Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 15/2/2018)

Although narrator Giles (Richard Jenkins) informs us that our story involves a `princess without a voice' and a `monster who tried to end it all', he also mentions the `last days of a fair prince's reign' and this sites the action in 1962, as President John F, Kennedy locks horns with the dastardly Soviets in the Cold War being waged from his court at Camelot. As she wakes from a watery dream, mute thirtysomething Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) seems oblivious to the fact the TV sets in the shop windows near her Baltimore apartment are showing U2 bombers in stark black-and-white. She prefers fantasy and delights in joining Giles (who is balding, gay and lives with his cat while struggling to get by as an illustrator) to watch Bill `Bojangles' Robinson and Shirley Temple doing their famous stair dance in David Butler's The Little Colonel (1935).

Scarred on the neck and abandoned as a baby, Hawkins is sufficiently carnal to masturbate in the bath as she gets ready for the work, but she is also a dreamer and rehearses Temple's steps as she sashays along the corridor before emerging on the street beneath the illuminated marquee of the Orpheum cinema. This old-style fleapit is fighting a losing battle against television by showing biblical epics like Henry Koster's The Story of Ruth (1960) and owner Mr Arzoumanian (John Kapelos) is so keen to drum up custom that he offers Hawkins free tickets for the show. However, she has to get to the secret government facility where she toils as a janitor alongside neighbour Zelda Delilah Fuller (Octavia Spencer), who never stops talking and interprets Elisa's sign language for their colleagues.

While tidying up in one of the laboratories, Elisa and Zelda see Dr Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) take delivery of a tank containing Amphibian Man (Doug Jones), who has been captured in a South American river and is being guarded by imposing federal agent Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon). However, they are escorted out of the room when Elisa taps the glass of the pressurised container and she heads home to accompany Giles to the diner where he has a crush on Pie Guy (Morgan Kelly) behind the counter. His fridge is full of half-eaten pies and Elisa turns up her nose at a bilious-looking slice of key lime while watching Betty Grable singing `Pretty Baby' in Walter Lang's Coney Island (1943). Sitting on the sofa, the friends duplicate her soft-shoe shuffling and smile before Elisa heads for bed and another day on the night shift.

Following an uncomfortable encounter with Strickland in the washroom, Elisa and Zelda are summoned by supervisor Fleming (David Hewlett) to clean up the blood in the lab from which a bleedings Strickland has just emerged in some distress. Elisa finds two of his fingers on the floor and pops them in a brown paper bag before gazing into the tank containing Amphibian Man, who seems to connect with her through the glass. She mentions him to Giles, who says he is pretty sure that mermen don't exist before heading off to a presentation and leaving her to watch Alice Faye singing the Oscar-winning `You'll Never Know' in H. Bruce Humbertsone's Hello, Frisco Hello (1943). However, while Bernard (Stewart Arnott) likes his artwork for a Jell-o commercial, he is forced to turn down his proposal and dithers when Giles (who is a recovering alcoholic) asks if there is any chance that he can rejoin the agency, as freelancing is proving a hard row to hoe.

Having been given a pep talk by Strickland about sticking to their jobs in the laboratory, Elisa sneaks in during her lunch hour and lures the creature (who has been chained in a pool) to the surface with a boiled egg. He seems to understand her sign language and responds when she returns the next day with a portable record player so he can hear Glenn Miller's `I Know Why (And So Do You)' from Humberstone's Sun Valley Serenade (1941). As she takes the bus home and rests her head against the window, a glow lights up her face, as she feels close to the Amphibian Man, who had stood against the glass to watch her dance with her mop and bucket (as Gene Kelly had done in George Sidney's Thousands Cheer, 1943).

However, her stolen moment is spotted by Hoffstetler, who is really Russian agent Dimitri Antonovich Mosenkov. He informs handler Mihalkov (Nigel Bennett) that Amphibian Man has the ability to communicate and feel and he is keen to protect him from Strickland and General Hoyt (Nick Searcy), who are in favour of dissecting him to learn about his ability to breathe out of water so that they can advance America's manned space programme. Distraught at seeing the creature chained to a slab and bleeding from the wounds inflicted by Strickland and his cattle prod, Elisa vows to liberate him and asks Giles for his advice. She delivers an impassioned speech about him accepting her for who she is when Giles says he is too busy to help with her mad folly. But, having been rejected again by Bernard and spurned by Pie Guy (who turns out to be a racist homophobe), he returns home to throw in his lot with Elisa because people in the margins need to stick together. Unbeknownst to them, they also have an ally in Hoffstetler, who is dismayed that Mihalkov is unwilling to assist with abducting Amphibian Man and would rather kill it by lethal injection than let the Americans learn from it.

Feeling macho after perfunctory intercourse with his prim wife Elaine (Lauren Lee Smith), Strickland buys a teal-coloured Cadillac and parks it in the bowels of the research centre, where Zelda has her surreptitious smoke breaks. She notices Elisa sneaking around and wonders what on earth she is up to. While Giles forges a pass to the facility while watching Carmen Miranda performing `Chica Chica Boom Chic' in Irving Cummings's That Night in Rio (1941), Elisa shifts the position of the CCTV cameras. Strickland fails to notice, but Hoffstetler does (while pleading to delay the vivisection) and realises he can trust Elisa to spirit the creature away. Thus, he uses a device to sabotage the generators and uses his syringe to kill an MP blocking Giles at the underground checkpoint.

Having given Elisa a crash course in how to care for and feed Amphibian Man, Hoffstetler helps her push him to the loading bay in a laundry basket. Against her better judgement, Zelda also lends a hand, as Strickland comes hurtling downstairs to thwart them. However, he arrives only to fire some futile bullets and see the damage the speeding van has done to his new car. He promises Hoyt that he will recover the `asset', but has no idea that he is wallowing in the tub in Giles's apartment until the waters rise in the nearby canal lock and Elisa can release him back into the wild.

