Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 10/8/2017)

Released after a six-year stint behind bars, crook Serge Reggiani looks around twitchily, as he walks along the darkened streets of a rundown Parisian neighbourhood. He pays a call on René Lefèvre, a fence who is examining the jewellery passed on from a recent heist in the Avenue Mozart. Aware that Reggiani has hopes of going straight with new girlfriend, Monique Hennessy, Lefèvre is happy to help him prepare for a robbery in Neuilly with confederates Jean-Paul Belmondo and Philippe Nahon. However, Reggiani is unhappy to learn that Lefèvre has invited gangsters Michel Piccoli and Jacques de Leon to collect the loot and he kills Lefèvre with his own gun before stealing the jewels and some banknotes from the safe. He buries them, with the gun, underneath a lamppost on a patch of wasteland, before laying low in Hennessy's apartment.

She doesn't trust Belmondo, but Reggiani is even more suspicious of his regular tool supplier, Philippe March, who seems to have known where to call without Reggiani remembering when he gave him the address. Belmondo insists he was drunk at the time and Reggiani takes his word. They show Reggiani a newspaper report about Lefèvre's demise and Belmondo reveals that the old man had murdered Reggiani's wife while he was in prison to prevent her from squealing to the cops. He insists he has Reggiani's back. But, no sooner has Belmondo left the flat than he calls Inspector Daniel Crohern, who just happens to show up at the villa during the robbery.

Belmondo is too busy slapping Hennessy around and lashing her to a radiator to discover Reggiani's whereabouts to be the snitch, however. But Reggiani and Nahon are caught red handed and the latter is fatally wounded during their hopeless flight. Reluctant to leave a wounded pal, Reggiani guns down Crohern and places the gun in Nahon's hand before staggering away. Having been winged in the shoulder, however, Reggiani collapses on the pavement, just as a patrol car pulls up to the kerb.

Instead of landing in a cell, however, Reggiani finds himself being attended by Dr Christian Lude in a safe address organised by March and his wife, Paulette Breil. He removes the bullet and hooks Reggiani to a drip. But he is in no mood to convalesce and draws a map to show Breil where he hid the Lefèvre contraband before going in search of the man who ratted on him. Inspector Jean Desailly is certain it's Belmondo and brings him in for questioning. He knows Belmondo is Crohern's stool-pigeon and tries to get him to identify the cop killer after explaining why Nahon could never have pulled the trigger.

Belmondo assures Desailly that he will avenge his friend, but he refuses to be intimidated by detectives Marcel Cuvelier and Jacques Léonard, who try to provoke him into betraying Reggiani. They also quiz him about a car that was seen speeding away from the scene and how it came to be wrecked in a quarry with Hennessy's corpse inside. But Belmondo merely shrugs, until they threaten to ensure that he will never get to live in the retirement home he has just had built in Ponthierry by implicating him in a major drug deal.

Desailly escorts Belmondo to a call box so that he can phone around Reggiani's usual haunts. They find him in a bar reading about Hennessy's death, but he denies having any knowledge of who killed her or Lefèvre and who might have been Nahon's accomplice in Neuilly. Reminding him of how Lefèvre drowned his wife at Deauville, Desailly seeks to goad Reggiani into an indiscretion. But he denies owning a gun or having anything to do with Nahon. Consequently, he is pitched into a cell with hulking brute, Carl Studer. While he cools his heels, however, Belmondo goes to the lamppost and digs up the proceeds of the Avenue Mozart blag.

He goes to the nightclub Piccoli runs with De Leon and sits at a table with his old flame, Fabienne Dali. She is now unhappily dating Piccoli and he promises to secure her freedom if she co-operates. Dali slips Belmondo her address and their post-coital pillow talk turns to what she heard while she waited in the car outside Lefèvre's rooms. She is certain that Piccoli hasn't hidden the loot in his safe and takes some persuading before she agrees to tell the police that the gunshots might have been muffled by a passing train. Taking his leave, Belmondo breaks into Piccoli's home and shoots him before planting the incriminating evidence. Dali has phoned De Leon to say that Piccoli wants to see him and he is killed by Belmondo, who makes it look as though the pair shot each other in a dispute about the jewels.

While Dali calls Desailly with the tip-off that gets Reggiani released, he meets up with Belmondo and March in a café. They explain that they had realised he was in trouble after shooting Lefèvre, but things became more complicated after Hennessy snitched to the cops. Knowing that Crohern was keen to make a big arrest to boost his career, Belmondo had called to invite him out to dinner to keep him away from Neuilly. But he had put his prospects first and had paid with his life. Loyal to both men, Belmondo had to find a way of putting things right. So, he and March had finished off Hennessy, with the latter firing the bullet into her brain before he pushed her car off a precipice into the quarry.

