Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 17/8/2017)

Following the landing of a meteor near the rural Mexican town of Guanajuato, pseudo-scientists Bernarda Trueba and Oscar Escalante have been harbouring an alien life form in their barn. It thrives on giving pleasure to humans and one of its favourite partners is Simone Bucio. She is first seen in the throes of ecstasy, as a long tentacle slides out of her body and she is left with a nasty wound in her side. Having collapsed while trying to kickstart her motorbike, she has to seek treatment at the local hospital and lies to nurse Edén Villavicencio that she was bitten by a rabid dog. However, as she returns for a series of rabies shots, they become friends.

Having endured another loveless early morning spoon awakening from husband Jesús Meza, Ruth Ramos takes sons Pablo López Pérez and Zair Alberto Gutierrez to see Villavicencio because Gutierrez has developed a rash from eating chocolates from the factory where Ramos works for mother-in-law Andrea Peláez. She has no idea that her sibling and boorish spouse are having an affair. But Bucio also has her eyes on Villavicencio because the creature's handlers have decided that it's becoming dangerous for her to keep seeking her pleasures with it. Following a lingering shot of a stacked tray of ribs (which will contrast with a later close-up of a tree stump in a rock), Bucio persuades Villavicencio. She guides him to a stream in the middle of nowhere that she urges him to follow and he seems to be in the best of spirits after a cut transports us to a noisy nightclub, where Meza manages to become jealous of Villavicencio canoodling with Bucio and Ramos dancing with a stranger.

Meza's mood darkens after Villavicencio calls an end to their fling. He has become strangely distant and gaunt and Meza (who works with a road gang) is so distraught at being dumped that he gets drunk and pleads with Ramos not to leave him. She had been thinking about moving out, but she needs his support after Villavicencio is found naked and unconscious in a pool of water by a shepherd tending his flock. Ramos sobs on Meza's shoulder after the doctor informs her that her brother is in a coma and that there is no guarantee he will respond to treatment. Peláez comes to cook for her son and grandchildren and Meza gets peevish with her when he has to remind her that he hasn't eaten meat since he was a small boy. But he keeps his nerve when Ramos asks if he had seen Villavicencio at the hospital because one of his co-workers had seen them arguing and Ramos suspects that her homophobic husband beat up her brother.

Sitting on the steps after her next visit, Ramos bumps into Bucio, who asks if there's anything she can do to help. They go to Villavicencio's flat to find his birth certificate. But, instead, Ramos reads the sexts from Mesa on his phone and, when the doctor confirms that Villavicencio is only being kept alive by machines, she reports her husband to the police for attempted murder. Pérez tries to comfort her as they watch a late-night zombie movie and Bucio also calls round to see how Ramos is coping. She mentions an aunt in Tijuana and blushes when Bucio strokes her cheek and reminds her she is a beautiful woman.

She talks Ramos into taking the boys for a picnic close to Escalante and Peláez's wooden shack. He conducts a few tests and Peláez apologises for him being an insensitive scientist and explains how animals have been drawn to the area since the meteor landed (and we follow a large black dog to a clearing full of copulating creatures). The guardians allow Ramos to spend some time with Bucio before she takes the plunge. She struggles as she is laid on a mattress in the barn, but surrenders herself to the slimy tentacles approaching across the floor and she emerges shortly afterwards to hug Bucio in gratitude and to confirm that she would like to repeat her experience. Ramos asks if the entity harmed Villavicencio, but Bucio promises that it's sole purpose is to provide pleasure.

Bucio returns to the flat she shares with American Kenny Johnson to find a party going on. She slumps on to the sofa and feels water rising between her thighs and she makes her excuses to leave. During Ramos's next session, Escalante suggests that Bucio should leave the region to make a full recovery from her rejection and she breaks the news to Ramos as they pick their way back through the woods by torchlight. She also admits that the extra-terrestrial harmed Villavicencio, but Ramos is so enjoying the sensations it gives her that she can no longer feel any resentment.

The same isn't true for Meza, who resents being arrested and sends Peláez to pick up Pérez and Gutierrez from school. However, Ramos smashes a window at the house and takes them to live in Bucio's old room. Following her next meeting with the beast, she ends her brother's suffering by pulling the tube from his windpipe and Peláez does much the same to her son after she disowns him after using her influence with the judge to have him released from prison. Staring at his father's hunting trophies, Meza puts a gun to his temple. But his father interrupts him and he falls to his knees sobbing after he is slapped across the face.

Meanwhile, Bucio has hooked up with a hunter in a motel and sleeps with him without enthusiasm. However, she pleads with him to stay the night so that she is not alone. Meza is also scared of isolation and finds Ramos at the commune. He accuses her of letting him rot when she knew he was innocent and he strikes her in trying to force her to take him back. When he accuses her of having a lover, Meza goes to pull the pistol out of his jeans pocket and succeeds only in shooting himself in the leg. Ramos bundles him into the back of a truck and drives into the country. She drags Meza through the woods to the hut and finds Bucio's naked corpse inside. There is no sign of the owners, so Ramos hauls Meza on to the mattress and he looks up to see the giant octopus-like alien uncoiling itself from the rafters to ravish him. Having helped Escalante dump the bodies in a pit, Ramos goes to collect the kids from school and they ask why she has blood on her shirt.

Played with admirable commitment by Ramos, Bucio and Meza, this provides positive proof why film-makers should leave things to the audience's imagination rather than taking a risk and revealing all. There's nothing particularly wrong with the tentacled monstrosity designed by Morten Jacobsen and digitally animated by Peter Hjorth. But the sight of it descending towards the helpless Meza will fail to live up to most viewers' expectations and will make it that bit more difficult to accept the premise that anyone would willingly subject themselves to its ministrations, even if their lives were otherwise falling apart.

This failing is down to Amit Escalante and his co-scenarist Gibran Portela, as their characterisation is sketchy at best, while the narrative requires too much suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to Ramos putting herself in potential danger with an alien while leaving her supposedly cherished children with a comparative stranger in a field near where her brother's brutalised body was found. It also doesn't help that Chilean cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro (who has recently worked with Von Trier on Melancholia, 2011 and Nymphomania, 2013) keeps an overly discreet and static distance for some scenes, while he resorts to shakicam for less significant sequences like Meza's barroom brawl.

