Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 28/9/2017)

Having crossed the Mekong River between Burma and Thailand in an inflatable boat, Lianqing (Wu Ke-xi) is taken by motorbike through the imposing countryside to a waiting truck. She only has enough money to ride in the boot, but the gangling Guo (Kai Ko) offers to swap and Lianqing sits in the front seat with the driver. As darkness falls, they approach a checkpoint and have to bribe the cop on duty to stop him searching the vehicle. On arriving in Bangkok, Guo gives Lianqing his cousin's number and tells her she can always get a job in his factory. However, she is expecting a friend, who has already arranged work for her.

Turning up her nose at the gifts that Lianqing has brought her, Hua proves less helpful than flatmates Maomei and Cai (Yue Gai-huan), who not only give Lianqing some noodles, but also promises to help her find work. Her efforts are hindered by a lack of paperwork, however, and Lianqing has to settle for washing dishes in a low-grade city centre restaurant. After a tiring shift, Lianqing gets home to find Guo waiting for her. His sister knows Hua, who is as grumpy as before when Lianqing tries to chat to her. He gives Lianqing his mobile number and tells her to call whenever she likes.

After being paid her first wages, Lianqing asks one of the cooks to wire the money to her family in Lashio and makes inquiries of another colleague about fake ID cards. She calls home to remind her mother to collect the cash, but soon finds herself spending the night with Guo's sister after Hua accuses her of stealing and throws her out of the flat. Having been tempted to touch Lianqing's hand as she slept, Guo takes Lianqing to work on his scooter and asks her to quit and take a job at his factory. She thanks him for his kindness, but insists on remaining independent and he stalks off in disappointment.

Lianqing is taking a Thai class when Guo calls again. But, when the lodgings above the restaurant are raided by the police, he puts up the bail to get Lianqing released, while her boss bribes the duty cops to free her workmates. Realising she is probably better off with Guo, Lianqing agrees to apply for a job at the textile factory run by his cousin. He gives her the number 369 and tells her to forget about the big city and apply herself if she wants to do well. Guo introduces her to Burmese-Chinese workers Fu'an and his partner Zhi, as well as foreman Ersao, and she soon becomes used to the din on the factory floor.

Hours are long and Guo uses amphetamines to help him stay awake. He keeps tabs on Lianqing and brings her lunches and ice water, but she is determined to get residency papers so that she can return to the city. Guo tries to explain that she will get paid less there and be charged higher rents, but she hates being stuck in the sticks. She cheers up when they cool off under a water sprinkler. But she clams up again when Guo gives her a necklace and touches her shoulders when he puts it on for her.

Her determination to go her own way leads Lianqing to spend her time off for the Songkran Festival driving into the mountains to find a man who produces forged documents. Guo insists on travelling with her, as they take winding roads into the misty hills. On their arrival, they are offered noodles and informed that they have to pay for their papers in advance. Lianqing is worried they will be ripped off, but her companions stump up their fees and she is left to reassure their truck driver that they will reimburse him for the tolls he has paid on the road.

After a fitful night's sleep, Lianqing rises early to find Guo smoking on the porch. He complains that they are wasting their time and money getting permits they don't need. However, Lianqing reveals that she wishes to get a Thai passport so she can find a job in Taiwan. Pulling sulkily on a cigarette, Guo declares that work is the same everywhere and that he intends saving enough to open a shop back in Burma selling imported Chinese clothes. But Lianqing has made up her mind and is frustrated when the forgers make them sign forms before admitting that the cards may take some time to produce.

Lianqing sees another injustice when Fu'an causes the power to fail when falling into a machine and breaking his leg. He is in agony, as his friends shovel painkillers down his throat. But the boss forces Zhi to sign away her rights to future compensation in return for a one-off payment and Lianqing and Guo are required to countersign. Guo gives Zhi some money as they leave and Lianqing insists on returning to the mountains to get their documents at the earliest opportunity. They are held up by roadblocks and have to pay extra to redeem their papers. But the shop owner Lianqing met through Cai says they are legally worthless and she clings to Guo on the back of his scooter, as they ride through the city in a downpour.

Although she now thinks of Guo as her boyfriend, Lianqing knows they will have to split up because she plans to return to the city as soon as she can. She is furious with him, therefore, when a workmate tells her that Guo has withheld details of a phone call from her friend Wuniang, who could get Lianqing valid documentation. Lianqing throws iced water over him as he sleeps so that she can give him a piece of her mind and she pushes him away when he makes a grab for her.

Feeling betrayed and desperate, Lianqing contacts an old friend who can arrange for her to work as a prostitute so that she can make quick cash and move on with her life. While Guo works the late shift and hurls wood into the furnace, Lianqing puts on her best clothes waits in a hotel room for her client. On hearing a knock at the door, she thinks she sees an iguana on the bed and recoils in terror as it scuttles across the floor towards her, rears on to its back legs and pins her against the window with its tongue shooting out across her cheek.

Taking the bus out of town, Lianqing meets with Wuniang, who has arranged for her to pose as a woman from Somai village who has supposedly lost her ID in Bangkok. She has to hand over more money to a corrupt army officer, but he gives her the information to memorise and convince the local cop that she is a rustic Thai. The deception works and Lianqing finally seems to be making headway. But, as she sleeps that night, Guo climbs in through an open window and fights back tears as he crouches over her. She wakes and tries to struggle, but he stabs her before slitting his own throat and the film ends on a blood-splattered image of the Buddha.

Taking its title not from Rudyard Kipling, but from the point at which illegals are reportedly returned to Burma, this fact-based story establishes Midi Z as one of the finest exponents of social realism in current Asian cinema. Often shooting in long takes, he shrewdly conveys information by visual rather than verbal means and compels the viewer to search for meaning in both the expressions and body language of Wu Ke-xi and Kai Ko and in the varied environs in which they find themselves.

Cinematographer Tom Fan, production designer Akekarat Homlaor and editor Matthieu Laclau draw telling contrasts between the different places in which Wu works and sleeps, with the cosy clutter of her friend's flat providing a false first impression of life in Thailand before she moves on to the shabby backstreet café and the cavernous, cacophonous textile factory. Working in conjunction with composer Lim Giong, sound designers Tu Duu-Chih and Wu Shu-Yao come into their own during these sequences, although they also capture the bustle of Bangkok and the deceptive quietude of the countryside with equal aplomb.

