jinsheng, however, Tao sticks with him and informs her father that she has a boyfriend while they are travelling on a train. He is less than impressed by her choice, but has no intention of interfering with her life. Tao poses with Jinsheng in front of a backdrop of Sydney Opera House for her pre-wedding photo and rides out into the country on her scooter to give Liangzi his invitation to the ceremony. Unable to find him anywhere, she pauses on a deserted road and watches in horror as a plane seeding the nearby forest spins out of control and crashes in the scrub. A truck driver pauses to rubberneck, but nobody goes to the aid of the stricken crew.

Eventually, Tao finds Liangzi at his digs. But he declines the invitation because he is about to leave the area. He has no idea of his destination, but he knows he has to get away. As he tosses the keys over a wall, Tao asks him to say goodbye, but he insists he already parted from her at the disco. Despite her hurt, Tao goes ahead with the wedding and gives birth to a son, whom Jinsheng calls Zhang Daole and he promises to make lots of dollars so that he can live up to his name.

At this juncture, the title credit appears and Jia switches from the boxy Academy frame format to a wider 1:85 aspect ratio, as the scene shifts to 2014 and Liangzi poses for a photograph with his workmates at a provincial mine. He is married to an unnamed wife and has a young child. But he is also suffering from a cancer brought on by coal dust and his doctor advises him to return home and make arrangements for treatment with the local hospital. The trio arrive in Fenyang and Liangzi uses a hammer to break the padlock on the house he had abandoned 14 years earlier. His wife is dismayed by how big and bare it is, but she makes it cosy and resolves to help her husband through his ordeal.

When he is well enough to go out, Liangzi hooks up with the mine foreman (Sanming Han). But he is about to relocate to Kazakhstan to lay pipelines for a Chinese company and has had to borrow money from his brothers to pay his fare. Liangzi had hoped to secure a loan for his treatment, but is buoyed by the news that Tao and Jinsheng are divorced. As Jinsheng has made a small fortune with his shrewd investments, Liangzi's wife hopes that Tao will be willing to help with the medical costs and tracks her down to a wedding banquet, where she is among the guests of honour.

Tao comes to the house and is saddened to see Liangzi laid so low. She finds the wedding invitation he had discarded years before and explains that Jinsheng has custody of Dollar (Zishan Rong), who is studying at the International School in Shanghai. Digging into her bag, she produces a wad of banknotes and reassures Liangzi that she can afford the loan, as Jinsheng gave her his filling station as part of the divorce settlement. Walking away with tears in her eyes, Tao wonders how differently things might have turned out if she had chosen the right man.

Shortly afterwards, Tao drops her father (who has been trying to find her a new husband) at the train station so he can spend some time with an old army buddy. However, he dies in the waiting room after a long journey and Tao has to pay for an ambulance to bring his body back to Fenyang. She texts Jinsheng and asks him to put Dollar on a plane for the funeral. But she barely recognises him, as he has acquired big city attitudes and looks down his nose on his provincial relatives. Nettled, Tao forces Dollar on to his knees during the memorial service and makes him bow low in honour of his grandfather.

During the wake, Tao overhears Dollar calling his stepmother `mommy' while chatting online and, from a series of snapshots she finds on his tablet, she resents the fact that he has been so pampered. She also picks up that Jinsheng (who now calls himself Peter) is planning to move to Australia and she realises her time with her son is going to be short. They drive to the bridge spanning the river and she urges him to make the most of his opportunities. But she loses her temper when she sees him Skyping home again and defies Jinsheng's order to put him on the next flight by escorting him on a slow-train journey across the country. They stop off at the station where her father passed away and they sit in the deserted waiting room to pay their respects. On the last leg of the trip, Tao gives Dollar a key-ring and tells him that he will always have a home.

A final switch into the anamorphic 2.35 widescreen format takes the action forward to 2025, where Dollar (Dong Zijian) is finding life Down Under difficult, as his father has divorced again and they are drifting further apart. Although he has everything he could want, Dollar has few real friends and gets teased for his name in his Cantonese class with Mia (Sylvia Chang). He tells her that he has no mother, but disrespects Jinsheng when he interrupts a meeting with some old friends, who are discussing the possibility of returning to China now that the political situation has changed.

Back at their luxurious apartment overlooking Port Campbell, Dollar finds a couple of guns and some bullets lying on a coffee table and gets into an argument with Jinsheng about why he is finding it so tough to learn his mother tongue. Dollar has a job as a waiter at a nearby restaurant and he takes a delivery to an upmarket address and is surprised when Mia opens the door. She informs him that he is her first guest and invites him in. But he is nervous and feels more comfortable talking to her during a break in lessons. He reveals that he was joking about being a test tube baby, but insists he can't remember his mother's name. Mia explains that she left Hong Kong in 1996 to live in Toronto and found her way to Australia after her marriage broke down.

