Parky at the Pictures (In Pictures 22/6/2017)

Starting her days with a pick-me-up, fiftysomething Liliane Cheverny (Isabelle Huppert) works on the production line at an Ostend paté factory. At night, she reads on the bus home and watches quiz shows while sipping booze from a teacup. She is amused by 21 year-old newcomer Jean Leloup (Kévin Azaïs) forever forgetting to put on his hygiene cap and lets him sit at her table at lunch. However, she is taken aback when he announces that she looks like Laura, a pop starlet who had represented Belgium with `Souvenir' at the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. Liliane claims to know nothing about the singer, but she is given a timely reminder on her quiz show that night when nobody gets a question about Laura (Alice d'Hauwe), who was seemingly cast into oblivion after she divorced her songwriting manager, Tony Jones (Johan Leysen).

Jean also sees the programme and is more convinced than ever that Liliane is Laura. But she eats lunch in the female changing-room to avoid him and is cross with him when he waits for her after work and makes her miss her bus. He gives her a lift on the back of his moped and she invites him inside for a drink. She smiles when he explains that he is in training for an upcoming lightweight boxing bout and when he reveals that his father, Eddy (Jan Hammenecker), is such a huge fan that his mother, Martine (Anne Brionne), gets tetchy whenever he mentions her. But he has to leave because he is being interviewed by a local radio station about his prospects in the ring and Liliane eagerly tunes in.

At lunch the next day, Jean asks if she likes working at the factory because he can't get used to smelling of paté. Liliane smiles, but turns down his request to sing at a charity event at his boxing club and feels a little nettled when he gets up from the table and leaves. She is even more put out when he fails to return to work and she learns from the foreman that he was merely a temp. Missing him, Liliane seeks out his gym and promises to perform for one night only, on the proviso that there is no pre-publicity. Jean agrees and rushes home to inform his parents, who have mixed feelings about the news.

On the big night, Liliane smokes nervously outside the venue and gives Jean a wink when he stops Radio Venus presenter Kenneth (Benjamin Boutbouf) from trying to snatch an interview. She makes Jean turn his back while she steps into her red dress and asks him to help with the zip. Smiling, as he reassures her that it has a look of old-fashioned class, Liliane waits in the wings as Eddy introduces her with breathless reverence. Singing to a backing track, she remembers the hand choreography from 30 years before and is pleased with the warm applause she receives. However, she is less amused by the prying questions of Wendy (Muriel Bersy) when she agrees to stay for a drink and is relieved when Eddy asks her to dance. But her hopes of dancing with Jean back at her flat are thwarted when his mother calls him back to the party.

At work on Monday, Liliane is horrified when a TV crew comes on to the factory floor and she has to field questions about a comeback. She is also frostily polite when co-worker Solange (Christine d'Argenton) spends the bus ride home cursing the Swedes who had cheated her of a deserved victory. But she refuses to speak to Jean, as she thinks he has betrayed her trust, and it's only when he sees the TV report that he realises why she is so angry. He calls up to her when she ignores the doorbell and she throws a glass at him. However, when he rides past the bus queue the following evening and insists that he kept his side of the bargain, Liliane agrees to go for a ride with him and they wind up in bed after she shows him some photographs from her heyday.

Returning home after spending the night, Jean is frustrated to be swept off to help his father instal a new toilet in their caravan. He tries to call (while seemingly not having the sense to leave a message), but Liliane is left waiting with a lobster and a dozen red roses for a guest who never comes to dinner. So, when he tries to explain what happened, she tells him that they have no future together. Yet, as she tries to steer him through the door, she can't resist kissing him.

Having been knocked out by the champion, Jean decides to quit boxing and breaks the news to Liliane during a post-coital bath. He pleads with her to start singing again and offers to become her manager. She teases him about the many duties he would have to undertake and he accuses her of not taking him seriously. But she lets him book a couple of gigs and Eddy is proud of his son for coaxing her back into the limelight, even though Martine is appalled by the expense of having to buy him a new suit. Starting slowly in an old people's home and a prison, Liliane wonders why she is bothering when an outdoor crowd is more interested in a cycling race than her song. However, she is intrigued by the prospect of entering the Belgian heats of Eurovision and seeks out Tony at his luxury home to ask him to write a secret song for her.

She plays `Joli Garçon' on her piano for Jean, who arranges for her to record a demo. Tony is suitably impressed and offers to lend her money for make-up, hair and a dress. But, while she wins easily (as Tony is on the jury), Jean feels left out during the backstage celebrations and is furious when Tony comes on to the empty stage to inform him that he has been helping Liliane behind the scenes. Feeling humiliated, Jean brands Liliane a whore and storms out of her dressing-room after she slaps his face.

Liliane goes to the family home to find Jean, but Martine refuses to let her in. She tries calling up to him, but he hides behinds the curtains and she drives away in her cab. Undaunted, however, she competes in the grand final and turns in such a bravura performance that the audience and viewers at home sing along. But, while Eddy cheers her on, Jean goes to his room and takes out his anger on his punchbag. Moreover, Martine prevents Eddy from voting in the phone poll and Liliane spends the interval in her room drinking from a hip flask.

She is in no fit state to return to the stage to reprise the winning song, therefore, and staggers into the corridor looking for someone to zip up her dress. The host stalls while the floor manager goes in search of Liliane, while Eddy calls Jean downstairs to watch her triumph. He plonks himself on the settee in time to see a disorientated Liliane fall down the stage steps and pass out, as Tony rushes to her side to call for an ambulance. She wakes en route and asks for Jean.

So, when he arrives at the hospital after speeding across town in his vest and sweat pants, Tony is tactful enough to make himself scarce. Liliane thanks Jean for coming, but thinks they should break up, as they have too little in common to make a go of things. He shuffles to the lift and paces the corridor wondering what to do for the best, when he turns to see Liliane watching him in the doorway of her room and he runs to her for a closing embrace filmed in a discreet long shot.

The story of a washed-up singer who finds love on the comeback trail could have been made at any point in the nine decades since talking pictures were introduced in 1927. One only has to think of Xavier Giannoli's When I Was a Singer (2006), with saw Gérard Depardieu hit the road to redemption with Cécile de France. But what it lacks in novelty, Bavo Defurne's follow-up to his impressive 2011 debut, North Sea Texas, more than atones in understated charm. Following on from Mia Hansen-Løve's Things to Come and Paul Verhoeven's Elle (for which she received an Oscar nomination), this may not be Isabelle Huppert's best performance of 2016. But she is entirely convincing as a faded chanteuse-turned-paté garnisher, whose unsteady progress back to the big-time feels as authentic as her May-September romance with Kévin Azaïs and his ghastly bumfluff moustache.

Having been singing on screen for over 40 years, Huppert handles the songs by Pink Martini's frontman Thomas Lauderdale with the breathy aplomb that was showcased on the 2011 album, Madame Deshoulières, which she recorded with Jean-Louis Murat. The torch singer hand gestures are a particularly deft touch, as they date Huppert as subtly as the gowns designed by Johanne Riss. Equally commendable are production designer André Fonsny's interiors, with the tasteful gloominess of Liliane's apartment contrasting tellingly with the functional cosiness of the Laloup homestead and the gaudy flamboyance of Tony's red leather sofa and revolving drinks table.

