As the title suggests, a celebrated French author finds himself at the centre of Guillaume Nicloux's crime comedy, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. Speculating on Houellebecq's unexplained disappearance for several days during a book tour in 2011, this is a consistently amusing satire on contemporary French society that has drawn comparisons with a couple of innovative sitcoms, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Michael Winterbottom's The Trip. In fact, this owes much to those postmodernist digressions that Quentin Tarantino used to delight in inserting into his early pictures and the sight of the author of Whatever (1994), Atomised (1998) and Platform (2001) debating the merits of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with a body builder and a mixed martial arts fighter should set highbrow pulses racing

During the course of a perfectly ordinary Parisian morning, Michel Houellebecq catches up with a little reading and tries to write some poetry before contacting architect Veran Mauberret to discuss renovations to his kitchen. The grouchy, dishevelled chain-smoker is not afraid to express his opinions and dismisses Le Courbusier and Scandinavian interior design with the same querulousness with which he trashes Mozart during a later conversation with old friend Françoise Lebrun, whose piano playing he criticises without compunction. However, he is more flirtatious with Béatrice Mendy when he goes to buy vegetables and it's possible that they may once have been more than just vendor and customer.

But as Houellebecq goes about his day, as it becomes clear that he is being followed back to his plush high-rise apartment by Maxime Lefrançois, Mathieu Nicourt and ringleader Luc Schwarz. The bodybuilder and the MMA bruiser are hardly the stealthiest stalkers in the history of kidnapping, but they succeed with surprising ease in bundling their quarry into a coffin-like metal box (with drilled air holes) and carry him to their vehicle in broad daylight, without arousing any suspicion whatsoever.

Driving into the deepest suburbs, they arrive at a village where Nicourt's parents live in what seems to be a motor scrap yard. Initially, Houellebecq resents being chained to a bed in a girl's room, especially as he has had his lighter confiscated. However, André and Ginette Suchotzky are clearly excited at having a famous person under their roof and they start fussing over Houellebecq, as they ply him with Polish sausage and Spanish wine. He also palsp up with Polish employee Ian Turiak, who lives in a cabin in the compound and shows Houllebecq a framed photograph of his parents.

The unmasked abductors also start to take a shine to Houellebecq and he is soon involved in earnest discussions on everything from art and HP Lovecraft through the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to the plight of Europe and the state of French democracy. Although he calls for a war against Belgium, much of his ire is directed at President François Hollande. But Houellebecq is also prepared to debate the creative process and the secret of Alexandrine poetry in return for some boxing lessons from Lefrançois and Nicourt.

One thing bothers Schwarz, however. Nobody seems particularly willing to pay a ransom. He has been negotiating with lawyer Karim Achoui, who represents the unknown person who sanctioned the snatch. But he proves evasive and Schwarz begins to wonder whether Houellebecq has arranged the entire charade to garner a little publicity. However, he seems increasingly content in his captivity, as not only does he have a willing audience for his often inflammatory views, but he is also being treated more like an honoured guest than a hostage. Indeed, he is even presented with prostitute Marie Bourjala to help celebrate his birthday, while a doctor is summoned when he complains of earache.

But something has to give and this is where Nicloux's droll divertissement starts to come unstuck. Back in 2011, rumours had circulated that Houellebecq had been targeted by Al-Qaeda for his contentious statements on Islam. But, when he resurfaced after several days, the fiftysomething provided no explanations and this sense of anti-climax carries over into the film. It's not a serious flaw, as the main pleasures come from watching Houellebecq (who had himself murdered in his 2010 novel, The Map and the Territory) bantering in a semi-improvisatory, misanthropic manner with a trio of fellow non-actors, who prove surprisingly sharp for a bodybuilder, an MMA pug and a former Israeli soldier who worked a security guard for Karl Lagerfeld.