Z pulls no punches in his depiction of the corruption and venality that exists at all levels of Thai society. But he is just as interested in the chauvinist conservatism that prompts Kai to try and manipulate Wu into accepting him as her protector. He is unfailingly generous, but the combination of his lack of education and the pills he keeps popping prevent him from accepting Wu's right to make her own decisions and take her own risks. By contrast, her pluck and willingness to do whatever it takes to further her cause are admirably conveyed by the Taiwanese actress in her third collaboration with a director who takes inspiration from the likes of Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jia Zhang-ke without compromising his own vision. The result is an unflinching and unsettling study of the insecurity, exploitation and alienation facing migrants the world over.

Despite its slender running time, British documentarist Carol Salter's sophomore feature, Almost Heaven, provides a thoughtful introduction to Chinese attitudes towards death, while also exploring family ties, first love and the shifting expectations of migratory workers in the second wave of the economic leap forward. The latter topic has been covered in films as diverse as Micha Peled's China Blue (2005), JP Sniadecki's The Iron Ministry (2014) and Zhao Liang's Behemoth (2013). But Salter offers a more intimate insight into the hopes and frustrations of young people who have taken a step towards a better life for themselves and their expectant families, but who are still uncertain of their ultimate destination.

Seventeen year-old Ying Ling has landed an apprenticeship in the Ming Yang Mountain Funeral Home in Changsha, the capital of the central Chinese province of Hunan. She lives in shabby digs and her mother is too busy to chat when she calls home. So, she throws herself into her work, even though she looks nervous when the first dead body descends on a hydraulic system into the bowels of a vast facility that would not be out of place in a science-fiction movie. She gets the giggles rehearsing the scripted speeches that employees have to give to the bereaved and erupts with laughter when instructor Jin Hau surprises her with the armless naked mannequin on which she is going to practice her techniques.

As they work, she opines that she is surprised he is old enough to be her teacher and they continue to chatter as they practice on a fellow trainee, who jokes that Ying needs to get a boyfriend in order to learn how to caress a body more gently. She wonders where she could find someone handsome enough and Jin volunteers as she consults a website about overcoming a fear of ghosts that suggests having a man to protect her would be a good start. Dressed in a white shirt, with a black tie and waistcoat, Ying looks apprehensive as a cadaver is brought into her section. She wheels the red coffin into the curtained section of a room and we hear the sound of commotion, as her superiors tick her off for almost tipping the coffin off the trolley because she had misjudged the weight of the body.

Having survived her ordeal, she goes to a fast food restaurant with Jin and puts plenty of ketchup on her fries. She wonders if she is right for this kind of work, but knows her parents need her to make money and will be annoyed if she quits. The next day, she calls her father after watering the plants on the main staircase, and informs him that she intends buying him a DVD player so that he will be able to watch films. Her reaction suggests he is not particularly grateful, but we cut away to see a young women saying her last goodbye to her mother, as she is wheeled away to the mortuary. Ying and Jin look on as the morticians talk softly to the woman as they wash away her pain and illness and place her tenderly in her coffin. Everything is carefully labelled to avoid mistakes and Ying seems more at ease than she had done before.

During a break, Jin asks Ying what she would like to do in the future and she reveals that she would like to open a small shop selling tea and barbecue. Then, despite saying she wouldn't like to do anything dangerous, she declares she would like to learn martial arts and become a bodyguard or a policewoman going after major criminals. Jin is taken aback, but not as much as when Ying asks if she can touch his eyelashes and they both get the giggles.

The scene couldn't be more different, as they appear in masks and aprons to attend to a classmate lying on a bier. They bow reverentially and Ying shaves him under the watchful gaze of a tall man in a `Love' shirt, who takes notes with a pen with a fluffy yellow topper. Sitting in the staff room, they admit to making mistakes and Ying shoots Jin a glare when he apologises for being a bad partner. As she listens to a critique of her performance, another body arrives in reception and a sobbing woman is led away as the porters drop an empty coffin while loading it into the back of a van.

Ying and Jin travel across town in a hearse to tend to a 90 year-old woman who has passed away in a nursing home. They work delicately, with Jin holding a sheet and averting his gaze, as Yang washes the body. When they have finished, they bind the corpse in a knotted sheet and await the undertakers to take her away. As her hands are still in plastic gloves, Yang asks Jin to tidy her ponytail and he has to be told what to do, as he clearly has no experience with girls. She smiles when he does it too tightly and is relieved when they are dismissed and allowed to return to their waiting vehicle.

On a day off, Jin and Ying go to an amusement arcade and have fun on a drumming game before blasting some baddies on a shooting challenge. They buy some music and make fun of each other's taste and Yang teases Jin that he is no good at romance. When he asks her to teach him, she merely giggles and they wander through the busy town, with Ying being sceptical that Jin is three years older than her. However, he springs a surprise when he announces that he has decided to go home, as his grandparents are unwell and he misses them. He has already dropped out of university and is not getting great grades in his training and, so, while he clearly adores Ying, he has made up his mind to go home and knuckle down.

She helps him compose his resignation letter and laughs when he says he is making it sound too poetic. They squeeze into the back of a taxi to take Jin to the station and Ying asks whether his father or mother has the longest eyelashes. She scolds him for not knowing how old his father is and then admits forgetting her own dad's birthday. As they get closer to the station, Ying keeps shooting little looks at him, as she likes him and senses that he likes her. She pretends to bite his fingers when he reaches out towards her face and they giggle as they grip each other's hands. But, she realises she will probably never see Jin again and, while they chatter about meeting up again as they walk to the ticket barrier, the close-up of her face as she wanders away into the neon-lit night reveals the glint of tears in her eyes.

Returning to the funeral home, Ying seems more sombre, as she walks down the stairs. A family looks on, as she washes the face of a man who had died suddenly that morning and the sounds of weeping increased the pressure on her to do a good job. Once the family has left, there is an emergency, as the corpse has a nosebleed and Ying has to stuff its mouth and nostrils with cotton wool before the body is placed in its coffin. She goes home to ask her mother if she can come home to collect some winter clothes, but she orders her to stay put and then refuses to put anything warm in the post as it would be too expensive.

The harshness of Ying's job hits home harder when a woman bawls at the sight of her dead sister and Ying tries to retain her composure as the duty manager has to remind the deceased's family that she will only be cremated when they have paid for the funeral. This clash of sororal distress and business pragmatism upsets Ying and she snaps back at her boss when he tells her off for removing her plastic gloves before they have disposed of the rubbish. He complains that she does something silly each day, as they dump the contents of a bin in a hole in an outbuilding floor (which hardly seems hygienic).