The following day, Strickland interviews the staff and dismisses Elisa and Zelda as the toilet cleaners. Meanwhile, Giles sketches Amphibian Man and wonders if he had a mate in his river, while lamenting the fact that his own life has pretty much passed him by. When he dozes off, however, the creature gets bored and watches Mister Ed on the television before biting the head off Giles's cat when it hisses at him. He barges past the artist and lumbers into the night, But Elisa finds him transfixed by the CinemaScope screen in the empty Orpheum and brings him home. She patches up the wound on Giles's arm and Amphibian Man pets his other cats and apologises for harming his host. But Elisa takes him to her own bathroom for the night and, unable to sleep, strips off to join him in the tub.

Wearing a red hairband with matching shoes, Elisa traces the water on the bus window and two droplets merge into a single whole. But, while her good mood is matched by Madeleine Peyroux singing `La Javanaise' on the soundtrack, Strickland is more determined than ever to restore his reputation and capture the fugitive. He attempts to intimidate Hoffstetler, but he retains his composure and does so again when Mihalkov comes to his apartment to check that he had disposed of Amphibian Man's corpse. In fact, he is glowing through his blue veins while canoodling with Elisa in the bathroom she has flooded so he can be more comfortable. However, the water seeps through the floorboards and soaks the patrons watching Edmund Goulding's Mardi Gras (1958) and Arzoumanian complains to Giles about the mess. He opens the bathroom door and sees how happy Elisa is as she clings to her lover. Indeed, he also has a little moment of his own, as his hair has started grow on the spot where the creature touched him.

But Strickland is bent on preventing any happy ever after. Having snapped off his gangrenous finger, he sends Fleming to spy on Hoffstetler, as he suspects him of having stolen the asset. However, when Hoyt comes to his office and gives him 36 hours to sort out the mess he has made, Strickland gets a lesson in the value of decency that makes him realise how disposable he is in the grand scheme of things. Nevertheless, he steels himself to salvage his mission, just as the rains start to come down and the canal begins to fill. Aware that Amphibian Man is starting to suffer, Elisa feeds him hard-boiled eggs and sits across the table from him to summon up the whispered words, `You'll Never Know', before her imagination takes her into a monochrome Fred`n'Ginger world, where she dances with her beaux against a backdrop of studio soundstage stars.

It's clear, however, that the creature is ailing and Zelda urges Elisa to get him to the waterfront as quickly as possible. Giles drives them, but Strickland is on their tail after wheedling the truth out of the dying Hoffstettler. Rather conveniently, Elisa had written the time and place of Amphibian Man's departure on the calendar in her kitchen and Strickland arrives to gun him down. He also shoots Elisa. But Giles knocks him out with a metal post and the revived Amphibian Man slashes across his throat, as police patrol cars roll into view. As Giles looks on, the lovers plunger into the dock, where a kiss enables Elisa to breath in the depths and the pair seem suspended in the green-tinged water, as they prepare to embark upon their new life together.

Following the grandiose spectacle of Pacific Rim (2013) and Crimson Peak (2015), Del Toro returns to the brand of arthouse fable at which he excelled in The Devil's Backbone (2001) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Co-scripting with Vanessa Taylor, he settles for a simple message, as the aqua-man who is dragged out of his natural environment by government agents to be exploited for sinister purposes is contrasted with the black, gay and disabled characters who dwell on the margins of a society that promotes decency without practising it. But, for all the socio-political subtexts that could be plucked from this scenario, it's essentially a beauty and the beast fairy-tale with its roots in old Hollywood gems like Jack Arnold's Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954).

Yet, by quoting from so many 20th Century-Fox musicals and biblical epics, Del Toro risks reminding us that the former were glossily ersatz facsimiles of the superior pictures being produced in the same genre by MGM, while the latter were widely regarded as empty spectacles designed to lure consumerist Eisenhowerian Americans away from their television sets. This isn't to say that Paul Denham Austerberry's production design and Dan Laustsen's cinematography aren't magnificent in their use of mossy greens and butterscotch browns. Indeed, they have worked a minor miracle in recreating 60s Baltimore on a modest $19 million budget. But style often takes precedence over substance, as Del Toro strains for a significance that the slender storyline isn't always able to accommodate and which prompts him to indulge the more emotively whimsical passages of Alexandre Desplat's score and the more leisurely stretches of Sidney Wolinsky's mid-picture editing

Some of the characterisation is equally thin, with Shannon's glowering villain feeling a little familiar and Jenkins and Spencer's `outcasts' seeming a touch too tick-boxy. All three give fine performances, although the latter two seem somewhat fortunate to have snagged Best Supporting Oscar nominations, especially when Doug Jones - who had previously collaborated with Del Toro as Abe Sapien in Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) and the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - is so superbly expressive beneath the prosthetics sculpted by Mike Hill, fashioned by Shane Mahan and digitally augmented by Dennis Berardi. His first meeting with Hawkins in the lab tank is particularly charming, although Del Toro deserves credit for making the relationship so sensual and for comparing the tenderness of their love-making with the lustful brusqueness of Shannon's coupling with his wife and the crudeness of his advances on Hawkins.

Echoing the current furore around high-ranking men abusing their power, this aspect of the plot chimes in with the subtext of `change not always being for the better' that is epitomised by the diner employing faux southern hospitality to sell its Day-Glo pies and by the post-Mad Men ad agency replacing hand-drawn graphics with photography. But Del Toro doesn't dwell on his themes, which is perhaps as well when major moments like Hawkins's signed speech about the creature making her feel alive and accepted come so perilously close to being trite and mawkish.