Amusingly designed by Didier Abot and Olivier Radot, Houellebecq's prison is cosily kitschy and contrasts markedly with his ultra-chic abode. But the craft credits are uniformly solid, with Christophe Offenstein's prying camerawork and Guy Lecorne's twitchy editing nicely tempering the toing and froing of the badinage with a hint of suspense. Building on the reputation forged with La Poulpe (1998) and The Stone Council (2006) for wry comedy and unpredictable thrillers, Nicloux indulges himself with an in-joke, as he has Houellebecq read the tie-in edition of Denis Diderot's The Nun that accompanied his 2013 screen adaptation. But, for the most part, he directs with a light touch that allows his unconventional leads to explore both their unique chemistry and some genuinely outrageous sentiments.

If Houellebecq's experiences often seem stranger than fiction, Robin Wright's futuristic experiences feel chillingly real in Israeli animator Ari Folman's The Congress, a sleek if rather unexpected follow-up to Waltz With Bashir (2008). Five years in the making and taking its inspiration from Stanislaw Lem's darkly satirical novel, The Futurological Congress, this live-action/animation hybrid marks something of a departure for Folman, as he refocuses the anti-Communist ire of the original on to America's pharmaceutical giants and the various conglomerates controlling the Hollywood film studios. But, in exploring the illusory nature of media truth, the diminution of free choice and the exponential creep of capitalism, this visually striking picture isn't always intellectually acute as it might be. Nevertheless, Wright and her co-stars commit admirably to the conceit, while Folman is equally well served by production designer David Polonski, animation director Yoni Goodman, sound designer Aviv Aldema and composer Max Richter.

Actress Robin Wright pays a visit to agent Harvey Keitel, who laments that she threw away her early fame by consistently picking the wrong men and a succession of bad movies. He also criticises her for devoting more time to son Kodi Smit-McPhee than her career. However, Keitel is prepared to give her one last chance, as an opportunity has come up to put her back on top and he urges her to seize it. But Wright has to rush away because airport security has caught Smit-McPhee flying a kite close to the perimeter fence and sister Sami Gayle teases him when he is brought home and told to behave.

Passing a poster for The Princess Bride, Wright sighs wistfully as she approaches the Miramount studio. Production chief Danny Huston greets her warmly and gushes that he is going to make her the star she should have been. He explains that technology now exists to take a performer's likeness and history and digitally manipulate it to fit any role in any scenario. Thus, she could become an immortal icon without ever having to work again. However, Wright hates the idea of losing control of her own image and storm out of the office, as Huston calls after her that she has 30 days to accept his offer and then he will be powerless to help her

Returning home, Wright is concerned that Smit-McPhee seems listless. He encourages her to try flying his kite and she feels a sense of contentment and control that she finds liberating. But her reverie is interrupted by Keitel arriving with studio underling Michael Stahl-David, who shows her a sample scene featuring Sarah Shahi and Keitel enthuses that she will be guaranteed to give nothing but brilliant performances from now on. Gayle is impressed and warns her mother that this isn't the time to be technophobic. But, while Keitel reminds her that she can stay a star without having to endure the trials of shooting and the tantrums of her directors and co-stars, Stahl-David cautions that nothing can be changed once the scanning process has taken place.

Wright remains unconvinced, however, and it is only when doctor Paul Giamatti informs her that Smit-McPhee is slowly losing his hearing and sight that she decides to accept Huston's terms and dedicate herself to caring for her child. Huston congratulates her on making a wise choice and assures her that films as we know them will rapidly disappear. He notes the genres she wishes to avoid and promises to keep her 34 for the next 20 years before entrusting her to cinematographer Christopher B. Duncan, who will conduct her scan.

Ushered into a vast dome, Wright is asked to display a range of emotions. However, she struggles to respond to order and only starts to change her expression when Keitel comes into the booth and begins telling a rambling anecdote about how he became an agent and learned how to exploit the weaknesses of his clients to guide them towards success. He concludes by admitting that he loves her, even though she has often been difficult to handle, and hopes that she finally gets the life she deserves. As he falls silent, Wright realises she has just given her final performance.

A caption shifts the action forward two decades and Wright appears at the wheel of a fast car speeding towards Abrama City, where she is due to attend the Futurist Congress in a 1000-storey hotel. Security guard John Lacy informs her that she is about to enter the Restricted Animated Zone and that she will only be able to leave through his checkpoint. He hands her an ampoule and tells her to sniff it as she drives along the desert road.