That night, Ying treats herself to a video-phone chat with Jin, who shows her around the office where he sells gravestones. He jokes that he plays computer games when his boss isn't looking and admits to being bored. She beams at everything he says and returns to her dormitory to look up links about becoming a nurse. But she is back on duty at the Ming Yang mortuary and reads the prepared speech to the mourners who have come to pay their respects to a loved one. She looks moved as the daughter delivers a speech that makes Ying realise how unlikely she would be to say the same poignant things about her own parents, but retains her outward dignity, as the guest file past the coffin.

Having visited a steeply banked cemetery and watched people tending graves bearing photographs of the deceased, Ying boards a train and relocates to a new town to begin her training as a nurse. Instead of talking to the dead, she gives a practice dummy a kiss of life and finally seems to have found her métier.

This affirmative ending feels entirely apt, as Ying Ling clearly has a love of life that seems wasted among the dead. We learn next to nothing about her, as Salter withholds details of her background and how she came to apply for a job that seems so unsuitable for someone of her youth and vivacity. We don't even discover how long she has been training or the time span of the shoot. Yet, while the immature Jin Hau drifts into a job selling tombstones, Ying's brush with grief convinces her to work towards saving lives and a seize a chance to be appreciated in a way she isn't at home and wasn't at the mortuary.

While the main focus falls on Ying's rite of passage, Salter remains alert to such everyday details as Ying wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt and behaving in much the same manner as any teen just wanting to have fun. Moreover, she doesn't overplay her hand in showing how educated kids are being forced to travel halfway across the country to find worthwhile work and subsist on meagre salaries in spartan lodgings to provide for their often demanding and (in this case) ungrateful parents.

The odd scene seems stage-managed. but Salter keeps her camera at a discreet distance while Ying is working or dealing with the bereaved. Curiously, considering she has edited several films as well as directing Mayomi (2008) and the short, Unearthing the Pen (2009), she entrusts the cutting to Cinzia Baldessari, Hoping Chen and Rodrigo Saquel. Their work is aptly steady, but Ying is shown gazing into the distance a bit too often and Raoul Brand's sound mix is much more effective in capturing the shifting moods, as Ying and Jin return to the staffroom and chuckle over nothing after witnessing distraught relatives deal with the shock and permanence of loss.

Film-makers always take a risk when they construct a story around a spiky protagonist. But Glasgow-based debutant Peter Mackie Burns's gamble pays off handsomely in Daphne, a feature version of his acclaimed short, Happy Birthday to Me (2013), which reunites him with screenwriter Nico Mensinga and star Emily Beecham, whose fearless performance is one of the highlights of a picture that views such classic studies of single girls in London as John Schlesinger's Darling (1965) and Silvio Narizzano's Georgy Girl (1966) through the prism of Mike Leigh's Naked (1993).

Thirty-one year-old half-Sicilian redhead Emily Beecham lives life on her own terms. She doesn't share Ritu Arya's enthusiasm for keeping in touch with old friends and walks away from pub pick-up Tim Innes when he breaks off from a street snog to take a selfie for his mates. Boss Tom Vaughan-Lawlor tolerates her tetchy attitude at the restaurant where she works as a chef, while pizza delivery boy Ragevan Vasan overlooks the fact she gives him an inappropriate Muslim greeting and is two pounds short. But mother Geraldine James is tired of Beecham sneering at everything, especially as she has begun experimenting with alternative philosophies since being diagnosed with cancer.

Vaughan-Lawlor also expects a good deal from Beecham, as he recognises her talent and shares expensive cheese samples with her on the fire escape outside the restaurant. But Beecham goes her own way, whether she is calling Slavoj Žižek a `doughnut' while reading one of his books or discussing Freud's theories of love over a line of cocaine with Osy Ikhile before sleeping with him and shoving her bare foot into his sleeping face after raiding his fridge.

However, she receives a jolt on her way home to Elephant and Castle when she pops into Amra Mallassi's convenience store and witnesses him being stabbed by a drug-fuelled thief. She kneels beside Mallassi and hands him a photograph of his family while waiting for the ambulance to arrive and gives a statement to the police. But she ignores calls offering her counselling and teases Vaughan-Lawlor when he tries to show off his knowledge of Žižek during a discussion on Internet dating and the difference between love and sex.

Having sent him home to his wife, Beecham keeps drinking and has an argument with bouncer Nathaniel Martello-White, who finds her foul-mouthed spirit amusing. She staggers home to force feed takeaway chicken to a picture of Ryan Gosling on her laptop and talks to herself in bed before waking with a hangover. Ignoring calls from James, she snipes at kitchen manager Karina Fernandez for always whining about minor hassles and drops into Vaughan-Lawlor's office to suggests they sleep together. But she loses her nerve and they barely mention the incident during a rooftop fag break. She asks if he ever fantasised as a kid about becoming the centre of attention after losing both parents and he laughs that she is a weird one. He admits that he didn't intend having kids, but he has learnt that life is about getting on with the unexpected and they shrug at each other. After work, Beecham bumps into Martello-White in a deli and they make awkward small talk before he offers his phone number.

Bunking off work, Beecham goes to see psychiatrist Stuart McQuarrie to discuss her reaction to Mallassi's stabbing. However, she is aggressively defensive and questions his ability to assess her when he knows nothing about her and has a complete set of Harry Potter books on his shelf. On the bus home, she gets chatting to young mum Ruth Bradley and they jovially complain about how rundown they feel. But they fall silent when Bradley thinks Beecham is joking about her mother having cancer and they mumble their goodbyes when Beecham reaches her stop.

She calls Martello-White and they meet for a drink. However, Beecham launches into a diatribe about the impossibility of love and storms out when he reminds her they are only on a first date. He runs after her and asks what her problem is. But she follows when he goes back to finish his drink and have an enjoyable evening until Beecham puts on her indifferent act again when they part at the Underground station. She gets home to find James waiting for her and they argue about her need to keep having chemotherapy, even though James has lost faith in traditional medicine.

Having cooked a meal she promptly throws away, Beecham has another altercation when she meets up with Arya, who wishes she would stop being so cynical all the time. Returning home, Beecham crashes on the sofa and is surprised when Vasan delivers a takeaway she has no recollection of ordering. He asks if she is okay and suggests that she gets some fresh air, but she is in no mood to take health advice from a stranger. Nevertheless, she picks up college lecturer Matthew Pidgeon in a bar the following day and gets so wasted after meaningless sex at his flat that a top shot shows her meandering along the pavement, as though she has no idea who she is, let alone where she is.