Dollar waits on Mias table when she has a frosty reunion with her ex-husband, who is demanding that she pays her share of some of the expenses he had covered during their marriage. Mia is stung by his pettiness and storms out, only for Dollar to call round with her order and a recommendation that she doesn't let the past ruin her life. However, he also needs to move on with his future and asks Mia to translate so he can have a heart to heart with Jinsheng. He announces that he is going to move out and quit college and find something to do that interests him. But Jinsheng mocks his notions of freedom and points to the guns he has bought since Australia changed its firearms laws and complains that it makes no sense to make owning a weapon legal and firing it a crime.

Mia and Dollar go for a drive and, sitting in the passenger seat, he gets a feeling of déjà vu (as he had earlier when Mia played the song he had listened to on the train with Tao). She is amused by how earnest and how naive he is and smiles when he takes the wheel and drives them into the middle of a field. When a helicopter passes overhead, he suggests that they take a flight over the bay and Mia is taken by surprise when he kisses her. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him back and they end up in bed together. As she lies with her head on Dollar's shoulder, Mia notices the key-ring around his neck and he begins to cry when he admits that his mother gave it to him. She suggests that he flies home to visit her and explains how much she missed her own mother when she first left and came to dread the ring of the phone.

Dollar and Mia go to a travel agency to plan their flights. But he gets cold feet when the clerk mistakes him for Mia's son and he urges her to leave. In the car park, he admits that he was suddenly concerned about how he would introduce Mia to Tao and she touches his cheek to show that she understands. Mia walks down to the beach and Dollar follows to apologise. But she reminds him that he is free and has a duty to himself to do whatever he wants. Meanwhile, back in Fenyang, Tao prepares some dumplings before taking her dog for a walk in the snow. Looking at the pagoda that dominates the landscape, she begins to dance and swings into the steps to `Go West' from the opening sequence.

Unfortunately, this last glimpse of Tao only reminds the audience of how much she has been missed during the last act. Poorly written and hesitantly acted, the Australian sequences require us to empathise with the most resistible characters in the storyline and take onboard a complete newcomer whose backstory is clumsily handled in a bid to coax us into identifying with her. Sylvia Chang is a wonderful actress, but even she struggles with lumpen dialogue that lurches between exposition and platitude. It hardly helps that Dong Zijian is so stiff as the teenage Dollar. But Jia also seems out of his comfort zone directing in a foreign language so far from home.

By contrast, the scenes in his hometown are handled with his customary sense of place and affinity for ordinary people. Once again, Jia works well with cinematographer Yu Lik-wai and art director Qiang Liu (whose of atmospheric colour is superb) to capture the atmosphere of Fenyang and the northern scenery in the surrounding Shanxi province, with the three sequences at the Yellow River being particularly effective, as three become one as fireworks, gelignite and controlled explosions send seismic ripples through the lives of Tao, Liangzi and Jinsheng.

Editor Matthieu Laclau and composer Yoshihiro Hanno prove equally adept at setting the pace and tone, as the triumvirate slowly disintegrates. But special mention should go to costume designer Li Hua, for the multi-coloured jumper worn by Tao (which ends up as a jacket for her dog), the black leather jacket and red pullover sported by Jinsheng and the hard-wearing blue jacket that identifies Liangzi as a lowly working man. Although their characters are somewhat sketchily drawn, Liang Jin Dong and Zhang Yi provide Zhao Tao with solid support, as she once again demonstrates how intuitively she understands the world that her husband seeks to explore. Its just a shame that he opted to deprive us of her company for so much of a disappointing denouement that doesn't delve deeply enough into the idea that luxury and escape are not all they are cracked up to be.

13) THE YOUNG OFFENDERS.

The best Irish comedy is rooted in realism and blends in dashes of whimsy, knockabout, surrealism and humanity. But the most important ingredient is often a dark edginess that keeps the characters and the audience off balance and uncertain what is going to happen next. Recent examples like Paddy Breathnach's I Went Down (1998), Lenny Abrahamson's Adam & Paul (2004) and Garage (2007), and John Michael McDonough's The Guard (2011) all managed to echo the great Irish theatrical tradition while irresistibly riffing on the offbeat charm of Father Ted.

Newcomer Paul Foott joins this august band with The Young Offenders, a rite of scally passage that draws on Ireland's biggest ever drugs haul (when a record €440m-worth of cocaine was seized off the West Cork coast in 2007) to put a mischievous spin on an Enid Blyton-style scenario about cycling through the countryside in search of adventure. Instead of lashings of ginger beer, however, 15 year-old wastrels Chris Walley and Alex Murphy hope to celebrate the recovery of a bale of washed-up contraband with topless models and an English butler in a luxury mansion.

