Parky at the Pictures (DVD 27/7/2017)

Under the dispassionate gaze of her grey cat, Marty, Isabelle Huppert is brutally raped in her suburban Parisian home by a masked assailant who makes his unhurried escape through an open door. Rather than calling the police, the battered and bruised Huppert cleans up the crockery that got broken during the assault before throwing away her black dress and taking a bath (whose bubbles discolour with blood). She nonchalantly orders Chinese food and teases son Jonas Bloquet about his latest dead-end job and his relationship with the pregnant Alice Isaaz, who was raised in an artist collective and has had many lovers before moving in with Bloquet.

Having slept with a hammer on her pillow, Huppert chairs a meeting of the video game company she runs with old friend Anne Consigny. She is unhappy with the reaction of the princess being molested by a monster and gets into an argument with Lucas Prisor, a gamer who resents being ordered around by a woman with a publishing background. Colleague Arthur Mazet backs Huppert, but Consigny jokes that he is the only member of staff who doesn't actively hate them.

After taking a blood test, Huppert has a coffee and informs lover Christian Berkel (who just happens to be married to Consigny) that she can't see him this evening as she is not in the mood. She pops in to see mother Judith Magre and catches her in flagrante with her latest toyboy, Raphaël Lenglet. Delighting in discomfiting her daughter, Magre asks Huppert how she would feel if she remarried and smiles when she threatens to kill her. However, they are both aware that Huppert's father is up for parole and neither is thrilled by the prospect of him being released, as he committed a series of brutal murders that caused a national scandal because he implicated his 10 year-old child in the crimes (hence a stranger cursing and spilling her drink over Huppert in the café).

On arriving home, Huppert bumps into neighbours Virginie Efira and Laurent Lafitte, who ask her to get involved in a residents' campaign. She speaks briefly to the workman changing her locks before feeding Marty, whose loud miaows trigger a flashback to the attack, as the intruder burst in through the patio doors after she opened them to let the cat inside. But she regains her composure as readily as she dismisses the fender bending she has outside the restaurant where she is meeting ex-husband and struggling novelist Charles Berling for supper. She starts to ask him about an abusive text she received from her assailant, but they are interrupted by Consigny and Berkel, who are appalled when Huppert casually mentions her ordeal and her decision not to call the police because of the mistrust that dates back to her treatment around the time of her father's arrest. But she can't resist taunting Berling about his broken bumper, as they walk to their cars, and wastes few words in rejecting his proposed game scenario.

The next day, Huppert meets Bloquet to view the apartment he hopes to rent with Isaaz. But his mother and girlfriend have a row and he pleads with Huppert to stop trying to control his life because he has finally grown up. She returns to the office to find Berkel waiting for her because he knows Consigny is out of town and she provides him with joyless hand relief. Working late, however, she gets another text from her attacker that suggests he can see her because it makes reference to the colour of her blouse. But the only other person around is Prisor and he is busy taking photographs in the studio.

Huppert meets with Magre for coffee and she complains that a man threw pizza at her because a TV channel broadcast a documentary about her husband prior to his parole hearing. But, even though Huppert wants nothing more to do with her father, she watches the programme about the events that occurred in Nantes some four decades earlier and forever tainted her reputation. She also has another flashback, but this time manages to subject the masked man to a frenzied counterattack. But her reverie is disturbed by Marty pouncing on a bird that has flown into her doors. She puts the dead sparrow in a box and is dropping it into the outside bin when she sees a suspicious car parked across the quiet street. Taking the axe and pepper spray she recently purchased to protect herself, she smashes in the driver window, only to sting the eyes of Berling, who is concerned that she is in danger.

As he recovers over a glass of wine, Berling lets slip that he is dating Vimala Pons, who invited him to speak at a seminar on Simone De Beauvoir. Huppert gleans from Bloquet that Pons is also a yoga teacher and she is Googling her when she receives an email with an attachment showing her head affixed to the princess being raped in the video game in development. She asks Mazet to investigate and he speculates that the clip could have been produced by an old employee with a grudge, as the company system has recently been hacked.

Tracking down Pons, Huppert apologises for smashing her car window and invites her to a Christmas party with Berling. He is dismayed by her snooping when they meet up at the maternity unit where Isaaz has gone into labour. Feeling far from overjoyed at the imminent arrival, Huppert gives Bloquet and his black buddy Stéphane Bak a meaningful stare when she sees the colour of the child. But Isaaz glares back without shame and Huppert confides in the midwife that she has never felt close to her son and wonders if he has a stronger bond with Consigny, as they first met the night they gave birth together and Huppert agreed to let Consigny breastfeed her baby after her own was stillborn.