But what is most frustrating about this fitfully suspensful film is the shallowness of its social commentary, as Escalante and Portela dwell on such standby themes as the homophobia and chauvinism inherent in Mexico's predominantly macho culture. But, then, they don't seem to feel the need to offer subversive insights into animal instinct and human desire or seem overly concerned about examining in any depth the allegorical significance of a pair of hippie scientists harbouring a visitor from outer space dispensing slithering gratification in an Edenic hideaway.

Venezuela is much in the news at the moment, but film imports from this troubled South American country have been few and far between. Now, following on from Jonathan Jakubowicz's Secuestro Express (2005), Mariana Rondón's Bad Hair (2013) and Lorenzo Vigas's From Afar (2015) comes 27 year-old Jorge Thielen Armand's feature debut, La Soledad. Deftly combining fact and fiction to reflect the lives of non-professionals essentially playing versions of themselves, this may not be the subtlest of allegories. But Armand makes inspired use of home movies and a decaying Caracas mansion that once belonged to his great-grandparents to expose the state of a nation whose social fissures seem to grow wider with each passing day.

Jorge (Jorge Roque Thielen) watches some old films of a family gathering at the villa in a quiet Caracas suburb that is now home to old retainer Rosina (Maria del Carmen Agámez Palomino), her grandson José (José Dolores López), his girlfriend Marley (Marley Alvillares López) and their young daughter, Adrializ (Adrializ López). As the camera follows José and Adrializ through the house, it's clear that it's in such a state of disrepair that mould grows freely on the ceiling above the large cracks in the wall. Jorge pays a visit to take down a glass chandelier, while Rosina's second son, Tito (Fabián López), asks if he can lay low after he witnesses a shooting at a slum funeral. She warns him that he can't stay for long and he promises not to be a burden.

The next morning, José tells Adrializ that she can't have milk with her cereal because a cowboy has told him that the cows have gone on holiday. She watches him exercise in the garden before he gets on with some chores. Jorge comes to find him to break the news that his family has decided to demolish the house and sell the land. He apologises for being powerless to stop them and hopes that José can find somewhere else to live.

Returning from work, Marley says she will apply for a Life Certificate so that they can get on the social housing ladder. But José feels betrayed, as he has always lived in the house and has been friends with Jorge since they were kids. Adrializ asks if she can go to the beach for her birthday, but Marley says it's too dangerous and suggests that he fixes the pool in the garden instead. He spends a morning queuing for milk at a grocery shop with precious little on its shelves and has to come home on the bus, as he no longer has money to run his motorbike.

Marley works as a maid for a rich family, while José does odd jobs on a building site. He hosts a party for some friends and Malandro (Yofrangel Fonseca) mentions that he is planning to snatch a wealthy hostage, as kidnapping is the only booming business in Venezuela. They sing a few songs, even though Marley makes her disapproval known. But the carousing continues until the morning when José finally orders the rabble to leave. He spends the morning looking at the amount of work that would be needed to restore the house and watches a television programme about how rich people used to bury treasure around their property to keep it safe from thieves.

Jorge feels bad about José being kicked out and gives him a larger share of the money they make stripping asphalt from a roof. But José makes his resentment clear and is further frustrated when Irene (Elizabeth Quintanales) - another member of the mansion family who sometimes brings Rosina groceries and ticks her off for allowing others to live in a property she is supposed to be caretaking alone - fails to find any of the pills that his grandmother needs to control her blood pressure. She assures him she will be fine, but José spends another sleepless night worrying about what will happen to them. He wanders around the garden, half-heartedly searching for a likely place to hide treasure. But he starts looking more concertedly after Adrializ finds an old photo album and he concludes that the family owe his clan something after so many years of faithful service.

Tapping the walls for hollow spots produces no results, however, and José devotes himself to cleaning the pool. Adrializ is delighted, but José can't get the idea of a secret stash out of his mind. He wanders around the grounds and sits in a shady spot, where he seems to be visited by a whistling spirit (José Mateo López). Adrializ tries to cheer up her father by putting a towel on her head and pretending to be a ghost, but he is in no mood to play because Marley is getting tired of struggling to stand still and wants them to relocate to Colombia, where the political and economic situations are more stable and there is a better chance of finding decently paid work. But José refuses to leave Rosina, as he doesn't trust Tito to look after her properly, as he is always up to no good with his friends from the old neighbourhood.

At another party in the house, Tito announces that he is leaving for Ecuador and Marley can barely hide her frustration. José asks Rosina if she has ever seen any ghosts and she says that there is a rumour that a previous owner kept slaves and they killed the one who has buried a chest full of morocota gold coins. However, Rosina warns José that spirit of the dead slave would continue to watch over the treasure and that any attempts to dig it up would result in disaster. But he is determined to solve their problems with a windfall and swaps a metal statue from an antechamber for a metal detector, which he uses to scour the mansion for loot. He has no luck, but he does find a white horse grazing near an outhouse and he hugs the animal in despairing hope.

That night, Rosina has a hypertension attack and José calls his friend Pájaro (Ángel Enrique Pájaro) to get her to hospital in his car. They sit on the floor in a crowded corridor for several hours before a doctor slips them some painkillers and recommends that they try a private clinic. Returning home, José puts his grandmother to bed and resumes his search with the metal detector. Stumbling around in the darkness, he gets a signal from the wall of a dilapidated shed and starts to shatter the stone with a hammer. But, when he reaches inside the hole, he finds nothing but razor blades and he slumps to the floor in disappointment.

José wakes the next morning to find Marley perched on the bed asking him to sign a paper granting her permission to take Adrializ to Cali in Colombia. He refuses and climbs a tree to get an overview of the grounds. He spots Jorge entering through a side gate and follows him, as he rifles through some old books, photos and letters. When they bump into each other in the garden, Jorge again tries to apologise for letting José down, but insists he has no say in the decision to sell. Times are hard and there simply isn't the money to renovate. But José has had enough of excuses and he turns on his heel when Jorge offers him some money to tide him over. After another fruitless search through pharmacies and backstreet markets to find Rosina's medication, José asks Pájaro to drive the family to the beach. Marley sits with Pájaro, while José and Adrializ frolic in the sea. They start to build a sandcastle, but José loses interest and swims out from shore to float in a cruciform shape on the deep blue water.