Bicycle thief Chris Walley is something of a cult hero in his working-class district of Cork. Wearing a hoodie and a mask that makes him look like local thug Shane Casey, he leads Garda sergeant Dominic MacHale on a merry dance through the streets, even pausing to kiss a female fan before taunting his pursuer with a wheelie before disappearing into the English Market. Best pal Alex Murphy idolises Walley, despite the fact his plain-speaking fishmonger mother, Hilary Rose, thinks he's an eejit who fails to understand when she insults him and who sets the impressionable Murphy a bad example.

Busting moves as they wander along in their identical individuality, Walley and Murphy are currently on easy street because Casey has been jailed for possessing cannabis plants after MacHale got a warrant while looking for the police bike that Walley had stolen. They fantasise about living in large on a million euros, as life has not been easy since Murphy's builder father was killed by a falling hammer and Walley lost his mother and began a battle to hide his ill-gotten gains from his abusive alcoholic father, Michael Sands. But Walley gets an idea how to change things while watching a news report about some missing bales of cocaine after customs officers impounded a trawler at Three Castle Head.

Murphy likes the idea of €7 million, but doesn't fancy cycling 100 miles across Munster, especially as he has promised Rose he will mind the stall while she has a troublesome tooth pulled. But they argue after she serves up another burnt offering and he meets up with Walley at the docks the following morning for the adventure of a lifetime. They fail to notice, however, that MacHale (who keeps ignoring superintendant Ciaran Bermingham's orders to do some proper policing) has fitted a tracking device to the mountain bike that Walley has stolen for himself (while getting a flowery yellow girls' cycle with a basket for Murphy) and he tags along behind them, as their progress is measured in animated form on a facsimile of the map that Walley pilfered from the corner shop.

Seemingly nothing can stop them, until Murphy gets saddle sore after a couple of miles and needs to have a swim to wash his tackle after he cools it down with a sticky ice lolly. They are prevented from breaking their legs by leaping into a shallow quay by fisherman Wesley O'Duinn and Murphy teaches Walley how to swim before they resume their journey. However, they realise that MacHale is following them and, when he stops at a café, Walley dons his Casey mask in a bid to reason with him in the way that Al Pacino and Robert De Niro squared off in Michael Mann's Heat (1995). But MacHale is evidently not a movie fan (even though he mimics Jack Nicholson trying to get through the bathroom door in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, 1980) and tries to arrest Walley, who escapes by the seat of his tracksuit trousers.

They are given sanctuary by farmer Pascal Scott, who sends MacHale packing with a flea in his ear before dispatching the boys into the yard to kill a chicken for supper. Murphy is partial to poultry, but he can't bring himself to break the neck of a bird who looks as confused as he does. Scott has no such qualms, however, and the lads are plucking feathers when they spot the tracking device under Walley's saddle. They consign MacHale to a wild goose chase by attaching it to a homemade boat, while they settle down for an evening with Scott, who gets fighting drunk and mistakes them for his prodigal sons before they strap him to his armchair and let him sip beer through a straw while watching the telly.

The next morning, Walley is distraught to discover that the cops recovered the entire shipment of cocaine and feigns hay fever when Murphy accuses him of crying. However, he has problems of his own, as he needs the loo and mitches off to attend to his business in the castle ruins. As he crouches, he sees a figure in the distance and fetches Walley to marvel at the sight of club-footed drug dealer PJ Gallagher cuddling a bale of coke in his sleep. Despite waking him, they manage to evade his grasp and cycle away from the coast with a sense of jubilation that only dissipates when they realise they snagged the bag on a barbed wire fence and that its contents have spilt out along the road.

Furious with Murphy for blowing his one chance of hitting the jackpot, Walley punches him on the nose and leaves him to strop off alone. But other misfortunes are starting to pile on top of one another, as Gallagher has found a name tag inside Murphy's discarded jacket and returned to Cork in a stolen car, while MacHale notices the ring on Walley's finger in the photograph Rose presents at the police station when reporting her son missing. Moreover, Casey has been released from prison, where he has been sharing a cell with a small-timer who slept with Walley while wearing his Casey mask and a pair of Murphy's name-labelled underpants.