Thankfully, her performance is so beautifully judged that both her romance and her rebellion avoid seeming melodramatic. She also eschews winsome sweetness in connecting with the creature and readily embraces the physical side of their liaison. Moreover, she is assured enough to use sign language to tell Shannon what she thinks of him in the knowledge that he can't understand her and that Spencer would never dream of translating her insults and defiance. One suspects she doesn't have much chance of beating Frances McDormand for her work in Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. But this is a memorable performance and deserves to be commended alongside those mentioned in the opening paragraph.

Another contender for Best Actress is Ireland's Saoirse Ronan, who sheds six years to play a teenage variation of writer-director Greta Gerwig in Lady Bird. Distilled from a 350-page scenario originally entitled Mothers and Daughters, this Sacramento-set saga has been designed to provide a female perspective on the growing pains captured in such classic male rite-of-passage pictures as François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Richard Linklater's Boyhood (2014). This isn't Gerwig's first time behind the camera, as she followed a writing-starring gig on Mumblecore stalwart Joe Swanberg's Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) by co-directing Night and Weekends (2008). She has also taken script credits on Rod Webber's Northern Comfort (2010) and partner Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha (2012) and Mistress America (2015). But, with an Oscar nomination of her own in the bag, this announces Gerwig as an exciting addition to the shamefully meagre ranks of American women film-makers.

Touring campuses in California in 2002, Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) and her mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf), listen to an audiobook of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Both tear up at the end of the story. But, within seconds, they are bickering about the fact that Marion refuses to use her daughter's preferred name, Lady Bird, and is determined to stop her from applying for places on the east coast because her father, Larry (Tracy Letts), is facing redundancy and they will barely be able to pay her fees for a college closer to their home in Sacramento. Frustrated by her mother's reluctance to let her fly, Lady Bird opens the door of the speeding car and rolls out on to the deserted highway.

With her arm in a pink plaster cast, Lady Bird returns to the Eternal Flame Roman Catholic school, where she is best friends with the pudgy Julianne Steffans (Beanie Feldstein). Despite not being a believer, Lady Bird has to attend chapel services, along with her lessons. She is a solid rather than inspired student, who likes running for class offices, even though she knows she stands no chance of winning. When her campaign poster disturbs Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith), the elderly nun suggests that Lady Bird might find a more suitable outlet for her talents in the school musical, which is being staged with the boys from the neighbouring Xavier academy. So, she signs up for auditions with the loyal Julie before heading to the minimart, where she annoys her adoptive brother, Miguel (Jordan Rodrigues), and his girlfriend, Shelly Yuhan (Marielle Scott), by looking through the magazines.

Despite the fact that money is tight - Marion works double shifts at the hospital - Lady Bird has set her heart on applying for a New York college and Larry agrees to look into financial aid packages to help her secure funding without Marion finding out. He drops her off at school, where she looks enviously at the affluent and popular Jenna Walton (Odeya Rush), before discussing masturbation with Julie while lying flat on her back and scarfing communion wafers in the chapel vestry. Defying convention again, Lady Bird puts on a special dress to sing `Everybody Says Don't' from Anyone Can Whistle during her audition for the production, while Julie performs `Make Me a Channel of Your Peace'. But, while she is supportive of her friend, Lady Bird is furious when she gets a better part in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along opposite Danny O'Neill (Lucas Hedges), who won her heart with his rendition of `Giants in the Sky' from Into the Woods.

Almost swooning when she bumps into Danny while shopping with her mother, Lady Bird offers to lend him a set of heated rollers so he can curl his hair for the role. She watches him like a hawk during acting classes with Fr Leviatch (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the priest producing the show who is rumoured to have found religion after his teenage son committed suicide. Moreover, during the school hoedown, she asks Danny to dance and rejects a life home with Julie so she can stay behind with him for her first kiss. However, her bubble is burst the moment she gets through the front door, as Marion is in a foul mood because Lady Bird went out without tidying her bedroom and they can't afford to replace her school uniform now that Larry has lost his job.

Undaunted by this turn of events and the guffawing of the guidance counsellor (Carla Valentine) who advises her to lower her college entry expectations, Lady Bird throws herself into her romance with Danny. They declare their love for each other while gazing at the stars and she is touched by his insistence that he respects her too much to touch her breasts. She is also overjoyed when he invites her for Thanksgiving at his grandmother's house, as it is the dream home she passes on her way to school each day. But Marion is upset that she has opted to miss her last family celebration before college and buys her a new dress with a heavy heart. She is also a little nettled when Danny comes to pick up Lady Bird and points out that he actually had to cross the tracks to get to the house.

Having made a good impression on grandma (Joan Patricia O'Neill) by folding the napkins, Lady Bird hooks up with Julie and her friend Greg (John Karna) to go drinking and smoking dope. They pile into the kitchen scoff leftovers and Marion comes down to check they are okay. As the visitors drive away, Shelly lets Lady Bird know that Marion was hurt by her absence because she loves her so much. She reminds her what a good woman she is, as she took her in after her own parents threw her out for sleeping with Miguel. But Lady Bird is too stoned to pay much attention.

So keen to improve her grades that she throws away a mark book belonging to maths teacher, Mr Bruno (Jake McDorman), Lady Bird informs Julie that she has reached saturation point with learning and puts all her energy into he romance and the play. The family comes to opening night and Miguel and Shelly sit bemused while Marion and Larry beam with pride, as does Julie's mother (Kristen Cloke) and her trendy boyfriend, Uncle Matthew (Andy Buckley). But Lady Bird comes down to earth with a bump when she catches Danny kissing another boy during a celebratory supper at a fast-food restaurant and Julie listens to sad songs with her to ease her pain.

