Parky at the Pictures (DVD 13/4/2017)

Rising before six one Monday morning, Paterson (Adam Driver) kisses Iranian-American partner Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and eats a bowl of Cheerios under the watchful gaze of her bulldog Marvin before heading off to work. He carries a little grey lunchbox, as he walks to the bus garage, where he takes time to scribble a poem about a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches in his notebook before heading into the New Jersey city of Paterson. As he drives, he listens to the inconsequential conversations of his passengers and keeps mulling over the verse that he eventually writes down during a break he shares with a postcard of Dante Alighieri.

On arriving at his bungalow home, Paterson straightens the wonky mailbox pillar and compliments Laura on the curtains she has hand-painted with her trademark black-and-white design. She has ambitions to open a cupcake stall at the farmer's market and encourages Paterson to find a publisher for his poetry. But he would much rather take Marvin for a walk and slip into the bar run by Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley). He chats briefly with brothers Sam and Dave (Trevor and Troy Parham) and sips his beer as Doc moves a piece on a chessboard on the counter.

The next morning, he listens to the complaints of garage supervisor Donny (Rizwan Manji) before eavesdropping on two blue-collar pals boasting about recent encounters with women that draws the ire of a black female passenger as she disembarks. That night, Laura urges Paterson to photocopy his poems before anything happens to them and begs him to allow her to buy a guitar on Ebay so she can fulfil her new ambition to become a Country-and-Western star. Despite knowing they can't afford to waste $200, he gives his consent and is rewarded with a kiss before being dispatched to walk Marvin.

As he strolls through the neighbourhood, Paterson is advised by some lads in a car to make sure fhat Marvin doesn't get dognapped. Yet, as usual, he ties him to the post outside the bar, where Doc is debating whether to add a cutting about Iggy Pop to his wall of fame. They become involved, however, in a tiff between Marie (Chasten Harmon) and Everett (William Jackson Harper) that culminates in them getting the giggles when Doc commends Everett on the delivery of his tale of woe about being unloved and he takes offence at the suggestion that he should become an actor because he already is one.

After an unremarkable Wednesday on the road, composing poems about dimensions and legs with a mind of their own, Paterson comes home to upright the mailbox and discover he is having quinoa for dinner. Marvin seems unimpressed and pulls hard on his lead during their walk. But he pauses outside the laudromat to listen to Method Man (Cliff Smith) working on a rap while his washing spins. It's quiet at the bar and Paterson watches Doc chatting to a female customer, while two men play chess in a corner. He stares into his beer and seems content with his lot.

Thursday dawns and Paterson gazes at Laura as she dozes with her hair spread over the pillow. He passes through the rundown area adjoining the Market Street depot and overhears a couple of students discussing the exploits of a 19th-century Italian anarchist weaver. On his break, he writes a poem about waking up next to Laura and fearing she will one day see him for the ordinary Joe he is. As he knocks off, Donny regales him with his latest problems before Paterson stops to sit with a tweenage girl (Sophia Muller) who is waiting for her mother and twin sister. She shows him the secret notebook in which she writes her poems and reads him one about rain and the dirty mirrors made by puddles.

He is touched by her words and she seems pleased that a bus driver has heard of Emily Dickinson. Over a supper of cheddar and sprout pie, Laura tells Paterson that she read online that Petrarch kept his poems to his own Laura in a secret book. She badgers him to make copies of his writing at the weekend and he promises he will. Distracted by a picture of a waterfall on the wall, he recites part of the girl's poem and Laura says it sounds like one of his and teases him by muddling the name of his favourite poet, William Carlos Williams. He spots a large bag of flour in the kitchen and she says it is her turn to make cupcakes for the farmer's market. Looking over at Marvin asleep on his armchair, he gulps down water to take away the taste of the pie before gamely eating on.

At the bar, Paterson and Doc discuss Bud Abbott, who not only has a statue in Paterson, but also a park named in his honour. They start running through the `Who's on First' sketch when Doc's wife (Johnnie Mae) bursts in and demands that he replaces the money he took from her savings or there will be big trouble. He promises to pay her back after the weekend chess tournament, but she just snorts incredulously. As Paterson asks Doc if he is okay, Marie snaps at Everett and storms out of the bar, leaving Paterson to nurse his beer in gratitude that Laura understands him so well.