While Gallagher steals a nail gun by shooting DIY shopkeeper Fionula Linehan in the arm, Murphy returns home to a frosty, but sympathetic welcome from Rose, while Walley gets beaten by Sands for finishing off his booze. Their struggle is interrupted, however, when MacHale knocks at the door and Walley is about to go quietly when a neighbour kid tells him that Gallagher is looking for Murphy with murder in his eyes. Giving MacHale the slip, Walley bursts into the kitchen where Murphy and Rose are having a hilarious heart-to-heart about whether she is a worse mother than he is a son. He blurts out about the cocaine while trying to fill the sack with flour. But they are interrupted when MacHale arrives at the door, only to be knocked unconscious by Gallagher.

As Rose makes tea, Gallagher asks Murphy and Walley about his drugs. They come clean and admit to being stupid enough to create the longest line of cocaine in history. But Gallagher loses his patience and shoots all three in their kneecaps before being distracted by the doorbell. Casey wanders in to menace Murphy in mistake for Walley, only for the pair to convince Gallagher that Casey has fenced the coke and stashed away the loot. All hell breaks loose (to the accompaniment of the 1992 Sultans of Ping FC hit, `Where's Me Jumper?') when Gallagher drops the nail gun and it starts firing at random while bouncing off the floor.

Fortunately, Rose proves handy with a heavy saucepan when Casey tries to stab Murphy and Gallagher attempts to nail MacHale. He stops the boys from kicking the comatose Casey, who ends up back in his cell in the local nick. MacHale is promoted and Walley placed in foster care with Rose after pleading guilty to bike theft. Consequently, all three wind up working on the fish stall, where Murphy (who has narrated throughout) uses his new-found gift of the gab to chat up pretty customer, Alanna Callaghan.

Superbly played by Murphy and Walley (who simply have to be teamed again) and an admirable ensemble, this is not only consistently droll, but it is also tautly structured in the tradition of the best farces and beautifully photographed by Paddy Jordan. The scenario may not be particularly original, but Foott trusts his actors to find the funny side of every situation. He also refuses to romanticise the struggles the teenagers face, with Walley's domestic travails being handled with insightful sensitivity.

Some have complained about Gallager having a withered arm and a club foot. But there's nothing mocking or cruel about this equal opportunity villainy, which feels akin to some of Gallagher's characterisations in the TV series, Naked Camera. Hilary Rose (who is married to the director) also puts her sketch experience to good use, as she trades barbs with Walley and joshes Murphy about his many fixations and deficiencies. But it's the guilessly gormless Laurel and Hardy-like chemistry between the debutants that makes this so genial and enjoyable.

12) TONI ERDMANN.

In her three features to date, German writer-director Maren Ade has proved herself adept at producing what might be termed `two-handers'. Having fashioned engaging roles for Eva Löbau and Daniela Holtz in The Forest for the Trees (2003) and Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger in Everyone Else (2009), Ade has now created her finest characters to date in Toni Erdmann, a father-daughter comedy with a range of satirical subtexts that provides career-defining opportunities for Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller.

Having separated from his wife and drifted apart from his daughter, Ines (Sandra Hüller), sixtysomething Winfried Conradi (Peter Simonischek) ekes out an eccentric existence in a provincial German town. When not putting on disguises to fool delivery drivers, he gives piano lessons and dons ghoulish make-up to accompany the children at the local school. He dotes on his elderly mother, Annegret (Ingrid Burkhard), and his ageing dog, Willi. But he is so out of the loop that he feels like an outsider at Ines's birthday party and, so, when Willi dies suddenly, he shows up unannounced at Ines's office in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

Donning sunglasses and a pair of false teeth, Winfried walks alongside Ines in the lobby. But she ignores him and dispatches assistant Anca (Ingrid Bisu) to find him a hotel and pass on an invitation to join her at a reception at the American Embassy. Ines cautions Winfried to be on his best behaviour, as she needs to convince oil company boss Henneberg (Michael Wittenborn) to retain her consultancy firm on a deal to outsource maintenance work that will make hundreds redundant. However, Winfried jokes that he sees so little of Ines that he has had to hire a surrogate daughter to cut his toenails. She forgives him, however, when Henneberg and his wife Natalja (Victoria Malektorovych) invite them for a drink with a selective group of contacts at his hotel. But, in her eagerness to avoid being shouted down by a pushy male rival, Ines lets slip some confidential information and she senses that Henneberg is less than amused when Winfried attempts to create a diversion by popping in his protruding dentures.

Even when the others say their goodbyes, the suffocating sense of awkwardness intensifies when Winfried jokes that he intends staying for a month and Ines struggles to hide her dismay. But she allows him to stay at her apartment and seems genuinely upset to hear of Willi's demise. Moreover, she is touched (if a little puzzled) by the elaborate designer cheese grater he has bought for her birthday.