Given the strictness of censorship under Nicolás Maduro, it says much for Armand's tenacity and courage that this film was made at all, let alone released internationally. Having shown well at a number of festivals, it arrives here with a reputation for innovation and intensity that it doesn't quite merit. But it remains a potent and intelligent insight into the everyday pressures facing those in the lower depths of a society reeling from a combination of declining oil revenues, spiralling inflation and political instability.

Writing with Rodrigo Michelangeli (who doubles impressively as cinematographer), Armand concentrates on the shortages and uncertainties that reinforce the class chasm that divides Venezuela. Jorge wants to remain friends with José, but fails to appreciate the calamitous impact that his family's decision will have on his basic existence. One suspects that he and Irene are just the kind of targets to tempt Malandro. But José would rather plunder the past and his search for the morocota bounty emphasises the extent to which the rich and poor are ensnared in a vicious circle that neither can escape.

Rising to the docudramatic challenge of recreating aspects of their own lives, the ensemble ably conveys the sense of struggle that is reinforced by the neo-realist street scenes and Michelangeli's atmospheric lighting of the villa interiors. Eli Cohn's sound design is also first rate, particularly during José's nocturnal perambulations and his encounter with the ghost, when the noise of the chirruping cicadas and quacking ducks almost becomes deafening. But the action does meander on occasion, while the use of the mansion as a symbol for Venezuela's fall from grace is a bit too blatant.

From Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981) to Wolfgang Petersen's Troy (2004) and Zack Snyder's 300 (2006), screen adaptations of ancient myths have tended to be effects-laden Greek odysseys for the whole family. However, there have been several classical retellings down the years, with Tyrone Guthrie (1957), Pier Paolo Pasolini (1967) and Philip Saville (1968) all tackling Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, while Pasolini (1969) and Lars von Trier have revisited Euripides's Medea and Michael Cacoyannis managed to coax Katharine Hepburn into headlining the same playwright's The Trojan Women (1971).

There have also been numerous loose reworkings of the timeless tales of gods, goddesses and hapless mortals, including George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964); Arthur Allan Seidelman's Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Hercules in New York (1970); Harry Kümel's masterly horror, Malpertuis (1971); Woody Allen's Oscar winner, Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Ron Clements and John Musker's Disney gem, Hercules (1997); Joel and Ethan Coen's wittily inventive O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); the Percy Jackson movies (2010 and 2013); and Patty Jenkins's instant comic-book classic, Wonder Woman (2017).

While the Roman world engendered the Italian peplum picture (which is better known to English-speaking audiences as the `sword and sandal' genre), its mythology has been less well represented on screen. Jean Cocteau (1950) and Marcel Camus (1959) turned to Ovid for their revisions of the Orpheus story and the same poet provides the inspiration for Christophe Honoré's Metamorphoses (2014), which is showing as part of Picturehouse's Discover Tuesday series. Sadly, with the Phoenix currently undergoing refurbishment, Oxford cineastes will have to venture into the capital if they are to catch it.

In a prologue set in dense woodland in southern France, Actaeon (Matthis Lebrun) is transformed into a stag during a hunting expedition after witnessing the transsexuual goddess Diana (Samantha Avrillaud) cleansing herself from a large plastic water container. No sooner has he struggled to his hooved feet, however, than he is shot by one of his fellow huntsmen.

The scene shifts to a lycée in a nondescript project. Europa (Amira Akili) is smoking on the pavement with her friends when a large articulated lorry crawls round the corner and drives towards them. As she walks home, Europa sees the truck in a car park and it circles her before the passenger door flips open. She makes love in a field with Jupiter (Sébastien Hirel), the king of the gods, who declares that he has come to change her life. An old man passes and Jupiter explains that he is searching for his daughter, Io (Coralie Rouet), but has no idea that Jupiter seduced her on a misty country road and turned her into a heifer when they were spotted by his passing wife, Juno (Mélodie Richard). Io is appalled by her bovine when she looks at herself in a puddle, but Juno gives her into the care of Argos (Vincent Massimino).

Europa is dismayed by his treatment of Io, but Jupiter explains that he sent his cleverest son, Mercury (Nadir Sonmez), to lift the curse by killing Argos. He finds the all-seeing giant lazing beside a lake and lulls him to drowsiness with his panpipes. However, Argoss has eyes all over his torso and Mercury has to use his cunning to catch him off his guard. As night falls, he tells how he got his pipes from Syrinx (Myriam Guizani), a nymph who had escaped from Arcadia (actually, a Carrefour superstore) and was making her way across treacherous ground when she was pursued and ravished by a naked Pan (Olivier Müller). However, as he finishes pleasuring her, he finds that Syrinx has changed into the hollow water reeds from which he will make his pipes.

Realising that Argos has dozed off, Mercury steals his rifle and shoots him in the eye in the middle of his chest. He cuts the rope tethering Io, but she is unable to flee because Juno arrives in her car and recaptures her. She sits beside Argos and plucks the eyes from his body and throws them into the black night sky. As they fall back to earth, they become part of a peacocks tail and Juno exacts her revenge on Io by unleashing a gadfly from a jar.

Europa and Jupiter are joined by Mercury and they wait outside a church, as the pious bourgeois congregation files away. Jupiter and his son reach out their hands for alms, but the hypocrites ignore them. By contrast, the elderly, devoted and impoverished Baucis (Gabrielle Chuiton) and Philemon (Jean Courte) offer them everything they have. They even try to catch their goose for slaughter and Jupiter rewards them by filling their humble table with a feast. But, before they can savour more than a few mouthfuls, a storm breaks and Jupiter guides them through the darkness to a peaceful stream. They ask if they can be granted a wish to die together and Europa looks on as Baucis is reborn as a poplar tree and Philemon as a maple stood proud and strong by her side. The sun and the breeze touch their leaves and Europa touches their bark before making love with Jupiter in their shade.

While she sleeps clinging to the red trunk of the maple, Jupiter swims across the river to copulate with Juno. He lets slip that he envies women for having more intense orgasms than men. But Juno is sceptical and they visit a transgendered doctor, Tiresias (Rachid O), for confirmation. Juno is so angry with Tiresias for claiming to know how women feel that she throws liquid in his eyes and Jupiter gives him the gift of foresight in compensation for being blinded.