Belmondo then used his connection with Dali to set up Piccoli and De Leon and he now plans to start afresh with Dali in Ponthierry. Slumped in a corner of the booth, Reggiani thanks his friends for their support. But, as Belmondo leaves, Reggiani gets a phone call at the bar informing him that funds have been transferred out of his bank. This reminds him that he had cut a deal with Studer to kill Belmondo because he had been convinced he had welched on him. So, as Desailly arrives to arrest March because a fragment of his raincoat has been found on Hennessy's car, Reggiani speeds after Belmondo in torrential rain. He arrives at the house before his friend and is gunned down in error by Studer, who hides behind a screen when Belmondo enters after visiting his horse in the stables. Reggiani tries to warn his pal, but to no avail, as he is shot between the shoulders by the dying Studer. Shuffling to the phone, Belmondo calls to apologise to Dali for letting her down and checks himself in the sunburst mirror before collapsing to the floor.

The camera lingers on the hat that has fallen off Belmondo's head to remind the audience of the opening caption in which Melville had explained that `doulos' is slang for both a `hat' and a `finger man'. The irony will be lost on none, therefore, that the one honest(ish) broker pays for the treachery of others. Aficionados will also note that Belmondo meets a similar fate to the one meted out to him by Jean-Luc Godard in À bout de souffle (1959) and there is surely a nod towards that nouvelle clarion call in the way Belmondo checks how he looks before expiring. Serge Reggiani also brings baggage in the form of his poignant performance in Jacques Becker's Casque d'or (1952). Indeed, such details typify the Frenchness that Melville employs to wrest noir back from the American film-makers he so much admired. Consequently, the dialogue is delivered in a leisurely manner rather than in the breakneck rat-a-tat that had become familiar in Hollywood B movies. Similarly, there's a glimpse of female flesh that would not have been permitted under the Production Code, while the sound Yet, Belmondo is rarely seen without his noirish uniform of fedora and trench coat, while Paul Misraki's score relies heavily on cocktail jazz. Indeed, it provides a witty backdrop to the lengthy expository flashback that several critics have suggested is a major stylistic weakness. But, while Melville might choose his words carefully in justifying acts of violence and venality alike, he never swerves from his contention that honour among thieves is as sacred as steadfastness among freedom fighters. Moreover, he conspires with cinematographer Nicolas Hayer, production designer Daniel Guéret and editor Monique Bonnot to reflect the mindset of shady characters in a milieu in which trust is at a premium because of the surfeit of past deceptions. Even the dreadful back projection during the scenes featuring police cars prowling the nocturnal streets adds to the sense of dislocation.

Despite the tensions on the set between Melville and Belmondo, the latter excels alongside Reggiani, particularly in the long-take interrogation sequence in which Belmondo echoes the opening quotation about choosing to lie or die. Moreover, one is left to lament the fact that neither Monique Hennessy (who was Melville's secretary) nor Fabienne Dali went on to have longer careers. But Melville would go from strength to strength and his outstanding oeuvre is currently on show at the National Film Theatre. There are several gems on show, including the pair mentioned in the opening paragraph, as well as Le Samouraï (1967), The Army of Shadows (1969), Le Cercle rouge (1970) and Un Flic (1972). But also keep an eye out for Melvilles masterly debut, Le Silence de la Mer (1949), the underrated nun story, When You Read This Letter (1953), and his first encounter with Belmondo, Léon Morin, Priest (1961).

It's impossible to gauge the impact that the work of Touko Laaksonen had on gay iconography. His work has been celebrated on screen before in than James Williams's short Boots, Biceps and Bulges (1988) and Ilppo Pohjola's documentary Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991). But the art or pornography debate that surrounds the 3500 or so homoerotic drawings that Laaksonen produced during his 40-year career is barely touched upon in Dome Karukoski's handsome, respectful, but underwhelmingly bland biopic, Tom of Finland.