Suddenly, Wright turns from human being to animated avatar and she finds herself bowling along a rainbow route that passes through waves bearing a selection of ships with faces and an array of friendly critters. A screen appear in front of her and it plays the trailer for the latest Rebel Robot Robin picture and Wright is so dismayed by what her image has become that she plunges off a precipice and lands in an end-of-the-pier town, where she is welcomed at the door of the hotel by a diminutive bellboy.

Venturing inside, Wright sees the lobby filled with celebrities like John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Che Guevara, Pablo Picasso and Elizabeth Taylor, who appear to change form on inhaling a mysterious substance. She is nonplussed by their eccentric behaviour and is relieved to get a call from Smit-McPhee, who is being treated in a hospital room. Wright confides that it feels odd being a cartoon and she barely recognises herself when she sees Rebel Robot Robin giving an interview to promote her latest adventure. She is shown to her room by busboy Kevin Thompson, who reminds her that everything she experiences is happening in her mind and Wright realises that the ampoule must have contained some sort of psychedelic drug.

No longer sure what is real and what is imagined, Wright calls Huston and only agrees to sign a new contract if he stops messing with her mind. She finds herself singing in a spotlight beam and panics when the cops raid the venue. However, she realises she is dreaming when she notices that Huston is the chief of police and rises for her morning meeting. Waiting outside Huston's office, she gets chatting to Tom Cruise (voiced by Evan Ferrante), who informs her that they are the last stars in cinema, as everyone else has become a character actor.

He boasts that he has been feeding kids in Africa on behalf of UNICEF and Wright asks why everyone at the Congress is behaving so erratically. Cruise explains that the film industry is about to become obsolete because viewers will soon to able to ingest a substance and imagine a movie in their heads without there being any need to shoot it. Moreover, they will be able to headline in the guise of their favourite stars. Thus, Miramount want him and Wright to sign extensions to their contracts, as people still want them to feature in their DIY plots. Cruise finds this gratifying, as he has never ceased to be an actor in his soul and still enjoys the adulation.

Wright gazes off down the corridor and sees a band playing in a large arena. A man walks on to the stage and announces that the Miramount-Nagasaki corporation has created an amazing new world in pill form. He further declares that scientists have cracked the chemical formula of free choice and that there is no need for anyone to be frustrated any longer. He takes a sniff of the ampoule in his hand and turns into Clint Eastwood, Jesus Christ and Rebel Robot Robin. The company president comes forward to introduce Wright. But, as she is fixed in the crosshairs of an unseen rifle, Wright goes off message and denounces Big Pharma for neglecting its duty to cure disease in order to produce a mind control drug that lead everyone to die of guilt.

She calls herself a prophet of doom, as she is dragged into the wings. But mayhem ensues when the president is assassinated and Wright is swept off her feet by Jon Hamm, who places a breathing helmet over her head as giant bugs release a purple gas. Hamm tells Wright that they are trapped in their avatars, but she is distracted by the sight of her daughter fighting with the anti-Miramount rebels. Descending into a flooded room, Hamm orders Wright to stay awake and not succumb to hallucinogenic poisoning. However, she looks up to see Huston dangling from a chopper by a rope. He tells her that he is the chief of police and has come to take her to safety.

But Wright wakes from this latest dream to discover that Hamm is the animator responsible for Rebel Robot Robin. He lets slip that he has fallen in love with her in the 20 years he has been drawing her, even though he has never seen any of her live-action films. She is charmed by his awkwardness, but she seeks reassurance that she is actually awake when news comes through that guerillas have taken over the management floor and have stopped the flow of mind-bending chemicals into the water supply. Hamm nods and reveals that he had become so obsessed with Wright that he feared he would be taken off her pictures. So, he went looking for the real woman in order to find new movements and expressions to make her character even more engaging and he shows Wright some black-and-white footage of her playing a heroic pilot riding on a bomb like Chill Wills in Dr Strangelove.