Waking alone on Friday morning, Paterson finds Laura icing cupcakes in the kitchen. Marvin barks when they kiss and whines in the hope of being fed a tidbit. Laura is excited about the market and the fact that her guitar is due to be delivered. But, while Paterson is less convinced that she is on the verge of a double career breakthrough, he mumbles encouragement before heading to the depot to begin on a new poem. He is interrupted by Donny, who is too stressed to even discuss his problems. But Paterson gets a problem of his own when the electrics fail and he has to wait for help on the pavement with his passengers. But he is not alone in feeling frustrated, as Marvin is so peeved by Laura strumming her harlequin guitar that he scuttles into the front garden to push against the mailbox post before returning indoors.

Stopping en route to give some money to a homeless person, Paterson arrives home to be serenaded with the part of `I've Been Working on the Railroad' that Laura has learned to play. He is impressed and she asks if they can have takeaway pizza for supper so she can conquer the whole song. She notices her husband looks tired and implores him to get a mobile phone for emergencies. But he insists the world worked fine before them and flatly refuses to be at everyone's beck and call all of the time.

In the bar that night, Doc teases Paterson about rescuing his passengers from a potential fireball. Marie comes in and complains that Everett refuses to accept that she is not in love with him. As they talk, he bursts in brandishing a gun and shouts that he will kill Marie or himself unless she relents. Seizing his moment, Paterson disarms him by knocking him to the floor. But Doc calmly fires the pop gun at Everett's and tells him to stop upsetting his customers. Marie thanks Paterson for being a hero, but Doc mocks him for not being able to spot a toy.

In view of a photograph of Paterson in his medal-strewn army uniform, Laura wakes him with a kiss on Saturday morning. She frets that he might have been in danger at the bar and asks him to read Williams's `This Is Just to Say' as she packs her cupcakes into boxes. Marvin sits grumbling on Paterson's chair at the table as he reads and proceeds to drag him along his chosen route past the waterfalls when they go for a walk. He also sulks when Paterson spends the afternoon writing in the basement and then gets left behind to guard the house when Laura insists on celebrating her cupcake success by going to a revival screening of Erle C. Kenton's Island of Lost Souls (1932).

When they get home, they find that Marvin has shredded Paterson's notebook. Laura apologises for her dog, who scurries away before he can be punished. But Paterson blames himself for leaving it on the sofa. The next morning, however, he whispers to Marvin that he doesn't like him as they sit facing each other in the living-room. Laura wants to put Marvin back in the garage, but Paterson lets him stay and goes for a walk rather than let Laura cheer him up by playing her song.

He bumps into Everett, who apologises for behaving so badly in the bar. They exchange banalities in the sun before walking on. Paterson sits on a bench by the waterfall bridge, where he is joined by a Japanese tourist (Masatoshi Nagase). He asks if Paterson knows about William Carlos Williams and they briefly discuss poetry. The stranger shows Paterson his notebooks and regrets that his own poems are in Japanese and would rather not translate them, as this would be akin to taking a shower in a raincoat. As he leaves, he gives Paterson a blank notebook and reassures him that the empty page presents the most possibilities. Feeling suitably buoyed, he finds a pen in his pocket and writes a poem.

As the film ends with Paterson getting up for work on Monday morning, he confirms Everett's throwaway line about the sun coming up each day regardless of the problems that ordinary people might be facing. It's a fitting way to close a picture that retains a quiet faith in the American way, even though all the recent evidence appears to give grave cause for concern. Some have criticised Jarmusch for filling the neighbourhood with so many flawed African-American and immigrant characters, who lack Paterson's Zen pragmatism. Others have complained that it celebrates an Eisenhowerian view of society, with the man of the house having a noble job that he enjoys while his homemaker wife bakes and works wonders with fabrics. But, while Laura seems proud that her little unit belongs in the 20th century, Jarmusch's lament for a lost age of innocence still has teeth (as Marvin proves).

The great neo-realist screenwriter, Cesare Zavattini, once said that the perfect film would depict ’90 minutes in the life of a man to whom nothing happens'. Jarmusch comes close to realising his ambition here by resisting the temptation to impose a conventional movie narrative upon the marvellously phlegmatic Adam Driver. His existence is scarcely without incident, however. Nor is it utopian and Driver channels these myriad mundane occurrences into lyrical musings (actually penned by 73 year-old Ron Padgett) that demonstrate the importance of the little things that stick in our minds for no good reason, like the pieces of trivia that Barry Shabaka Henley plucks from the air behind his bar. But what makes Driver so engaging is that he recognises that poetry doesn't have to rhyme. Thus, Marvin can chew his book to tatters because what matters is the serenity to accept the things that can't be changed and start again on a fresh page No matter what he does, Driver seems at ease in his own skin and this sense of being comfortable extends to his relationship with Golshifteh Farahani, which has settled into an affectionate cosiness that suits them much better than the kind of grand passion that William Jackson Harper seeks with Chasten Harmon. He may be the more grounded of the two, as he knows her grandiose dreams for them will never be realised. But he supports her right to excel at everything she does and appreciates her faith in his writing, even though he would just as happily keep it hidden as have it published. Hence, he keeps his poetry books on a small shelf in his basement den and lets Farahani do whatever she wants with the rest of their home, as that is her exhibition space.