With her cast removed, Lady Bird recovers her poise as Christmas comes around. Larry gives her a completed financial aid form as a present and she takes a job at a local coffee shop to boost her savings. While waiting tables, she flirts with Kyle Scheible (Timothée Chalamet), a Xavier poseur who cultivates an air of intellectual edginess and plays in a band called L'Enfance Nue. Deciding that he is Danny's replacement, Lady Bird attempts to cultivate a friendship with Jenna and abandons the theatre club, whose production of The Tempest will be directed by Miss Patty (Marietta DePrima) and Father Walther (Bob Stephenson), a sports coach who thinks that Shakespeare can be staged in the same way as an American football game.

When Sister Sarah Joan criticises Jenna for the length of her skirt, Lady Bird helps deck out her car with a `Just Married to Jesus' slogan and earns an invitation to the parking lot where her clique hangs out. She tries to flirt with Kyle and can't fathom whether he is being serious when warning about the surveillance properties of mobile phones. As Lent arrives, Lady Bird is still snubbing Julie and gets into a row with Miguel and her parents when she gets an offer from a college with an agriculture faculty. She smooches with Kyle at a party at Jenna's house and gets suspended from school when she heckles an anti-abortion speaker. Naturally, Marion is furious with her and reveals that her father is suffering from depression and doesn't need any additional stress. Lady Bird demands to know how much it cost to raise her so that she can pay off her debt and stopping speaking to her mother. But she regrets embarrassing Larry by asking to be dropped off before school.

She is equally ashamed when Jenna discovers she lied about living in Danny's grandmother's house and is disappointed with Kyle when he misleads her into thinking he is a virgin when they sleep together for the first time. He suggests the war in Iraq is more of a tragedy than her sensibility, but Lady Bird protests that people don't have to die for things to be sad. Marion picks her up and lets her cry on her shoulder before they go to cheer her up by looking around properties for sale in the post part of town.

Shortly afterwards, Lady Bird is commended on an essay about Sacramento by Sister Sarah Joan, who confides that she found the car prank amusing. She also receives a letter from an eastern college informing her that she is on the waiting list for places. Larry is pleased for her and is just as encouraging when he bumps into Miguel applying for the same computer programming job. Marion helps her pick a prom dress and promises she loves her after wondering whether her choice isn't a bit too pink, Shelly and Miguel feel sorry for Lady Bird when Kyle honks when collecting her and, when he and Jenna decide to miss the dance to party with some friends, she asks to be dropped off at Julie's house and they go to the prom together and have a nice time, even though Lady Bird is saddened to hear that Julie is spending the summer with her father and that they won't see much of each other.

She goes to see Danny in the play and is proud of him. However, while they are celebrating graduation day, he lets slip that she has applied out of state and Marion feels so betrayed that she sends her to Coventry. Thus, Larry along brings Lady Bird a muffin with a candle in it on her 18th birthday and she marks the occasion by buying a scratch card, some cigarettes and a copy of Playgirl. She also removes the pictures from her bedroom wall and paints over the messages she has written to herself during her childhood. Inheriting Miguel's position at the supermarket, Lady Bird even works two jobs for the summer and Larry re-mortgages to house so she can afford to study in New York. But Marion refuses to wave her off in the airport and is on the loop road to park when she is overcome with emotion and rushes back to the terminal, only to be greeted by a reassuring hug from her husband.

Settling into her new digs in the big city, Lady Bird finds an envelope full of letter drafts written on yellow A4 by her mother. Using her new mobile phone, she calls Larry to ask what they mean and he says she wanted to say she loved her, but was afraid Lady Bird would judge her writing style. At her first mixer, Lady Bird gets drunk and introduces herself to David (Ben Konigsberg) as Christine. They kiss and she throws up and is rushed to hospital, where the nurse quickly realises she is just drunk. On waking up in a side room, she sees a small Asian boy with an eye patch. She wanders towards the campus and stops into a church during a service. The sound of the choir prompts her to call home and leave a message for Marion. She recalls driving around Sacramento for the first time after passing her test and thanks her for everything she has done for her.

Directed with confidence and charm, this may not be the perfect picture some of the online forums would have you believe. But it's mightily impressive and reveals just how much Gerwig has absorbed from her viewing and acting. She probably won't be delighted to hear any comparisons to Woody Allen, as she has distanced herself from him after appearing in To Rome With Love (2012). But she may be happier to be linked with Eric Rohmer and Philippe Garrel, as well as John Hughes (Pretty in Pink, 1986), Diablo Cody (Juno, 2007), Lena Dunham (Tiny Furniture, 2010) and Mia Hansen-Løve, with whom Gerwig will reunite later this year on Bergman Island after their first teaming on Eden (2014).

The structuring of the action as a chain of short scenes demonstrates remarkable storytelling maturity, although Nick Houy must take some credit for the fluency of his editing. Sam Levy's photography, Chris Jones's production design, April Napier's costumes and Jon Brion's score are equally acute. But this has an auteur feel, right down to the montages of beloved Sacramento haunts and the fact that Saoirse Ronan incorporates Gerwig's speech patterns and mannerisms into her performance. Yet, excellent though she is in carrying the picture, Ronan is splendidly supported by a marvellous ensemble and matched every step of the way by Laurie Metcalf, who will be best known to UK audiences for her small-screen work in Roseanne and The Big Bang Theory. Desperate to prevent her daughter from getting ideas above her station that can only result in disappointment, Metcalf is forever fighting her own sense of frustration and failure as a wife and mother. Yet her brand of gruff love is as authentic and as keenly observed as the red-tinted Ronan's inability to avoid making basic and avoidable mistakes in her relationships with her family and classmates.