However, when Wright is roused from her next sleep, she finds Huston standing beside her in a frogman's outfit. He explains that Hamm has disappeared and that there is no one to protect her from the consequences of her reckless folly on the stage. Marching Wright to the hotel roof, Huston accuses Wright of committing professional suicide and positions her in front of a firing squad. She asks for a bullet in the head, but Huston insists that this is life not an hallucination and pulls the trigger of his gun.

Wright wakes in hospital, where a doctor informs her that she is going to be frozen because she has fallen so deeply into an imagined state. Duncan helps lower her into a container and Wright is seen shivering as she wanders a perishing landscape. She longs to see Smit-McPhee and, just as the thought enters her head, his kite flies overhead and it pulls them along the ice as the cling to each other in a desperate embrace.

Yet again, Wright wakes from her trance. This time, she finds herself in a bedroom with a Grace Jones lookalike, who tells her that she has to return to childhood in order to rebuild her reality. Hamm enters and says he is glad she has finally thawed out. However, he bears the bad tidings that Smit-McPhee has gone missing and reveals that their only hope is to go to the big city and follow the few clues they have to his whereabouts. In order to reach New York, they have to cross a field that appears to have become a grotesque version of Eden and Wright realises that she has entered a place in which old concepts of time have lost all meaning.

The Big Apple has become a mass of hanging gardens and Wright learns that ego, competition and war have been outlawed to ensure that everyone is who they want to be. People emit pheromones that allow them to remain inn a state of bliss and Wright watches as Yoko Ono wanders past and skyscrapers blast off like rockets. Hamm leads Wright to a street that contains all knowledge and tells her that he has experienced all of the Greek myths at first-hand. He explains that everyone is free to feel whatever they wish and, so, Wright goes in search of a doctor who can supply her with a potion that can turn her hands into wings. As a voice sings `Forever Young' on the soundtrack, Wright and Hamm fly above the metropolis and land in a wilderness beyond its limits.

Hamm informs Wright that Gayle has become a naturalist, but advises against trying to find her, as she would no longer recognise her own mother. Undaunted, Wright takes off again and lands at her old home beside the airport. She finds one of Smit-McPhee's old kites and she sends it airborne, only for it to slip its string and cause a plane to crash and set off a chain of explosions across the airfield. Wright and Hamm make love as flowers spring up around them and she experiences pleasure for what seems to be the first time in ages.

They go to a restaurant, where the lobster serves itself and Michael Jackson is one of the waiters. Wright asks how she can escape this chemical party and reach the world beyond, but Hamm admits he isn't sure, as he doesn't know how to make the return journey. He produces a capsule from his teeth and informs Wright that it causes a whiteout that removes all the chemicals from her system. She thanks him and promises to remember him, as she swallows the drug and leaves behind a place of idealised beauty and finds herself in a rundown live-action reality, in which people in rags are huddled together and everyone looks old and tired.

Wright searches for Smit-McPhee and an ailing black lady sitting alone urges her to check at the doctor's surgery nearby. Taking a train crowded with derelicts, Wright reaches a place with kites and airships moored by ropes and disembarks to climb into a balloon. It takes her to a light-filled airship that is filled with spotless, seemingly affluent people who inhabit another world from the one she has just left behind. She tracks down Giamatti, who has aged considerably. However, he embraces her warmly and sighs that little has really changed, as people still have the option to face reality or try to hide away in dreams fuelled by anti-depressants.

Giamatti suddenly turns serious and informs Wright that Smit-McPhee waited 19 years for her to come and fetch him. However, when he was almost totally blind and had all but given up hope, he decided to cross over and find her. Wright asks where she can find him, but Giamatti says she would never be able to recognise him now, even if she returned to the same place he happened to be inhabiting. He explains that her landing spot in the dream world would depend upon chemistry and imagination. But Wright insists she is prepared to take her chances and she returns to the animated netherworld, in which she makes films and enjoys being a mother. However, she returns to the Congress and succeeds in arriving at the airship just before Smit-McPhee makes his decision to cross to the other side. She follows him and she alights to find him working on a model of an early flying machine. He turns to see her and the action ends on a freeze frame.