Cinematographers Philippe Guilbert and Virginie Saint-Martin also do a good job of avoiding kitsch in lighting the factory floor, the charity venue and the contest theatres. But Huppert is so compelling that it's easy to overlook the polished contributions of others, as well as the clichés and caricatures in the screenplay that Defurne co-wrote with Jacques Boon and Yves Verbraekens. Indeed, as France has not won Eurovision since Marie Myriam's `L'oiseau et l'enfant' in 1977, it could do a lot worse than select Huppert for Lisbon 2018.

Two films had a seismic impact on Hollywood in 1967 and Gene Hackman was involved in both of them. However, he only made the cast of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde after producer Larry Turman and director Mike Nichols decided after three weeks of shooting that he was too young to play Mr Robinson in The Graduate. Yet, the pair seemed unconcerned that there were only six years between Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman, the actors they had cast as Mrs Robinson and her toyboy, Benjamin Braddock.

Then again, they knew they had already taken sizeable liberties in adapting Charles Webb's source novel, as Benjamin was clearly an athletic WASP variation on Holden Caulfield and, with this in mind, they had considered casting Warren Beatty, Steve McQueen, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Anthony Perkins, Keir Dullea, Brandon De Wilde and Michael Parks after first choice Robert Redford had turned them down. They even auditioned Charles Grodin before taking a chance on an off-Broadway up-and-comer who hadn't popped by the age of 29.

After Nichols had realised that he couldn't work with Ava Gardner, he had also contemplated Doris Day, Jeanne Moreau, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Patricia Neal, Geraldine Page, Deborah Kerr, Shelley Winters, Eva Marie Saint and Ingrid Bergman for the past of Mrs Robinson, while Turman's wishlist for her daughter Elaine included Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret, Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Carroll Baker, Sue Lyon, Lee Remick, Suzanne Pleshette, Carol Lynley, Elizabeth Ashley, Yvette Mimieux, Pamela Tiffin, Patty Duke and Hayley Mills.

Ultimately, they plumped for Katharine Ross - who had been recommended to Nichols by Simone Signoret, her co-star in Curtis Harrington's kinky sex thriller, Games (1967) - while Murray Hamilton (who was a whole seven years older than Hackman) was hired to play Mr Robinson after Marlon Brando, Howard Duff, Brian Keith, Jack Palance, Frank Sinatra, Walter Matthau and Gregory Peck were supposedly in the frame. Each choice proved inspired, however, and Nichols and Turman struck lucky again in asking neophyte TV scripter Buck Henry to redraft Calder Willingham's pedestrian screenplay and folk duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel to perform four numbers on the soundtrack. One might say that the New Hollywood gods were smiling on them.

As he arrives back at LAX from his eastern college, 20 year-old Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has seems lost in his own thoughts, as he glides along an automated walkway to `The Sound of Silence'. He seems no more animated, as he gazes at the model diver at the bottom of the fish tank in his bedroom. When his father (William Daniels) asks if anything is wrong, Benjamin confesses to being concerned about his future. But Mr & Mrs Braddock (Elizabeth Wilson) sweep him downstairs to a party being thrown in his honour.

They present him with a red Alfa Romeo Spider 1600 before reeling off his scholastic and extracurricular accomplishments before a gaggle of fawning friends. Mr McGuire (Walter Brooke) takes Benjamin to one side and urges him to consider a career in plastics. But he slips away instead to his room, where he is unexpectedly joined by Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the alcoholic wife of his father's business partner. She asks him to drive her home, as her husband (Murray Martin) seems set for the long haul. Reluctantly ushered inside, Benjamin quickly becomes uncomfortable as she tries to ply him with drink and asks what he thinks of her.

The camera peers through the crook of her leg as she reclines and Benjamin blurts out an accusation that she is attempting to seduce him. Rolling her eyes at his gaucheness, Mrs Robinson offers to show him a new portrait of her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). As he inspects the picture, however, she asks him to unzip her dress and stands in her slip while Benjamin blathers on about Mr Robinson walking in and finding them. Exploiting his unease, she asks if he would like her to seduce him and Benjamin flees. However, Mrs Robinson calls down for her purse and he is horrified to see her naked body reflected in the glass of Elaine's portrait.

As he tries to make his excuses, Mrs Robinson informs him that she is available to him at a time and place of his choosing. He keeps burbling as she explains that all he needs to make is a single phone call and he is mightily relieved to hear the tyres of Mr Robinson's car come screeching up the driveway. Seeing Benjamin is agitated, Mr Robinson offers him some avuncular advice and envies the fact that he has his whole life in front of him. As Mrs Robinson looms into sight, her husband encourages Benjamin to sew his wild oats and she concurs that he looks like the kind of man who would be fighting off the girls.

Rushing to his car with an invitation to call on Elaine when she returns from Berkeley, Benjamin escapes into the night. But his mood scarcely improves over the following days and he wanders through his 21st birthday party wearing scuba gear. Yet skulking at the bottom of the pool and viewing his parents' social group through his distorting goggles seems to help Benjamin reach a moment of clarity and he is next seen in a phone booth at the Taft Hotel inviting Mrs Robinson for a drink. She promises to be there in an hour and urges him to book a room. But nerves prompt him to drift through the lobby in a daze and he feels so intimidated by the desk clerk (Buck Henry) asking if he has come for an affair that he wanders into an upper-class family reception before opting to wait in the bar.

Arriving in a leopard skin coat, Mrs Robinson asks Benjamin if he has booked a room. Seeing he has the jitters, she offers to go to the desk. But he insists on going himself and endures an excruciating exchange with the clerk about the fact that he would rather leave his luggage in the car because he only needs a toothbrush. Scuttling back to the phone booth, he places a call to Mrs Robinson to inform her that all is well and that he has checked in as Mr Gladstone. But she still has to ask for the room number and agrees to meet him in No.568.

Placing the `Do Not Disturb' sign on the door, Benjamin turns off the lights as soon as Mrs Robinson arrives. In his eagerness to kiss her, he locks mouths before she has exhaled her cigarette smoke and then fusses over a coat hanger for her dress before making an impulsive grab for her right breast. Showing great restraint, Mrs Robinson ignores his ramblings about bedding a close friend of his parents and inquires whether he is a virgin. He tries to laugh off the accusation, but locks himself in the darkened bathroom, where `The Sound of Silence' plays again, as the scene dissolves to the light reflecting on the surface of the Braddock swimming pool, as Benjamin sunbathes on a black inflatable raft.

As `April Come She Will' begins, a sequence shows Benjamin flitting between family barbecues and hotel assignations. Sitting in her underwear, Mrs Robinson undoes the buttons of his crisp white shirt and slides her hand inside. But their trysts are devoid of passion and slick elisions and jump cuts suggest that Benjamin quickly comes to regard a session with Mrs Robinson as being no different from a night at home with a beer in front of the television. His father begins to worry about his indolence and browbeats him from the edge of the pool about choosing a grad school or a career. Similarly, Mrs Braddock asks about his nocturnal ramblings and hopes that he isn't doing anything foolish.