Arriving home to see police cars outside her building, Huppert is informed by Efira that Lafitte chased away an intruder in a ski mask and she insists that her husband escorts Huppert to her apartment. He takes a quick look round and apologises for letting the prowler escape, but Huppert is charmed by his awkwardness and is embarrassed when she blurts out that she has just become a grandmother. The following morning, she discovers that Prisor skis and asks Mazet if he will teach her to shoot at the gun range where he practices. She also offers him a large reward if he can identify the perpetrator of the video clip and he jokes that weird things often turn up when you hack into someone's computer.

Having masturbated while using binoculars to watch Lafitte arrange a Nativity scene in his back garden, Huppert invites him and Efira to her festive soirée. She revels in telling Berkel to mind his manners and serving Pons a starter with a toothpick inside. But she also tuts at Bloquet as Isaaz orders him to take care of the baby and lets slip his disdain when Magre and Lenglet announce their engagement. Moreover, she plays footsie with Lafitte under the table as Efira says grace and Berkel takes a pop at him for being an investment broker. After supper, she arranges to have lunch with Pons and leaves Efira and Magre watching midnight mass on TV and the others playing scrabble while she flirts with Lafitte. She tells him how her father murdered their neighbours when they stopped him making the Sign of the Cross on their children's forehead's. Patting his knee, she jokes that he killed several animals as well as 27 humans and, yet, he spared a single hamster. She recalls him coming home covered in blood and throwing all their possessions on the fire. Caught up in the moment, she has started helping him and was photographed covered in ashes when he was arrested. She regrets being dubbed the psychopath's daughter, but is more frustrated by people's refusal to accept her innocence and the pain she endured at the hands of the police.

Huppert goes to fetch Lafitte a cognac and argues with Magre about her mocking laughter at the table. She tells her mother that neither of them is sufficiently drunk to have this conversation. But it proves to be their last, as Magre collapses and just about manages to tell Huppert to visit her father before she lapses into a coma in the ambulance. Unable to hold her hand, Huppert asks the doctor is the seizure is genuine, as Magre is something of an attention seeker. But she is reassured that her mother is dangerously ill and Huppert returns home in something of a daze with Consigny.

They share a bed and Consigny smiles as she asks if Huppert remembers the time they experimented with lesbianism on holiday. But it's Berkel who wakes her with a hand under her nightie the next morning and Huppert informs him that their affair is over. She goes to see Magre and chides her for trying to manipulate her on her deathbed. But, as Huppert changes the TV channel, Magre goes into cardiac arrest and dies as the electronic doors slide across to leave Huppert outside looking in helplessly. Driving home alone, she gets a shock when Marty jumps on her. But worse is to come when she finds semen on her bedding and an apology on her open laptop.

A few days later, Huppert goes to scatter Magre's ashes in her favourite park. Isaaz gives Bloquet a mouthful for forgetting the baby's dummy and Huppert asks why he puts up with such abuse when he is clearly not the child's father. In denial, Bloquet swears at her and Consigny runs to calm him down, as Huppert scatters the ashes on the breeze. Later that night, however, as storm has blown up and Lafitte offers to help Huppert with her shutters. She flirts with him and allows him to fondle her after struggling with an upstairs window. But Lafitte gets cold feet and scurries away in shame.

At the office, Huppert has another stand-off with Prisor over the new game and is disappointed when Mazet finds nothing incriminating on his computer. But she does find something on Mazet's PC , however, and forces him to drop his trousers in a order to humiliate him. On arriving home, she finds a parcel on the doorstep and is admiring the baby seat she has bought when she is attacked again by the masked man. She puts up a struggle and stabs him in the hand with a pair of scissors before ripping off the mask to reveal Lafitte, who rushes away in terror. The next morning, however, he leaves for work as usual and shoots Huppert a nervous glance as she collects her post.

Feeling the need to get things off her chest, Huppert goes to visit her father in prison. However, she learns that he hanged himself in his cell with a sheet shortly after hearing she was coming and she gloats over his corpse in the morgue. While driving home, however, a reporter calls for her reaction and she sweves off the road into a tree when a fox bounces off her windscreen and she sprains her knee. Unable to move, she calls her friends, but only Lafitte is available to help her. He pulls her out of the window and cleans up her wounds back home. But, when Huppert asks if he enjoyed raping her and what motivated him to do so, he merely insists it was `necessary' and stalks away.

Forced to walk with a stick while her knee is in a brace, Huppert puts Magre's apartment up for sale and catches Longlet with another woman. She order him to leave and he accuses her of being her father's willing accomplice. Keeping her cool, Huppert repeats her demand that he moves out and he sneeringly shoots back that he defiled her mother. As she leaves, Huppert agrees to a last assignation with Berkel and arrives home to find that Isaaz has thrown Bloquet out for resigning his burger job. She is aghast to see he has brought the baby with him and takes Isaaz's side when she comes to collect the child. However, she feels sorry for Bloquet, as she knows he had been trying to protect the boy from his mother and had put up with a good deal in order to be a good father.