As should be readily apparent from reading the synopsis, this is a film that has to be seen and experienced rather than described and assessed. There are too many fleeting details and passing references to famous people to record them all in a simple outline and, even then, the prose could rarely do justice to the fluidity and vibrancy of the visuals. Yet, while this is rarely anything but aesthetically dazzling, it is also bereft of humour and feels dramatically and philosophically fraught, as though Folman had been making up the entire scenario as he went along while under the influence of some LemSD.

The opening live-action segment is stiff, overlong and far from convincing, as Folman struggles to set his scene. As a result, the surreally fantastical sequences feel detached in a way that, say, the Pepperland scenes in George Dunning's equally trippy Yellow Submarine (1968) were not. However, this often feels as though Ralph Bakshi's Cool World (1992) and Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels (2008) had crashed head on and this reliance on animation seriously undermines the fulmination against a Hollywood philistinism that seems curiously outmoded. The cast works hard, but if they get what Folman is striving to say they are prevented from fully conveying it by being rendered as mediocre cartoons rather than flesh-and-blood humans raging against the machine. .

A refusal to give up also characterises the cop played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas in Mikkel Nørgaard's The Keeper of Lost Causes, which has been adapted from the first of Jussi Adler-Olsen's five Department Q novels by Nikolaj Arcel, who not only reworked Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo for fellow Dane Niels Arden Oplev in 2009, but who also wrote and directed the much-admired King's Game (2004) and A Royal Affair (2012). However, while all the pieces are there for this to be a compelling addition to the ScandiCrime screen canon, they stubbornly refuse to slot into place. Indeed, so many familiar tropes are trotted out that this often feels like a police procedural pastiche. One suspects that Borgen alumnus Nørgaard needed a mini-series to do justice to the establishment subtexts moiling beneath the surface. But, while it may lack complexity and a gratifying gallery of suspects, this still holds the attention and represents a massive improvement on Nørgaard's previous feature, Klown (2010).

Homicide cop Nikolaj Lie Kaas isn't one for the rules. However, when his maverick streak leads to one partner being killed and another being paralysed, he is hauled over the coals by commander Søren Pilmark and dispatched to Department Q, a basement unit that specialises in cold cases. He is teamed with taciturn Syrian Fares Fares, who is content to stay in the shadows and shuffle papers between cups of strong coffee. But Kaas is a man of action and he decides to investigate the supposed suicide of Sonja Richter, an aspiring politician who disappeared some years earlier while travelling on a car ferry with her brother, Mikkel Boe Følsgaard, who had been brain damaged and had lost the power of speech in the childhood car crash that had killed their parents.

As Kaas and Fares take the same boat, Nørgaard flashes back to the events that led to Richter being abducted and deposited in a pressure chamber by an unseen assailant. However, the audience is left in the darkness along with Richter about the precise motive for her plight. Instead, the focus returns to the cops incurring Pilmark's ire by visiting the traumatised Følsgaard in his care home and Richter's former politician lover, Rasmus Botoft, in his office. They also harass palled cop Michael Brostrup, who conducted the original investigation. But Kaas is not one to take a warning literally and they follow the clues provided by a party conference dossier to travel to Sweden in search of Magnus Millang, whose photograph had caused Følsgaard to have a panic attack.

On reaching Millang's home town, however, Kaas and Fares discover that he is not the man in the picture and they realise that someone must have assumed his identity at the conference when they learn that he drowned in a boating accident shortly after Richter disappeared. His friend Eric Ericson informs them that Millang was raised in an orphanage and the pair pay it a visit, even though they have been suspended for insubordination. The elderly manager remembers that Millang was inseparable from Morten Kirkskov, a troubled child whose father had perished in a traffic accident and who had been billeted at the home because wheelchair-bound mother Marie-Louise Coninck was unfit to raise him.

At this juncture, Nørgaard inserts slow-motion flashback showing Richter and Kirkskov as children (Olivia Holden and Lucas Lynggaard Tønnesen) travelling in their respective family cars. As they pass each other on a country road, she pulls tongues at him and he looks on in bemusement as she puts her hands over her father's eyes just as a truck comes hurtling towards them. The horror of the collision is conveyed in disconcerting detail before a dazed boy looks out from the wreckage to see a girl in a red dress blithely trying to catch snowflakes amidst the carnage.