The first baby he treats after his accident is Narcissus, who grows into a strapping teenager (Arthur Jacquin) who is adored by everyone. However, he isn't sure why and, having spurned the advances of Echo, he speaks directly into the camera in proclaiming that he is just himself. Feeling compelled to go on to the roof of the high-rise block where he lives with his mother, Narcissus removes his shirt and lays down on the gravel. He looks up to see his own image in the sky and leans forward enraptured. But rather than endure the torment of being in love with his own reflection, he falls backwards from the ledge and tumbles towards earth.

Waking with a start, Europa finds herself alone. She dresses and wanders into the woods, where she meets Bacchus (Damien Chapelle), another son of Jupiter, who declares himself to be the sweetest and most fearsome of the gods. He tells Europa she will become queen of a Greek island, but she would rather be left alone and threatens to stop believing in deities. However, Bacchus tells her about the daughters of Minyas (Anna Campion, Éleanor Vergez and Margot Guitton), who made the mistake of doubting his legitimacy.

He found them in a cinema and bundled them into the back of a pick-up truck, where he made one drive and the other two strip naked. As they drive, Bacchus informs them that they are going to the Strabon Pond, whose waters have a debilitating effect because of a prayer uttered by Hermaphrodite (Julien Antonini). A flashback shows how the youth was approached at the water's edge by Salmacis (Marlene Saldana), who undressed in the hope of swimming with her new acquaintance. Angered by his reticence, she strides away. But, as Hermaphrodite begins to paddle, Salmacis appears beside him and she prays to the gods that they are never separated. However, they responded by uniting their bodies so that Hermaphrodite has female breasts and Bacchus grants his request when he reaches the shore.

Bacchus and the sisters arrive at Strabon and he orders them to wade into the water. When they refuse, he mocks them for being afraid of gods they don't believe in and he laments that they could have had fun dancing together. Instead, he grabs them by the wrists and turns them into birds and lets them fly away.

Europa listens to the story with ambivalence. She wants to walk away, but Bacchus describes the dullness of her morning routine and how much she hates her repressive father and she realises she has nothing worthwhile to go home to. They are interrupted by Pentheus (Yannick Guyomard), a mortal cousin of Bacchus wandering in the wilderness with a torch. He demands the return of his female relations, who have become Bacchantes. When he shines his beam into the nearby trees, however, he sees that the branches are full of naked women, who pursue and pounce on him, leaving Bacchus to burn his corpse. As he tends the flames, Bacchus informs Europa that he will be taken seriously and mentions that her younger brother, Cadmus (Jimmy Lenoir), is looking for her. She whispers on the air that she is fine and leaves Bacchus behind to follow Orpheus (George Babluani) after he is pulled out of the river by the Bacchanates.

As Orpheus walks through the countryside, he collects disciples and Europa keeps step with them until they reach a shrine to Narcissus. Kids from the neighbourhood watch from a distance, as Orpheus makes a speech about breaking the cycle of reincarnation. The cops arrive and disperse the crowd, with Orpheus and his clique being chased through the estate by the locals who resent him questioning their modes of remembrance.

They walk along a busy road at dusk and congregate around Orpheus, who tells them the story of Atalanta (Vimala Pons), who had been warned off marriage by the gods. In order to foil suitors, she challenged them to a race and none succeeded in proposing by beating her. However, Venus (Keti Bicolli) took pity on fruit picker Hippomenes (Erwan Larcher), who jogs through his orchard each day. She gives him three golden apples to distract Atalanta during the race and declares him the winner after they swim across a pool. However, Hippomenes is so pleased with becoming Atalantas suitor that he forgets to thank Venus, who punishes the couple by making them sexually insatiable and then by turning them into lions.

Orpheus swims in a lake and dives deep below the surface. He walks along the bottom before returning to dry land. He finds a burning body and a note stating that his wife, Eurydice, has been restored to life. However, the guardians of the Underworld ask him not to look backwards as they leave the realm of the Dead. But, as he leads her through the tangle of vegetation on the bed, her hand slips away from his and Orpheus looks back to see his beloved sinking into the depths. He returns to the Orphics, who are waiting in a cave. But, with Europa looking on, the Bacchanates sneak inside wearing nothing but plastic raincoats and they shoot everyone dead.

Europa gazes on the beautiful corpses, as Cadmus urges her to come home. She refuses, but gives him her haversack, which he opens on the bus and he half-smiles as he sees a bloodstained book. Back at the lake, Jupiter watches as Europa undresses and floats on the sun-kissed water, bobbing over the little wavelets that shimmer across the placid surface.

Closing with Ovid's plea to the gods from 1 AD that his verses might endure, this is a bold and often inspired distillation of the 250 or so myths contained in the original text. Honoré nimbly segues between the narratives, using some to contextualise the main plot strands and others as digressions. But nothing feels extraneous or strained, as he comments on the unchanging attributes of human nature and the continued relevance of ancient wisdom in the modern world. Touching on everything from the Greek debt to the migrant crisis and referencing film-makers as different as Pasolini, Alain Resnais, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, and Steven Spielberg (yes, Jupiter really does make his first appearance as the truck in Duel, 1971), Honoré exploits the inexperience of his largely non-professional cast to make existence and other people seem baffling, as they make mistakes for which they often pay a monstrous price.

Shooting around Nimes and Montpellier, Honoré and cinematographer André Chemetoff make evocative contrasts between the beauty of nature and the blandness of the concrete edifices selected by production designer Samuel Deshors. But Honoré also switches between long shots locating the characters in their milieux and facial close-ups that challenge the excellent young cast to resist emoting in the traditional movie manner. Honoré also makes magnificent use of music by Mozart, Webern, Schoenberg and Ravel to suggest the celestial influence on the quotidian. Although, of course, the gods are so capricious and cruel that it's easy to empathise with flawed mortals being toyed with for their sport.

It's not often that the set steals the show from the performers, but this is definitely true in the case of Stanley Tucci's Final Portrait. Designed by James Merifield and constructed on a Twickenham soundstage, the studio in which Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti paints the portrait of American author James Lord has an ambient authenticity that is noticeably missing from the well-disguised London landmarks being used as stand-ins for the environs around 46 rue Hippolyte Maindron in 1960s Paris. The interiors also have an apposite period integrity that Danny Cohen frustratingly fails to achieve with the distracting jerkiness of his pseudo-nouvelle vague camera movements.