Conveying Farahani's kooky personality, Mark Friedberg's production design is as splendid as Frederick Elmes's Patersonian views and Carter Logan's stealthily affecting score. But, right down to the defiantly clumsy Iggy Pop reference that promotes his documentary, Gimme Danger (see last week), this is very much a Jim Jarmusch film. Its sedate pace recalls the early works that established him as an indie hipster in the 1980s and it is perfectly complemented by the droll humour and resolute refusal to indulge in any greater contrivance than a bus breaking down. Yet what most viewers will take away from this shambling feature is the scene-stealing brilliance of Nellie, the English Bulldog who deservedly (but very sadly) became the first posthumous winner of the Palm Dog award at the Cannes Film Festival.

On 15 July 1974, Christine Chubbuck shot herself in the head during a live news bulletin on the WXLT channel in Sarasota, Florida. Her death inspired Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning screenplay for Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) and was explored in disconcerting detail by actress Kate Lynn Sheil, as she supposedly prepared to play the 29 year-old, in Robert Greene's estimable documentary, Kate Plays Christine (2015). Now, director Antonio Campos and screenwriter Craig Shilowich seek in Christine to understand what drove a troubled, but seemingly committed and ambitious reporter to commit such a shocking and desperate act.

Practicing her technique by pretending to interview President Richard Nixon in an empty studio, Christine Chubbuck (Rebecca Hall) asks camerawoman Jean Reed (Maria Dizzia) whether she is too insistent or unsympathetic in her approach. A conscientious reporter who writes solid copy and delivers it with sincerity rather than empathy, Christine is desperate to make her mark at the WZRB station in the Florida backwater of Sarasota. But boss Michael Nelson (Tracy Letts) finds her hospital zoning piece dull and chews her out during an editorial meeting about her disdain for populist stories and her reluctance to use new technology Anchor George Peter Ryan (Michael C. Hall) smiles at her backchat, but he is as keen as she is to impress visiting network chief Bob Anderson (John Callum), who is looking to recruit new talent for his prestigious Baltimore channel.

Having driven Nelson crazy by making pernickety last-minute changes to her Suncoast Digest report, Christine drives off to give a puppet show on bullying to some disabled children at a local hostel. She asks carer Susan Pourfar about the abdominal pain she has been experiencing and she urges her to see a doctor, as it might not just be stress. But a team meeting the next day only adds to her growing sense of frustration, as Nelson is determined to introduce a new policy - `if it bleeds, it leads' - that flies in the face of Christine's commitment to tackling community issues. George and weatherman Steve Turner (Timothy Simons) support her, but Nelson insists that juicier stories is the only way to boost the advertising revenue on which their survival depends.

George offers a consoling word, while Christine edits a strawberry festival piece and she wonders whether he is just being kind or whether there is a genuine spark between them, as her mother Peg (J. Smith-Cameron) hopes. They moved south after an unexplained episode in Boston derailed Christine's career and now share a rented house together. But Christine resents Peg trying to plan a party for her forthcoming 30th birthday and remains in her room at night sketching out item ideas rather than hanging out. Much to her annoyance, however, Nelson keeps spiking her and, when she asks what she has to do to impress Anderson, he tells her to seek out tabloid topics rather than worthy issues.

Nettled by being told she's smart but insubordinate, Christine make being yourself the subject of her next puppet show and follows a meeting with police captain Frank Basil (Lindsay Ayliffe) by buying a ham radio to tune into the precinct radio frequency to land some scoops. Peg is worried that Christine is about to have one of her turns and demands an apology when she dismisses her new romance with workmate Mitch (Jayston Warner Smith). But, even though Christine and Jean a tip on a house fire, Nelson ticks her off for interviewing an injured victim (David Foster) rather than filming the burning building or the fire brigade in action.

Anderson hosts a Fouth of July party and Christine plays pool with a drunken George, who suggests they have much in common and could make a good news team. But they are interrupted by sportscaster Andrea Kirby (Kim Shaw) and Christine makes her excuses to leave. She sits alone in her room and is trying to make sense of the police radio reports when she realises she is bleeding. Doctor Morgan Spector diagnoses an ovarian cyst and suggests she has an operation that could diminish her chances of having children. Jean notices she is feeling down, but Christine rejects her idea of going for ice-cream and throws herself into developing a new form of expanded news report that Nelson dismisses as ill-conceived and inaccessible. She tries to argue her case and he warns her about her future behaviour when she rants about the fake flowers on the interview table being symptomatic of the station as a whole.