Given its status as an antidote to Trumpist pomposity and the pre-Oscar backlash against Three Billboards, The Shape of Water and Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By My Name, there is every chance that Lady Bird might slip through to take Best Picture. But it would be a major surprise if Gerwig beat Del Toro to Best Director, even though she has clearly announced herself as a talent to watch in demonstrating the importance of being yourself and paying attention. Much will depend on that always difficult second feature.

In 2013, Polish documentarist Pavel Lozinski persuaded his film-maker father, Marcel, to go on a road trip to Paris in order to work through the issues affecting their relationship. Lozinski, Jr. filmed the two-week odyssey and edited the footage into Father and Son. Later that year, however, Marcel felt the need to put his own side of the story in Father and Son On a Journey. The resulting films were compelling without always being entirely convincing, as each man was too aware of the camera to let his guard slip completely. Moreove, as is always the case with actuality, it was never clear what was spontaneous and what was staged.

Taking his inspiration from the casebook of eminent psychiatrist Bogdan de Barbaro, Lozinski turns the focus on a mother and daughter in You Have No Idea How Much I Love You. However, as Polish law forbids the filming of actual therapy sessions, he has been forced to use actresses to play a highly strung divorcee and her estranged 25 year-old child in a five-act saga that is only revealed to have been a reconstruction in a closing caption. Few will mistake this for fly-on-the-wall reality, as the action is too carefully framed to have been captured on the hoof. Nevertheless, many will be left feeling frustrated by the calculation of the contrivance.

The first session opens with a close-up of Hania (Hanna Maciag), who has a short blonde mop and a nose ring. She looks anxiously to her left and, under the watchful gaze of Professor Bogdan de Barbaro, asks her long-haired mother, Ewa (Ewa Szymczyk), if she would like to start the dialogue. In the end, she talks first and they explain why they have agreed to undergo the therapy and both suggest that they are doing it for the other's benefit as much as their own. At De Barbaro's prompting, Hania reveals she gets a lump in her throat before each meeting with her mother, while Ewa admits to feeling a bit like a `mad lady', as she lives alone with a cat and relies on yoga classes to keep her calm.

Earnest and empathetic, De Barbaro gently reminds the pair that he is in charge of proceedings and will not allow them to make sweeping statements they cannot substantiate or are unwilling to explore in detail. The anxious Ewa holds back the tears as she assents, while Hania does so with a more petulant reluctance. When asked to describe their love for each other, Ewa claims to feel an overwhelming force, but Hania declares she has never felt they had much of a bond and her expression hardens, as Ewa struggles to retain her composure at hearing such a harsh truth. Smiling sympathetically, De Barbaro suggests that the tears and the lump are symptomatic of their situation and is quietly confident that he will be able to guide them towards some sort of rapprochement - although he concludes the session by reminding them it will take a lifetime to learn how to get along.

As the second session commences, De Barbaro asks Hania to clarify why she says she felt tormented after her parents divorced. Reflecting on being a four year-old who can't understand why her father is no longer around, she implies she feels let down because Ewa struggled to cope with raising two children (an unnamed brother is only briefly mentioned in passing) and the sense of failure at her marriage breaking down. Ewa concedes that she had a tough time and was hospitalised after being physically sick at the thought of being alone. So, Hania withdraws the word `tormented' and says she felt stifled by Ewa devoting so much time to herself when she wanted solace.

Despite insisting she has happy memories of her pre-divorce childhood and that she doesn't want to blame Ewa because she now realises that her father is a selfish idiot, Hania is puzzled why they need to dwell on the past when the problems exist in the present. But De Barbaro explains that he needs to understand their history in order to discern the barriers between them. When Hania snaps back that she doesn't feel lonely now, De Barbaro sounds a touch exasperated at her unwillingness to follow his reasoning and he takes a gulp of water, as the screen fades to black.

The third session sees Hania with a shorter, tidier hairstyle. The red spot on her left eyeball has also disappeared. She begins by describing a video she saw on YouTube about a stork turfing its weakest chick out of the nest while its siblings tried to protect it. De Barbaro (who has also had a trim) states that birds often learn to fly while falling, but Ewa interjects that Hania wasn't pushed, as she left home of her own accord after a number of attempts to run away. Brushing tears off her cheeks, Hania protests that she never felt loved and believed she would be better off alone, as she would no longer need to crave affection she would never receive.

Stung by these words, Ewa gets up from her chair and walks in a circle before resuming her seat. De Barbaro seizes upon this revelation, as he thinks it's crucial to unlocking why Hania feels so wronged and Ewa harbours such guilt. However, Hania wonders whether there is any point in saying things that will hurt her mother, as she believes they will never be able to interact as equals. When pressed, she claims to feel despair and sorrow when she contemplates their relationship and Ewa promises not to feel hurt if her daughter delves into the emotions underpinning such a conclusion.

Thus, she has to suffer in silence, as Hania says she felt anger rather than love as a child and dislikes her younger self for not rebelling sooner. De Barbaro asks if she could give that lost little girl a hug and she responds with cynicism to the notion that she can make herself feel better by embracing someone who only exists in her memory and her imagination. He feels it would be a valid exercise, but a tearful Hania resists and Ewa reassures her that she loves her a good deal and apologises for having hurt her. Interrupting, De Barbaro tells Ewa to hold back such declarations, as they might wash away the path that Hania is following and she nods in distressed frustration, as Hania assures her that she didn't mean to make her feel so guilty.

A couple of weeks later, at the start of the fourth session, De Barbaro asks if they have any matters arising from their last meeting and Hania reveals that she feels less sorrowful. Ewa, however, blurts out that she still feels guilty and, when De Barbaro suggests thats he unburdens her pain on him not Hania, she looks puzzled, as she can't understand how that could possibly help when he is not part of her problem. He suggests that the main source of her pain is loneliness and Ewa concedes that it stalks her like the Groke, the ominous adversary of the Moomin stories. De Barbaro warns her that this comparison implies that she has become cosily accustomed to being alone and, as a consequence, she is unable to face up to how much this situation is harming her and her relationship with Hania.