Scripted by Tucci from Lord's own memoir, this erudite, but often stilted anecdote joins The Imposters (1998), Joe Gould's Secret (2000) and Blind Date (2007) on the popular actor's directorial CV. But he has yet to improve on his wonderful debut, Big Night (1996), which he co-directed with Campbell Scott, whose own efforts behind the camera have similarly tailed off with Hamlet (2000), Final (2000) and Off the Map (2003).

While in Paris some time in 1964, James Lord (Armie Hammer) agrees to pose for Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush). He promises it will only take a day (or so) and Lord is happy to sit for such an internationally renowned sculptor before he flies back to the United States. Lord is greeted warmly by Giacometti's wife, Annette Arm (Sylvie Testud), as she heads out for lunch and by his brother Diego (Tony Shalhoub), who has just completed a plinth for one of Giacometti's famously wiry creations. But, while he likes the base, Giacometti loathes his own effort and tosses it aside, as he rummages around his cluttered courtyard studio to find the paints and brushes he needs to immortalise Lord.

Sitting him down on a wicker chair in the middle of the room, Giacometti declares that Lord has the head of a brute, but reassures him that no cop would ever convict him on the basis of his portrait, as he so rarely captures what he sees. Dabbing away on a fresh canvas, Giacometti laments that portraits are impossible to do and are rarely finished. But Lord keeps his thoughts to himself as he holds his pose (as the infuriatingly skittish camera darts around him in a gauche bid to replicate the restlessness of Giacometti's gaze). Moreover, he remains polite when Giacometti informs him that he will have to return the next day, as he has doesn't want to keep him seated for too long. As he leaves, however, Lord bumps into Caroline (Clémence Poésy), a prostitute who has become Giacometti's mistress and muse and Lord is pained to see the expression on Annette's face, as she watches her husband canoodle with the vivacious brunette.

A montage shows Giacometti drinking, dining and canoodling with Caroline at a nearby café before he repairs to her room for sex before stumbling back to his studio in a state of inebriated inspiration. Having worked feverishly for a couple of hours, he tumbles into bed beside his wife and turns the light on to sleep. When Lord encounters him the next day, Giacometti is taking coffee with Pierre Matisse (James Faulkner). But he sweeps Lord off to the studio, where he resumes work and curses frequently as the paint refuses to do his bidding.

Needing more time to complete the portrait, Giacometti asks Lord if he can postpone his departure and he agrees. The artist confides that he has spent 37 years being a fraud, as he never finishes anything and has only stuck to his métier because he couldn't live with the shame of being a coward if he quit. After a while, Diego arrives with a bundle of money from a gallery. Lord laughs as Giacometti tosses the brown paper bag on to the floor and accuses him of ostentation. But the Swiss reveals that he distrusts banks and has hidden thousands of francs around his studio and only has a vague memory of their whereabouts. He insists he doesn't work to accrue wealth, but seems oblivious to the fact that his affluence and celebrity have enabled him to live his chosen lifestyle.

As he arrives on the third day, Lord sees Giacometti turning on the conniving charm in order to sell to a female collector. He jokes that he hasn't painted a nude in the flesh since the 1930s and informs Lord that he looks like a degenerate from the side. Yet, while he makes progress on the face with some white paint, Giacometti is suddenly stricken with despair and puts his head in his hands as he wonders why he bothers. Taking the opportunity to stand and stretch, Lord is bawled out for moving when Giacometti looks up. He is relieved when Annette comes to collect them for lunch and Lord feels awful for her when her husband wanders away from their table to consort with Caroline. She reassures him that she is used to his ways, just as he will be by the time the portrait is finished.

On Day 4, Giacometti is busy remoulding an existing sculpture when Lord arrives and he seems preoccupied. He suggests having a drink, but decides to work and touches up the nose before declaring himself famished. They repair to a small café, where the accustomed waiters serve him a dish of cold cuts and potatoes, along with two glasses of red wine and two strong coffees. Rather than work, however, Giacometti feels the need to walk and, as they wander through a cemetery, he persuades Lord to delay his flight for another few days. He also asks if he has ever wondered what it might be like to be a tree, just as he had previously asked if he had considered various forms of suicide.

Returning to the studio, Giacometti is distracted by Annette entertaining a Japanese man (Takatsuna Mukai) in her bedroom. No sooner has he returned from saying hello than Caroline bursts in. She is delighted that he has bought a car for her and she makes motoring noises as she takes Lord's portrait off the easel and steers it around the room. While he tries to work out what is going on, Caroline places an unfinished picture of herself in front of her lover and takes Lord's place on the chair. Pausing in the courtyard, he looks at Giacometti devoting his full attention to a gold-digger, while Annette pulls a net curtain across the window so Lord can't see her necking with her companion.

There is no sign of Giacometti when Lord arrives for the fifth day of the sitting. He chats with Diego, who discloses that he has started to read John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Suddenly, his brother storms through the wooden gate and drags a dustbin into the middle of the courtyard. Stomping up to the gallery in his studio, he unearths a bundle of sketches that he proceeds to rip up and burn because the collector didn't like the paper they were drawn on. Diego does nothing to stop him and walks Lord back to his lodgings. He gives him a bird sculpture he has done to make amends for a wasted day and opines that Giacometti is in a bad mood because Caroline has disappeared.

This bad temper continues into the evening, as Giacometti asks Annette to pose topless. He accuses her of wriggling and, when she counters that she has always tried to please him, he condemns her for wanting a home when he never did. She complains that he keeps her short of money and he throws banknotes at her so that she can buy the coat she insists she needs. Diego wanders in during the spat and knows not to get involved, as his sibling skulks off in search of a companion who is going to satisfy him on his own terms.

He walks the streets and winds up in a brothel, as his voice is heard telling Lord the next day that he used to lull himself to sleep by imagining himself raping and killing two innocent girls. Once again, the sitting goes badly and Giacometti threatens to abandon the portrait. But, as he slumps forward in despair, Caroline appears in the doorway and they exchange silent stares that restore the artist's spirit and, as he follows his mistress to a nearby bar, Lord returns to his rooms to explain in a testy transatlantic phone call why he is further extending his stay.