Storming home, Christine makes a bad first impression on Mitch and Peg pleads with her to calm down before she lets things get out of control as they had done before. But she accuses her mother of being a pot-smoking hippie whose eccentric ideas have messed up her worldview and she slumps in a chair in despair that no one ever listens to her. Her mood improves, however, when George asks her on a date and she relaxes on air during an interview about chickens before patching things up with Peg. Over dinner, she has some wine and begins wondering whether George has feelings for her, despite always flirting with Andrea and receptionist Gail (Kimberley Drummond). But, having told her about becoming addicted to cocaine after his promising football career was ended by injury, George takes Christine to a Transactional Analysis meeting because he feels sorry for her and wants her to sort herself out and fulfil her potential.

Flustered by a role-playing exercise with the poised and pragmatic Crystal (Rachel Hendrix), the virginal Christine is further taken aback when George informs her that he has been poached for a Baltimore slot. He extols her passion and probity, but Christine is in no mood to listen and drives straight to Anderson's house to feigns a flat tyre in order to use his phone. Surprised to see her so late at night, Anderson invites her in and she tries to promote herself. But, while he insists that the door is always open, he reveals that George has selected Andrea to accompany him and Christine is crushed.

When she goes to the station the next day, however, she apologises to Nelson in front of George and he persuades him to let Christine report any breaking stories from the desk over the weekend. She smiles and promises to knuckle down and everyone seems pleased she has turned over a new leaf. But Christine gets a gun from covert dealer Tug (Ritchie Montgomery) and hides it in her puppet bag when she goes into work. She asks Jean to record her live broadcast for her show reel and types up a special script before taking great pains over her make-up.

Going live, George introduces a story about a man being stabbed in the car park of a local tavern. But, when Christine pauses for the accompanying field footage, there's a technical malfunction. Suppressing a half smile, she shuffles her papers, reaches into her bag and puts the gun to her head with the words: `In keeping with the WZRB policy of presenting the most immediate and complete reports of local blood and guts, TV30 presents what is believed to be a television first. In living colour, exclusive coverage of an attempted suicide.'

As Peg watches from home, Nelson cuts the live feed and only realises Christine has shot herself when she falls to the floor. Jean rides with her in the ambulance and consoles Peg in reception, as Nelson looks away from the playback, George tries TA mantra to regain his composure and Steve tunes in to national networks reporting on Christine alongside President Gerald Ford's response to the Watergate hearings. With her friend still in a coma, Jean goes home, feeds the cat and sits down in front of the television with a big bowl of ice-cream while humming the `Love Is Around' theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was set in the newsroom of a Minneapolis TV station (and whose star died this week at the age of 80).

Arriving in UK cinemas a week after the newest incumbent of the White House declared war on the American media, this poignant biopic warns of the dangers of hubris in the Oval Office, while stressing the importance of moderating the content and tone of the news agenda. Christine Chubbuck (who died 14 hours after pulling the trigger) might not have been a natural on screen, but she had enough integrity to know that journalists have a responsibility to report the facts and not massage or sensationalise them in order to manipulate or mislead the audience. Given the recent prevalence of fake news and `alternative facts', the Trump administration and its attendant press pack would do well to heed the lesson enshrined here that the first casualty in any conflict is the truth.

Ironically, Campos and Shilowich are guilty of several instances of dramatic licence. They even alter Christine's last words. But they resist the temptation to make her a cosily empathetic heroine and are superbly served by Rebecca Hall, who veers between stridency and vulnerability in limning a difficult, but decent character whose gauche demeanour and rigid rectitude contrast with Michael C. Hall's suave superficiality and Tracy Letts's boorish hackery. In addition to showing how Hall often proves to be her own worst enemy, even as circumstances cruelly conspire against her, Campos and Shilowich also capture the institutionalised chauvinism that is seemingly as virulent today as it was in the 1970s. Ultimately, it was a lack of glamour and a refusal to compromise her principles rather than a stilted style that cost Christine her promotion, although Hall also conveys the insecurity and inflexibility that kept her from meeting the high standards she set herself. In reaching the sobering conclusions that mediocrity reigns in an age obsessed with celebrity and that little we do matters very much, Campos is admirably abetted by production designer Scott Kuzio and costumier Emma Potter, whose muted use of period trappings and colour schemes is matched by Joe Anderson's discreetly attentive camerawork, Coll Anderson's emotionally attuned sound design and Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans's clipped score. As with Afterschool (2008) and Simon Killer (2012), Campos depicts instability with sensitivity. He also prompts the audience to rethink its attitude to the media in light of the shooting of reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward by Vester Lee Flanagan II (aka Bryce Williams) on the WDBJ breakfast show in Roanoke, Virginia in August 2015. Factual accuracy and expert opinion may be under attack on both sides of the Atlantic, but all hope of maintaining trust and accountability will rapidly disappear without them.