Still drunk, she goes to work and insults Fernandez and orders Vaughan-Lawlor to stop handling the merchandise when he tries to calm her down. He takes her home and cooks breakfast after sleeping on the couch. She stops short of apologising, but sticks with her drunken decision to quit when he admits that he is in love with her and hopes that they can still see each other in the future. Struggling to get her head together, Beecham pays McQuarrie another visit and reveals that she feels the need to see Mallassi, even though she isn't particularly concerned how he is. McQuarrie reassures her that it's impossible to have the correct response to every situation and she ponders his advice on a train across London to tell Martello-White that she's not in the right place for a relationship.

Against her better judgement, Beecham attends a Buddhist healing ceremony with James and they hug in the park after James says she isn't ready to give up on life just yet. She follows this up by calling on Mallassi, who is delighted to see her and invites her to eat with his wife and two small children. They re-enact the robbery to show his family what happened and reassures Beecham that she saved him by calling the ambulance and holding his hand. As at the prayer meeting, she feels both amused and touched and recognises that her petty problems don't really amount to much in the grander scheme.

Closing somewhat cornily on a shot of Beecham as a face in the nocturnal crowd while The Velvet Underground's `I Found a Reason' plays on the soundtrack, this is a compelling portrait of a millennial singleton coping with the kind of urban alienation to which Michelangelo Antonioni used to subject his carefree female characters in the 1950s. But Burns and Mensinga merely skirt the more political aspects of the scenario, as they examine the impact of isolation in a claustrophobic metropolis. They are far from the first to focus on such feistily independent women, however, as Theda Bara, Mae Murray, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks all played similar types in the silent era. Indeed, echoes abound of features like Richard Brooks's Looking for Mr Goodbar (1977) and Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (2011), as well as such TV series as Girls, Love and Fleabag (which was created by Beecham's friend, Phoebe Waller-Bridge).

But, while the approach may not be entirely novel and details like Beecham keeping a pet snake and drunkenly peddling a ghost bike in the park feel a little contrived, this is full of zinging one-liners. Moreover, thanks to the creative realism of Adam Scarth's visuals, Nick Emerson's nimble editing, Joakim Sundström's acute sound mix and Sam Beste's unpredictable piano score, Burns is able to capture the rhythms of city life while also giving Beecham plenty of scope to explore her character. His comparison to Gena Rowlands in the early films of John Cassavetes is apt, as Beecham never seems to be giving a performance, whether she's being snarky with other women or brusquely flirtatious with men. However, her brittle, almost Huppertian excellence depends much on the attuned support provided by the likes of Geraldine James, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, Nathaniel Martello-White and Stuart McQuarrie.

Since winning the Golden Bear at Berlin with his first short, Milk (2005), 50 year-old Burns has produced two more shorts, Run (2005) and Stronger (2015), and the affecting experimental documentary, Come Closer (2011). But he will have his work cut out to improve upon this cannily quirky feminist parable for the gadget age.

Acclaimed British theatre director David Leveaux makes his feature bow with The Exception, an adaptation by TV writer Simon Burke of Alan Judd's novel The Kaiser's Last Kiss, which centres on the Dutch exile of the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II. In places, this polished blend of conspiracy thriller and interracial romance covers similar ground to Paul Verhoeven's Black Book (2006), while also revisiting the seemingly irresistible topic of the `good German', whose perameters have changed little since they were first established in Edward Dmytryk's The Young Lions (1958) and Anatole Litvak's The Night of the Generals (1967). Ultimately, a potentially compelling story is undermined by slick caricature and insipid melodrama. But we should be grateful that a film about such an intriguing, but often overlooked aspect of the Second World War actually got made at all.

Still suffering from nightmares after an incident in Poland that almost got him court-martialled, Captain Stefan Brandt (Jai Courtney) is sent to Utrecht in the Netherlands to guard Kaiser Wilhelm II (Christopher Plummer) after the Wehrmacht invades the Low Countries. As Brandt imposes his authority on aide-de-camp Colonel Sigurd von Ilsemann (Ben Daniels), Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz (Janet McTeer) urges her husband to stop chopping wood in the grounds of Huis Doorn and show leadership to his military protectors as part of a bid to regain the throne he lost at the end of the Great War. However, Gestapo officer Dietrich (Mark Dexter) orders Brandt to watch Wilhelm to ascertain his views on the Third Reich and to guard him against possible British kidnap or assassination attempts.

Furious at being made to babysit an old man when he would rather be fighting at the front, Brandt consoles himself with the presence of a British spy in the town and it doesn't take too many grey cells to realise that she is Mieke de Jong (Lily James), a new maid at Huis Doorn, who amuses Wilhelm during his morning briefing on the progress of the war by proclaiming that Hitler was right to invade Holland because it's so nice. She also makes an impression on Brandt when she comes to his quarters to convey the Kaiser's invitation to supper and she takes pity on him when his war wound prevents him from forcing himself upon her after ordering her to undress.

She opens the door when he arrives for dinner and Von Ilsemann reminds Brandt not to comment on Wilhelm's withered left arm and to keep the conversation away from politics. However, the Kaiser talks of little else, as he points out that Hitler stole the swastika from Indian mythology and suggests that Otto von Bismarck would have stood for no nonsense from the Nazis, let alone the alliance of Communists and Jews that enabled them to come to power. Hermine tries to change the subject, only for Wilhelm to lose his temper when Brandt reveals that his father died on the Somme before he was born and that his mother used to carry her wages home in a barrow before succumbing to tuberculosis. The exiled emperor rages that he was betrayed by the generals who cost him the war and his country and he storms out after insisting that he deserves better treatment after dedicating his life to the Fatherland.

Brandt arrives home to find Mieke waiting in the darkness (the two guards who overheard their last tryst seem to be off duty) and she orders him to undress before straddling him on the bed and leaving as soon as she is satisfied. They meet again the next morning in the grounds of Huis Doorn when Brandt insists on moving into the house to protect the Kaiser from the British agent. Mieke twitches at the mention of a spy, but Wilhelm is too busy feeding the ducks to notice her reaction. As he sends Mieke to show Brandt his room, Hermine and Von Ilsemann watch from an upper-storey window and discuss the need to keep her husband's spirits up so that he is ready to return to Berlin when the tide turns against Hitler.