Suddenly, the puzzle makes sense and Kaas and Fares speed to the farm where Kirkskov is preparing to turn off Richter's air supply in the barn. Unpersuaded by Coninck's insistence that her son is away at sea, Kaas begins snooping around the outhouses and Kirkskov agrees to being questioned back in Copenhagen in order to ensure Richter's demise. However, Kaas spots a generator and rows of petrol cans outside the barn and realises that Richter is being held prisoner and tells Fares to stop the car. Kirkskov stabs Fares and, wrestling free from Kaas, runs back towards the farm.

Kaas calls Pilmark for back-up and climbs a ladder to the chamber control panel in a bid to reconnect the air supply. He uses the intercom to urge Richter to stay strong, but Kirkskov comes up behind him with a choke rope. All seems lost until the wounded Fares arrives with an iron bar. Having been reassured that Richter is going to make a full recovery, Kaas turns down Pilmark's offer to return to Homicide, in order to continue his partnership with Fares in Department Q.

The sequel set up in the closing shot, The Absent One, is already being filmed with the same principals. However, there is room for improvement for both Nørgaard and Arcel. The main area they need to address is structure, as the frequent shifts between the ongoing investigation and past events to which the detectives are not privy makes for frustrating viewing. They could also do with reining in the police clichés, as Kaas and Pilmark come close to being walking caricatures. Fares is more interesting as the empathetic Muslim who finally succeeds in making the scowling Kaas smile. But everyone seems too aware of Nordic Noir convention for the action to feel distinctive.

The mystery itself isn't particularly taxing and there is always something unsatisfying about a whodunit that introduces the culprit in the final reel. Nevertheless, editors Morten Egholm and Martin Schade slip between time frames with edgy efficiency, even though they struggle to incorporate subplots involving Kaas's hospitalised partner (Troels Lyby) and delinquent stepson (Anton Honik). Production designer Rasmus Thjellesen also does well in conjuring up the labyrinthine gloom of Dept. Q, while cinematographer Eric Kress makes unsettling use of greenish light and shadow in the pressure chamber sequences, particularly when Richter is forced to perform a little DIY dentistry with a pair of pliers.

Somewhat surprisingly, this topped the Danish box-office charts for seven weeks. But British fans of Waking the Dead and New Tricks will find the whole cold case angle a bit overly familiar. However, the bleak brutality that has become the leitmotif of screen Scandi is solidly established and sustained and Nørgaard ably plays the Hitchcockian game of telling the audience what is going to happen and then making them wait and watch as it does. Consequently, even if the plot is a touch predictable and Patrick Andrén, Uno Helmersson and Johan Söderqvist's score does little to ramp up the suspense, the overall picture is undeniably atmospheric.

Despite avoiding outright Sopranos caricature, there's still a burlesque feel to the wiseguys on show in John Slattery's God's Pocket, an adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel that marks the Mad Men star's directorial debut. This was also one of the last films completed by Philip Seymour Hoffman before his unfortunate demise in February and it confirms the extent to which he will be missed by American independent cinema. But, while his palooking outsider lurches between crises with an appealing haplessness, Slattery and co-writer Alex Metcalf struggle to establish the geography or capture the enclavish atmosphere of the eponymous South Philadelphia neighbourhood in what appears to be the early 1980s.

In a voiceover accompanying footage of a fractious funeral, newspaper columnist Richard Jenkins explains that God's Pocket is a great place to live, providing you're a native. Serial loser Philip Seymour Hoffman has been accepted (albeit with reservations) because he is married to local beauty Christina Hendricks. But, no matter how hard he tries to fit in, he will never be accepted or accorded the latitude granted Hendricks's mouthy 22 year-old son, Caleb Landry Jones, who struts around the hospital building site where he is employed, flicking his switchblade and making racist remarks to veteran labourer, Arthur French.