By Day 9, Lord has resigned himself to the long haul and is rewarded by a cemetery conversation about Cézanne being the last great artist and Picasso being a fraud who steals ideas from others and spouts nonsense in the form of pompous epithets. Three days later, after his morning swim, Lord goes to see the ceiling that Marc Chagall has painted at the Opéra. Annette is excited about seeing it and shows Lord the yellow dress she has bought for the occasion. But Giacometti dismisses the achievement as `house painting' and Lord requests a smoking break to calm himself down. He asks Diego how long this will go on and he shrugs a reply that portraits are never finished, even with a deadline.

They are interrupted by Caroline arriving in her new car and she insists on taking Giacometti and Lord for a ride into the country. The following day, however, he complains he has caught a chill and slinks off to bed after conceding that the picture might have defeated him. Annette returns home in a new yellow coat to learn that her husband is too sick to go to the Opéra and Lord leaves before being asked to stand in. He bumps into Caroline in a café, but she has no intention of visiting Giacometti, as he is no fun when he is unwell.

The next morning, Lord is happy to see Giacometti and Annette cuddling together on the bench outside Diego's workshop. Yet, when they return from another cemetery walk, they find the studio has been ransacked by Caroline's pimps, who are angry that Giacometti has fallen behind in his payments. Filling his raincoat pockets, he meets the pair (Philippe Spall and Gaspard Caens) at a cosy café and cuts a deal to pay both his arrears and a six-month advance to work and sleep with her. Lord is amazed to see him hand over such large sums so cheerfully, but Giacometti confides that he would have been lost without her.

Having promised to keep Lord for four more days only, Giacometti loses patience and smothers the portrait face with grey paint. Frustrated, Lord takes it into the courtyard to photograph for his ongoing journal and feels dismayed when Giacometti tries to boost his spirits by disclosing that he only gives up when he feels hopeful. Days 15, 16 and 17 pass in another montage, in which Annette and Diego sympathise with Lord, as Giacometti goes through peaks and troughs before once more obliterating the features with grey.

Yet again, Lord cancels his flight and returns for more punishment. But he makes a deal with Diego that he will pounce the next time he sees Giacometti reaching for the thick brush and Diego will rush in and pronounce the picture a decent start and a good place to stop. On Day 18, Lord watches for signs of resignation and leaps up when he thinks Giacometti is about to lose patience. Diego does his bit and Giacometti is convinced by their argument and the sitting finally comes to an end.

In his narrative summation, Lord reveals that the painting was exhibited Stateside and that he continued to correspond with Giacometti. The artist confessed to having enjoyed their collaboration and hoped to renew the acquaintance. But he died at the age of 65 in January 1966.

Anyone expecting a companion piece to Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse (1991) or Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun (1992) will be disappointed by a biopic that focuses more on the artistic psyche than the creative process. The camera frequently peeks over Giacometti's to see how he's getting on. But Cohen also stares deep into Lord's eyes, as he tries to fathom what is going on beneath the shock of grey hair that makes Rush look so like his character. However, Tucci prefers to leave Giacometti as much an enigma as Lord is a cipheritic American in Paris. Consequently, this feels like an unfinished sketch, which, in the circumstances, is entirely apt.

In attempting to convey Giacometti's artistic anguish and emotional turmoil, Rush sometimes lays on the patina of eccentric genius a little too thickly, while an Aussie twang occasionally undercuts the Swiss curses. Yet he nails the sense of suffering for one's art, while his conflicted affection for the ever-excellent Sylvie Testud and the rather jambonish Clémence Poésy is disarmingly touching. Also bearing a striking physical resemblance to his character, Hammer does well enough as the straight man, while Shalhoub is ironically droll as the artisan in the shadow of a famous brother who cannot function without him. However, while it complements Tucci's self-conscious efforts to prevent the action from feeling stagebound, Evan Lurie's score is less subtle, as it lurches between Gallic cliché, klezmer jazz and a rather pretty string and piano theme. But, for all the tantalising wit of the script, this is primarily a feast for the eyes, with the most indelible impression being left by that gloriously grim studio full of half-finished Giacometti figures.

On 20 July 2012, James Eagan Holmes walked into the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, Colorado and let off tear gas canisters before opening fire on the audience with an array of firearms. In all, 12 were killed and 70 others were wounded. Exceeding the casualty figures of any other American shooting, the effect that SSRI antidepressants might have had on Holmes's mindset was recently examined in a BBC documentary, A Prescription for Murder. But Tim Sutton takes a different approach to the scenario in Dark Night, which takes its title from the fact that the victims were watching Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (2012) when Holmes struck.

As Maica Amata sings in a breathily mournful manner over a darkened screen, there is a cut to Ciara Hampton's eyes. She stares ahead in a Stars and Stripes vest, as the light on her face changes from red to blue and we realise she is sitting on the kerb near a police car. The scene is Sarasota, Florida and, in quick succession, we meet the skinheaded Aaron Purvis being interviewed on the sofa with his mother Marilyn, Iraq veteran Eddie Cassiola and Hampton (his paramedic wife), dog walker Robert Jumper, selfie-taking wannabe actress/model Anna Rose Hopkins, superstore workers Rosie Rodriguez and Karina Macias, and skateboarder Andres Vega, who has dyed his hair orange to match James Holmes, whose trial is being reported on background televisions across the sequence.

When not tending to his snakes and terrapins, Purvis plays video games and imagines coming out of his house to find himself being doorstepped by the paparazzi. Following a trek through Google Street View, we see Vega getting his hair done by two gal pals during a trippy hookah party. Then, a point-of-view shot of someone brandishing a pistol in a video game segues into a scene of Cassiola cleaning and aiming his guns in the kitchen after he returns home from group therapy. As Jumper gets out of his car at a mall complex and counts his steps as he walks across the car park, Rodriguez and Macias shuffle along with their eyes glued to their phones, as they arrive for work on a clothing counter. Nearby, Vega skates along the waterfront with a buddy, as Hopkins arrives for an audition and sits nervously in a waiting-room, while one of her rivals gyrates seductively in a skimpy outfit to music playing in her headphones.