Dietrich turns up at the house and notes Brandt's interest in Mieke and follows her to the church in Utrecht where she reports to her resistance handler, Pastor Hendriks (Kris Cuppens). She is concerned that her window of opportunity is closing, but the cleric urges her to remain calm and take no chances, as the Gestapo have been picking up the signal of her transmissions to London. Von Ilsemann discusses the spy with Brandt after supper as Wilhelm shows the captain his collection of military uniforms. But Mieke also happens to be on hand to eavesdrop, just as Brandt keeps turning up for sex. Despite having feelings for him, she becomes scared he will unmask her and decides to tell him she is Jewish. He is unconcerned, Hermine dislikes Mieke's manner and scolds Wilhelm for offering to help her family.

News comes that SS chief Heinrich Himmler (Eddie Marsan) is coming to see the Kaiser and Hermine informs Brandt that she thinks he is coming to suggest a restoration of the monarchy. She is nervous that her spouse will make a bad impression and cost them the stipend on which they depend. But she also likes the idea of regaining the power that set her apart from her disapproving sisters. Family feuds also inform Wilhelm's conversation with Mieke while they feed the ducks. He tells her about Uncle Friedrich mocking his withered arm and how his first love turned him down to marry his murdered Russian cousin. But she is more interested in the fact that Dietrich is conducting a full search of the house to ensure it is safe for Himmler to stay. However, Brandt has already guessed that Mieke is hiding something and frantically ransacks her room in order to protect her.

Praising National Socialism, Dietrich makes no attempt to hide his pleasure that a butcher's son has power over the Kaiser. But Brandt can only think of Mieke and, when he sees her suspiciously hurrying away on an errand, he follows her to the church and peers through the window as she asks Hendriks for permission to assassinate Himmler in revenge for the SS killing her father and husband. He promises to contact London and come to the house with an answer. But the SS detector van tracks down his signal and he is arrested just as Mieke comes to Brandt's room. When he wakes from another nightmare, he tells her how he thrashed an SS officer who had ordered a massacre in Poland and curse the bad apples spoiling the nobility of the German fighting machine. She jumps out of bed and is taken aback when he proposes marriage and promises to protect her.

However, they are caught together by the housekeeper and Hermine summons the Kaiser to dismiss Mieke and reprimand Brandt for fornicating under their roof. He refuses to do anything of the sort, however, and reveals that he fathered illegitimate children with an Austrian countess and a French prostitute before he married. As hypocrisy is not among his vices, he urges the pair to be more discreet. But Hermine is furious and takes out her frustration on Von Ilsemann. However, he warns her that Himmler's visit is more likely to result in liquidation than restoration, as he will not tolerate Wilhelm's outbursts.

Meanwhile, Dietrich has shown Brandt the bloodied pastor and he realises instantly that Mieke is the British agent. He speeds back to the house, as she loads her gun in anticipation of her mission to kill Himmler. The Reichsführer's arrival prevents Brandt from speaking to Mieke, but he glares at her as Hermine welcomes Himmler to her humble home. He responds with bluff civility and asks Von Ilsemann for a private meeting with the Kaiser.

As everyone moves inside, Brandt bundles Mieke into a downstairs room and demands to know if she has been using him. She replies that they must each do their duty before becoming tearful and he consoles her. Emotions are running high throughout the house, as Himmler has informed Wilhelm that Hitler wants him to return to Berlin and re-assume his throne. Hermine is overjoyed and Von Ilsemann offers his congratulations. But Himmler tells Brandt and Dietrich that the invitation is merely a ruse to flush our monarchist sympathisers and they are ordered to monitor all the royal couple's communications.

Brandt manages to pass a message to Mieke before dinner, where she overhears Himmler alluding to a solution to those hindering the Reich from achieving its destiny. Stung by a reference by one of the visiting officers to his failure to tackle the Jewish problem, Wilhelm and Hermine try not to let their horror show as Himmler describes an experimental method for disposing of disabled children. Mieke also strives to focus on her duties when he refers to the reordering of peoples in the east to make more room for German settlers. But he has no time to chatter and turns down Wilhelm's offer to see his collection of PG Wodehouse first editions before sweeping away.

Mieke brushes past Brandt as he leaves the dining-room and whispers that he is the exception to the Germanic rule. He lives up to her faith in him when he tells Von Ilsemann that Himmler's offer is a trap and then helps her escape when Dietrich phones to inform him that the pastor has cracked. However, a panic has broken out because the Kaiser has collapsed at his wood pile after Mieke passes on a message from Winston Churchill. Hermine rushes to his side and he tells her that the British Prime Minister has offered him sanctuary in London and the throne of a defeated Germany. He is amused to have been invited to rule again twice in one night by such implacable foes, but has no intention of leaving Doorn, as he refuses to be a figurehead for the gangsters seeking to exploit him. Hermine is proud of him and kisses his cheek.

But, while they enjoy an intimate moment together, Brandt tries to smuggle Mieke off the estate and shoots Dietrich and his henchman when they attempt to search the ambulance taking the Kaiser to hospital. His shout prevents Mieke from swallowing a suicide capsule and he kisses her hand before passing out. Having informed Mieke that he now has something new to fight for, Brandt proposes and, as she disappears into the misty morning woods, she tells him to find her after the war.

She lets him know she is safe by sending her copy of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil to his new office in Berlin and he calls Wilhelm to pass on the good news. What they don't know, however, is that she is pregnant and the film ends with Brandt reading at his desk in defiance of an air-raid siren as Allied planes rumble overhead.

It's more than a little disingenuous to turn a warmongering autocrat like Wilhelm II into the mischievous matchmaker of a Jewish partisan and a Wehrmacht maverick. But, while the excellence of Christopher Plummer's performance may persuade some to overlook the more fanciful aspects of this engaging, if rarely convincing drama, the more implausible elements of the plot might have the opposite effect. Even if we go along with the notion that Himmler came to Huis Doorn to flush out traitors (he didn't, but Hermann Göring did meet Wilhelm in 1940) and put Churchill's rash (and rather spurious) promises about the Kaiser regaining his crown down to poetic licence, it's harder to ignore sloppy plot points like Mieke's motive for wanting to kill Wilhelm and Himmler.

We are plainly told that Brandt is sent to the Netherlands on the day that German forces cross the border. Thus, even if the SS did manage to murder Mieke's father and husband in the first hours of the invasion, it's highly unlikely that she would have had time to offer her services to Pastor Hendriks and been entrusted with such an important mission by British Special Operations. Furthermore, even if she had succeeded in securing such a prominent position within the Kaisers household, she would not have been there long enough to have incurred the ire of Princess Hermine and would certainly not have had the seniority among the staff to open the door to Brandt on his first arrival at the manor.