While out shopping, Huppert and Bloquet run into Lafitte, who invites them to dinner. Efira gone to see the Pope in Spain and left him masses of food and Bloquet gets drunk on red wine. He passes out and Lafitte offers to show Huppert the wood burner in the basement. She knows what is coming and lets Lafitte know it is okay to seduce her. But he insists that there has to be an element of coercion and Huppert is sufficiently aroused to consent.

At work, she congratulates Prisor on the quality of the game he has designed and he nods in gratitude. However, Consigny ushers Huppert into her office to reveal that she knows Berkel is having an affair and claims to have recognised the perfume on his clothing. But Huppert offers nothing but detached support and she keeps well away from Barkel when she throws a launch party for the game. She asks Bloquet to cater it to earn some money and feels so sorry for Berling when he tells her that Pons had mixed him up all this time with another novelist that she hooks him up with Prisor to discuss his game idea. But she also confesses to Consigny about her affair and ask Bloquet to tend to the guests while she drives home with Lafitte.

En route, she tells him that she is tired of lying and intends reporting him to the police. He says nothing as Huppert closes her gate and goes inside. But the masked Lafitte bursts through the back door and pounces on her. He rips her dress, while slapping her across the face. Huppert tries to resist, but he is too strong for her until Bloquet arrives and caves in his skull with a piece of wood. Whispering, `why?', Lafitte collapses and Huppert tells the cops she has no idea why such a quiet neighbour would suddenly become such a beast.

As Huppert supervises the decorators giving the downstairs rooms a new look, she notices Efira putting the crib figures into a removal van. She asks how she is coping and Efira says she can always find solace in her faith. Huppert wishes her luck and is taken aback when Efira thanks her for helping a decent man with a tormented soul find what he was looking for, albeit for a short time. Before the full import of the words can sink in, Huppert sees the reunited Bloquet and Isaaz arrive with the baby. However, she slips away to the cemetery to leave flowers at memorial plaques to her parents. Consigny finds her and reveals that she has thrown Berkel out. But she needs somewhere to live during the house sale and Huppert offers her a bed, as they walk along the avenue.

One can almost imagine Claude Chabrol and Luis Buñuel arguing in a celestial screening room over who should take the most credit for this devastating dissection of bourgeois hauteur and Catholic hypocrisy. Roman Polanski, Michael Haneke and Claude Sautet might also recognise the odd trope, while Mia Hansen-Løve would probably spot similarities between Huppert's Oscar-nominated performance and her equally brilliant work in Things to Come. What seems in little doubt, however, is that this is the kind of film that Alfred Hitchcock would be making if he was still active - hence Anne Dudley's lushly atmospheric score paying such fulsome homage to Bernard Herrmann. He had taken tentative steps in this direction in Marnie (1964) and Frenzy (1972) and one can only speculate on how Huppert might have responded to his direction in exploring the damaged psyche of a victim who feels herself to be complicit in the crimes committed against her.

Emma Stone is wonderful in La La Land, but Huppert leaves her standing with this typically courageous exploration of desire, dominance and danger. As one might expect, Verhoeven makes demands that test her mettle. But she seems to relish roles that take her to the edge and even brings a darkly comic touch to some of the more shocking scenes, as though daring the audience to engage with the action rather than simply spectate from behind a protective barrier of cosy PC preconceptions. Thank goodness Verhoeven abandoned plans to make this in Hollywood because he couldn't think of a single English-speaking actress who could handle the part.

The supporting cast is also splendid, with Consigny, Magre and Isaaz being the standouts and it's a shame that more was not made Efira's pious spouse, especially as she seems to have known all about Lafitte's activities and kept quiet in order to protect herself and her spotless reputation. A little more of the ever-urbane Berling would also not have gone amiss, particularly as Huppert would seemingly not have divorced with him had he not struck her (although she is somewhat submissive in her elicit relationship with the resistibly chauvinist Berkel). Then, there's Huppert's relationship with Bloquet, as well as Consigny's surrogate affection for a man child whose desire to be a good parent makes him blind to his girlfriend's evident shortcomings. And let's not get started on the content of the video games and Huppert's dealings with Prisor and Mazet. Or her father!