Another character on the edge dominates Trey Edward Shults's Krisha, an ambitious, if sometimes overwrought expansion of a 2014 short, which was not only filmed in nine days at the debutant's nother's home in Montgomery, Texas, but which also features several members of his family and draws on the tragic addictions of Shults's alcoholic father, Bill, and his cousin Nica, who died of an overdose shortly after a disastrous attempt to reconnect with her kinfolk on Thanksgiving.

In a twist on the fictional tale, the film's star (and the director's aunt), Krisha Fairchild, raised her niece's son Israel and this melding of fact and fiction invites comparisons with fellow Houstonian Jonathan Couette's Tarnation (2003), which chronicled his relationship with his bipolar and schizophrenic mother, Renee Leblanc. However, Shults, who started out as an intern on Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011), has clearly been influenced by both his mentor and by the doyen of American improvisatory cinema, John Cassavetes.

Opening with an unforgiving close-up of sixtysomething Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) staring into the mirror at her wavy grey hair and careworn face - like Killer Bob (Frank Silva) in David Lynch's Twin Peaks (1990-91) - the action shifts into a lengthy Steadicam shot depicting Krisha arriving for Thanksgiving with the family she has not seen for many years. Leaving her dog Dingo in the front seat of her pick-up truck, she hauls a wheeled suitcase up the wrong drive and steps in something unpleasant in teetering across the lawn to the house of her sister, Robyn (Robyn Fairchild).

Entering with a cheery assurance that barely masks her trepidation, Krisha embraces Robyn, doctor brother-in-law David (Chris Doubek), sister Vicki (Victoria Fairchild) and her husband Doyle (Bill Wise), nephews Logan (Bryan Casserly) and Alex (Alex Dobrenko), and nieces Atheena (Atheena Frizzell) and Augustine (Augustine Frizzell). She also makes a fuss of nephew Chase (Chase Joliet), wife Olivia (Olivia Grace Applegate) and their three-month-old daughter, Rose (Rose Nelson). But Krisha seems much more guarded as she greets Trey (Trey Edward Shults), who turns out to be her estranged son, and she heads out to collect Dingo with a look of relief and strain on her face.

Missing the tip of her left index finger, Krisha applies some ointment before retying her bandage. She takes some pills from a cashbox opened with a key she wears on a chain around her neck and notes the dosage on a scrap of paper. Making sure Dingo is comfy on a chair, she goes downstairs and smiles at the men watching the football on television before listening to Vicki, who is about to collect their mother (Billie Fairchild) from her care home. It appears as though Krisha has volunteered to cook the turkey on her return to the fold in order to demonstrate that she has conquered her demons and can now be a responsible member of the family. While the boys arm wrestle and play baseball in the garden with a broom handle, Krisha chops the ingredients for some homemade stuffing. Chase watches intently as she removes the innards from the bird, but no one offers to help until the oven door is closed.

Relaxing on the patio, Krisha chats with the sardonic Doyle about the number of stray dogs that Vicki adopts. She asks after his health and he jokes about getting great results from the Viagra he is taking along with his heart medicine. He also claims that he has plans to sell his granddaughter, as he could get six figures for such a cute white baby on the black market. Venturing back indoors, Krisha eavesdrops on David asking Trey if he could sort out a problem with his computer. As David goes upstairs to browbeat cousins Alex and Logan for watching porn, Krisha looks through the drawers in the bureau and seems to find what she is looking for.

Having checked on the turkey, Krisha asks Trey if they can have a few moments alone and she sneaks upstairs to swallow another couple of pills, while Chase canoodles with Olivia on the porch and joshes her about the fact that being a parent makes him feel virile. Krisha has never found being a mother easy and she tries to apologise to Trey for letting him down. But he remains unreceptive and takes offence when she suggests that he devotes himself to his film-making hobby rather than his dull degree in business management. The camera closes in on their faces, as Krisha strives to show she cares. But Trey wants nothing to do with her and struts downstairs, leaving Krisha to stare into the distance, as the camera retreats slowly behind a glass door and along a corridor lined with family portraits to find Olivia singing Rose a lullaby.