The romance between Brandt and Mieke also strains at credibility, despite the best efforts of Lily James and Jai Courtney. But there is less spark between them than there is between Plummer and Janet McTeer, whose exchanges with Ben Daniels are also poignant. McTeer is splendidly snooty as the exiled monarch's second wife, while Daniels's comment on the quality of the trout after the Kaiser has been fulminating against his ungrateful people is priceless. But Leveaux and Burke seem content for Eddie Marsan and Mark Dexter to play Nazi caricatures, with the latter's inept inability to track down James being particularly questionable.

On occasion, Leveaux tries too hard to demonstrate his mastery of camera technique, with one circular track around Courtney and Dexter being particularly cumbersome. But he always seems more intent on entertaining than in exploring the fascinating themes thrown up by Judd's source material. He is well served by cinematographer Roman Osin, production designer Hubert Pouille and costumier Daniela Clancio. However, the contributions of the usually dependable duo of editor Nicolas Gaster and composer Ilan Eshkeri are curiously less effective, with the action sequences feeling choppy and the score often seeming over-emphatic. Yet, despite the middlebrow handling, the subject matter remains compelling and one should be grateful that films like this are still being made.

Although he had built up a solid reputation at home with features like AmnesiA (2001). Schnitzel Paradise, Bonkers (both 2005) and Happy Family (2006), Dutch director Martin Koolhoven first came to the attention of British viewers with his Second World War drama, Winter in Wartime (2008). However, while he will make a much greater impression with his first English-language outing, Brimstone reveals a tendency towards grandiloquence and grandstanding that suggests Koolhoven needs a no-nonsense producer capable of channelling his evident talent and curtailing a self-indulgent streak that, at times, comes close to rendering this brooding and boorishly bombastic Western unwatchable.

In an opening chapter entitled `Revelation', mute midwife Liz (Dakota Fanning) delivers a child with the help of her young daughter, Sam (Ivy George), who can interpret her sign language. She is married to homesteader Eli (William Houston), who has an adolescent son, Matthew (Jack Hollington), by a former marriage. They lead a quiet existence in a small frontier settlement. But Liz is chilled to the marrow when she hears the Dutch-accented voice of The Reverend (Guy Pearce), the new preacher who delivers a sermon about the fires of Hell and the imminence of retribution. He glowers at her from the pulpit when Abigail (Charlotte Croft), the wife of their neighbour Nathan (Bill Tangradi), goes into labour after the service and Liz fears for the future when she fails to prevent the baby from dying at birth.

Liz blames The Reverend for the death and she senses his presence in the long grass beside her home. Yet, when a drunken Nathan sets fire to their buggy and fires bullets through the window late at night, it's The Reverend who calms him down and Eli offers him a whisky in gratitude. Liz hides in the shadows, but The Reverend (who has an angry scar across his left eye) informs her that she had no right to make the choice over who lived or died and that she can expect his punishment. She urges Eli to pack up and leave, but he thinks she is afraid of the grief-stricken Nathan rather than the sinister man of God, who taunts her for having lost her tongue in threatening the safety of her family.

The next morning, Matthew finds his sheep slaughtered in the barn (with one having its unborn lambs ripped from its womb) and Eli ride with his son to demand an explanation, only to discover that Nathan and Abigail have moved out. While they are away, Liz blindfolds Sam so she doesn't see the carcasses and has her sing `Abide With Me' while she works. However, The Reverend locks her in the barn and leads Sam away and Liz knocks herself out trying to smash an upper window to rescue her child. When Eli returns, he finds Sam unharmed and is bemused why his wife has taken such a dislike to the new preacher.

That night, he learns why, as Liz rides to the church after Sam reveals that The Reverend had accused her of murdering a man. She creeps up to his bed with a knife in her hand and pulls back the bedclothes to find Sam's doll on the mattress. A rapid cut shows The Reverend clutching a bigger blade, as he looks into Sam's bedroom. However, his target is Eli and he disembowels him for earning Liz's love before torching the house. Matthew and Sam escape and the former is forced to put his father out of his misery when he finds him in the stable with his intestines wrapped around his neck. Liz bundles the children into a buggy to stay with her father-in-law (Adrian Sparks) in the hills. But, as The Reverend picks Sam's doll out of the dust in front of the blazing building, it's clear that he will pursue her wherever she goes.

The story flashes back in the second chapter, `Exodus', to show a young girl named Joanna (Emilia Jones) wandering in the wilderness. She is rescued by a Chinese family and sold to Frank (Paul Anderson), who runs the Frank's Inferno bordello in the mining town of Bismuth. He entrusts her to Sally (Vera Vitali), who gives her a glass of lemonade and protects her from the other girls and the less scrupulous customers. However, Fred (Fergus O'Donnell) is not one to take no for an answer and he forces Joanna to watch as he copulates with Sally. When he begins striking her, Joanna pulls a gun and this increases Fred's excitement. But, when he orders Joanna to clean him up, Sally shoots him in the back and is hanged in the square by Frank's brother Zeke (Frederick Schmidt) for getting ideas above her station in thinking she can deprive a hard-working man of his pleasure.

Joanna takes the loss of her friend badly and Frank explains that girls have to obey the rules of face the consequences. She says she knows all about paying a heavy price and makes no resistance as he forces himself on her. As time passes, Joanna (now played by Dakota Fanning) becomes a prostitute and watches with best friend Elizabeth (Carla Juri) as Frank guns down an old man (Peter Blankenstein) whose daughter had perished at the saloon. However, as she looks across the street, Joanna sees Zeke pulling back a rifle from an upstairs room to protect his younger brother.

She gets a further idea of how Frank views the law when Elizabeth bites a client's tongue when he tries to kiss her and he demands that her own tongue is cut off in retribution. The drunken gold miners howl in assent and Joanna hides behind the door in wide-eyed terror. She learns the sign language that Elizabeth picks up from a book the doctor (Justin Salinger) gave her and tries to dissuade her from killing Frank in revenge. Joanna is relieved, therefore, when a matchmaker finds Elizabeth a husband who doesn't mind her being mute and they agree to pose as sisters so that Joanna can escape the Inferno.

But, on the night Elizabeth is packing to leave, The Reverend shows up and pays to have the saloon to himself. Frank has the girls parade down the stairs, but the stranger makes his choice when he finds the two moles on Joanna's neck and recognises her even though she is wearing a mask. He claims she is the only person who can deliver him from hellfire and demands that she leaves with him. But she cowers in a corner and watches as Elizabeth slashes The Reverend across the face with her knife. However, he stabs her and turns to confront Joanna. She seizes Elizabeth's blade and slashes his throat and he falls to the floor.