Purvis is asked about school and he claims to have achieved his grades by doing just enough. He claims to have made no connections with his teachers or other students and seems to think that life is about surviving. A girl calls to see Jumper and they have a nervous conversation on the doorstep, as she has previously rejected his advances. He emerges from the house with a rifle and walks purposefully along the street to point the barrel through a window, as the girl is singing `You Are My Sunshine', while giving a guitar lesson.

Cacciola goes to a shooting range and the sound cuts out as he empties his clip into the face of his paper target. In the parking lot, Hopkins is interrupted by three teenage girls screaming needlessly while posing as her own agent during a phone call with a casting director. Back at the skate park, Vega looks on as his tousle-haired friend patches up a cut finger. While Marilyn Purvis extols the virtues of her son the interviewer, Jumper gets milk and cookies from a chic middle-aged woman at a big house in the suburbs and promptly stops his car to throw up into the gutter. He thumps the steering wheel in frustration and goes drinking in subdued red lighting in a bar, while Purvis throws a dart into his bedroom wall while a girl walks across his bed in her underwear and a t-shirt.

Jumper tries on a selection of horror masks in the mirros. He pauses while wearing Batman's hood before an aerial shot hovers over the neighbourhood to another Armata song. Macias joins a group of white girls sunbathing and splashing around in the lake, while Hopkins goes to visit a couple of female cancer survivors. She is allowed to feel the forehead of a woman who lost part of her temple following a brain haemorrhage, but seems more interested in posing for more selfies outside. Driving along at dusk, Purvis listens to a radio news report about a shooting, while his mother frets that she has been so over-protective that she might have ruined a couple of potential romances.

Staring ahead with his blue eyes almost seeming to be in a zombie trance, Jumper shakes his head violently. Hopkins exercises on camera, while Macias takes meticulous care over her eye make-up before kissing her mother goodbye. Hampton opens the door and Cacciola tries to peer round the corner to see who has arrived, while Purvis brandishes a hammer, as he strides across the darkened garden towards his terrapin. However, he returns indoors to work on a sketch of a girl's face, as Hampton applies her lipstick.

Jumper heads for his car with a large canvas bag over his shoulder and tells a neighbour that he's off to a party at the movies. Rodriguez puts on a Catwoman mask, while travelling in the backseat of a car with Macias, while Cacciola and Hampton queues for tickets with their young son and Vega plays on a shooting game in the foyer with his hoodie pulled up. Hopkins sips on her drink, as Rodriguez tells Macias that she looks nice. As the camera slips into the digital projection booth, we see Jumper striding with a fixed jaw towards the multiplex. He enters the auditorium showing the well-publicised Dark Night through a side security door. But the last shot is of a dramatic black-and-blue sky rather than the anticipated bloodbath.

While being a far cry from cinema slaughter fodder like Mark Herrier's Popcorn (1991), Tim Sutton's third feature after Pavilion (2012) and Memphis (2013) can't quite shake the echoes of such school massacre movies as Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), Antonio Campos's Afterschool (2008) and Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique (2009). Often feeling more like a gallery installation than a feature, this is clearly a work of great artistic ambition and technical accomplishment. French cinematographer Hélène Louvart's views of Sarasota are as impeccable as Bart Mangrum and Jami Villers's lived-in interiors and Eli Cohn and Daniel D'Enrico's sound mix, as they help Sutton generate a sense of everyday foreboding that Alfred Hitchcock would have been proud of.

But the droning vocals of Canadian chanteuse Maica Armata tip the balance towards a pseudy kind of exploitation that exposes Sutton's real intentions. He has protested in promoting the picture that this is only tangentially connected to the Aurora incident, but he still litters the action with references that are mostly more oblique than the orange hair being sported by Vega. Similarly, while he fills the frame with phone, computer, video game and television screens, he struggles to convey the reasons for the alienation that they have helped exacerbate among American youth.

One suspects, however, that he is less interested in motive than mood and, consequently, he and editor Jeanne Applegate offer only snippets and impressions of the lives being led by those about to be caught up in a pitiless crime. Thus, there are no characters for the admirable non-professional performers to play, merely ciphers who are put through their paces like their predecessors in a Robert Bresson film. But what most frustrates about this elliptically ambiguous, if formally stylish outing is that its bid to reveal the evil that lingers in the seething discontent that currently pervades America falls flat because Sutton's contrived meld of cod documentary, nonchalant realism and arthouse suspense (complete with several homages to Val Lewton's Cat People bus scare) has failed to evoke any credible sense of a community about to be torn apart. There is always a danger that documentaries about the everyday lives of ordinary people can shift from being intimate to being intrusive and even invasive. Fortunately, Jonathan Olshefski strikes the right balance in Quest, which reveals how the Obama years impacted upon the marriage of one North Philadelphian couple, Christopher and Christine'a Rainey. Edited down by Lindsay Utz from over 300 hours of footage amassed over a 10-year period, this started out as a profile of Christoper (who is known as Quest, just as Christine'a is invariably called Ma) and the recording studio that affords neighbourhood youngsters an opportunity to express themselves in rap. But, as John Lennon once said, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

Shortly after Barack Obama is elected President of the United States, Christopher and Christine'a decide to tie the knot. As they explain, while Ma braids Quest's hair, they have been together for 15 years, but decided that the time was right to make a definitive commitment. Each has lived with different partners and they have several children between them. But 13 year-old Patricia (`PJ') is the baby of the family and she enjoys the wedding day as much as her folks, who joke that they have little in common besides their core values, as Ma would rather watch crime shows with a good storyline, while Quest prefers cartoons that offer an escape from the surfeit of reality he witnesses on the mean streets of a deprived neighbourhood.

Quest runs PJ to school each morning on the back of his bicycle before he heads to the studio where he records aspiring hip-hop artists like Price, who is struggling to keep his drinking under control. Ma works at a shelter for homeless and abused women and accepts that she has become something of a den mother. She jokes that PJ was the coolest five year-old, but is now becoming a proper teenager, as she declares she wants to be a DJ. But Ma also has a grandson to care for, as her 21 year-old son, William Withers, has been diagnosed with a brain tumour shortly before his girlfriend Nicole gave birth to Isaiah. Ma is overjoyed at becoming a grandmother, but is struggling to reconcile such happiness with William's illness.