Returning to the garden, where Alex and Logan are wrestling shirtless after an altercation with hosepipe, Krisha lights a cigarette and finds herself talking to Doyle again. He appears concerned and reminds her that he is family and that Krisha can always confide in him. Yet, when she declines to respond to an inquiry about her health, Doyle loses his temper and Krisha is taken aback when he insists that keeping everyone up to speed is the least the family deserves after all she has done to hurt them. He denounces her as a serial absenteer and orders her to get her ducks in a row because she isn't a student on a gap year. But Krisha continues to smoke in silence until she snaps back that he hardly makes life easy for Vicki and that he should consider himself lucky that she has not turfed him out of the house.

Worried that she is blowing her last chance of reconciliation, Krisha paces the confined kitchen space, with the camera circling round her as she tries to remain calm. Dashing upstairs, Krisha has a shower and dries her hair before putting on some make-up and a figure-hugging red dress. As she rejoins the family, Robyn wheels their mother (who suffers from dementia) into the front room and Krisha is relieved that she remembers her prodigal daughter. She apologises for not seeing much of her before slipping away to phone Richard, who is either her addiction sponsor, her lover or both. However, he is sending his calls to message.

Feeling exposed and alone, Krisha smuggles a bottle of wine into her room and uses a pair of nail scissors to push down the cork. She drinks deeply, while trying not to catch sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. As Nina Simone's rendition of `Just in Time' blares out from the record player, Krisha meanders downstairs and looks around the room. Despite a woozy sensation, she attempts to remove the turkey from the oven. But it proves too heavy for her and, in excruciating slow-motion, it falls to the floor with a cascade of hot oil.

Robyn and Vicki rush to retrieve the carcass, as Doyle makes wisecracks about salvaging him a leg. But no one wants Krisha to help and she is escorted to her room. After a while, she creeps back down and sees Chaise showing his parents the wine bottle he has found. Doyle accuses her of being a lush who can't stop herself from spoiling things. But she hardly has the wit or will to fight back and is led away before she can apologise to Trey. He brands her an embarrassment and she slumps in front of a television to watch a video of one of his childhood birthdays before falling asleep.

Waking with a start, Krisha calls Richard and leaves him a stinging message about abandoning her when she needed him most. She declares him dead to her and she wishes she had never had anything to do with him. Shuffling across the sofa, Dingo tries to console her. But he growls when Krisha squeezes him too tightly and she grabs his neck in annoyance before letting go and welcoming his non-judgemental affection. Girding herself, she descends the staircase to find the family gathered around the table enjoying an alternative feast. She asks to join them, but Robyn shepherds her out of the room and bundles her back into her bedroom.

She castigates Krisha for wasting her last chance, while wetting a flannel to cool her face after she throws up. Trying to remain calm, Robyn reveals that Trey had begged her not to invite his mother and that she had gone out on a limb in vouching for her. Krisha insists that she had been sober and had worked hard on turning her life around, but Robyn finds it hard to believe her, even though she still loves her. Making herself the victim, Robyn declines to ask Krisha about her struggle or what drove her to make such a ruinous miscalculation. Instead, she returns to the party, leaving Krisha to open another bottle and sniff the contents of some blue capsules.

Her sister's words ring around her head, but with little of the confused compassion with which they were first uttered. Consequently, Krisha is feeling belligerent as she stumbles down the stairs and sidles into the dining room. She makes another attempt at apologising. But, when Robyn asks her to leave, she lurches towards Trey and implores him to tell her that he loves her. He berates her for deserting him and insists that he is no longer her son. Rounding on Robyn, Krisha begins smashing crockery and lambasting her for turning Trey against her. But, as she is wrestled out of the room, Krisha knows she is beaten and stares at herself once more in the mirror. As the image begins to blur, however, the faintest hint of an enigmatic smile plays on her lips.

This is such a family affair that Shults even found room for the canister containing the ashes of the grandfather who suggested that Krisha was named after the daughter of the family that sheltered him an an escaped POW during the Second World War. But, while the mise-en-scène is full of such keepsakes and trinkets, the influence of Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945), Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) is as readily evident as that of John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence (1974). Indeed, Krisha Fairchild's performance echoes that of Gena Rowlands, as she dominates the action without letting the audience know the first thing about the issues that drove her to drink and drugs and, subsequently, estranged her from her family.

The absence of backstory occasionally frustrates, as this is essentially a recreation of Nica's failed bid to win back her family, which culminated in her attempting to remove the turkey from the over with her bare hands. That pain pervades proceedings, as it is clear that Krisha is not the only one suffering. But, while speculation is a key part of spectacting, it would be nice to know a bit more about the circumstances that prompted Robyn to take responsibility for Trey and what Krisha has been doing with herself since she last saw her child.