While fighting in the Continuation War against the Soviet Union, twentysomething Touko Laaksonen (Pekka Strang) leaves a Helsinki cinema to follow Captain Heikki Alijoki (Taisto Oksanen) into the bushes in a nearby park. They meet again a few days later in woodland following an air raid and Touko reveals that he wants to play piano and draw when the conflict is over. Alijoki jokes about demanding an invitation to his exhibition at the Louvre and allows him to keep his silver cigarette case. But, before his war is over, Touko stabs a Soviet paratrooper while relieving himself in the forest and the twin images of the rabbit that had hopped past him in a moment of innocent escape and the face of the dead Russian would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Following the defeat of the Nazis who had been Finland's wartime ally, Touko shares a Helsinki apartment with his sister Kaija (Jessica Grabowsky), who wishes that he would get a proper job so they can afford black market cheese. When he has a nightmare, Kaija comes to his room and suggests that he finds someone special to take care of him. However, she is dismayed when he hints that he had same-sex liaisons in uniform and she makes excuses about combat confusion in urging him to lead a normal life.

But, when not working as an art director for an advertising company, Touko is drawing hunks in provocative poses and he slips the sketches under the cubicle divide in a nightclub washroom. On the first occasion he tries making covert contact in this way, he is punched by an affronted customer and thrown out of the club. But he has more luck around the time of the 1952 Olympics during a park encounter with Nipa (Lauri Tilkanen), who is eager for action and takes fearsome beating from the patrolling police to allow Touko to slip away unnoticed. He returns to his room and guzzles whisky while thinking back to the parachutist and fetishising his uniform and moustache to create his famous leather-clad character, Kake (Niklas Hogner), who sits on the sofa behind Touko's desk with a grin of knowing self-satisfaction on his face.

Asked at work to improve the graphics for a coffee campaign, Touko poses workmates Gabriel (Martin Bahne) and Maria (Ksenia Lelesh) on a couch and asks them to imagine they are gazing at each other the morning after their first intimacy. They get the giggles and he snaps them with a camera and so delights the boss that Kaija has high hopes for his promotion. However, he refuses to let her see his Kake drawings and, seeks to distract her with a lightning sketch challenge. He is surprised by her talent and encourages her to show her work, despite his own insistence on secrecy.

Taking a trip to Berlin, Touko helps to find a publisher for his pictures and has a torrid night with a collector he meets in a bar. When he wakes the next morning, however, he finds the stranger has stolen his passport, wallet and portfolio and Touko is arrested for trying to leave his hotel without paying. Consul Sahlin (Kari Hietalahti) is content to leave such a disreputable compatriot to face the music. But he mentions the name Alijoki and Touko demands to see him because they fought together during the war. On entering the cell (where a guard had just informed Touko that his kind were gassed during the Third Reich), Alijoki recognises the cigarette case. Keen to avoid a scandal that could damage his own reputation, he persuades the Germans to let Touko go when he swears his innocence on his honour as an officer.

Shortly after Touko's release, he realises that new lodger Veli Mäkinen is Nipa and both he and Kaija develop a crush on him. They go to watch him dance, but Veli makes it clear that if he had ever met Touko before he must have been drunk. The resentment between the siblings begins to simmer. Thus, when they attend the same party, they each force the other to kiss Heidi (Ida Koski) during a game of truth or dare. They also try to catch Veli's eye during a Midsummer reunion at the family's lakeside summer house, with Kaija even rolling down the meadow slope in the hope of seeing the face of her future husband in the water. But Touko kisses Veli instead and they become lovers and Veli urges Touko to share his drawings with others.

At one of Alijoki's regular poker parties - which he hosts with his understanding wife (Meri Nenonen) - Touko hands etchings around and they soon start to sell through various under-the-counter outlets across the city. They also start a motorcycling club, with Touko taking lots of pictures of men in leathers and peaked caps. But the police raid Alijoki's home and Touko is disappointed by his eagerness to be cured when he is placed in an asylum. They sit in a snow-covered garden and echo the conversation Touko had had with Veli about Finland accepting homosexuality.

Despite claiming not to be a freedom fighter, Touko follows Veli's advice and posts some photographs of his best work to the editor of the Physique Pictorial magazine in California (Þorsteinn Bachmann). He is bowled over by the images and renames the artist `Tom of Finland' in time for the Spring 1957 issue. Doug (Seumas F. Sargent) and his gym bunny boyfriend Jack (Jacob Oftebro) soon become big fans and invite Touko to visit with a view to mounting an exhibition. Touko is astonished to see how openly gay men hold hands in the street and immediately feels at home at Doug's home, which forever seems to be hosting a hunk-strewn pool party. Even when the cops burst in looking for a robbery suspect, they pay no heed to the garden antics and Touko is struck by the contrast with the oppression he has to endure back home.

He is also touched by the greeting he receives at a bar in New York, where he spots some of the stolen Berlin drawings in a cheap porn mag. Doug tracks down the publisher, Mannheim (Haymon Maria Buttinger), and threatens legal action unless he issues a Kake book on good quality paper. As Veli hasn't made the trip, Touko brings him back a personal copy and notices that he has developed a persistent cough.