Verhoeven owes much to production designer Laurent Ott and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine for giving the action an elegance that is both sinister and satirical. But he is more indebted to David Birke, who does as good a job in translating Philippe Djian to the screen as Jean-Jacques Beineix did reworking 37°2 Le Matin as Betty Blue (1986). This is much more grounded in reality than that cinéma du look classic, but it shares its incendiary sense that one person's normality is another's aberration. Birke deserves great credit for keeping the subplots and red herrings in the air long enough for Verhoeven to establish the principals and generate a bit of suspense. But it's the stinging wit and precision of the dialogue that most impresses, as Verhoeven and Huppert demonstrate that `shame isn't a strong enough emotion to stop us doing anything at all'.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actress Nicole Garcia has a remarkable record behind the camera. Since making her directorial debut with Every Other Weekend (1990), only A View of Love (2010) and Going Away (2013) have failed to secure César and/or Palme d'or nominations. Frustratingly, neither The Favourite Son (1994) nor Charlie Says (2006) were widely released in this country, but Place Vendôme (1998) and The Adversay (2002) proved that Garcia could coax performances of poignant power from the likes of Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil. Hopes were high, therefore, when it was announced that she would direct Marion Cotillard in From the Land of the Moon. But this adaptation of Italian writer Milena Angus's Sardinia-set novel, Mal di Pierres, is so determinedly sentimental that not even Cotillard can find truth in its melodramatic contrivances.

Some time in the 1950s, Marion Cotillard and husband Àlex Brendemühl drive from Le Ciotat to Lyon so that teenage son Victor Quilichini can compete in a piano competition at the Conservatory. Caught in traffic en route to the venue, Cotillard recognises a street name and urges the taxi driver to go on without her. As she sees Louis Garrel's name on the door, she thinks back to the immediate postwar period when she had discovered the pleasures of sensuality while standing without underwear in the fast-moving waters of the river in the Bargemon countryside.

Living with parents Daniel Para and Brigitte Roüan and her younger sister, Victoire Du Bois, Cotillard had caused a scandal by exhibiting herself naked to the farm workers below her bedroom window. She had even prayed in the local church for a man to fulfil her aching desires. But she oversteps the mark in her pursuit of Elian Planes, the married teacher who had loaned her a copy of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Mistaking his generosity for a token of his affection, Cotillard spends the entire harvest feast watching Planes, as he chats with their neighbours. When he leaves the party to relieve himself, she follows and thrusts a letter into his hands. But, when he gives it back with shocked alacrity, she pushes him into the table in front of his pregnant wife before running into the woods.

Found by a search party the following morning, Cotillard is taken to the doctor by her mother, who explains about her stomach cramps and lustful excesses. But Roüan thinks that Cotillard merely needs a man to keep her in line and, when she sees him gazing at her daughter while she plays the piano, Roüan offers to set Spanish bricklayer Brendemühl up in business if he takes Cotillard off her hands. He has been a nomad since being driven out of his homeland during the Civil War and he likes the idea of settling down. But Cotillard is disdainful of his timid advances and warns him that she will be trouble. Yet, as he is about to take the bus out of town, she agrees to marry him if he will accept that she will neither love him nor sleep with him.

Brendemühl accepts Cotillard's terms and, after she experiences a crippling attack of the cramps in her room, they take communion together during their joyless nuptial mass. They move to Le Ciotat on the Mediterranean coast, where Cotillard spends the first week in bed and largely ignores her spouse before she starts helping out with his new building firm. She resents the fact he spends 200 francs on Toulon prostitutes each Saturday and agrees to sleep with him to keep the money in the family. But, while she is inspecting the house he is building for her, Cotillard suffers a miscarriage and the doctor recommends that she takes a spa cure for her kidney stones.

Treating Brendemühl to a cold embrace as she checks into the clinic in the Swiss mountains, Cotillard keeps to herself until she befriends Provençal waitress Aloïse Sauvage, who has worked at the spa for four years and regrets being unable to see her young daughter in Paris. While accompanying Sauvage on her cleaning rounds, Cotillard peers through an open door and catches sight of Louis Garrel, a lieutenant who was diagnosed with uremia after serving in Indochina. She hovers around his room when Sauvage goes to shave him and pays him another visit after seeing orderly Jihwan Kim leaving his room. Garrel explains that Kim was converted to Christianity and drafted into the French army and Cotillard admits that she has never set eyes on an Asian man before. She asks whether there will always be wars and sits silently at Garrel's bedside, as he flits in and out of consciousness after chewing some opium for the pain.