Despite being somewhat upstaged by the mordant Bill Wise, Shults does enough to suggest that his talents are not confined to behind the camera. But it's his direction that leaves the deepest impression, as he takes ownership of clichés and makes intrusive use of close-ups and unforgiving lighting to expose his characters to the harshest scrutiny. Cinematographer Drew Daniels achieves some effective pans and glides within the high-ceilinged, but still claustrophobic interiors. But the aspect ratio shifts (from 1.85 to 2.35 and 1.33) seem a touch self-conscious, unlike Shults's jagged editing, Tim Rakoczy's unsettling sound design and the skittish bursts of percussion, strings and electronica on Brian McOmber's audacious score.

Movie history is studded with epic punch-ups from John Wayne and Victor McLaglen's rousing donnybrook in John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) through Patrick Swayze and Marshall Teague's throat-ripping tussle in Rowdy Harrington's Road House (1989) to Edward Norton and Brad Pitt's one-on-one sessions in David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). And it's not just the blokes who go mano e mano, as demonstrated by Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel trading blows over a pair of pants in George Marshall's Destry Rides Again (1939) and Uma Thurman and Chiaki Kuriyama facing off in a restaurant garden in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol.1 (2003). But the three brawls involving Sandra Oh and Anne Heche in Onur Tukel's pugnacious satire, Catfight, have more in common with the socko shenanigans between Peter Griffin and Ernie the Giant Chicken in the cartoon series, Family Guy.

As TV host Craig Bierko enlists the aid of fat, flatulent sidekick Randy Gambill to lampoon America's imminent entry into a war in the Middle East, black maid Myra Lucretia Taylor serves dinner to wine-chugging Manhattanite Sandra Oh and her defence contractor husband, Damian Young, who is hoping to make a killing from the newly elected president's foolhardy enterprise. They chastise teenage son Giullian Yao Gioiello for sketching at the table and question the value of something as frivolous as art in such troubled times.

Meanwhile, in the working-class Bushwick district of Brooklyn, artist Anne Heche is bickering with caterer girlfriend Alicia Silverstone about who is the more masculine and is, therefore, better suited to being the breadwinner. Heche is hopeful that wealthy collector Steven Gevedon will purchase some of her new pictures. But he finds their abrasive, red-tinted content anxiety inducing and prefers the soothing blue bunny pictures drawn by Heche's bubble-headed assistant, Ariel Kavoussi.

Having failed to make a sale, Heche agrees to help Silverstone at the function that Young's partner, Peter Jacobson, hopes will lead to a life-changing contract. With this in mind, Young asks Oh not to drink, as she always embarrasses him when she gets tipsy. But she is so dismayed by his revelation that he is unhappy in the marriage that Oh hits the bottle and is surprised to discover the bar being tended by Heche, the onetime best friend she disowned at college after she discovered she was a lesbian (hence Oh's hatred of art). She tries to make polite small talk, but is so bitchily condescending that she succeeds only in antagonising Heche, who snipes back by mistaking Young and Jacobson for a gay couple.

Needing a moment, Heche slips into a stairwell for a smoke. But Oh barges into her after Young sends her home for being drunk and she lambastes Heche for doing drugs in public. At the end of her tether, Heche calls Oh a spoilt trophy wife and punches her on the nose. Momentarily stunned, Oh retaliates and a furious flurry of fists and feet follows that culminates in Heche straddling Oh's chest while she unleashes a volley of blows to her face. As Heche staggers downstairs, Oh looks at herself in her compact mirror, only to fall backwards into a coma.

Much has changed by the time Oh comes round in a hospital bed two years later. As Taylor and no-nonsense doctor Dylan Baker (cast perhaps in acknowldgement of the influence of Todd Solondz?) explain, Young has committed suicide, while Gioiello perished in the war after the president reduced the draft age to 16. Moreover, as health insurance has been abolished, Baker has had to plunder Oh's assets to pay her medical bills. But, while she has nothing, Heche has become famous because her apocalyptic vision has caught the zeitgeist. She is also about to become a mother, as Silverstone was unable to conceive and Heche agreed to undergo artificial insemination. Unable to bear the thought of living with tree-hugging aunt Amy Hill, Oh accepts Taylor's offer of her sofa. She also joins her in cleaning hotel rooms, where she learns about Heche's success from an art magazine belonging to one of the guests. However, Heche is struggling to build on her triumph and takes out her frustrations on Kavoussi, who gets chewed out in front of Gevedon for using the wrong colour labels on her gallery exhibits. She also gets annoyed with Silverstone for doting on a practice baby doll and rolls her eyes as she rejects the gifts her trendy friends bring to a baby shower because they fail to conform to her standards. Meanwhile, Oh has been forced to move into a hostel because Taylor's soldier son resents his mother giving house room to her exploitative ex-employer. She opens the box of keepsakes that Taylor had put together and finds a video message from Gioiello, in which he explains that he is volunteering to fight because he has realised she was right about the futility of art. Remembering that Heche has an opening that night, Oh goes to the gallery and is reminded of their fight by a painting of bruised female faces. Declaring Heche to be a hack, Oh starts knocking pictures off the wall and Gevedon and the other guests look on in amazement (thinking they are watching a performance piece) as the pair trade blows before Oh runs off into the night with the triptych that unlocked her memory.