Hoffman has struck a deal with florist John Turturro and crook Domenick Lombardozzi to steal a refrigerator meat container and flog the contents to butchers across the neighbourhood. As they drive, Hoffman enthuses about a horse running in an upcoming race and reveals how he hopes to cash in on its long odds. He flinches at the brutality Lombardozzi uses to persuade the driver to abandon his rig and gets teased by Turturro when he thinks he is going to be pulled over by a highway patrol.

But, just as Hoffman has a narrow escape, Jones gets what's coming to him, as French responds to the latest taunt by caving in his skull with a metal bar and all but the stuttering Jonathan Gordon agree to back foreman Glenn Fleshler's story that Jones was struck by a swinging winch hook. Meanwhile, Hoffman and Turturro have taken the meat back to the florist shop the latter runs with Joyce Van Patten and he asks his buddy for a loan to pay back the $20,000 he owes Lombardozzi. Hoffman readily agrees, but realises on getting home that he will need all his spare cash to pay for Jones's funeral.

Editor Christopher McCann is also seeking answers after his paper prints an inaccurate report of Jones's demise and he warns Jenkins that he will be fired unless he stops wasting his time boozing and sleeping with journalism graduates like Sophia Takal. As he laps up her hero worship, Hoffman receives the sympathy of the regulars at Peter Gerety's bar and he thanks them for the contribution they have made towards the funeral expenses. However, any hopes Hoffman might have had of cutting corners are scotched by undertaker Eddie Marsan, who cautions him against trying to fob Hendricks off with a cheap coffin for her only boy.

She is being consoled by Rebecca Kling and Molly Price, who have little time for Hoffman and berate him for sleeping in Jones's bed rather than on the sofa. He is grateful to Marsan, therefore, for dragging him upstairs to find a burial suit. But he reminds him that he will expect to be paid promptly for the mahogany casket. What's more, the inconsolable Hendricks suspects foul play and orders Hoffman to make some inquiries around the Pocket. Aware that his outsider status will preclude him from ascertaining the truth, Hoffman delegates this duty to Turturro, who, in turn, sub-contracts it to Lombardozzi, who promises to ask around.

Power cuts have prevented Turturro from preparing the stolen meat for sale, and, so, Hoffman is grateful to Bill Buell, Rebecca Kling and Prudence Wright Holmes for raising $1400 in a jar on the bar at the Hollywood. They also play up to Jenkins when he drops into the bar to get the lowdown on the Jones story, while cops Matthew Lawler and Danny Mastrogiorgio are so taken with Hendricks that they agree to pay a return visit to what she is convinced is the scene of a crime. Angry at being threatened by Fleshler, Gordon tries to tell the officers that a crime has been committed, but he takes so long blurting out his accusation that they lose patience with him and leave convinced there has been a tragic accident.

Fleshler is working late alone when Lombardozzi arrives on site with back-up Chris Cardona and Michael Kaycheck. However, Fleshler is anything but intimidated by them and gouges out an eye in staging an impressive rearguard with his shovel. Lombardozzi blames Turrurro for the incident, but he is too busy watching his horse beat Hoffman's surefire tip to care. Indeed, his winnings go some way to paying off his debt and he still has enough over to give to Hoffman, who has just blown the bar money in the hope of winning enough to pay for the entire funeral.

Marsan is unimpressed by Hoffman's sob story, however, and he tries to attack him before regaining his composure. As he goes to fetch a beer, Jenkins pays a call on Hendricks and is instantly smitten by her cascading tresses and curvaceous figure. He pats her hand while reassuring her that the paper will do the right thing by her child and uses a casual remark about Jones loving animals to invite Hendricks to see the plot of land he owns beside a lake. She accepts demurely, just as Hoffman gets turfed out of the funeral parlour in the rain and trips over the corpse that has been dumped unceremoniously in a back alley. Struggling through the puddles, Hoffman lugs Jones to his refrigerated meat van and dumps him inside. He gets home to see Jenkins and Hendricks coming downstairs. But, while he suspects nothing, he is overcome with a sense of inadequacy and rushes to the bathroom to throw up rather than tell his wife the awful truth.