The next morning, Ines lets Winfried tag along when she goes for a massage at a health spa and he is taken aback when she demands free food and drink in compensation for the clumsiness of her masseuse. He asks if she is happy in Bucharest, but she deflects the question and is relieved to receive a summons from Natalja to accompany her to Europe's biggest shopping mall. Winfried watches a man teach his grandson to skate on the ice rink and buys ingredients to make spaghetti. He accuses Ines of not being human because she is so wedded to her job and she suggests he has lost focus and ambition after he lets her oversleep and she misses an appointment to take Henneberg clubbing.

Realising he is in the way, Winfried returns to Aachen and Ines cries as she waves him off from her balcony. But she has a big meeting with boss Gerald (Thomas Loibl) and his assistant Tim (Trystan Pütter) en route to putting their proposals to Hanneberg. As she has stubbed her toe while folding the sofa bed, Ines gets blood on her blouse and makes Anca change clothes before she makes her presentation. Sensing that Henneberg is wavering, she also takes the initiative when Dascalu (Alexandru Papadopol) suggests the unions will oppose her proposals. While admiring her ruthless approach, Gerald warns her to be more of a team player and, while Anca tidies the room, Ines calls Winfried to check he got home safely, while looking down on a shanty garden, as a mother tends to her children.

When she meets friends Steph (Lucy Russell) and Tatjana (Hadewych Minis) for dinner, however, she insists she had the worst weekend ever and is busy bad-mouthing Winfried when they are interrupted by a stranger at the bar. He introduces himself as Toni Erdmann and declares that he has come to Romania to console tennis legend Ion Tiriac because his tortoise has died. Tatjana and Steph engage him in conversation, while Ines shuffles her feet because she has recognised Winfried in one of his disguises. She ushers her friends to their table and is aghast when Steph gives Toni her business card and invites him to call her if he needs anything during his stay. Following him out of the restaurant, Ines sees her father disappear in a stretch limo and she wonders what on earth he is doing.

The next day, he wheedles his way on to the roof garden of her office and breaks wind loudly while Ines is discussing strategy with Gerald. He has persuaded Hanneberg to go for the most drastic downsizing option and has also asked Ines to handle the negotiations with Romanian lynchpin Illiescu (Vlad Ivanov). She is pleased to hear Hanneberg has faith in her, but is annoyed with Gerald for delaying her promised promotion to Shanghai and is left close to tears when Toni butts into the conversation and offers to use his life-coaching skills to smooth the way with Hanneberg and bolster the flagging spirit of Ines's team.

She goes to Tim's hotel room and they joke about how no one knows they are lovers because of their work rivalry. Ines makes him masturbate over a petit four and consumes it with more ennui than arousal. She returns to keeping her distance at a business reception, where Toni explains how he owes a debt of gratitude to his father for teaching him how to use a cheese grater. Gerald seems impressed by Toni's rapport with Hanneberg, but the other guests are bemused by his boorish antics. He is disappointed, however, when he sees Ines do a line of cocaine with Tim and Tatjana and looks on with disdain as the pair flirt with each other with a champagne bottle on the nightclub dance floor.

Having failed to catch up with Ines before she heads home in a taxi, Winfried returns to his room and wearily removes his disguise. Feeling guilty for intruding into Ines's life, he lets himself into her apartment the next morning and gives her a fright when he pops out of her shoe cupboard. He tries to cheer her up by slapping on handcuffs because of her drug taking, but he discovers he has lost the key and Ines has to get the company chauffeur to take her to a petty crook pal to get him to pick the lock.

Arriving at the oil plant managed by Illiescu, Ines informs him that Toni is a new employee on a fact-finding mission. They visit a pipeline and Toni makes a joke to one of the workers about a broken seal that results in him getting the sack. Sidling away in dismay, Toni goes to relieve himself in a rundown garden abutting the works and is embarrassed when the owner not only allows him to use his bathroom, but also insists that he takes some apples from his tree. Once again bemused by her father, Ines falls asleep in the car back to the city and wakes to find Tony about to pay a call on Flavia (Victoria Cocias), who is under the impression he is the German Ambassador after they met at Gerald's soirée. While her sister Dorina (Cezara Dafinescu) and friend Ana (Ozama Oancea) show Ines (rejoicing under the pseudonym Miss Schnuck) to paint Easter eggs, Toni chats to Flavia and offers to sing a song before they leave. She belts out Whitney Houston's `The Greatest Love of All', but doesn't seem very convinced about the lyrics and their eulogy to self-belief and storms off, leaving Winfried to come clean about his deception to Flavia, who understands that family can be complicated and invites him to stay for dinner.