Despite being in the early stages of pregnancy, Heche chases Oh into a tyre garage, where they arm themselves with a hammer and a wrench to continue their feud. As a train thunders overhead, they hurl themselves across the floodlit forecourt and exchange sickening blows that result in Heche slumping into a corner. But, as she struggles to get to her feet, she dislodges a tyre from the rack above her head and she is knocked unconscious.

The world is a very different place when she wakes, two years later. The War on Terror is over, but Heche is broke and alone, as she lost her baby and Silverstone deserted her after selling all her paintings to pay her medical bills. Doctor Baker leaves the explanation to Kavoussi, who feels guilty because she has become the author of a bestselling comic-book about happy blue bunnies and she offers Heche a chance to work for her while she gets back on her feet. Oblivious to Heche's plight, Oh has moved into Hill's woodland cabin. She has little time for her aunt's New Age nonsense or the fact she has named trees after Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But she enjoys sitting on a bench and watching Gioiello's messages on his camcorder.

Back in Brooklyn, Heche struggles to hold a pen and becomes so wound up by Kavoussi's simpering voice and cheerful charity that she has a nightmare in which Kavoussi relishes Heche's downfall as an act of twisted revenge. So, when Silverstone (who has a new baby with her boyfriend) drops off a tin of mementoes and Heche finds a clue to Oh's whereabouts, she shows up on Hill's doorstep. Initially, she tries to pick a fight. But Oh invites her in for breakfast and shows her Gioiello's videos. They seem to be getting along when Heche accidentally spills water on the camera and it malfunctions. Blaming Oh for not backing up the files, Heche squares up to her old foe and they tumble through the door on to the porch.

A right cross tips Heche backwards over the balustrade and Oh charges at her beneath the soft autumnal sun. They roll down an incline towards the lake and jockey for position while trying to gain control of a broken branch. Heche starts hurling rocks at Oh, who attempts to run away. But Heche pins her down and punches her repeatedly in the face. Oh regains the initiative, just as Hill wakes from her nap and looks out of the window. The camcorder reboots itself on the table and shows the end of Gioiello's final message. But Oh and Heche keep slugging it out to the strains of Frédéric Chopin's `Funeral March'.

The use of classical music during the fight sequences is one of the many inspired touches in this riotous parable, with the patriotic pomp of John Philip Sousa's `Stars and Stripes Forever' driving home Tukel's state-of-the-nation barbs with hilarious savagery during the climactic rumble. Some of the parody is far from subtle, particularly where Bierko and Gambill are concerned. Moreover, by making the antagonists as monstrously deplorable as each other, Tukel risks accusations of misogyny and bad taste. But, as one of the gallery guests opines: `It's a little vulgar, but in a good way.'

With just 16 days at his disposal, Tukel wastes little time on backstory before chucking Oh and Heche in at the deep end. They respond with a ferocity that is both shocking and amusing, as they feed off years of pent-up loathing and resentment. Fight choreographer Balint Pinczehelyi and stand-ins Kimmy Suzuki, Kara Rosella and Nikki Brower must take their share of the credit. But Heche and Oh throw themselves into each brouhaha, with a seething precision that also extends to their line readings, as Oh bids to be civil to Taylor and Hill and Heche struggles to remain patient with the excellent Silverstone and Kavoussi.

Determined to make the audience feel each blow, Tukel resists the temptation to slice and dice Zoe White's imagery in the modish manner. Moreover, he uses Jarret DePasquale, Michael Suarez and Tristan Baylis exceptional sound work to drive home the brutality of confrontations that deftly sum up the tensions that have been simmering in the United States ever Donald Trump announced his candidacy. The emphasis here is more on the shift towards right-wing philistinism and the rejection of the expert élite and the cartoonish nature of this satire in no way diminishes its potency.