One of the film's major flaws is its haphazard approach to the passage of time and Karukoski lurches forward awkwardly to 1981 to show Veli succumbing to throat cancer shortly after Touko fulfils a long-cherished dream to have yellow curtains. Kaija is also upset by the death and tries to fuss over Touko. However, she is so disgusted when he finally shows her his drawings that she starts hoovering without another word. Eventually, she leaves the apartment to let Touko take a phone call from Doug, in which he declares that his drawings are being blamed for the spread of the AIDS virus.

Touko hops on a plane and thinks back to how he rallied his troops in the forest by singing the national anthem. He lands in a very different America, as gay men are afraid of both the disease and the homophobic backlash. Touko and Doug smuggle a white rabbit into hospital to show Jack, who is fading fast. Despite his condition, he insists he wouldn't change a thing and thanks Touko for the pictures that set him free.

Inspired to do something to alert the gay community to the benefits of safe sex, Touko starts drawing again and Doug helps him find Zagat (Manfred Böll), an elderly Jewish religious publisher who is prepared to print a new book. A montage shows how Tom of Finland became culturally accepted and the film ends, where it began, with Touko and Doug sitting in a large, wood-panelled antechamber. They joke about who let the rabbit out before Touko enters a theatre packed to the rafters with Tom's men cheering to the echo in gratitude for what he gave them in terms of identity and liberty. The credits roll to Sylvester belting out the disco anthem, `Take Me to Heaven'.

Touko Laaksonen was 71 when he died following a stroke brought on by emphysema. But his legacy has burgeoned in the subsequent quarter century. Everyone from Freddie Mercury to George Michael has copied his biker look, while the Village People virtually became living embodiments of the Kake sub-culture. Moreover, Tom of Finland even became a national icon and became the first homoerotic artist to have his work depicted on postage stamps. Yet, while he subtly implies that Touko's wartime experiences played as big a part as his fantasies in concocting his square-jawed, well-hung, bubble-butted studs, Karukoski ducks discussing his fixation with German uniforms and fails to come close to conveying the importance of his graphic style in either artistic or social terms.

The scenes set in postwar Helsinki are admirably atmospheric, with cinematographer Lasse Frank Johannessen employing subdued lighting and muted colours to capture the dual sense of daring and dread that pervades Touko's clandestine nocturnal escapades. Production designer Christian Olander makes equally artful use of hue and shadow in recreating Touko's bedroom, Helsinki's sinks of depravity and the Berlin prison cell. Anna Vilppunen's costumes and Lasse Enersen and Hildur Guðnadóttir's melodic cello score also merit mention. But, while he also makes a decent job of contrasting Finnish bleakness with the California sunscapes, the narrative begins to unravel in the final third, as though screenwriter Aleksi Bardy has been told they have run out of film to fit in the last 30 years of his unassuming hero's life.

Having taken such pains to establish the characters of Touko, Kaija and Veli, Bardy and Karukoski settle for Doug (a stand-in for Durk Dehner) and Jack being ciphers to be whizzed through scenes of post-Stonewall delirium and HIV heartache that seem to topple in on one another. The reasons for Touko's Stateside rise to fame get lost in the shuffle, hence the announcement that he is being blamed for the epidemic coming across as a melodramatic contrivance. His dash to press with a book urging the use of condoms similarly feels rushed, while the closing rapturous reception almost feels cartoonish. This is a huge shame, as Karukoski and Bardy clearly have their hearts in the right place. But they seem scared of causing offence by showing any nudity or any sort of lustful physicality. Moreover, their denouement does a disservice to both Touko Laaksonen and Pekka Strang, who plays the taciturn Tom with a steadily burning pride in his status as both an artist and a gay man. But there's not even a hint of the transgressive thrill that made him a legend.

Marc Rothemund is primarily known in this country for his harrowing study of the White Rose resistance movement, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2006), which not only earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, but also the Best Director prize at the Berlin Film Festival. However, the true-life tale he tells in My Blind Date With Life couldn't be more different, as it chronicles the efforts of Saliya Kahawatte to disguise the almost complete loss of his sight in order to realise his ambitions in the hospitality industry. This may not sound like the stuff of feel-good gold, but screenwriters Oliver Ziegenbalg and Ruth Toma keep the cheap laughs and easy sentimentality at bay, even though Rothemund doesn't always manage to resist the temptation to rely on blurred perspectives.