Feeling the need to take the relationship to the next level, Benjamin asks Mrs Robinson about her day. He tries to discern her feelings for her husband and is surprised when she reveals that she only got married because she was pregnant. Betraying his immaturity, Benjamin seems more interested in the car in which Elaine was conceived than about Mrs Robinson's feelings and she orders him not to talk about her daughter. Sensing he has hit a nerve, Benjamin demands to know why Mrs Robinson considers him suitable for a casual fling when she would forbid him from dating Elaine. Disliking the answer, he jumps up in high dudgeon. But she calms him down by flattering him into believing that their meetings are the only thing she has to look forward to.

Ironically, the Braddocks have reached the conclusion that Benjamin needs some company of his own age and arrange for him to go on a date with Elaine. Mrs Robinson glowers in the background as Benjamin calls to collect her daughter. But he is no more enamoured of the idea and upsets Elaine by taking her to a strip club. He tries to apologise when she bursts into tears and she sympathises with his sense of ennui while they scarf down junk food at a drive-in restaurant.

They get into an argument with some kids for playing `The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine' too loudly and repair to the Taft Hotel for a drink. Elaine is puzzled why people keep addressing Benjamin as Mr Gladstone. But, as they set off for home, Elaine asks Benjamin if he is having an affair and he confides in her about being duped by a voracious married woman who refuses to take `no' for an answer. Once again, she feels sorry for him and agrees to go for a drive the next day after he insists that the fling is over and that he is beginning to have genuine feelings for her.

As he waits for Elaine during a downpour, however, Benjamin is horrified to find Mrs Robinson getting into the car beside him. She threatens to tell everyone about their liaison unless he stops seeing Elaine. But he refuses to be blackmailed and storms up to Elaine's room to tell her the truth. However, she guesses the moment she sees her bedraggled mother in the doorway and screams in such anguish that Mrs Robinson orders Benjamin to leave.

Accompanied by `Scarborough Fair', a montage shows Benjamin trying to occupy his time and marshal his thoughts in the days that follow. A plan of action finally emerges after he watches Mr Robinson loading the car to take Elaine back to Berkeley and he heads north after informing his parents that he intends marrying a woman who no longer likes him. Renting a room from Mr McCleery (Norman Fell), he follows Elaine across the campus until he plucks up the courage to sit next to her on a bus. She is surprised to see him and confesses that she has started dating medical student, Carl Smith (Brian Avery).

Yet, a short while later, Elaine bursts into Benjamin's room while he is shaving and accuses him of molesting her mother. But, while he manages to persuade her that Mrs Robinson has demonised him, the shrieking causes McCleery to threaten him with eviction. That night, Elaine creeps back into the bedsit and asks Benjamin to kiss her. He responds by proposing marriage, but she stalls and continues to do so over the next few days, as he pursues her relentlessly across the town. Even the hint that she might have already become unofficially engaged to Carl doesn't deter Benjamin. Indeed, a direct order from Mr Robinson (who knows all about the affair) and a goodbye letter from Elaine only spurs him on and, as `Mrs Robinson' plays in the background, he criss-crosses California in a desperate bid to catch up with his beloved and prevent her from doing anything he might have cause to regret.

Eventually, he reaches Santa Barbara on the day of the wedding and has to run the last few blocks to the church when his car runs out of petrol. Looking down on the bridal party from the balcony, Benjamin pounds on the glass in the hope of catching Elaine's attention. Ignoring her parents, she walks down the nave to the door and he fends off Carl and Mr Robinson, as they try to intervene. Mrs Robinson slaps her newlywed daughter twice across the face, but this only makes her more determined to rebel and she bundles through the doors, which Benjamin bars with a large crucifix. They dash into the street and flag down a bus. As they flop on the backseat, their problems seem to diminish behind them. But, as `The Sound of Silence' strikes up for a last time, it's clear that they are not guaranteed a happy ever after.

Ten years ago, Charles Webb (who now lives in Eastbourne) wrote a 70s-set sequel entitled Home School, in which Benjamin and Elaine enlist the help of Mrs Robinson in their campaign to teach sons Jason and Matt at home because the local school in Westchester County, New York doesn't meet their exacting standards. The reviews were decidedly mixed and there doesn't seem to have been an unseemly scramble for the screen rights. But, despite having given them life in the early 1960s, the characters of Benjamin, Elaine and Mrs Robinson (who was never granted a first name) ceased to belong to Webb the moment The Graduate became a box-office sensation and introduced the blend of nouvelle vague self-reflexivity and counterculture subversion that would do for the Production Code in 1968 and free American cinema from 34 years of conservative control.

Yet, Hollywood was no stranger to stories of older women using their wiles to ensnare younger men. Indeed, there are distinct echoes of Mae West inviting Cary Grant to `come up sometime and see me' in Lowell Sherman's She Done Him Wrong (1933) in Mrs Robinson's famous speech: `Benjamin. I want you to know that I'm available to you, and if you won't sleep with me this time...[Benjamin: Oh, my God.]...if you won't sleep with me this time I want you to know that you can call me up anytime you want and we'll make some kind of an arrangement. Do you understand what I...?' But everything changed with the flash of nudity, which was actually provided by an uncredited Sunset Strip stripper, while future Dallas star Linda Gray was paid $25 to flash her stockinged leg for the poster shoot.

Much changed, too, with the speed of the repartee between Hoffman and Bancroft, which (as Sam Kashner has pointed out in an excellent Vanity Fair article) owed much to the improvised banter that had made Mike Nichols and Elaine May the toast of the American comedy scene in the late 1950s. But, just as Buck Henry's script introduced a televisual zip that he had honed writing for shows like That Was the Week That Was and Get Smart (a zany spy spoof that was the brainchild of Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks), so Robert Surtees's photography, Richard Sylbert's Oscar-winning production design and Sam O'Steen's editing raised the bar.

Yet, dare we say that the picture loses much of its edge after Hoffman's fancy shifts from Bancroft to Ross? The Berkeley sequences would certainly have benefited from a little judicious trimming, as Elaine is too sketchily drawn to bear the burden of Benjamin's overnight obsession or his need to revolt against the mores of his caring, but crushingly conventional Eisenhowerian parents. She is also nowhere near as intriguing or alluring as her mother, who has remained the focal point of the numerous revivals of Terry Johnson's 2000 stage interpretation. But this is a minor quibble with a landmark denunciation of growing up that has retained much of its bite and bile. And how can you do anything but love a film with a last-reel getaway on public transport?

Curiously, the influence of Jean-Luc Godard can also be felt in Anocha Suwichakornpong's By the Time It Gets Dark, a tantalising treatise on the film-making process, art's compromised capacity for capturing the past and the moral imperatives involved in portraying reality that will mesmerise some and baffle others. Expanding on the experiments with non-linearity she conducted in Mundane History (2009), her debut study of a paralysed man's relationship with his carer, Suwichakornpong seeks to establish new levels of cinematic consciousness that might edge the medium closer to conveying a modicum of lived truth. But, for all her ambitions, she remains fully aware of the camera's limitations.