Enduring her aqua treatments and the regular glasses of warm spa water, Cotillard is pleased to see Garrel playing Tchaikovsky's `June Barcarolle' on the piano in the main recreation room. However, the effort proves too much for him and he has to be helped back to his room. Cotillard comes to sit with him and he lends her the book he has been reading and she sees his address in Lyon written on the title page. She is frustrated, therefore, when Brendemühl pays her a visit and he is hurt when she complains that it always rains when he is around. When he goes for a smoke, Cotillard slips away to cradle Garrel as he suffers an attack and she returns to her own room to take the crucifix out of her bedside drawer and thank the Lord for finally hearing her prayer. The next day, however, she sees his mattress being aired through his window and rushes back to the clinic in time to see Garrel being loaded into an ambulance and driven away. She runs though the woods to intercept the vehicle on the winding mountain road, but she is too late to say her goodbyes.

Waking to heavy snow after three days in bed, Cotillard is relieved when Garrel returns after a transfusion in Lyon. They spend time together and have their picture taken by the clinic photographer. Yet, when Cotillard offers herself to Garrel during a walk, he insists she is married before God and she hastens away through the trees in some distress. However, when they next meet in the steam room, they become lovers and Cotillard experiences the sensations she had always longed for. But, no sooner has she found happiness, than Brendemühl announces that he is no longer prepared to bear the cost of an expensive and ineffectual cure. She begs Garrel to take her away, but he needs to sort out his future career, as he is leaving the army. He promises to send for her when he is settled and Cotillard bids farewell to Sauvage with the confession that she has been happy for the first time in her life.

Returning to the home that Brendemühl has created for her, Cotillard learns she is pregnant. Du Bois comes to visit with her beau and they picnic on the beach. But Cotillard feels that Brendemühl has a right to know the truth and she informs him that she will leave him the moment Garrel calls her. Yet, while she writes endless letters, she never receives a single reply and tries to wade out into the sea when the bundle is returned unopened. Brendemühl wrestles her to the shore and holds her to prevent her doing anything foolish. But, when she fails to hear back after telling Garrel that she is expecting his child, Cotillard abandons hope and commits to raising her son.

Seven years pass and Du Bois comes to stay. She is unhappy because her workaholic husband is never home. But Cotillard urges her not to get a divorce, as she has come to learn that stability with a good man is important. Young Ange Black-Bereyziat returns from fishing in the stream with Brendemühl and eagerly shows his mother his catch. She seems content, as she changes the station on the car radio. But the sound of `June Barcarolle' reawakens suppressed emotions and she asks her son's piano tutor to teach him the piece.

As another seven years pass (in a neat panning shot depicting Cotillard's family listening intently as Quilichini plays for them. Despite the quiet pride in her eyes, Roüan complains that Cotillard shows the boy too little affection and she is stung when Brendemühl suggests that she was taught to keep such a distance during her own childhood. He urges Cotillard to let Quilichini enter the contest in Lyon and, following a quick recap of their trip, we rejoin the action as Cotillard enters Garrel's building. She rings the bell and asks Kim if he remembers her from the clinic. He informs her that Garrel died on the day he was rushed away in the ambulance and she struggles to understand what he is saying. But he reassures her that she was present on the day he passed and she is left dismayed by the realisation that she has been living a dream for 14 years.

Trying to gather her thoughts while walking along the riverbank, Cotillard misses Quilichini taking second prize. But Brendemühl remains calm when she finally catches up with them and they start the drive home. In the darkness, Cotillard asks about the day he came to the spa and we flashback to see Brendemühl leaving the table to go for a smoke. On the verandah, he meets Garrel and offers him a cigarette when he confides that he has been told his condition is terminal. He gestures towards Cotillard sitting alone in the dining room and admits that he could have loved her in another life, but neither his body nor his heart is up to the task. As she listens to Brendemühl in the car, he reveals that he had been unable to sleep at the village inn and had slipped into Cotillard's bed and she had welcomed his advances without protest.

Arriving home, Cotillard goes to the cupboard in which she has kept the suitcase she has not unpacked since returning from the spa. She opens the medical file in which she had hidden the photograph she had taken with Garrel and is stunned to see herself posing on the edge of an empty chair. Wandering into the garden, she finds Brendemühl watching the sun coming up over the sea. She asks why he had never told her the truth and he simply replies that he had wanted her to live. As the film ends, Cotillard and Brendemühl pick their way through some rocky terrain overlooking his hometown. She asks him to point out his house, as she looks at him with something approaching admiration.

Marion Cotillard has become one of those actors who seem incapable of giving a poor performance. She barely registers a flicker of emotion in this novelettish saga and, yet, one is never left in any doubt about how her wilful heroine is feeling at any given moment. Àlex Brendemühl and Louis Garrel are no more demonstrative in providing selfless support. But such mannered playing and threadbare characterisation makes it difficult for the audience to empathise with individuals who exist solely for Nicole Garcia and co-scenarist Jacques Fieschi to pull off the kind of coup de théâtre that one usually associates with M. Night Shyamalan.