Ines gets home to find the caterer waiting to deliver items for her birthday reception. But, just as the guests start to arrive the following afternoon, she has a last-minute change of mind about her dress and winds up opening the door to Steph in her underwear when the zip jams. She explains to Gerald and Tim that she is hosting a naked party to help with team bonding, but they opt out and Steph also leaves when Ines orders her to strip. Anca comes naked, however, and is shocked when Winfried arrives wearing a hairy Bulgarian Kukeri folk costume (borrowed from Flavia). The returning (and now nude) Gerald is equally caught unawares when Winfried taps him on the shoulder. But they all take the creature in good part, even though Ines can't explain its presence. She rushes after her father when he leaves and, wearing a bathrobe, hugs him in the nearby park before she returns to her gathering and he asks the receptionist at the hotel to help him remove the outsized head.

Some months later, Ines returns to Germany for her grandmother's funeral. After the service, Winfried goes into the garden as his sister Irma (Klara Höfels) asks Ines if there is anything she would like to take as a keepsake. She is about to take up a new job in Singapore and wanders outside to find her father. Knowing this will be the last time he will see her for a while, he waves away her attempt to apologise for saying he lacked focus. But he smiles sadly, as he concedes that he spends a lot of time remembering little moments from her past that he was too busy to appreciate as they were happening. She borrows his dentures and puts on one of Annegret's old hats and Winfried potters off to fetch his camera. Left alone, Ines gazes into the distance, taking in a scene she will never see again and wondering what the future might hold.

A cross between Gérard Depardieu and Sir Les Patterson, Toni Erdmann is one of the most curious cinematic creations of recent times. In some ways, he resembles the furry hero of Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli anime, My Neighbour Totoro (1988), as he tries to protect Ines from the miscreants circling her and to persuade her that there is more to life than work. Austrian stage actor Peter Simonischek plays Winfried/Toni with a flash of Klaus Kinski in his eyes. Yet the mischief is often superseded by a nostalgia and regret that prompts him to make an impromptu and (initially) unwelcome visit to Bucharest and then to keep popping up, in spite of the mortifying silence while waiting for the lift that should have alerted him to the fact that Ines is more than capable of standing up for herself.

Or is she? Despite brushing aside suggestions she is a feminist in a shamelessly chauvinist milieu, Sandra Hüller knows the rules of her game and how to bend them to her advantage. She uses sex to tame the ambitious Trystan Pütter, while playing on Thomas Loibl's acute insecurity at being so dependent upon her. Yet, when important client Michael Wittenborn needs someone to go shopping with his trophy wife, Hüller is deputised rather than Ingrid Bisu (although it has to be said that Hüller is not averse to treating her Romanian assistant like a menial, even though she is the only person to accept the nude party dictat without quibbling). She also fails to see through the false friendship offered by Hadewych Minis and Lucy Russell and is only able to recognise the good intentions of her father's cumbersome interventions when he is wearing a disguise that goes way beyond Toni's mop top and teeth rather than when he is accompanying her through her gutsy song rendition.

Exceptional though the go-getting Hüller and the pranksterish Simonischek are, they owe much to the wit and poignancy of Maren Ade's gleefully unpredictable scenario and her courage to pace the picture in a way that enables them to explore and embrace their characters. Harking back to the anarchic heyday of the screwball comedy, Ade bucks convention by dispensing with the romcom aspects to give something like Gregory La Cava's My Man Godfrey (1936) a father-daughter feel. But she also leaves room to discuss sexism in the workplace, the decline of business ethics in the age of globalisation, the impact of EU membership and German patronage on post-Communist societies, and the breakdown of communication within modern families.

Although they resist drawing attention to themselves, Silke Fischer's production design, Gitti Fuchs's costumes and Heike Parplies's editing are all superb. But the standout technical contribution is Patrick Orth's cinematography. When not cleaving close to Hüller and Simonischek, the camera peeks out of car windows to capture the rundown domestic and industrial architecture that betrays the country's failure to move on from the overthrow of Ceausescu and the lack of genuine interest that foreign investors take in the plight of the core Romanian population. But, for all its astute asides on the state of the world, this is an intimate study of two people reaching out to make amends before it is too late. And rarely has such a potentially sentimental story been told in such a boldly anarchic manner.

11) LA LA LAND.

Even before it made screen history by becoming the first feature to win seven Golden Globes, La La Land was being feted for restoring the lost magic of the cinema. Yet, for all its nostalgic gloss, Damien Chazelle's musical is a resolutely modern story that reinforces the mantra of the Saturday night talent shows that aptitude matters less than fame and success. It's fitting, therefore, that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are not genre specialists like Gene Kelly and Judy Garland, but actors who get to sing and dances like the leads in three like-minded paeans to the golden age of the Hollywood musical, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You (1997). This doesn't make Gosling and Stone any less effective in their roles, as their lack of expertise renders them more relatable. But this is as much about Chazelle's ambition to prove that modern movie technology can be put to more imaginative use than endless comic-book adventures as it is about romance and reclaimed innocence.