From the outset, the emphasis is on perception and viewpoint, as a woman opens a window to let light flood into a dilapidated wooden house and a photographer moves to one side to get a better angle on a tree being blown by the breeze. As a small group of young people gather to pray beneath the tree, the scene cuts to some students being held face down and in a state of undress by some Thai soldiers. A megaphoned voice reveals this to be a film recreation of the Thammasat University Massacre in October 1976, when hundreds of students died. The director warns the victims not to fall asleep and urges the troops to be more brutal in their intimidation. One strikes a pose with a cigarette and a pistol, but the director wants them to kick the students to make the scene feel more real. As she calls the shots, a male photographer (Lek Kiatsirikajorn) crouches to take a series of monochrome production snaps that acquire a reportagist immediacy.

A young couple walk in the countryside. Their hands almost touch and, as they sit together in silence, the woman (Waywiree Ittianunkul) goes to say something to her companion (Natdanai Wangsiripaisarn), but decides against it. It's not made clear when or where this is happening, but another rural setting in the present sees film-maker Ann (Visra Vichit-Vadakan) arrive at a spacious dark wooden house with Taew (Rassami Paoluengton). An only child hailing from a small town, Taew had emerged from her shell as a student at Thammasat University in Bangkok and a flashback shows the student couple leading a discussion about the iniquity of the fact that the rector has accepted a cabinet post following a coup. She is angry about his motives for entering politics and persuades the others to help her make banners for a demonstration and they are seen pasting posters to the campus walls in the small hours of the night.

Ann and Taew go to the supermarket for provisions with their housekeeper, but Ann has trouble sleeping (amidst flashes of amber light that could be lens flare) and sits on the verandah as the insects chirrup. The next morning, they breakfast at a small café, where Nong the waitress (Atchara Suwan) is puzzled why Ann is scripting a film about Taew's life when she is also a writer and has a much better appreciation of her experiences because she actually lived them. Politely side-stepping the inquiry, Ann orders some locally grown mushrooms and Taew is relieved that the conversation has switched away from her, as she is very modest about her achievements.

Indeed, she finds it hard to talk about herself on camera and the next interview is seen though a window pane to reinforce the sense of detachment. Ann asks about the nature of the protest and Taew insists that people frequently took to the streets during this period to make their views known and she laments that there is a designer mob feel to many modern campaigns. She fends off questions about how her parents reacted to her becoming an activist and goes completely silent when Ann inquires about any romances within the movement.

A slight distance between them is suggested by a shot of Taew reading in the blurred background, as Ann does the dishes. But the pair get to chat when a power cut forces them to go in search of candles. They are reflected in the television screen, as Taew asks why Ann wanted to make a film about her. She replies that Taew has led a meaningful life, but the older woman insists she is less living history than a survivor and asks Ann to sing for her. Taken aback, Ann chooses a childhood song about the moon and Taew is surprised that she opted for such a traditional tune. Suddenly, the lights come back on and, with the spell broken, Taew announces she is going to bed and bids Ann goodnight.

The next morning, as Nong sweeps up at the café and takes rubbish sacks to the bins, Ann cooks herself breakfast. Feeling that the project might be beyond her, she leaves Taew to sleep and rides through the smoggy nearby town on a moped. With time on her hands, she goes for a walk in the woods and, through the trees, spots a young girl in an animal costume (Alisa Piyaarayanun). She follows when the child runs away and, after a while, is perplexed to see that she is actually chasing her adult self. Slumping down against a tree, Ann picks up a glittery mushroom and the scene dissolves into a point-of-view shot taken from a vehicle negotiating a winding country road at night. This could be the dream that prompts Ann to wake in tears, but she recovers her composure to wander into the main room to take tea with two elegantly kindly ladies (Viria Vichit-Vadakan and Yaowares Areeyamitr).

Not having much appetite, the following day, Ann does a piece to camera about her childhood experience of making a glass move by telekinesis. She recalls the thrill she felt, as the object moved across a table top. But she was left drained of energy and struggled to sleep as she contemplated her achievement. Much to her dismay, she has never been able to repeat the trick and she wonders if this is because she told her best friend about it. Shots of a solitary crawling insect, a rustling tree top and sprouting fungi are followed by the mushroom scene from Georges Méliès's A Trip to the Moon (1902) before a POV shot takes us along a winding road in daylight.

The scene switches to a factory drying tobacco leaves and the camera records the various processes with documentary rigour. Peter (Arak Amornsupasiri) leans against a wall to smoke and he is followed, as he listens to a sentimental song on the car radio. Yet, as he walks across the tarmac to catch a flight, some female fans snap pictures with their phones and it becomes clear that he is not a worker, but an actor playing a role. Arriving back at his modest flat, he shaves off his moustache and sits down to read his next script.

In an alternative version of reality, a glamorous version of Ann (Inthira Charoenpura) and a grande dameish Taew (Penpak Sirikul) settle into their more lavishly furnished accommodation. The housekeeper leaves them to rest and we cut away to the student couple lying in bed in a high-rise apartment. He is naked and she lists what she likes about his body. But she merely smiles when he asks if she loves him. This scene gives way to an aeroplane cockpit, where Peter is playing a pilot. But he seems to be filming a music video rather than a drama, as he starts to sing and stagehands help him into a fish costume so he can `swim' against a painted underwater backdrop. During the course of the number, Peter climbs a rock wall, strums a guitar and swims in a transparent tank. This is situated on the roof of a luxury hotel, where Nong works as a cleaner and a neat split screen shows her doubled up scrubbing cubicles before she seems to disappear into a vanishing point. However, she returns to wander around the grounds filled with plaster meerkats and flamingos before she lunches by a decorative folly.

Meanwhile, Peter is enjoying seafood at a seaside restaurant with his pals and girlfriend, Chompoo (Sajee Apiwong). He breaks off from telling them about an indie project the female director has written specially for him to pose with the waiting staff. Returning to their room, Peter and Chompoo bump into Tak (Apinya Sakuljaroensuk) and her friend Pun (Vigrom Suvarnnapradip). She tells them about her latest project. They wish her well and retire to their room, with Peter teasing Chompoo because she has eaten too much. But something is bothering Tak, who looks mournfully out of her car windscreen as a passing street performer uses a bubble gun. However, this is all an illusion, as a freeze frame reveals Tak to have been playing a part in a film that is being viewed in a screening room. But, when the showing is interrupted by Ann (Soraya Nakasuwan) learning by phone that Peter has been killed in a car crash, they decide to finish the reel and see silent footage of Peter behind a wheel on a busy city road.

The mode of transport changes to a floating restaurant, as Nong scrapes plates in the galley. She gazes at a moonlit pagoda on the banks of the Chao Phraya River before heading home to fry an egg in the kitchen she shares with her mother. This scene of mundane domesticity cuts to a close up of Taew (Paoluengton) remembering the shock of seeing news footage of the students being brutalised by the military and having their corpses incinerated with burning tyres. Such was the horror of what she witnessed that she decided to leave the country.