Indeed, it's easy to pine for Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015), as Cotillard and Garrel exchange meaningful looks like Malcolm McDowell and Nanette Newman in Bryan Forbes's The Raging Moon (1971). But one has to admire Christophe Beaucarne's contrasting views of the rural, coastal and Alpine settings and Arnaud de Moleron's thoughtful interiors. Even Daniel Pemberton's lush string score fits the tone. Yet, this never acquires the sense of significance denoted by its dilatory pacing, as Garcia skates over themes of female desire, familial expectation, mental health and the colonial legacy. Consequently, for all the elegant artistry and sincere care that has gone into its making, this rarely feels like anything more than an old-fashioned weepie.

Released 14 years after the Armistice, Broken Lullaby was one of the least typical films that Ernst Lubitsch produced during the Hollywood phase of his enduringly influential career. Coming between the Maurice Chevalier musicals, The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) and One Hour With You (1932), and emerging a few months before the screwball masterpiece, Trouble in Paradise (1932), this adaptation of Maurice Rostand's 1930 play, The Man I Killed, was one of a number of pacifist talkies to emerge in the wake of Lewis Milestone's Oscar-winning interpretation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (1932). But, while the Berlin-born Lubitsch sought to remind audiences of the pitiless folly of conflict at a time when tensions were starting to simmer in Europe, François Ozon prioritises human emotion over historical lesson in his handsome monochrome remake, Frantz, In the small German town of Quedlinburg in 1919, Paula Beer goes to lay flowers on the grave of Anton von Lucke, the fiancé she lost during the Great War. She is surprised to learn that a French stranger has left some white roses and Von Lucke's mother, Marie Gruber, urges her not to mention the incident to her doctor husband, Ernst Stötzner. He is busy treating the war-wounded Johann von Bülow, who deeply resents the humiliation heaped upon Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. But he is also keen for life to go on and asks Stötzner for his permission to propose to Beer. However, she finds his suggestion that he could help her forget Von Lucke distasteful and pulls her hand away when he tries to press his suit.

During supper, there is a knock at the door and Beer opens it to see Pierre Niney scurrying away down the street. The following morning, he is crying quietly at the graveside when Beer arrives at the churchyard and he summons the courage to visit Stötzner at his surgery. Refusing to treat a Frenchman because they are all responsible for his son's death, Stötzner orders Niney to leave his house and refuses to discuss the matter with Gruber and Beer when they come to Von Lucke's unchanged room to see what Niney wanted.

Keen to meet Niney, Beer leaves a note at his hotel and declines Von Bülow's invitation to a forthcoming ball. Niney comes to the house and reveals that he knew Von Lucke in Paris before the war. He chooses his words carefully under Stötzner's suspicious scrutiny, but Beer and Gruber urge him to recall past meetings and we flashback to the muted colours of the Louvre, as the friends discuss the paintings before dancing with some pretty girls in a bar. Stötzner closes his eyes in anguish as he listens to the anecdotes, but Beer thanks Niney for bringing them some comfort.

She accompanies him to the cemetery the next day and explains that Von Lucke was buried in France and that the grave is merely a focus for the family's mourning. Beer also discloses that they know nothing about his fate other than the date he died and admits that she sometimes imagines him coming home. She recites his favourite Verlaine poem in French and Niney compliments her on her accent. Beer asks about the nature of their friendship and whether they competed over a sweetheart. But he lowers his eyes and insists that they were nothing more than pals.

They wander into the hills and she shows him the place where Von Lucke proposed. She is surprised that Niney knows so little about her and fails to notice his discomfort when she talks about how they met in a bookshop at students. However, she watches him swim in his underwear when he complains of being hot and suggests a dip in the lake. As he lies on the grass, she sees the scars on his torso. But he is reluctant to discuss them and claims that his sole wound is Von Lucke.

The colour drains from the imagery again as Gruber tells Beer that she sees many similarities between Niney and her son. Over supper, she is pleased to discover that they both played the violin, but is sorry to hear that Niney has ceased to play in an orchestra since the war because he can no longer hear the notes. Stötzner shows him Von Lucke's room and confides the guilt he feels at forcing the boy to do his duty for the Fatherland. He shows Niney his son's violin (which he considers to be his heart) and asks him to take it back to Paris. But, while Niney refuses, he agrees to play after looking through a photograph album and listening to Beer reading Von Lucke's last letter. His mind harks back (in colour) to the lessons he used to give his friend before he starts to play. Enchanted by the music, Stötzner and Gruber put their heads together and Beer is suitably moved to accompany Niney on the piano. But the intensity of the situation proves too much for him and he faints.