As the commuters caught in a rush-hour traffic jam on a Los Angeles freeway proclaim the pros and cons of `Another Day of Sun' in a bravura one-take opening, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling remain in their vehicles respectively to run lines for her latest audition and to replay the same snippet of jazz. Gosling beeps Stone when the line finally starts moving and flips her the bird as he drives past. But Stone has enough to worry about, as she is tired of being a barista on the Warner Bros lot and dreams of making her name as an actress. Yet, even when boss Terry Walters allows her to leave early, a customer spills coffee on her blouse and she has to audition in her anorak to hide the stain.

Roommates Callie Hernandez, Jessica Rothe and Sonoya Mizuno try to cheer her up by dragging her out for a night on the town, where she might just get spotted by `Someone in the Crowd'. Stone is unconvinced, but still tags along to dance in the street and participate in a montage filled with neon club signs, overflowing champagne glasses, swimming pools and fireworks. But, having sung sadly to herself in the washroom mirror, Stone leaves early to find that her car has been towed and she has to walk home.

Passing a nightclub, she is moved by the sound of a mournful piano and stands transfixed in the doorway. The action flashes back to follow Gosling from the traffic jam to an argument with sister Rosemarie DeWitt, in which she implores him to stop wasting his time with the dying sound of jazz and make the most of his talent. Club owner JK Simmons feels much the same way when he hires Gosling to play Christmas tunes for his customers. But the artist in Gosling prompts him to launch into one of his own compositions (`Mia & Sebastian's Theme') and it's this that enchants Stone and gets him fired. As she wanders up to congratulate him on his performance, Gosling almost knocks her over in storming out and she is left to lament another missed opportunity in this city of shattered illusions.

Winter turns to spring and Stone keeps being overlooked at casting calls. She finds herself at a pool party in Beverly Hills and is amused to see Gosling playing keytar in an 80s tribute band. When the singer asks for requests, Stone suggests the Flock of Seagulls hit, `I Ran', and flirts sarcastically when Gosling recognises her. As he is leaving, he rescues her from dullard writer Jason Fuchs and they agree that Los Angeles isn't much to look at from afar. Yet, as Gosling begins to complain about wasting `A Lovely Night', Stone gives as good as she gets and (having changed her shoes on a bench), they dance in the dusk light and realise they may feel something more for each other than antipathy.

The spell is broken, however, when she receives a phone call and he walks her to her car. But he shows up in the coffee shop the next day and they go for a walk around the studio lot. Stone shows Gosling the window that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looked out of in Casablanca (1942) and she tells him how she had first become interested in acting when her grandmother took her to see old films back in Boulder City, Nevada. He suggests she should write a play to showcase her talent, but she kills the mood when she admits to hating jazz.

Gosling takes Stone to the Lighthouse Café to listen to a live band and tells her that he plans to open his own night spot to prevent jazz from dying on the vine. She is taken by his passion and readily accepts his offers to see Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to help her prepare for a TV audition. Wandering along the pier, Gosling wonders in `City of Stars' if this is the start of something special. But the fact that Stone's audition lasts all of two lines (even though she is wearing a red jacket à la James Dean) suggests otherwise and her day goes from bad to worse when she forgets that her movie date clashes with a promise to dine with new boyfriend Finn Wittrock and his brother, Josh Pence.

The stultifying table talk persuades Stone to flee the restaurant, however, and she joins Gosling at the Rialto in Pasadena just as the picture is about to start. They hold hands as the action moves to the Griffith Observatory and, when the celluloid melts in the projector just as they are about to kiss, Gosling takes Stone to Mount Hollywood for a visit to the observatory. As they wander around the exhibits, they start to dance beside the Foucault Pendulum and become so swept away inside the Planetarium that they float on air while silhouetted against the night sky. Returning to terra firma, they kiss and the screen irises to black in the old-fashioned way.

By the time the summer comes, Gosling and Stone are an item. When she is not working on her play and he is not sitting in with his favourite band, they soft-shoe shuffle their way around the sights of Los Angeles. But everything changes when Gosling bumps into old school friend, John Legend, and he offers him the chance to play keyboards in his new combo, The Messengers. Resenting being told what to do, Gosling recognises that he needs to make some money if he is to realise the dream of owning his own club (for which Stone has designed a logo) and during a duet on `City of Stars', she accepts his decision, despite ruing the fact that he has chosen to compromise his artistic principles.