Nong has also cut herself off from the world, as she now appears as a shaven-headed nun sweeping leaves before prayers in front of a large Buddhist statue. Cross-cut with close-ups of other scalps are shots of an avenue of festive lights before we see a long-haired Nong dancing her cares away at a trance disco. After a while, however, the digital footage begins to fragment and, when the pixels realign themselves, the view shows a lush green field being rippled by the wind. As the scene settles, it is colour corrected so that the pinkish tinge in the sky is replaced with pale blue, as if to suggests that life has got back to normal.

Those forewarned about the complexities of Suwichakornpong's stunning film might wonder what all the fuss is about for its first half, as Ann and Taew get to know each other and relive key moments from their very different pasts. But, even here, the action is so studded with flashbacks, digressions and self-reflexive allusions that the audience has to remain alert in order to keep the elusive non-narrative from slipping out of their grasp. However, things do become trickier to follow after the Méliès clip and it would be tempting to suggest that the sequences involving Peter and the alternative Ann and Taew are have something to do with that spangled mushroom than Ann finds in the woods.

Yet, by using different actors to play Ann and Taew and by having Nong take on lots of menial tasks, Suwichakornpong appears to be flagging up the problem cinema has in depicting both history and reality, as it has a tendency to succumb to superficial artifice and, consequently, keeps romanticising momentous events and everyday occurrences to the extent that they bear only a passing resemblance to the originals. In meandering with mischievous gravitas towards this conclusion, Suwichakornpong pays fleeting homage to film-makers as different as Luis Buñuel, Chris Marker, David Lynch, Claire Denis and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with whom she shares an editor.

Lee Chatametikool teams here with Machima Ungsriwong to shape the images photographed by Ming Kai Leung, which make acute use of the many windows, doorways, mirrors, lenses and reflective surfaces that often obscure or distort the views in Parinda Moongmaiphol and Vikrom Janpanus's production design. Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr's sound mix and Wuttipong Leetrakul's score also have a disorientating effect, as Suwichakornpong esoterically explores the unreliability of memory and the inadequacy of cameras that are capable only of producing facsimiles of people, places and the past.

The scene shifts to Sardinia for the last offering from CinemaItaliaUK before it takes a summer break. Artfully blending elements from William Shakespeare's The Tempest and by Eduardo De Filippo's Art of Comedy, Gianfranco Cabiddu's La Stoffa dei sogni;The Stuff of Dreams is a teasing treatise on theatre and truth, crime and punishment, and the exquisite pleasure of forbidden passion. Although the action takes place around the time of the Great War, the musings on art and artifice wittily scripted by Cabiddu, Ugo Chiti and Salvatore De Mola, chime in with the current fixation with fake news, while also celebrating such bulwarks against tyranny as knowledge, creativity and freedom.

As a storm rages around the Sardinian island of Asinara, prison governor De Caro (Ennio Fantastichini) locks sleeping daughter Miranda (Alba Gaïa Bellugi) in her room. Out at sea, however, the captain of the ferry boat (Luca De Filippo) is struggling to cope with the rolling waves and travelling player Oreste Campese (Sergio Rubini) is more concerned about losing a trunk filled with costumes and make-up than he is about drowning with wife Maria (Teresa Saponangelo), daughter Anna (Anna Paglia) and their loyal sidekick, Pasquale (Nicola Di Pinto). In the next cabin, however, Camorra boss Don Vincenzo Aloisi (Renato Carpentieri) sees the emergency as an opportunity to escape from the guards escorting him to jail with his son, Ferdinando (Maziar Fayrouz), and henchmen, Andrea (Francesco di Leva) and Saverio (Ciro Petrone).

Waking on the beach the next morning, Oreste is relieved to be reunited with the other members of his troupe and delighted to discover that his trunk has survived being washed ashore. However, when the ferry captain's body is found with a gunshot wound, De Caro is determined to capture Don Vincenzo and his cohorts and sends the eager, but not particularly alert Lieutenant Franci (Jacopo Cullin) to find them. While the search party scours the island, Miranda picks the lock of her room and skips across the scrubland to bathe in the sea. However, her idyll is disturbed by the disorientated Ferdinando, just as Maria's moment of comfort privacy is compromised by Don Vincenzo, who holds her hostage until Oreste identifies himself and he sees a way in which he can fool De Caro into believing he is part of the theatre company.

Strolling into the prison compound, the castaways throw themselves on the mercy of De Caro. But he has a healthy dislike of thespians and strongly suspects that all is not as it seems. Consequently, dissatisfied with their answers regarding a production of Hamlet, he consigns the newcomers to the cells and urges Miranda to stay indoors. But she slips away to give the amnesiac Ferdinando some medicine for his fever and shows him how to rub herbs on his skin to fool the sniffer dogs. In her haste to get home, however, she drops a scarf that is retrieved by Antioco (Fiorenzo Mattu), a hulking shepherd, who has locked up the shipwrecked prisoner escorts (Lino Musella and Adriano Pantaleo) after they tried to throttle him with the chain around their wrists. Following a night of tantalising dreams, Miranda steals some tins of tuna from the stores and flirtatiously embarrasses the lieutenant (who has a crush on her) in order to leave the prison grounds and rendezvous with Ferdinando, who has been hiding from the guards. Despite his determination of keep his daughter confined, De Caro is too preoccupied in his study with the text of The Tempest after he orders Oreste to stage a production within five days so that he can expose the Aloisis and punish them for killing the captain.

Accepting the challenge on the proviso that his actors have a degree of liberty, Oreste scribbles down the play from memory. He also casts himself as Prospero, Maria as Miranda, >> as Ariel, Pasquale (who wants to play everyone) as Ferdinand, Don Vincenzo as the King of Naples, Saverio as his brother Sebastian and Andrea as Antonio, the usurpatious Duke of Milan. However, he needs four inmates to take the remaining roles and persuades De Caro into letting him select three to play Caliban, Trincolo and Stephano. But De Caro insists that trusted jailbird Agostino (Gianpaolo Loddo) plays Gonzalo, so that he can have a spy in the camp. However, as the troupe rehearses outdoors, he gets a good view of Andrea and Saverio struggling with the lines and Don Vincenzo (who had smuggled a pistol into the compound under 's dress) is so convinced they are going to give the game away that he asks Oreste to rewrite the Bard in more accessible language.

Having learned that Miranda went out in her runaway mother's best shoes, De Caro informs her that he has applied for a transfer, as she needs to mix with people of her own age rather than pine away on the island. But she is more than content with her current lot and wishes she could rejoin Ferdinando. However, the lieutenant keeps scouring the hills and even drops in on Antioco without realising that the escorts have been bound and gagged and dumped in the goat pen.

Work progresses on a makeshift proscenium and Oreste is pleasantly surprised by the improvement in Andrea and Saverio. However, he is horrified when Don Vincenzo plays a practical joke during the dress rehearsal with a blood squib and comes close to losing his temper when Pasquale fails to find him a wand for the duelling scene. Miranda watches from the ramparts, but ignores the lines about falling in love too young when the whole world is waiting for her. Thus, she is careless in hastening to meet Ferdinando and their embrace is witnessed from behind the bushes by Franci, who has just asked De Caro for a reference to support his application for a transfer. But Miranda is even more surprised when she mentions the play to Ferdinando and he remembers his name and the fact that his father is a gangster.