Beer walks Niney back to his hotel and he invites her to the Spring Ball. She accepts and Gruber accompanies her to buy a new dress, while Niney returns to his room to find a parcel containing a small coffin. Von Bülow is furious with Beer for bringing a Frenchman to a German festival. But the local girls are pleased to have a handsome young man to dance with and Beer ignores Von Bülow's rebuke to swirl away to the oompah band. She accepts Niney's jacket over her shoulder as they walk home, but his night is spoilt when a drunken reveller spits on him after he helps him back to his feet. He returns to his room and tries to write Beer a letter revealing the real reason for his visit, but he screws the paper into a ball.

The next day, Stötzner joins his friends in the hotel bar and is put out when they refuse his offer of a drink because he has befriended Niney. He regrets that they blame him for their losses when they all supported the war and sent their sons to the trenches with cheers and celebrated each victory without a thought for the French counterparts mourning their dead. As he leaves, he bumps into Niney and asks him to supper. But Niney is unnerved by the doctor's party singing a patriotic song while he waits for his key and has to stand his ground when Von Bülow accuses him of dishonouring Von Lucke's memory by trying to steal his girl.

When Niney fails to keep his appointment that night, Beer goes looking for him and finds him in the windswept churchyard. He insists on telling her what happened on the Marne on 15 September 1918, as his patrol was marching through the blasted countryside (in washed-out colour). Enemy shelling drove him into an empty trench where he found himself face-to-face with Von Lucke. His eyes were wide with terror, but he was armed and Niney shot him before he lost his nerve. He fell backwards and a stunned Niney had edged towards him as chaos reined around him.

As Beer begins to sob, Niney recalls how a blast had thrown him on top of the corpse and he had wiped the mud off Von Lucke's. He had discovered that his rifle was unloaded and, in a desperate bid to learn something about the man he had killed, he had searched his pockets and found his last letter to Beer. She curses him for lying about the happy times they had shared in Paris and Niney admits he has been a coward. But he confesses his need to unburden himself of his guilt and insists that he has come to love Von Lucke with each new detail he has learnt about his life and personality. Distraught, Beer hurries away and leaves Niney alone in the darkness after he promises to tell Stötzner and Gruber the truth before his train leaves the following day.

However, Beer meets him at the inn and escorts him to the station without letting him return to the house. She claims to have broken the news and, as she sees Niney on to his train, she agrees to let him write to them in the future. But she has actually told Gruber and Stötzner that Niney has been called home to see his sick mother and has made no mention of his role in their son's demise. So, as they sit down to lunch, they merely regret that they didn't get a chance to say goodbye and hope that he can return one day.

Beer tends to Von Lucke's grave and is stirred by the sound of the wind rustling the trees that had so moved Niney. She visits the churchyard in all weathers and constantly re-reads letters from the front. But she now hears Niney's voice reading the messages that Von Lucke had written in French to prevent his parents from snooping. Crushed by the betrayal of a man she had grown to love because he so reminded her of the lover she had lost, Beer wanders in the direction of the lake and walks into the water. She is only saved by a passing stranger, who recognises her as Von Lucke's fiancée, and she implores him to say nothing to Gruber and Stötzner.

Confined to her bed with a chill, she dreams that Von Lucke returns to play the violin for his parents. But, when a letter finally comes from Niney, she burns it in the stove in her room and makes up news about Niney resuming his career as a musician and promising to play Von Lucke's violin again. She tries to reply, but goes to confession instead and is comforted by Torsten Michaelis telling her to forgive Niney and to continue his lie to spare Gruber and Stötzner further pain. But the priest senses that Beer has feelings for Niney and echoes Stötzner's words about the need for life to go on. As she leaves the church, Von Bülow apologises for his behaviour towards Stötzner and Niney and asks for her hand again. She tells Gruber, who urges her to think carefully, as she could have a much nicer life with Niney.

After a few days, Beer writes to Niney and suggests that he might like to come back to Quedlinburg, as she has now come to terms with the reasons for his deception. But the letter is returned unopened and Gruber persuades Beer to go to Paris to find him. She feels eyes staring at her when required to show her passport on the train and averts her gaze from the ruins of a town that are reflected in the window. Despite speaking decent French, she feels like a stranger as the taxi drops her at the hotel where Von Lucke had stayed as a student and feels queasy as she sits on the bed, as it is clearly used for immoral purposes.

The next day, she goes to Niney's last address and books a ticket to see his orchestra play at the Opéra. As she sits in a café, she is unnerved when some soldiers enter and the patrons stand to launch into a furiously patriotic rendition of `La Marseillaise'. She is even more discomfited when the Édouard Manet painting that Niney had mentioned in the Louvre depicts a suicide victim. Further distressed by his absence from the orchestra, Beer makes inquiries at a hospital that lead her to the cemetery at Passy. Much to her relief, the man who took his own life is Niney's uncle and she tracks down widow Jeanne Ferron to ask about her nephew. She smiles when Beer tells her story and sends her to the country house of her husband's sister, Cyrielle Clair.