Neustadt teenager Saliya Kahawatte (Kostja Ullmann) is approaching his final exams when he begins having problems seeing clearly. Tests reveal that he has a hereditary condition that is causing the detachment of his retinas and an operation can only save 5% of his sight. Father Niluka (Sanjay Shihora) takes the news badly, but mother Dagmar (Sylvana Krappatsch) promises that Saliya can stay at his old school to acquire the qualifications he requires to study hotel management. His sister, Sheela (Nilam Farooq) helps him study and he develops a way of repeating information in order to memorise it. Yet, even though he gets excellent grades, his father can barely bring himself to look up from his beer bottle and offers little support when Saliya struggles to find any hotel that will take a risk on his disability.

Deciding that honesty is not the best policy, Saliya omits to mention his problem when applying for an apprenticeship at the Bayerischer Hof in Munich and Sheela coaches him in interview technique prior to meeting personnel manager, Fried (Alexander Held). Fortunately, Max Schröder (Jacob Matschenz) arrives late for his interview and repays Saliya backing up his excuse by helping him survive a tour of the hotel. They meet chef Krohn (Michael A. Grimm) and maitre d' Kleinschmidt (Johann von Bülow), who is a stern taskmaster and Saliya does enough to convince Fried that he is an honest man with ambition and a love of the trade.

Sheela helps him settle into his digs and walks him through his route to work and he is relieved to find Max has also been accepted. Housekeeper Frau Reidinger (Johanna Bittenbinder) puts them in a group with Jala Asgari (Samira El Ouassil), Tim Wasmuth (Michael Koschorek), Hannah Kümmerle (Agnes Decker) and Irina Saizew-Müller (Jasmin Wisniewski) and, during their first morning tidying rooms, Max promises to cover for Saliya after he spots him using a magnifying glass to clean a mirror. He also takes him on a guided tour of the hotel, so that he can familiarise himself with the layout. Max also reveals that his father is a restaurateur who despairs of him ever being suited for employment and that this is his last chance before he cuts off his allowance.

Picking up tips about using towels to clean mirrors and coping with the bruises from tripping over steps, Saliya begins to impress Reidinger, while Max just about keeps ahead of the game despite sleeping with guests and chambermaids alike. When they transfer to the kitchen, Saliya meets delivery girl Laura (Anna Maria Mühe), who takes an instant shine to him. As does dishwasher Hamid (Kida Khodr Ramadan), a refugee surgeon from Kabul who realises that Saliya has problems seeing and promises to keep shtum. Indeed, he helps staunch the bleeding when Saliya cuts himself on a cheese-slicing machine and he is relieved when Krohn agrees to go along with the deceit and helps him master potentially dangerous tasks.

However, Max has to break the bad news that Laura has a boyfriend and he tries to cheer Saliya up by taking him clubbing. Such is his highly developed hearing that he hears Tina (Olivia Marei) telling her friend that she intends sleeping with the `Indian boy' and Max coerces him into inviting her over for an evening that culminates in a noisy sex session. He also ends up in a clinch with Irina during a snowball fight in the street and Laura thinks they are an item. She is also put out when Saliya fails to wave when he is talking to Hamid about his work permit problems. But he rushes after her and she agrees to go on a date.

Meanwhile, Saliya has survived a stint on reception (where he has a few problems with keys that Max has to solve for him) and has moved into the restaurant, where the officious Kleinschmidt lies in wait. In order to master the art of cocktail making, Max sneaks into his father's restaurant after hours and prints out recipes in large print so that Saliya can learn them. A bartending montage follows, as the boys prank around and get drunk on their samples. Saliya decides this is the perfect place to take Laura to dinner and he learns the wine list and menu in advance. But he tells Max that he isn't going to come clean about his eyesight on a first date.

It goes well and he is delighted to hear that Laura works on a farm belonging to her parents. But he is taken aback to discover she has a five year-old son. She also has her suspicions about his sight, when he fails to notice her hinting about a wine refill and doesn't see a party of pretty girls pass their table. Nevertheless, she invites him on a river trip the following Sunday and he throws himself into mastering the bottle tops and labels so he can keep Kleinschmidt off his back. Unfortunately, Max cops off with a guest and Saliya is forced to re-wash and polish the wine glasses to meet Kleinschmidt's exacting standards. After several repetitions, he loses his temper and is warned that two more infractions will lead to his dismissal.