He cautions her that the sense of abandonment and injustice underlying her pain has an insidious charm and she feels nettled because she has always considered herself brave to battling the odds stacked against her. She acknowledges that the only people she speaks to regularly are shop staff and strangers and worries that there will be no one there to help her in a crisis. As De Barbaro encourages her to find a source of these emotions, Ewa pulls her hair into a ponytail and recalls being an only child of peripatetic parents and never feeling as though she belonged anywhere. When she asked for a dog, she was told to get straight A grades and, when she complied, the pet proved a disappointment, as it didn't live up to her expectations.

Worse followed when her mother died when she was 17 and her father fell apart and left her to deal with her grief alone. She sighs and suggests she has loneliness in her bones. De Barbaro hints that she allows this sensation to take her for a ride and she protests that she is anything but a victim. He rows back from the accusation and wonders if there is anything she can do differently to make and retain some new friends and she promises to do her best. She thanks the doctor for helping her make progress and she declares herself ready to cut the umbilical cord. Yet it's difficult to see how she has reached such a conclusion and there is a degree of scepticism in Hania's silence.

At their last meeting, De Barbaro invites the women to disclose what they have derived from the sessions. With her hair now in a neat bob, Hania says she has come to understand her mother's perspective and feels more nostalgic towards her. She accepts that they will always be very different, but Ewa thinks they could cook a meal together. But De Barbaro urges them to let the umbilical wound heal before they rush into anything.

According to the closing captions, Ewa Szymczyk and Hanna Maciag drew on their personal experiences to create their parts without the use of a script. Yet Lozinski still takes a `written and directed' credit and it isn't explained whether the women are actresses and/or patients of Bogdan de Barbaro. Such obfuscation makes it difficult to take the project at face value, but it in no way detracts from the intensity and commitment of Szymczyk and Maciag, whose `performances' are deeply poignant and eminently plausible. In playing himself, De Barbaro also does his best to give proceedings a dash of therapeutic authenticity, while editor Dorota Wardeszkiewicz tries to avoid melodramatising reactions in her cross-cuts.

Yet this three-hander never rings true. Cinematographer Kacper Lisowski keeps the cameras close on the faces of the participants to capture every changing expression. But, occaionally, he uses jawlines or wisps hair to blur the edge of the frame and soften the image. Maciag's changing appearance also feels too manufactured, as she responds to the freedom to speak by smartening up her hair and clothes. Obviously, patients wouldn't always wear the same things to appointments spaced out over a period of time, but the feeling of visual convolution chips away at the naturalism of the piece and its credibility. Consequently, while this is often disconcerting, it's rarely as harrowing or revealing as Lozinski and De Barbaro intended.

Most cineastes will associate the name of Silvio Soldini with the keenly observed social drama, A Soul Split in Two (1993), the charming romantic comedy, Bread and Tulips (1999), and the trenchant marital saga, Days and Clouds (2007). However, Soldini also makes documentaries and his 2013 study of blind people, Different Eyes, has prompted him to team with regular screenwriters Doriana Leondeff and Davide Lantieri on Il Colore Nascosto delle Cose/Emma, which reunites him with Valerio Golino for the first time since his third feature, The Acrobats (1997). Showing at the Regent Street Cinema on 20 February, this is the latest presentation from the estimable CinemaItaliaUK.

Opening with voices in pitch darkness at a sensory museum, the action quickly centres on Adriano Giannini, a 40 year-old Roman advertising executive, who is having an affair with Valentina Carnelutti, while dating Anna Ferzetti. During the latter's house party, he learns from sister Irene Vannelli that their stepfather has died and upsets her by refusing to go to the funeral. He prefers to keep working with Andrea Pennacchi and Rossana Mortara, whose boss is giving them a hard time over an important contract.

While looking for a blouse for Ferzetti, Giannini recognises a voice from the sensory session and tries to flirt with Valeria Golino, a blind osteopath who is shopping with her friend Rita De Donato. He confesses to having found her voice sensual and shamelessly books an appointment for her to treat a minor shoulder problem. Once again, he attempts to use his considerable charm and even offers his services as a personal shopper. Golino agrees to go for a drink and he is impressed by her independence and how heightened her other senses are.

Golina gets a call from her partially sighted friend, Arianna Scommegna, who has arrived in town for a course and they all go to a restaurant together. When Giannini gets a phone call, Scommegna asks Golina about the newcomer and she admits to being intrigued by him, even though her ex-husband always warned her not to date patients. They wind up back at Golino's flat and she teases Giannini that he is a Casanova who simply wanted to see what sex would be like with a blind woman. But they kiss and spend the night together,

Next morning, with Golino and Scommegna having already left, Giannini mooches round the apartment and takes a phone photo of a white stick on the unmade bed to win a bet with Pennachi that he could get Golino into bed. He doesn't contact Golino and she is a little disappointed, but has plenty to keep her occupied, including tutoring Laura Adriani, a teenager who is finding it difficult to get used to her blindness and is reluctant to complete her education because she feels nobody takes blind people seriously.

When Giannini comes for a second appointment, Golino apologises for sleeping with him and says she is not that kind of girl. He spots a scarf on the floor of the consulting room and is surprised she knows it is red. She explains how important colour is for her and how she likes to visualise things in her mind's eye. His interest is piqued when she claims that being blind forces her to go beneath surface appearance and he applies what she has told him to a Seat car commercial and his boss is pleased.