Stone is surprised, however, to hear the style of music when she sees them play the funky `Start a Fire' in front of screaming fans at an upmarket arena. She is also frustrated that Gosling is always on the road or doing publicity for the band, while she is left alone to complete her one-woman show, So Long, Boulder City, and make arrangements to perform it in a venue she has hired with her own money. Saddened to see that The Rialto has closed down, Stone's spirits soar when Gosling cooks dinner on a rare night off and they discuss their future. She is surprised when he announces that he is going to record an album with Legend and questions why he needs to go on another tour when he hates the Messenger sound. But Gosling becomes defensive and accuses Stone of only liking him when he was a nobody because it made her feel less of a failure. Nettled by his remark, Stone storms out, leaving Gosling to retrieve an overcooked dessert from the oven.

Despite the rift, Gosling still plans to attend the opening night of Stone's play. But Legend insists he does a photo shoot with celebrity shutterbug Miles Anderson who humiliates Gosling by making him bite his lower lip while posing at the keyboard. He misses the show, therefore, and Stone refuses to listen to his excuses after overhearing one of the few paying customers mocking her efforts. She moves back in with her parents and takes some convincing when Gosling drives to Boulder City to inform her that casting director Valarie Ray Miller had loved the production and wants to build a film around her.

Rather than read lines, Stone is asked to tell a story to the camera and she improvises the song `Audition (The Fools Who Dream)' around an aunt who once lived in Paris. Sitting on a bench in Griffith Park, Gosling urges her to seize the opportunity with both hands and commit fully to being a success. She realises this is his way of breaking up with her and she promises to give it her best shot if he devotes himself to the music that really inspires him. They admit that they will always be in love with each other, but know that the dream must come first.

Five years later, Stone is a famous actress turning heads in the coffee shop where she used to work. She also has a daughter with husband Tom Everett Scott, with whom she drops into a new jazz club after a traffic jam causes them to change their dinner plans. Recognising the logo she designed, Stone looks around the basement for Gosling, who spots her as he comes to the microphone. Sitting at the piano, he plays `Mia & Sebastian's Theme', as Stone thinks back over their relationship and imagines how things might have been. Roused from her reverie, she goes to leave. But she turns her head at the door and Gosling smiles back at her to reassure her that they have made the right choices.

No stranger to the genre having pastiched the nouvelle vague to engaging monochrome effect in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench (2009) before making his breakthrough with Whiplash (2014), 31 year-old Dominic Chazelle excels himself with his ambitious tribute to the classic musicals of yesteryear. Yet, while he studs the familiar action with grace notes to the forms greatest hits, this is much more a drama with songs than a fully fledged musical. Only a couple of songs emerge organically from the narrative and even they provide little insight into the character's mindset. Moreover, the story-driven songs dry up after Stone leans on Gosling's piano for the lyric rendition of the `City of Stars' melody that he had earlier whistled at sunset and she will later hum over the closing credits.

This is not to criticise Chazelle's use of the catchy, if not particularly memorable tunes composed by Justin Hurwitz with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. But the emphasis on set-pieces rather than integrated numbers leaves this feeling more like George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954) or Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977) than the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicles like Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Shall We Dance (1937) that inspired the challenge dances to `A Lovely Night' and `Planetarium' and such undisputed masterpieces as Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain (1952), whose dream ballets clearly impacted upon the wonderful `Epilogue' fantasy sequence.

Thanks to Linus Sandigren's sublime 35mm CinemaScope photography, David Wasco's lavishly production design, Mary Zophres's colourfully chic costumes and (aptly) Dancing with the Stars veteran Mandy Moore's elegant choreography, Chazelle does succeed in recapturing the majestic aura of the MGM heyday, however. He might overdo the tactic of using a single spotlight for atmospheric accentuation, but he certainly knows how to stage a musical interlude, as he segues from intimate close-ups of singing faces to long shots of dancing bodies filmed in full from a discreetly moving camera.

He also coaxes notable performances out of Stone and Gosling, who improve considerably on their previous teamings in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's Crazy, Stupid Love (2011) and Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad (2013). There's genuine spark between them, although one always feels that she is always truer to her vocation and more in love than he is. Stone also gives the more nuanced performance, which is why she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival before landing a Golden Globe and an Academy Award.

It's perhaps no accident that such a plaintive piece of harmless escapism should have been produced during one of the most fractious years in recent American history. But, while Hollywood will rejoice at this love letter to its fabled past, this is unlikely to become a cult favourite on a par with Randal Kleiser's Grease (1978), as, for all their feel-good charm, the songs are unlikely to enter the popular consciousness in quite the same manner because they simply won't take over the singles charts. Moreover, just as Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2012) failed to inspire a raft of silent copycats, so this enjoyably sophisticated confection will struggle to revive the musical genre, which, sadly, will remain as moribund as that other studio system standby, the Western.