Glad to get away from the hotel, Saliya spends a day by the lake with Laura and Oskar (Pepe Remiger) and manages to play football with him without giving the game away. At bedtime, the boy asks if Saliya is an alien from a planet where they don't play sport, but Laura is touched by how well they get on and kisses Saliya before he gets his taxi home. She also mentions that she stopped seeing Oskar's dad because he kept lying to her. His own father turns out to have been living a double life, too, as he decamps to Sri Lanka, annuls his marriage to Dagmar and clears out their bank account. Thus, Saliya is forced to join Hamid working at a night bakery to help his mother get by and he starts drinking and popping pills in order to cope.

Furthermore, Kleinschmidt has issued a written warning for being late on his first day in the hotel restaurant and he scarcely veils his almost racist contempt in reminding Saliya that he is on the precipice. A montage shows him burning the candle at both ends and finding it tough to take orders during a busy service and Hamid is concerned for him. Max also warns him he risks knocking down his house of cards and calls him when he is late for a shift. He is looking after Oskar at the playground while Laura does her rounds and she is furious when she returns to find the boy has wandered away and that Saliya had no idea where he had gone. When he tries to explain, she tuts and stalks away.

Late for service, Saliya is stoked on pills and Max pleads with him to take extra care. But he trips and drops a tray of champagne flutes and, when he ignores Max to take out some replacements, he walks into a trolley carrying a large wedding cake and crashes to the ground. Kleinschmidt throws him out of the dining-room and another montage shows Saliya popping pills at the bakery and falling down a flight of steps after being ejected from a nightclub for being a drunken nuisance. Max comes to find him in hospital and flirts with Sheela, who has come to tell him that Dagmar has found a job and can keep the house. Saliya concedes that he has bitten off more than he can chew. But he hates his new job in a call centre and, when Max talks him into cycling down a steep Alpine road (and he emerges largely unscathed), he decides to take the final Bayerischer exam after all.

Much to his delight, Kleinschmidt and Fried give him a second chance after the rest of his group speak up for him and Max lets him practice laying tables in his father's restaurant. He even gets to speak to Laura again after she spots him helping Hamid with his medical registration appeal. But, while she turns away when he insists he has been missing her, he refuses to let it get him down and he does the exam under Kleinschmidt's beady eye. He does well until it comes to setting places for four when he trips rushing to add water glasses after one of the other examiners tips him off. Fumbling around on the floor, he puts them in what he hopes is the right place. But, even though Kleinschmidt declares his table a disaster, he awards Saliya his diploma and everyone applauds.

At a drinks party on the hotel roof, Kleinschmidt offers Saliya a job as a sommelier. But he reveals that he is opening a restaurant with Max, who admits to Fried that he didn't think he'd last a week on the course. Hamid calls up to thank Saliya with his ambulance megaphone and everyone raises their glass for a toast. Max and Saliya find their place and Dagmar and Sheela attend the grand opening. As does Laura, who brings Saliya a rattling football to make it easier to play with Oskar and they kiss before she leads him to dance with the rest of the staff.

Closing with a credit crawl cameo by the real Saliya Kahawatte embracing Kostja Ullmann, this is an easily digestible confection that can always use truth as an excuse for its more contrived elements. Rothemund and cinematographer Bernhard Jasper have little choice but to blur the imagery whenever they need to show something from Saliya's point of view. But the repeated use of this gambit suggests a reluctance to trust the audience to read the perplexed expression on Ullmann's face and gauge his thought processes at each new crisis. It also means that when his lack of sight becomes critical, as in the playground sequences, the shallow depth of field feels less disorientating than it would have done if the blurring had been utilised more sparingly.

Fortunately, Ullmann conveys his physical and psychological difficulties with a conviction and charm that retains audience interest in the rather predictable storyline. Jacob Matschenz and Anna Maria Mühe also lift their rather one-dimensional characters off the script page, while Johann von Bülow makes a splendidly suave adversary. But, in truth, everything runs a touch too smoothly, whether it's Christian Eissle four-star production design or the way in which the songs by Djorkaeff and Beatzarre slot into Michael Geldreich and Jean-Christoph Ritter's mood-guiding score. Thus, while this is never anything less than enjoyable, it's not that memorable, either.

Human beings are ridiculous creatures. They have reached a point in their evolution where the advances made in the fields of science and technology should be benefiting everyone on the planet. But the vast majority of people on all five continents struggle to get by, while the privileged few seem to believe they have no responsibility for the welfare of anyone but themselves. A decade on from the Credit Crunch, depressingly few lessons seem to have been learned and there is every possibility that even bigger mistakes may soon be made by two rutting stags with preposterous tonsures.