Niney is delighted to see her and asks after Stötzner and Gruber with an earnestness that unsettles his mother. But she invites Beer to stay before Niney shows her around the grounds. She informs him that the whole family has forgiven him for killing Von Lucke and he is pathetically grateful for their kindness, as he feared he would lose his mind if they abandoned him. He introduces her to old friend Alice de Lencquesaing, who is due to sing after dinner and Beer is put out by the closeness between the pair. Yet De Lencquesaing lends her a dress and thanks her for accepting Niney, as she had lost her own brother in the war and had feared that her childhood friend would not be able to survive his guilt.

At dinner, however, Beer is flustered by table talk about the street celebrations that had broken out when peace was declared and becomes so jealous of the looks that Niney gives De Lencquesaing while they accompany her that Beer plays out of tune and rushes to her room. Niney tries to be reassuring, but he backs away when Beer closes in for a kiss and she wishes she had stayed in Germany. She is even more relieved to be leaving when she hears Clair pleading with Niney not to jeopardise his relationship with De Lencquesaing, as no one else would be so willing to have him as a husband. As Beer leaves, Clair begs her not to torment Niney, but Beer suggests that it's his feelings for Von Lucke that are the root of his troubles.

Niney drives Beer to the station at Saulieu and invites her to the wedding. She tearfully declines and Niney kisses her softly on the lips. He goes to speak, but she insists that things cannot change and she puts on a brave face when he exhorts her to be happy. She writes to Stötzner and Gruber to reassure them that she is having a wonderful time and spends her evenings listening to Niney play or accompanying him at private recitals. The elderly couple clasps hands as Gruber reads about the Manets at the Louvre and the film ends (and returns to colour for the final time), as Beer sits in front of `The Suicide' next to a young man who resembles Niney and confides that the picture makes her feel alive.

Ozon has explored the theme of bereavement several times, most notably in Sous le Sable (2000) and The New Girlfriend (2014). But, in revisiting the early years of the last century for the first time since he adapted the Elizabeth Taylor novel, Angel (2007), Ozon seems uncertain where to lay the emotional emphasis in a story that's as much about repressed emotion and closeted homosexuality as it is about grief, female emancipation and the perils of extreme nationalism. Even though Lubitsch was working in Pre-Code Hollywood, he was unable to broach Rostand's subtext and was forced to let doctor Lionel Barrymore and wife Louise Carter accept Phillips Holmes as Nancy Carrolls husband without knowing he had bayoneted their son, Tom Douglas, in a moment of cowardly panic.

In this revision, Ozon implies that Niney shoots Von Lucke because he can't live with the shame of falling in love at first sight with an enemy soldier. Yet he still spends the night lying as close as possible to his corpse in a moment of foxhole necrophilia that entices Niney into inventing the bromantic backstory that he can share with his beloved's parents and fiancée in order to keep him alive in his memory and to assuage the crushing sense of remorse that is so rarely discussed in screen studies of combat-related post-traumatic stress. By stressing the human aspect of the tale, however, Ozon plays down the political element, although this could still be read as a post-Brexit parable on the brotherhood of nations.

Wistful without being winsome, Beer copes well enough with being the narrative focus, as she strives to make sense of her feelings for Niney, while seeking to avoid causing her surrogate parents further pain. But Ozon fails to establish the precise nature of the love she feels for Von Lucke and, thus, with Niney often seeming frustratingly passive, her desire feels less confused than contrived, particularly when she realises that she has an unexpected rival in the masculinely attired De Lencquesaing. But Clair and De Lencquesaing are no substitute for Stötzner and Gruber and the picture's emotional intensity is much depleted by their prolonged absence. On the technical side, the influence of the great Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich is readily evident, as is the use of mirror imagery borrowed from Douglas Sirk and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Yet, by opting to shoot predominantly in shimmering black and white in order to evoke the look of the Heimat films produced in inter-war Germany, Ozon and cinematographer Pascal Marti invite comparisons with Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon (2009) that only serve to make the scene exposing Von Bülow's Prussian patriotism feel all the more cumbersome. Equally ineffectual are the fleeting glimpses of colour in the otherwise authentically sombre postwar milieux created by production designer Michel Barthélémy and costumier Pascaline Chavanne, which feel as laboured as the fallacious flashbacks, whose faux nostalgia is reinforced by the manipulative Mahleresque motifs in Philippe Rombi's score. In short, for all Ozon's customary grace and taste, this classical melodrama lacks the fabled `Lubitsch touch'.