Stealing a pouch from his pocket, Joanna takes Elizabeth's papers and causes a fire by throwing a torch on her friend's face so that no one can recognise her. Under cover of darkness, she hurries to the surgery to bribe the doctor with the contents of the pouch to sever her tongue so that she more closely resembles Elizabeth. When he loses his nerve, Joanna grabs the scalpel and does the deed herself before taking a coach out of town to marry Eli.

We continue to work backwards through the story in Chapter Three, `Genesis', which opens with Samuel (Kit Harington) and Wolf (Jack Roth) surviving a bloody argument in the wilderness over gold. In the nearby town, The Reverend is the pastor of a settlement of Dutch immigrants and he chastises his wife, Anna (Carice van Houten), for allowing their daughter, Joanna (Emilia Jones again), to pray in her native tongue. He also thrashes Anna when she refuses to sleep with him and Joanna (who has just started menstruating) peeks through the barn door during a storm to see her father brutalising her devoted mother.

Realising she has become a woman, The Reverend makes Joanna feed the hogs in the barn. He is unaware, however, that she is harbouring Samuel and Wolf after tending to their gunshots, and they are suspicious about her treatment at the hands of her father. Dismissing Anna's offer to resume her wifely duties, The Reverend declares that God has other plans for him and they become apparent after he compliments Joanna on becoming a woman after she slays her first hog in the yard.

While her parents are out, Joanna brings food for Samuel and Wolf and she abets the former when he climbs on top of the dunny roof and drops a noose over Wolf's head. He struggles to loosen the rope and even fires his gun into the wooden walls. But, as the door creaks open, he sees Joanna watching him and she has no compunction in chopping up his body for the hogs. As they eat, Samuel tells her that turning the other cheek is a sign of weakness and he urges her not to be as compliant as her mother. But Anna returns wearing a scold's bridle and hangs herself from the bell rope while her husband preaches to a full church about God conferring pain and inferiority on womankind after Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge.

As the congregation look on disapprovingly, The Reverend blames Anna for succumbing to her sins and for desecrating the temple of her body. However, he self-flagellates that night to expiate himself in preparation for marrying his daughter, who has fled the house to offer herself to Samuel in the barn. But he tells her she is too young to have such thoughts and sends her back to bed.

The following morning, The Reverend wakes Joanna and makes her teeter to the chapel on a narrow walkway across the muddy courtyard. She struggles her father declares that she will bear him many children, as Lot's daughters had done in the Bible. But, even though The Reverend forces the scold's bridle over her head, Joanna seems saved when Samuel enters with his pistol cocked. In ranting about his own abusive father, however, he allows The Reverend to grab his hand and squeeze the trigger so that a bullet lodges in his skull. Furious with her for having feelings for a stranger, he drags Joanna through the mud in her white nightgown and subjects her to a whipping before deflowering her. While he sleeps, Joanna slips out of bed and runs across the fields in terror and desperation.

By the time Chapter Four, `Retribution' opens, it's clear that Joanna/Liz has been through too much to let The Reverend prevail. Even Matthew (who has always resented Liz's presence) appreciates this as their buggy ploughs across the snowy terrain. While passing through a wood, Joanna hides behind a tree to ambush The Reverend. But he sends his horse on alone and shoots Matthew when he goes to investigate a hat in the road. Joanna cradles the dying boy in her arms and looks to the heavens as a top shot pulls away to reveal how exposed she and Sam are in this desolate landscape.

They are no safer at grandpa's, as he is murdered while babysitting and The Reverend appears from behind a tree to inform Joanna that she must suffer for causing him so much pain and trouble. He also boasts that he will make her watch as he makes a woman out of Sam and howls like a wolf as he warns his daughter about trusting false prophets in sheep's clothing. Capturing her with ease when she tries to flee, The Reverend ties Joanna to the stair post and licks his fingers after she spits in his face when he starts singing `Abide With Me'.

He proceeds to flog Sam and returns her missing doll while asking if she likes men. The sight of her child suffering her own fate gives Joanna strength, however, and she manages to lift her arms over the post and throw an oil lamp at him. Undaunted by the flames, The Reverend states that only the absence of love hurts him and Joanna blasts him through the window with her shotgun. But she is not granted the opportunity to build a new life, as a barge comes along the river to grandpa's place and Nathan introduces himself as the new sheriff of Bismuth. He explains how he found a wanted poster for Frank's murderer in the office and now takes great pleasure in arresting her as Elizabeth because there can't be too many tongueless women named Liz.

Powerless to defend herself, Joanna is taken away on the barge in chains. However, realising she won't get a fair trial, she jumps into the water and sinks with a hint of a smile on her face as Nathan fires futile shots after her. Sam turns on hearing the noise and she morphs into her adult self (Naomi Battrick) with a daughter of her own living in what is now a thriving sawmill and confident that her mother is looking after her. But, as her narration ends, she looks back into the woods, as though she has heard a noise, and we are left with the disconcerting suspicion that The Reverend might have survived after all and have merely been biding his time.

Koolhaven has made much of the fact that this self-serving hunk of frontier torture porn is a feminist tract. However, it's closer in tone to Gavin O'Connor's equally dubious Jane Got a Gun (2015) than such genuine revisionist insights into the female lot in the Old West as Maggie Greenwald's The Ballad of Little Jo (1993), Sam Raimi's The Quick and the Dead (1995), Ron Howard's The Missing (2003), Joel and Ethan Coen's True Grit (2010), Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff (2010) and Tommy Lee Jones's The Homesman (2014). Yet, curiously, the film this most resembles in its depiction of a man of the cloth using Scripture for his own sadistically hypocritical devices is Charles Laughton's sole directorial offering, The Night of the Hunter (1955).

Yet, despite sporting a scar, beard and wide-brimmed hat, Guy Pearce isn't in the same league as Robert Mitchum when it comes to malevolent menace, although his cause is hardly helped by the often risible Dutch-inflected dialogue he is asked to deliver. By dint of the fact that she is mute for much of the time, Dakota Fanning is spared such ignominy and makes the most of her silence to give a remarkable performance with her eyes. Emilia Jones also makes a solid impression as the young Joanna. But too many supporting players follow Pearce's cartoonish lead in gnawing chunks out of the scenery, which has been admirably designed by Floris Vos.