Fortunately, there are still a handful of good news stories around and Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos tell one of them with diligence and dignity in Bending the Arc. Executive produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and taking its title from 19th-century American Transcendentalist Theodore Parker's assertion that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, this celebration of the work done by Partners In Health in ministering to those abandoned by governments and frontline charities forces viewers to face up to some grim realities. But writer Cori Shepherd Stern also conveys the commitment of those inspirational healthcare professionals who are motivated by conviction and compassion rather than profit and power.

The film opens in Cange in Haiti in 2002, as Dr Paul Farmer visits a facility treating tubercular patients. Watching the footage, Ophelia Dahl, the Oxford-born daughter of Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal and the co-founder of Partners in Health, explains that they did little more than extend basic care to people who had been forgotten and it dismays her that such a situation could ever have existed. Following the end of colonial rule, the newly independent nations vowed to improve the lot of their citizens and the World Health Organisation signed the Alma-Ata Declaration in 1978 promising `Health for All'. However, bodies like the World Bank had a different agenda that diverted funds and reduced many emerging nations into debt and conflict.

Haiti was one of the world's poorest countries when the 18 year-old Dahl met the 23 year-old Farmer and they began tending to the sick in the Central Plateau under the watchful eye of Fr Fritz Lafontant. He knew of people who had been displaced by a hydro-electric dam project and Farmer and Dahl went to Cange and were appalled by the shacks they had thrown up on the hillside after being driven from their valley home. Yet, while Farmer was keen to build a clinic to help them, Lafontant urged him to go to Harvard Medical School, as it would give him greater clout in the future. Once in Boston, Farmer met Jim Yong Kim and he recalls their late-night debates with Todd McCormack about the iniquity of the way society was run. Dahl describes the impact of the financial crisis of the late 1970s and how the World Bank coerced debtor nations into cutting education and healthcare budgets in order to repay the loans they had taken out in order to fund their post-colonial restructuring. But the Partners in Health cabal was not alone in being outraged by such injustice and millionaire Tom White agreed to bankroll the Cange project. Louane Viaud and Dr Maxi Raymonville remember people flocking from miles around when the clinic opened its doors, while Dahl and medical tutor Arthur Kleinman recall the student Farmer and Kim flying down to Haiti on weekends and borrowing equipment and supplies from Boston hospitals in order to treat patients suffering from all manner of diseases.

Hailing from humble beginnings in Florida and South Korea, Farmer and Kim knew what impecunity felt like and they were intent on preventing needless deaths. Farmer was particularly frustrated by TB fatalities and invented a system of accompagnateurs to ensure that patients had someone to look in on them and fetch water to take their medication. Community health worker Heureuse Charles explains how this good neighbour system works by encouraging the sick to remain positive and feeling valued. Doctors Fernet Léandre and Joia Mukherjee also endorse the model, which Farmer, Dahl and Kim felt could be rolled out in other countries and, in 1993, Boston priest Fr Jack Roussin suggested he turned his attention to the outskirts of the Peruvian capital, Lima.

It soon became clear to Kim that the austerity measures being imposed by the World Bank were ensnaring those on the lower rungs in a cycle of poverty and suffering. But the government prided itself on having an outstanding TB programme and Farmer, Léandre and Mukherjee were content to go along with this propaganda until Roussin died of a drug-resistant strain that forced them to rethink their approach. Local doctor Jaime Bayona discovered around 50 cases in the shanty settlements and, yet, WHO decided that effective drugs were too expensive to tackle what was threatening to become an epidemic. Cesar Bonilla, a pulmonologist with the Peruvian Ministry of Health, admits the authorities threatened to eject the PIH group if they countermanded their strategy. But Tom White insisted on paying for drug supplies and Kim and nurse Lorena Mestanza recall the strain placed on long-term patients like Melquiades Huaya Oré, who had to endure debilitating side-effects.

Kim is shown footage of Oré at the start of his programme and he is deeply moved to see a recent interview with the same man looking hale and hearty. He reflects on how close they came to being forced to let him die and he reveals that their 85% recovery rate in Lima prompted them to push for global changes in prescription policies. In 1998, they enlisted the help of Harvard Dean Emeritus Howard Hiatt to confront the TB research hierarchy with their findings in the hope of getting their tactics adopted. During the sessions, they also discovered that most of the drugs they were using were no longer patented and Kim helped reduce the cost of many by around 90%.