Certain his son has drowned, Don Vincenzo feels anything but powerful and admits to Oreste that he has thought about using the gun to kill himself. But he would rather take his chances of making the mail boat after giving a convincing performance and he tosses the weapon into the grass, as the pair sit on an promontory overlooking the sea. Across the island, however, Franci captures Ferdinando and brings him back to the prison, while the escorts are also detained after managing to slip away from Antioco while he sleeps off a night on the hooch. Feeling smug, Franci breaks the news that he found Ferdinando by following Miranda and De Caro (who brought her to the island to protect her after her mother abandoned them to fulfil her own acting dreams) feels foolish and betrayed when Miranda insists that she is staying on the island while Ferdinando serves his sentence.

As darkness falls, the stage is set in the exercise yard and Oreste makes such inspired use of rippling cloth and a silhouetted ship to recreate the storm that the prisoners watching on benches with De Caro. Miranda and Franci burst into spontaneous applause. Antioco wanders in and is so transfixed by the make-believe that he adds his own bird impersonations when the off-stage cast create the sounds of the island. However, Miranda sneaks away to see Ferdinando in his cell and assures him that she wants to wait for him, even though he feels unworthy of her love. Yet, as she proclaims her love for him, the stage backdrop slips down and not only does De Caro see his daughter holding hands through the bars, but Don Vincenzo also realises that his son is still alive and he allows his joy to give away his real identity. Amidst the chaos, as Franci rushes to arrest the crooks, the watching prisoners protest that the show has ended early and, ever the trouper, Oreste bundles his company on stage to take their bows.

The next morning, Oreste comes to bid farewell to De Caro. He hands him the wand he didn't have time to break during the play and ignores the snipe that the production was bad enough to land him behind bars. But, as the boat sails away, Franci discovers that Ferdinando has escaped and he emerges from the costume trunk with Miranda, who steps on to the deck and looks back at the island. Realising what has happened, De Caro points the wand to summon a storm. But he has a change of heart and breaks the wood, so that his daughter can fly the nest and find the love he has not been able to give her.

Named after its albino donkey population and situated off the north-west tip of Sardinia, Asinara may only measure 20 square miles, but the onetime prison colony-turned-national park makes a glorious setting for this assured study of life imitating art (and vice versa), which won the Donatello Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Sergio Rubini also deserved his Best Actor nomination, as he struggles to reconcile his professional vanity and touching fidelity to the text with the need to survive and protect his family. Occupying opposite sides of the law, Ennio Fantastichini and Renato Carpentieri provide solid support, while Fiorenzo Mattu captivates with his soulful eyes and hilariously dense dialect that nobody else can understand. Conversely, Teresa Saponangelo is given little to do, while Alba Gaïa Bellugi is required to be more kittenish than mutinous.

But they are well served by costumiers Beatrice Giannini and Elisabetta Antico, who amusingly dress the Camorra clan in identical black suits that are as much a uniform as those worn by the prison guards. Livia Borgognoni's production design, Vincenzo Carpineta's cinematography and Franco Piersanti's score are also first rate. Yet, what most impresses is the tone and the readiness to provoke the audience into thinking about the themes and the interrelation between the screenplay and its sources rather than merely engaging with the characters and their plight. Gianfranco Cabiddu may not be a household name - IMDB lists his first two features, Disamistade (1988) and The Son of Bakunin (1997), but overlooks the documentaries Passaggi di tempo (2004) and Faber in Sardegna & L'ultimo concerto di Fabrizio De André (2015) and the 2006 TV-movie, Disegno di sangue - but his approach here recalls the style employed by Gabriele Salvatores in the Oscar-winning Mediterraneo (1991), another tale of castaways that succeeded in finding the wit and humanity in a serious scenario.

It's always a treat to sit down with the latest Andrew Kötting film and Edith Walks sees him hook up again with author Iain Sinclair for another psychogeographical peregrinations to set alongside Swandown (2012) and By Our Selves (2015). The former saw the intrepid duo take a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings to Hackney in a parody of the Olympic torch relay, while the latter followed in the footsteps of poet John Clare from Epping to Northampton. But this 108-mile odyssey takes them and a band of mummers on a five-day excursion from Waltham Abbey in Essex (where 12th-century chronicler William of Malmesbury claimed King Harold II was buried after the Battle of Hasting in 1066) to the 1875 Charles Augustus William Wilke statue in St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex that depicts the last Anglo-Saxon monarch in the arms of his paramour, Edith Swan-Neck. Dressed as a bride clutching her bouquet, musician Claudia Barton assumes the character of Edith the Fair (c1025-c1086), as she enters Waltham Abbey with drummer David Aylward. We see close-ups up the gargoyles of Harold and Edith, as Barton explains that she is a handfast wife who is both spiritual and eccentric. She complains that William the Conqueror stole her lands and forced her into exile. Some think she went to Norway, but Iain Sinclair insists that Edith fled to Ireland.

He introduces the troubadours Andrew Kötting has assembled like the travelling troupe in Ingmar Bergman's The Magician (1958) and questions whether Harold is actually buried in the abbey at all. According to legend, it was founded around 1016 after an ox cart carrying a black stone cross had been transported 150 miles from Montacute in Somerset. Harold Godwinson had been miraculously cured of childhood paraylsis after visiting Holy Cross and he had returned to give thanks after defeating his brother Tostig and Norwegian king Harold Hardrada at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066.

Despite Waltham's claim to be Harold's last resting place, it is contested by Battle Abbey in Sussex, while others suggest that Harold survived the arrow in the eye at Hastings and became a monk in Chester. But Sinclair and author Alan Moore like the idea that he reincarnated as Hereward the Wake and that his spirit has continued to regenerate and protect his realm. Sinclair believes that this is as good a place as any to start a pilgrimage and they set out with pinhole camera photographer Anonymous Bosch and Jem Finer, who wheels a sound box that will help create mood along the way.

As they walk, Barton explains that she is carrying clematis blooms and that they could be dried and used for medicinal purposes to help heal wounds and improve memory. We also hear her whisper lines from Heinrich Heine's 1851 poem, `The Battlefield of Hastings', over home movie footage of a 1966 reconstruction of the Battle of Hastings that was performed at Batchelors Farm in Edenbridge by children from the Chevening, Crockham Hill and Marsh Green primary schools. She is also seen swanning around the Wilke statue in a series of swooping nocturnal top shots, as what seem to be old broadcast audio plays on the soundtrack.

They reach the Greenwich Foot Tunnel (which, like all the landmarks in the film, has its Ordinance Survey co-ordinates given on screen), where Barton sings `Gone With the Wind Is My Love' in digital super 8 iphone close-up. They get the occasional sideways glance as they march through urban streets to the beat of Aylward's drum before they are questioned by a couple of good-natured cops. Kötting shows them the Wilke miniature they are carrying in a box and asks if they are interested in the country's distant history. He points out that the Normans brought the French language to England and the female cop says she knows enough Spanish to say she doesn't speak it very well. She also reveals that her grandfather was Polish and Kötting raises a laugh by spouting some cod Polish. However, Barton chides him when he says that Edith was Harold's mistress.