Keen to thank Golino for her inspiration, Giannini agrees to help her collect some plants for her garden, even though this means changing his plans to go to the beach with Ferzetti. He is fascinated by the way she interacts with the flowers and shrubs and takes her for a drink at a woodland café. Sitting beneath a tree, Giannini describes the scene for Golino, who reveals she had wanted to be a painter as a child. But she had gone blind at 17 and had to re-learn how to negotiate the world. She insists there are compensations, as she got to see what mountains and seas look like and can always remember what her parents and brother looked like. Touched by her delight at envisaging them as forever young, he tells her about being abandoned by his father as six and locked in dark cupboards by his detested stepfather. She gives his arm a consoling touch and he feels at ease with her.

He still spends time with Carnelutti and Ferzetti and tells Golino nothing about his love life, while she struggles to convince Adriani to stop being so angry with the world and resenting mother Laura Nardi for trying to help her. Yet, each time they come together, they enjoy themselves. While cooking in her apartment with Scommegna, however, he spots a mouse and they decamp to his trendy flat, where he gives them a guided tour and is intrigued by the way in which they get their bearings. Moreover, he is jealous when Golino stays out late with an old friend and is disappointed when she has the mouse family removed and she is able to go home.

While out shopping together, they bump into Ferzetti, who is furious that he has misled her about the `poor blind woman' he has been helping out of charity. When Giannini rushes after her, Golino is left alone in a strange supermarket and gets her white cane out of her handbag to find her way to the exit (with Soldini highlighting her sense of disorientation by reducing the depth of field to blur the area around her). She gets into a taxi, but Giannini rushes after her and forces a kiss on her that results in them tumbling into his bed as soon as they get home.

They make plans to go to a concert. But Giannini feels uneasy when he returns to his apartment and agrees to move in with Ferzetti, Angry with Giannini for standing up her friend, Scommegna bundles Golino into a cab and they ring his intercom. However, as he is talking to Ferzetti, he refuses to acknowledge them and Golino storms off into the night and hurts her leg when she bumps into a bicycle. She tries to get back to normal by playing baseball with her team, but she isn't on form and is annoyed with herself when she loses her temper with Adriani and advises her to swallow a handful of pills after she rejects a birthday gift of a lipstick because she sees no point in paying any attention to her appearance.

Realising while sitting in a cinema with Ferzetti that he would rather be there describing the imagery to Golino, Giannini repeatedly tries to call her. He goes to see mother Maria Cristina Mastrangeli in her idyllic hill town and discovers that Vannelli is pregnant. He sits with Mastrangeli in the cemetery and puts his head on her shoulder when she asks if he is happy. Returning home, he phones Golino again. When she finally answers, however, she lies that she is in France and Adriani plucks up the courage to go out on her own (using her stick) to find Giannini at his agency and tell him the truth. Bailing out on an important meeting, he bikes across town to the sensory museum. Golino wants nothing to do with him and darts into the dark room. But Giannini follows and, amidst a hubbub of voices, he kisses her and she sighs.

There's nothing particularly complicated about this elegant, if prosaic drama. Clearly wishing to share how the blind cope with everyday tasks that the sighted do without thinking, Soldini devotes plenty of time to quotidian tasks, such as shopping, pouring tea and using phones and computers. Benefiting from extensive study, Valeria Golino plays her part with deceptive ease, Yet she exerts considerable control over her eyes and head movements, as she conveys both sightlessness and a reliance not only on her other senses, but also on the ordered familiarity of her surroundings.

Laura Adriani and Arianna Scommegna are equally accomplished, although none of the secondary characters is particularly well drawn. Consequently, it's hard to feel much sympathy for Anna Ferzetti, even though she is shabbily treated by the eminently resistible Giannini. The son of Giancarlo Giannini and Livia Giampalmo, he is a fine actor in his own right. But, despite his affection for his motorbike and robot vacuum cleaner, his chauvinist ad exec doesn't seem like the type to be reformed by a good woman. Consequently, there's something tele-novelettish about the romance with Golino and the rarefied space the inhabit.

That said, Marta Maffucci's production design and Matteo Cocco's photography are admirable. Moreover, Soldini makes innovative use of the screen size to comment on the status of Giannini and Golino's relationship. He employs the Academy ratio until they go for their first drink when the screen widens (possibly to 1.66:1) and only returns to 1.33 when Giannini wakes up alone the next morning. Soldini continues to switch between these formats when Golino and Giannini are either alone or together and appears to spread further to 1.85:1 after they make love for the first time. Yet, while this tactic deftly suggests their widening horizons, the return to darkness for the climactic kiss feels rather more contrived, especially as love has to be blind to forgive Giannini's consistently boorish behaviour.

Born in Geneva to a Franco-Belgian Sinologist and an Iranian archaeologist, Maryam Goormaghtigh spent time in Alsace and Hong Kong before studying in Geneva, Lausanne and Brussels. Following the experimental film, Up to HK (2003), she made the documentary, Les Tendres plaintes, and the short road movie, Lonesome Cowboys (both 2005), before joining forces with Blaise Harrison on Bibeleskaes (2006), a `contemplative wandering' that took its name from a traditional Alsatian dish. Going solo again, she followed Safe Distance (2006) with Le Fantôme de Jenny M (2009), which reflected on the sale and emptying of her grandmother's house.

Now, following the playful Vol au Panthéon (2012), which centred on the theft of Philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ashes, Goormaghtigh has made her feature bow with Before Summer Ends, which is showing under the Dochouse banner after a month-long run online as part of MyFrenchFilmFestival. Coming four years after she first started filming Iranian exiles Arash, Hossein and Ashkan, she decided to introduce them to Charlotte and Michèle, whom she had met while working on an earlier project. The resulting two-week shoot was improvised around real events and left Goormaghtigh with around 70 hours of footage, which she has edited down with the aid of Gwénola Héaulme.