Buoyed by this success, the team turned to HIV-AIDS. While 300,000 had perished in the United States, over 22 million worldwide were infected and Dahl describes how institutions like the World Bank refused to fund treatment programmes using the anti-retroviral drugs that started to appear in 1996. But activists like Eric Sawyer refused to accept that the problem was too huge to tackle and began badgering WHO's AIDS supremo, Dr Jonathan Mann, in the hope of shaming him into action. His greed kills mantra reached Farmer, who was noticing a growing number of patients with the disease. Among them was Adeline Merçon, who was so weak that her father had started saving to buy her coffin. But Farmer and Kim hustled Stateside to get drugs and she is now a health campaigner and, like François St Ker, she thanks PIH for thinking she mattered enough to help.

When they published a paper in The Lancet on their efforts in Cange, Farmer, Kim and Mukherjee were castigated by fellow medics, who felt they had insufficient data and no understanding of drug industry economics. But, as Rwandan doctor (and future Minister of Health) Agnes Binagwaho recalls, the problem was not scientific, but racist. No one in the US administration was prepared to spend aid money on sick blacks, including Andrew Natsios of the US Agency for International Development, who doubted most Africans would have the sense to take their pills at the right time because they don't know what watches are for.

Such patronising paternalism dismayed United Nations economic advisor Jeffrey Sachs, who came to Haiti to cost a programme. Sawyer also kept up the pressure with mass demonstrations. But the World Bank refused to buckle and lead economist Mead Over almost mocks Farmer for his naive approach during a public debate. Eventually, the Haitiian patients who had survived issued the Declaration of Cange that stated that `all humans are human' and called for infected Africans to be given the same chance they had received. Mukherjee, Kim and Farmer are rightly proud of changing the mindset, but they remind the audience that few powerful people were initially prepared to back UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's plans for a global fund to provide drugs. Indeed, Kim highlights the key role played by George W. Bush, who changed his mind after consultation with Dr Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases.

Farmer and Kim also broke new ground by using AIDS money to open general health clinics across Haiti. But a bigger challenge came when Farmer met Binagwaho at a conference in New York and she invited him to see what life was like for most Africans. Rather misleadingly, Dahl's narration blames colonialism and the World Bank for Rwanda's plight in 1994, while omitting to mention the internecine barbarity. However, by the time Binagwaho launched the Vision 2020 initiative in 2000, Farmer had supported the use of AIDS funding to bolster the crumbling health service.

He brought Léandre and Mukherjee over from Haiti to help local nurses like Peter Niyigena and they not only discovered that around half the people they tested were HIV+, but they also found strains of cancer that were clustering in certain parts of the country. Dr Peter Drobac reveals how PIH brought in a vaccine to reduce the incidence of cervical cancer and 93% of 13 year-olds were inoculated. But it was Binagwaho's fury at being told by white doctors and financiers that treatments were too expensive for her people that kicked her into overdrive with PIH's assistance. Bill Clinton's Global Initiative made it possible to divert health funding into the training of the next generation of doctors and On 23 March 2012, Barack Obama nominated Jim Yong Kim to become the head of the World Bank because he had an understanding of the duties the bank owed to the poor and sick. Within a few months, he was using his power to deal with the Ebola outbreak in Africa. Indeed, an interview with Binagwaho was interrupted by a call informing her of the first confirmed case in Rwanda. As Farmer blamed bad healthcare systems in West Africa, Rwanda had the infrastructure in place to cope (although its sole suspected case proved negative). PIH also accepted government requests to help in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But what turned the crisis was Kim using his position to divert vast cash resources into stopping the spread of the disease and treating its victims.

Rwanda's transformation clearly has much to do with Binagwaho's refusal to be treated as a third-class human being. But the force of nature to hit Haiti in 2010 was an earthquake and Farmer and Dahl responded by fulfilling a promise to build a hospital close to where they had first met. The teaching facility they sponsored typifies the desire to reform the local system and encourage indigenous staffing and the closing captions reveal that PIH is now operating in 17 countries and that 98% of its 17,000 workers are homegrown. Faarmer and Binagwaho have also founded a university to train medics to reach 400 million people worldwide. Furthermore, the World Bank has committed $15 billion to accelerating universal healthcare in Africa and one is left wondering why more major institutions of this kind are not placed in the hands of philanthropists rather than capitalists.

Heavily reliant on archive material filmed by David Murdock and David Belle, Davidson and Kos make their points with efficiency and sincerity. The latter also co-edits the picture with Yuki Aizawa and, while it might be argued that the co-directors take few stylistic risks, their blend of field footage and talking heads is well suited to advocating the cause of Partners in Health and commending its key players. They also do well to let Farmer, Kim, Dahl, Mukherjee and Binagwaho speak for themselves, as their eloquence and modesty makes magnitude of their achievements all the more humbling.