Keen to futher explore the rejuvenation myth, Sinclair catches up with Alan Moore in Northampton, who concedes that he might have borrowed the idea from the 1985 Doctor Who Annual. As we hear Aylward and Barton making music with what look like gateposts in Elmstead Woods, Kötting and Sinclair plot their route using OS maps. Moving on from Petts Wood to Pratts Bottom, Finer produces percussive effects with his sound box before Moore and Sinclair discuss the fact that Harold was cut into pieces that Edith reassembled in a manner that makes them the English equivalents of Osiris and Isis. Moore makes a bad pun around Hereward's name and declares that every atom of the universe is represented in Finnegans Wake.

As Kötting cross-cuts between 1966 and 2016 footage, we hear Barton reciting Heine and singing `A Cup' (amusingly counterpointing shots of the schoolkids having a feast before the battle and shooting invisible arrows from homemade bows). She lies down in the Memorial Garden at Chevening to sing `The Arrow and the Song' before she baas at some sheep in a field and they plough on over the M25 to Knowle Park, where Sinclair relates their journey to a passage in St Augustine's City of God. We see him and Barton talking about Battle Abbey with Moore, who suggests that battlefields retain an aura and Sinclair reveals that he has used a crow named Odo (after the Bishop of Bayeux) to verify whether Harold was buried at Waltham Abbey and he was convinced by his reaction.

Marching on to Dunorlan Park to Aylward's drumbeat, we get to meet Odo during a picnic before the party heads along the Bourne Mill Footpath. Finer records the noise made by the train of Barton's dress on some parched soil, while Moore muses on lifespans and timescales and the theory that history is forever interacting with the present. A pendulum rig loops the camera over Barton, as she poses beside Wilke's statue and whispers on the soundtrack about Edith kissing Harold's bloodied body.

On they go, with the camera following the white train in the dust, as Aylward drums. They pause to make music with violin bows and bicycle spokes before striding out towards Wadhurst. A sequence shows them in animated but unheard conversation, as they pass through Battle Abbey and reach St Leonards. Barton's skirts are now soiled and shredded, but the sextet have succeeded in their mission to reunite Harold and Edith. The camera lingers over the annotated map of their route, as Sinclair explains that archaeologists have never found a scintilla of evidence pointing to a confrontation at Battle. But Edith (Barton) is convinced she felt his spirit there and feels she has helped re-animate him through her quest.

Mischievously, Kötting juxtaposes 1966 images of the warriors bestrewing the battlefield with a shot of himself on the beach clutching the Wilke replica and rising up on a hydraulic prop with a sucker arrow stuck to the left lens of his sunglasses. Some children (armed with toy weapons) bury him in the shingle before the scene shifts to Kent to the crypt at St Leonard's Church in Hythe. The camera roves around the collection of 1022 skulls that sit beside a giant stack of bones, as Moore speculates upon the fate of Harold and Hereward and concludes that they are free to roam any time and place because they have no proven resting place. Sinclair concurs that historic cycles depend upon the contiguous nature of past, present and future, as Edith restores Harold (Kötting) to life with the air pump beside the statue in Grosvenor Gardens.

As the film ends, Edith hitches up her dress and sets off across Camber Sands, the scene of a failed French invasion c1065. The play of shadow on the fabric almost looks as though it has been animated, as `Gone With the Wind Is My Love' is reprised on the soundtrack. It's a suitable way to close, as much of the action is repetitive, as the Six Proud Walkers mosey in and out of shot in the hope that something untoward might befall them. But this is consistently short of the kind of quirky happenstances that had enlivened Swandown and very much misses the imposing presence of Toby Jones (who had played John Clare). Consequently, for all its literate theorising on the nature of history and how detached most Brits have become from what isn't always a shared past, this feels as haphazard as it is playful.

Some of the camerawork is ingenious, while Philippe Ciompi's sound mix achieves a nice balance between Barton's folky singing and ex-Pogue Jem Finer's sculptured soundscapes. Kötting has stated that `who you walk with alters what you see'. This might well be true, but one suspects that some viewers would prefer see less of his travelling companions and a little more of the landscape through which they pass. Several more might even plump for the 10'66” short that Kötting has produced with his daughter, Eden. Animated by Glenn Whiting and with a score by Jem Finer, Forgotten the Queen makes vibrant use of Eden's drawings and collages to show how slings and arrows have impacted upon the outrageous fortunes of women since before the days of Edith Swan-Neck. But the dynamically witty visuals rely heavily on a daring, blaring blend of readings and radio voices that recalls the disconcertingly mischievous avant-garde tape loops created by The Beatles for the penultimate track of the White Album, `Revolution #9'.

Arriving with little fanfare, Randall Wright's Summer in the Forest is one of the most sincere and poignant documentaries of the year to date. Centring on Jean Vanier and the L'Arche organisation that now helps people with learning difficulties in 149 communities in 37 countries, this is a study in compassion that eschews sentimentality in demonstrating what can be achieved with conviction, commitment and a little inclusive empathy. The director will be interviewed by Mencap trustee Katie Hollier at the Phoenix on Monday 26 June at 18.15 and it's fervently to be hoped that this special Q&A screening is a sellout.

An opening caption reveals how Canadian naval officer Jean Vanier was invited in 1964 by Domincan priest Father Thomas Philippe to visit Le Val Fleuri, an institution for `idiots' in Trosly-Breuil in northern France. As we see a couple of figures walking in the nearby woods and the camera gently swooping down to show the chateau, the 87 year-old Vanier explains in voiceover that humanity has a compass that guides them towards what is right and he believes this is rooted in our natural instinct for peace and justice. As a new day dawns, Michel Petit (75) shaves and confides about having nightmares about the war and being told off, while Patrick Druault (65) accompanies Vanier for his breakfast. The pair have known each other for 45 years and Vanier jokes that he is completely crazy and single-minded in his pursuit of food and cigarettes. Yet, he also suffers from crippling anxiety attacks, as does André Stubenrauch (66), who has only just started to accept that his ju-jitsu fighting father was a bully who abused him. While he is still somewhat timid, Michel has a quiet awareness that he is brighter than his fellow residents. But he also has a fragility that keeps him from over-asserting himself.

When he started L'Arche (from the French for `The Ark'), Vanier had no experience of looking after people with mental health issues and he had to ensure sleepless nights and violent confrontations before he began to find his feet. He recalls riding on the coat-tails of the vogue for communality of the 1960s and was able to buy properties around Trosly-Breuil in order to give his charges a degree of independence. We see Jean pottering around the village doing his chores, as Vanier declares that he owes his sense of self and humanity to those he cares for.

Having met at Lourdes when she hit him with a Coke bottle, Céline Innocent (32) and Fred Dethouy (26) have become an item at Le Val Fleuri, where Fred has become part of the gardening team and Céline makes mosaics. She hopes they will be allowed to live together some day, but is happy just to be near her beloved. The wheelchair-bound Philippe Seux (75) also appreciates the freedom that Vanier has given him since plucking him from an institution in 1964, where he was often confined to his room and he joins Michel in averring that Vanier is a remarkable man who shows them all love by treating them like normal human beings. Sharing hearing difficulties, Michel insists that Vanier has taught him to appreciate silence. But he also admires him for the calm strength to deal with any situation that happens along.