The following morning, Hoffman gets a rollocking from Price, who warns him that he had better not mess up over the funeral. But his efforts to see some of the stolen beef are confounded by Jones's presence in the corner of the van and he finds himself left to his own devices after Van Patten guns down Lombardozzi and his oppo when they come to the shop seeking revenge on Turturro. As they flee to Florida, Jenkins drives Hendricks to a meadow outside the city and shows her the view they would have if he built their dream home. He asks how she would cope having a 60 year-old celebrity around and she lies back with him on the picnic rug.

Now desperate to raise funds, Hoffman goes to secondhand dealer Lenny Venito to cut a deal for his truck. As they chat in the office, Hoffman is horrified to see mechanic Michael Rogers take the vehicle for a test drive and runs after it in a frantic bid to prevent anyone from finding the deep-frozen Jones in the back. However, Rogers panics when he catches sight of Hoffman in the wing mirror and causes a crash at some traffic lights. The collision coincides with Jenkins and Hendricks reaching orgasm and all three lie on their backs gazing up at the clouds. But, as Jenkins tells Hendricks that he loves her, the cuckolded Hoffman slinks back to the garage to demand that Venito pays top dollar for the written-off van.

Relieved to hand over the full amount to the penitent Marsan (who promises to retrieve Jones from the morgue), Hoffman goes to the Hollywood for a drink. However, Bill Buell sidles over to inform him that his wife has slept with Jenkins and Hoffman tries to explain that the writer is merely helping he find out what happened to Jones. Tired of the gossiping deadbeats who prop up his bar, Gerety calls time and puts up the house lights. But, back home, Hoffman sits silently in the darkness, as Hendricks sneaks in from a rendezvous with Jenkins and he sits in the gloom unable to control a single facet of his existence.

Enraged by the report of Jones's second death, Hendricks hits Hoffman about the head with the morning newspaper. He tries to calm her down by telling her that having money problems is nothing to be ashamed of and she realises that he must have learned of her infidelity when he opines that everyone in the Pocket knows each other's business anyway. Jenkins says much the same thing in his column, as he credits the residents for struggling on in the face of overwhelming odds. He smiles from his car as Hoffman punches Marsan on the steps of the funeral home and moons over Hendricks, as she mourns her son.

However, she fails to return his calls and Jenkins wanders into the Hollywood just as French returns to work. Jenkins orders a beer, but Gerety suggests he should leave, as people are livid about his latest column. He tries to explain that he was paying them a compliment, but bruisers Michael Drayer and Eddie McGee are in no mood to listen and Gerety tells Hoffman not to interfere when he tries to come to Jenkins's defence. As the scuffle spills into the street, Hendricks comes to see what the fuss is about and the momentary distraction proves Jenkins's downfall, as he disappears under a blizzard of kicks and blows. His body is still lying in the middle of the road, long after everyone has melted away. But his fate remains a mystery, as the action closes with Hoffman laying low with Turturro and Van Patten in their new trailer in Florida, while he works out what to do next.

Better received in this country than the United States, this is a Runyonesque romp that owes its ring of authenticity to the fact that Dexter was once a Jenkins-style columnist on the Philadelphia Daily News. Indeed, he had his back and pelvis broken by the denizens of Devil's Pocket in 1981, when he was caught up in an attack on heavyweight boxer Tex Cobb. Quite how much autobiographical detail informs the Jenkins character is open to conjecture, but Dexter's self-depracatory himour seeps into every scene in this shruggingly generous paean to the pride and prejudice of insular blue-collar communities.

The performances are splendid and feel like a throwback to the post-Code American cinema of the early 1970s. Hoffman is particularly impressive as the sad sack incapable whose last good decision seems to have been marrying Hendricks. She also does well as the seeming innocent with the flinty heart of a Lady Macbeth and her scenes with the impeccable Jenkins are simultaneously sweet and seedy. Marsan and Turturro contribute knowing cameos, but every minor role (no matter how shorthanded) feels perfectly cast in order to catch the human spirt of the place. Yet, in spite of the excellence of Lance Acord's muted imagery and Roshelle Berliner's cosily shabby interiors, Slattery never quite nails what it is that distinguishes God's Pocket physically and sociologically from any other rundown suburb.