The family watch his head being shaved at the barbershop before he goes into hospital and Quest and Ma take turns babysitting. But he also has an early morning paper round and has a show on a local radio network, where he encourages listeners to vote Obama/Biden at the 2012 election. PJ chatters happily about the ballot, as Quest walks her to the bus stop. He looks around the neighbourhood and notes that she has started to complain about her curfew times. But she knows it isn't always safe, although Quest recalls how dangerous it was living in the projects after crack came to North Philly in 1983 and he was roped into selling for the dealers who used to gun each other down in the courtyards behind his street. However, his mother told him (in the absence of his father) that it was better to be constructive rather than destructive and he has tried to pass this mantra on to his own kids and his community.

Quest opened the studio as a beacon of hope and he gets a buzz out of watching young men channel their anger in front of the microphone, as giving them a purpose and a platform might keep them on the straight and narrow. As news reports about Hurricane Sandy and the Sandy Hook shooting suggest, however, there is only so much people can do to fight fate. But Quest and Ma do their bit, whether it's tending to William and his baby or watching PJ play basketball with her friends. Yet, close to this very playground a few weeks later, PJ is hit by a stray bullet during a shootout and Quest and Ma respond with humbling courage to the news that she has lost an eye.

Her parents maintain a bedside vigil after the operation to remove the bullet and they do an interview for the local TV news to complain that the council has no problem granting licences for casinos, but is indifferent to providing safe leisure activities for kids. They keep family and friends informed by phone and one of her visitors tells her about a lad who refused to give up after losing an eye in a tree accident. But Quest is angry that PJ felt the need to apologise for being shot and laments that the gap between the lawmakers and the African-American community is getting perilously wide.

Driving home in a vehicle filled with the get well balloons from her room, PJ looks out of the window at familiar sights she will now view from a very different perspective. She is welcomed home by her black cat, who sits in her lap and looks up reassuringly as she strokes it. They all know she has been lucky, but PJ is upset when a well-meaning woman tells her ordeal is God's will and that she will always be beautiful, no matter what. She cheers up shooting hoops in the backyard, while Ma and Quest throw a street party in her honour. The white cop who helped save her life is among the guests and he watches as PJ does some trick bouncing with her basketball. Price plays a set and everyone dances in the middle of the road. But it's noticeable how few adult males are in attendance, as Olshefski trains his camera on innocent kids who will soon be sucked into the vicious circle that Ma and Quest have tried so hard to break.

They go on the WURD radio station to report on PJ's progress and Quest praises Ma for remaining so strong. During a night shift at the shelter, she reveals how she was badly burned at 18 when a gas canister caught fire and she shows the scars on her arms and legs. But she had the tenacity to battle through in a way that Price seemingly does not, as Quest explains that he is tired of giving him last chances when he keeps throwing them back in his face. Price insists he has conquered his addiction, but Ma knows that he has frittered away his house and family and she agrees with Quest that a line has to be drawn.

PJ has her false eye fitted and her parents try to remain strong for her, but they know that her life was cruelly transformed in an instant. She now has to wear glasses that make her feel self-conscious and Quest notices the silence when he walks her to the bus stop and plays a rap recording she did as a child to deal with his own pain. He places a bowl under a leak in the roof, just as William is presented with a rainmate to keep him dry as he picks up litter at the American Football stadium. Autumn turns to winter and another teenager is gunned down on the same pavement where PJ was wounded. Ma and Quest go on a peace march and Christian and Muslim speakers call for unity before an angry ordinary Joe condemns the politicians who only venture into their district to record soundbites. He also dismisses the likes of Meek Mill, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Rihanna, who set themselves up as role models when it should be parents who teach their children how to behave.

Doing well at school, PJ gets a job at a clothing store and she announces that she is gay. She doesn't make a big deal of it, but Quest and Ma have their first on-screen argument, as she blames him for preventing her from doing girly things with her daughter. He denies that playing basketball and being a tomboy made PJ a lesbian, but Ma avers that he has consistently disrupted her efforts to feminise her. Quest deals with annoyance by repairing the roof with plywood and he poses for lots of selfies to reinforce the sense of a job well done by the man of the house.

William is also having a rough time, as chemotherapy caused his body to swell and he had his arm tattooed with a biohazard sign to reflect the fact he feels he has become toxic. But, then, Quest is pulled over by the cops because he fits the description of a suspect and Ma films the black officer getting increasingly aggressive as Quest expresses his disbelief at being stopped and searched. Even Ma is becoming frustrated by the way things are going and she gives PJ a lecture about the expense of school equipment and how she needs to learn the value of money and how gas and wi-fi matter more than new sneakers. But they find the money for her to have her hair straightened for her high-school graduation photo and she likes the new fringe that covers her left eye.

She also begins to play the keyboards, as well as the drum, and Quest is impressed by her progress. He has forgiven Price and has written some songs with him and PJ plays on the session. William is also in a better place, as his cancer is in remission and he has a new place to raise four year-old Isaiah. Ma is proud of the way her boy has won his battle while learning how to be a good father. But, as she calls to urge him to vote, she knows the road is about to become rocky again, as she despairs at Donald Trump patronising the black electorate by asking them, `What the hell have you got to lose?'

This quotation should send a surge of rage through anyone who has watched the Raineys trying to do the right thing with the least possible assistance from Philadelphia's white establishment. But Olshefski is also aware that the Obama presidency did little to improve the lot of the average African-American and that it is going to take seismic ground-level change if future generations are to escape the poverty, exploitation, discrimination, addiction, chauvinism and violence that have long blighted a community that doesn't need reminding that black lives matter.

Acting as his own camera operator and sound recordist, Olshefski clearly established a remarkable trust and rapport with the family. But, while he remains an invisible presence inside the Rainey household, his ideas and opinions are readily evident from his editorial choices. Thus, while this may have been photographed in a Direct Cinema manner, the organisation of the material is much more vérité.

Given that discretion had to be upheld in Ma's refuge and that PJ needed space to grow up, more might have been made about how Quest disseminates the Freestyle Friday recordings and the impact that the music has on both the artists and their audience. It might also have been useful to know how this enterprise is funded, as it's obvious that money is tight while Quest's sources of income are a little obscure. But this is a compelling and empathetic study that considers daily life sufficient justification for its existence rather than any tub-thumping political agenda. Nevertheless, Olshefski ably brings modern America into such sharp focus that the significance of the Charlottesville showdown and its fallout become crystal clear.