Michel has a natural curiosity and one of the younger carers drives him to the memorial to the 1250 men from Compiègne who boarded the last train to Buchenwald in August 1944. In the car, Michel recalls the bombing of Amiens when he was a baby and how the family would spend nights in the cellar. Rather unnecessarily, the sound of a steam engine accompanies shots of the overgrown railway line, as Michel places a stone on top of the monument to pray for the lost souls. He admits to liking the Jews because of Jesus and hopes that all religions can get along. On the way back to the car, he almost loses his footing and jokes that he isn't drunk. When the carer laughs at his joke, Michel declares that he likes him as much as Queen Elizabeth and they spend the journey home discussing animals and why Patrick prefers shops to history.

Raised in Quebec, Vanier had been bitten by the sea bug when his father had taken him aboard a troop ship in Halifax in 1942. Having enrolled in the naval college, he had initially found being away from home difficult. But he learned to stand on his own two feet and recalls how his father's accounts of liberating Buchenwald had shown him the vast contrast between the glory and suffering of warfare. This lesson had stood him in good stead when he decided to run L'Arche along very different lines to the asylums he had visited in Paris and he has been rewarded with the friendship and trust of residents who have shown him the value of seeing things through innocent eyes.

It also made him realise that people like David Surmaire (33) need to operate on their own terms. He rises to dance to techno music in his room before striding down to breakfast. Although his growth has been restricted, he refuses to be seen as small and roughhouses with a pal in the dining-room before cycling off to the box workshop where he is employed. While he inserts plastic bags inside cardboard flats, Philippe draws, colours and paints in his room, while Vanier explains how people should never be judged on intellectual knowledge alone. André concurs, as he sits in his room surrounded by belongings that he never dreamt he would own, and describes how he has made a life at Trosly and has enjoyed doing what he wanted and finding friends who accepted him for who he was.

Cross-cutting between a female doctor cycling to work and Sebastien Pommier (33) gliding along a corridor in his wheelchair, Wright introduces some of Vanier's more severely debilitated charges. Patrick helps out by feeding Chantelle her chocolate pudding, while Vanier sits with Sebastien (one of the few black residents) and tells him how beautiful he is in a moment of such unaffected intimacy that its hard to write about it without a tear in the eye.

Meanwhile, Michel has gone to spend the day with his sister, who leafs through a photo album and informs the female carer that her brother was a perfectly healthy baby until a doctor gave him a spinal injection for bronchitis at six months. She describes how her mother was slow to pick up on his condition and how the family was shunned because of it. He chips in periodically, as she reveals that he was so badly beaten by warders at a hospice than he once walked 30km home and she will forever be grateful to Vanier for proving her brother with a sanctuary. On the drive home, Marcel offers monosyllabic answers to his carer's concerned questions, as she realises the pain he must have endured before finding his haven.

Vanier waves off a minibus, as a group heads into the woods for a picnic. Patrick, André and David are among the party and they enjoy lounging around in the shade, playing boule and meeting some horses. David has fun barking at a fox terrier guarding the paddock, but takes playful umbrage when one of the carers tries to steal his cap. As he puts gel in his hair in his room, André goes for supper with his friend Widad, who asks him about his plans and he suggests he would like to learn how to read and then buy an electric car to take her out for a drink and dinner. They call each other `sweetheart' and their mutual affection is readily evident, although she is careful to stress the purely platonic nature of their friendship, as she bids him goodnight and he returns to Le Val Fleuri in time for lights out.

When the alarm clock next rings, the scene has shifted to Bethlehem, where Sara Daqdaq (22) and Maha M'Laya (25) are rising to start a new day at the L'Arche centre at Ma'an Lil-Hayat. On the drive from home, they pass shepherds leading their flocks to pasture and there is an element of Vanier doing something similar, as he interrupts a music session to excited applause. It bothered him that Israel took such good care of its citizens with learning difficulties and yet did nothing for those in the Occupied Territories. So, he established L'Arche across faiths and cultures to stand as a beacon of co-operation that might guide warring factions towards peace.

As Vanier joins a group making balls of wool to be used in souvenir Nativity scenes, Hilmi Mizher (23), who knows all about Raphaël Simi and Philippe Seux being the first L'Arche residents and loves Vanier because he gave him a safe place away from the beatings he is given in the streets. Sara is protected by her mother, who still feels guilty for the traffic accident that resulted in her month-old baby cracking her head on the road after being thrown out of the car window. She is proud of the way Sara tries to cheep people up whenever they are sad and her placid determination is beautifully captured in a discreet shot of her trying to co-ordinate her fingers around the handle of a glass tea cup and smiling with quiet satisfaction after she takes a sip.

Following a dusk shot of the city with an Israeli jet roaring overhead and a morning view of the West Bank wall, Vanier muses in voiceover that he feels lucky to live among such fragile people, as they have helped him come to terms with his own limitations and reach an understanding of human nature. As we see Sara on a shopping expedition, Vanier laments that tribes continue to seek dominion over each other and he wishes the world at large would recognise that the weak and the foolish have been chosen to confound the wise and the powerful by showing people reality rather than ideology. According to Vanier, weakness should be seen as a strength, as it prompts a cry of despair that can lead to peace. We also need to confront our fears because they lead to anguish and anger. Instead, we should convert our fury into compassion and show this in small gestures that make life better for individuals and the community alike. He admits it's a long, slow process in an age of instant gratification. But he assures us that the rewards are worth the effort.

Rising up from in front of L'Arche for an aerial view of Bethlehem, Wright match cuts to the lush woodlands around Trosly, where David gets to live out his obsession with Walker, Texas Ranger (1993-2001) by capturing an eye-patched assassin armed with a sucker dart gun threatening Céline and Fred's engagement party. Vanier arrives back in time for the picnic and we see Patrick, Philippe, Michel and André enjoying themselves with the other guests. Junior staff members toss each other into a giant paddling pool and Fred's sister reads from a long scroll to express her pride in all he has done. Taking Fred and Céline by the hand, Vanier congratulates them on finding each other and proving that love has no limits. There can be no better way of showing the unconditional acceptance L'Arche was founded to achieve.

It would have been very easy to produce a hagiographic portrait of Jean Vanier. But Wright places the focus firmly on his humanity and, as a result, his homespun wisdom makes a deeper impression than any philosophising rhetoric. His actions often speak louder than his words (which are spoken in a gentle English accent), as he offers himself and his time to people who recognise someone who understands them. Wright and cinematographer Patrick Duval maintain a discreet distance and should be commended for earning the trust of the `rejected people' at both Le Val Fleuri and Ma'an Lil-Hayat, some of whom speak with a disarming clarity and honesty that is often humbling. Yet the film is full of intimate moments that are all the more poignant because editor Paul Binns and composer John Harle resist the temptation to embellish them. Wright might have explored how the L'Arche is planning for life without its founder, but it makes sense to concentrate on this wholly decent and indefatigably hopeful man while he is still with us.