Having spent four years studying in Paris, the portly Arash has to fly home to Iran to sit his law exams. With only a fortnight left in France, he is talked into taking a road trip south by best friends Hossein and Ashkan and he jokes about how he will miss the alcohol aisle in the local supermarket after he returns to Tehran. Stopping off to steal some corn cobs from a field, the trio camp out under a shooting starry sky and discuss ties that would keep Arash in France. He explains that he finds it hard to socialise with non-Iranians, but Hossein is convinced that he would stay if he found love (as he had done).

The next day, the pals watch a procession in a small market town and eye up the carnival queen on a throne being pulled through the streets by a tractor. There are lots of other floats and the trio get into the swing of things by offering some Iranian cigarettes to two local lads. At night, they sit on a bench and watch people milling around a funfair, where they ride on the dodgems or try their luck at hooking a duck.

Driving on, Hossein lauds the Muslim philosopher Avicenna, who urged people to drink to cure the vapours. They stop at a supermarket to buy booze and Arash explains that he drinks because he knows he is going to Hell on a high-speed train because he used to avoid going to prayers as a kid. Snoring on a blanket at the camp site, Arash leans on Ashkan and Hossein is amused by how unselfconscious he is about his bulk, as his belly flops out from under his t-shirt. He suggests they go for a swim in the river and the friend slap sunscreen on each other before Ashkan ticks off Hossein for ogling the pretty girls.

Sitting at an outdoor café, Arash reveals his chat-up technique and Hossein agrees that some women will fall for a line from the Persian poet Hafez (who also spoke approvingly of wine), while others would prefer a quotation from Quentin Tarantino. They watch as Ashkan chats to a waitress by the fountain in the square and Arash reads from a Hafez poem about kissing the lips of the woman who serves him drinks. But, as they watch the local girls dancing at an outdoor disco, Hossein confides in Ashkan that Arash finds it difficult talking to strangers and that their plan to waylay him is never going to work.

That night, Hossein dreams of the desert roads of home and tells his mates about meeting a mullah who asked him to chant the Koran. He complied, but sang a brief verse before making his excuses and Arash suggests that the stranger was Hossein's father, who has always been disappointed in him for neglecting his faith and for studying abroad. As it's getting late, Arash makes his excuses to go to bed and the other two laugh about the size of his boxer shorts.

Speeding along the motorway the next day, Ashkan suggests they are all getting fat and Arash delights in telling the story of how he ate solidly for three months in a bid to avoid national service. His ruse worked, but he has since loved eating. As images juxtapose of the French and Iranian countryside, Hossein reveals that he feels more like his true self in France, but always feels happier in Iran. He goes for a swim in a lake with Ashkan, while Arash phones home and lies to his father that he is studying hard in a library.

Driving on through the rain, they decide that Southern France is like Northern Iran and suggest that Arash should move down here. After crashing at another camp site, they pick up twentysomething musicians Charlotte and Michèle at a diner and teach them the Farsi words for breaking wind, as well as showing them the different ways of covering one's head with a scarf. There is lots of laughter and more follows when they reach the coast and Arash swims with them in the sea. Michèle plays a mournful song on her guitar before they spend an evening at another carnival. Ashkan watches the fireworks with Michèle and goes for a ride on a chair-o-plane with Charlotte and the others tick him off for confusing them by flirting with them both.

Next day, Hossein and Arash advise Ashkan on the best t-shirt to wear at an outdoor gig the girls are giving. They spray him with cologne and give him some Iranian cigarettes to give to Charlotte. But, in chatting with her after the show, he manages to insult her drumming. Michèle insists he is simply trying to flirt with her. but Charlotte takes umbrage at his male condescension and skulks away in annoyance. However, they all end up dancing the night away, with Michèle making an unexpected play for Arash while bopping to The Coasters hit, `Down in Mexico'.

While sunbathing the next morning, Hossein gets a phone call from his sister informing him that the bank in Tehran has discovered that he has not enrolled for his final year of study and intends confiscating the family home unless his parents can pay off the last instalment of his grant. Sitting in a rusting children's playground, he tells Ashkan that he should be able to get a loan to pay the debt. But, if he returns to Iran, he will be forced to do two years of military service and will either have to leave his wife behind in France or take her with him and barely see her. He envies Ashkan for having got his service out of the way at 18 and wonders why the army would still want someone of his age.

Ashkan suggests he gets used to the idea that he will never see Iran again, as they wander to the beach to rendezvous with Charlotte and Michèle. However, they fail to show up and they go on to the sand alone to watch a detectorist combing the tideline and a mostly female martial arts class practising their moves. As night falls and Ashkan takes photographs of the moonlight on the rippling waves, Arash confides to Hossein that he always used to feel sad when the moon came out, as it meant it was time to leave his friends and go home. He asks his pal to sing a sentimental old song about the night, as the film ends.

Contrasting the pleasures of exile with wistfully remembered home comforts, this micro-budgeted odyssey is far from a nostalgic wallow, as the triumvirate are forced to confront the cherished freedoms and harsher realities of life in their theocratic homeland and their secular sanctuary. But Goormaghtigh coaxes relaxed `performances' out of her friends (who are only ever referred to by their first names), who improvised through pre-planned situations throughout their meandering expedition around the Midi.

The results are not always riveting, as Goormaghtigh captures the impromptu responses to concocted and actual events in long, mumblecoresque takes. She also struggles to draw a definitive conclusion from the juxtapositioning of the shots of the French and Iranian landscape. But the hulking Arash, the poetic Hossein and the amorous Ashkan make genial travelling companions and there is much to like about Goormaghtigh's lustrous imagery and Marc Siffert's score. But what sets this apart is the sense of compassion and acceptance that underpins the message that, for all our differences, we are all very much alike.