Cinematographer Rogier Stoffers also makes good use of the various German, Austrian, Hungarian and Spanish settings standing in for Anywheresville. However, he overdoes the top shots in the final chapter and abets Koolhaven in the gratuitous depiction of pitiless violence against women and girls that is invariably accompanied by the schmaltzy strains of Tom Hokenborg's old-style orchestral score. But the finger of blame can only be pointed at the director himself, who melodramatises every scene in seeking to recreate the grim reality of American backwoods life in the late 19th century. Times were harsh and brutal, particularly for women. However, Koolhaven displays the sophistication of a Cecil B. DeMille silent morality tale in laying on the voyeuristic wickedness before allowing virtue to triumph. He clearly has talent, but this execrable exploitation suggests he also seems to lack judgement.

While it's all too rarely employed in the case of Hollywood also-rans, the quality control filter is usually pretty effective at keeping lesser continental pictures off British screens. It must have been switched off this week, though, as Jean-Michel Ben Soussan's decidedly mediocre comedy, Le Correspondant, has managed to slip through the net. While it's always interesting to see what is amusing our European neighbours, the appeal of some of the more blatantly populist titles can often prove elusive and that is certainly the case with this pale imitation of an American teenpic.

Having woken from a dream in which his sports car arrival at a party is ruined by a lack of pants, teenager Jimmy Labeeu dresses hurriedly and has to borrow younger sister Inez Desclin's Hello Kitty scooter to get to the funeral of a classmate he barely knew. Walking back to school with fellow nerd Léon Plazol, they are spattered with cream cheese by school bully Côme Levin and vow to get some friends so that they are not as sad as class loser Matthias Averlant. Labeeu envies the dashing Victor Leblond - who has his eye on his dream girl, Sonia Nini - and, when Plazol informs him that his cool images rests on having Spanish bombshell Jeanne Abraham as an exchange student, Labeeu asks German teacher Frank Bellocq if he can set him up with one of his own.

Back home, stay-at-home father Charles Berling scolds Desclin for sharing her supper with her black kitten Bambi and she sulks because he won't let her have a snake. But workaholic mother Sylvie Testud seems unconcerned by her daughter lapping at her potatoes, as she gazes at her phone while half-listening to Labeeu's feeble Europhilic efforts to convince her to sign a permission slip for him to have a stranger stay at the house. But Berling consents and joins Labeeu, as he is introduced to Sophie Mousel, a lip-and-brow-pierced Goth who has no desire to be in France. But Plazol is no more enamoured, as he finds himself saddled with Teutonic hunk Alexis de la Rochemacew, who appeals to his lusty single mother, Isabeau Shahazada.

Arriving home to find Desclin sitting on the roof with Bambi, Berling shouts at her and she drops the kitten in panic. It lands on the spiked fence and Mousel puts it out of its misery by wringing its neck and Desclin has a funeral in the garden. Mousel watches drinking beer and Testud is not impressed. But she is forced to drive around town in the wee small hours when Mousel does a bunk and they find her at the police station after she is arrested at a spot renowned for its prostitutes. On the drive home, Berling and Testud have a row about him giving up his motorbike garage to be a house husband and she promises they will discuss the subject at the weekend. But Mousel (who has pretended she speaks no French) promises Labeeu all-out warfare and swears that the Americans won't be coming to his aid.

Next day, Labeeu becomes a laughing stock when Mousel sets up a blog making him look like an idiot. However, he chalks a swastika on her leather jacket and she is sent to principal Silvia Kahn's office, where she mocks Bellocq's German. Meanwhile, Berling loses his temper with Testud when she misses Desclin's birthday party and he has to listen to the other mothers gossiping while trying to entertain a dozen shrieking kids. Testud gets drunk with boss Guillaume Delorme and returns to a blazing row that culminates in Berling storming out to the movies. Testud buys in KFC and tries to convince her kids she is not getting a divorce. When Berling comes home, Labeeu has to stop him drinking a bottle of beer in which he has urinated and an uneasy peace descends for the night.

She drinks it the next day after rescuing him from Levin (who has debagged him for an online insult about his manhood) and gets her own back by putting Bambi's corpse in his wardrobe. But Berling finds it rather than Labeeu, who has agreed to help Mousel sneak out at night in return for advice on how to become popular. Her first tip is to pick on someone weaker. So, after being dunked in a toilet bowl by Levin, Labeeu gets into a playground fight with Averlant and Berling congratulates Mousel on getting Labeeu his first scrap scars.

She also helps him humble Levin by sending a text stating that Labeeu knows what the bully does alone in his room at night. As he harbours a bestial secret he doesn't want to get out, Levin calls a truce and Labeeu seizes the upper hand by forcing him to abase himself in front of Mousel and Plazol. In return, he accompanies her to a posh hotel, where a band named The Midnight Ramblers are staying. She tries to meet them posing as a journalist, but gets ejected and explains to Labeeu that the guitarist is the French father she has never met.

Borrowing Testud's company car, Labeeu drives Mousel to the hotel and they laugh singing DDR's version of `99 Red Balloons' en route. However, they are thrown out again and only bump into her father by chance at the back door. He apologises for neglecting her and gives her his phone number. By the time they get home, however, Testud has caught Berling kissing Bellocq after they had spent the night drinking raspberry mojitos. She accuses him of playing around while she slaves and he storms out when she refuses to accept that Bellocq lunged at him and he couldn't avoid his lips.

The next day, Berling comes to pick up Desclin from school and she spins him a yarn about Testud pining for him. She then does the same thing with her mother. Meanwhile, Mousel removes her Goth make-up and struts into school in a figure-hugging white dress to kiss Labeeu in front of Nini, so that she becomes jealous, even though she was crossing the yard to slap Labeeu for starting a rumour that they were dating. She gets him an invitation to Leblond's party and they kiss on the dance floor. But Mousel has left without saying goodbye and, when Nini disses ’99 Red Balloons', Labeeu steals her scooter and heads for Düsseldorf. Unfortunately, he goes the wrong way and gets arrested in Belgium for stealing petrol from a backwater garage.

Dusting off his vintage Norton motorbike, Berling heads to the police station and Testud sends Delorme to get all the credit for signing up a major Chinese client, while she picks up Desclin from school. Keen for his son to get his girl, Berling agrees to ride to Germany and they camp out in the rain before Mousel's mother (Rona Hartner) points them in the direction of a rave in the city. Testud arrives with Desclin in time to advise Labeeu to seize the DJ's microphone and declare his feelings for Mousel because women love to know they're wanted. The crowd falls silent as Labeeu delivers his speech and, even though Mousel suggests they should just be friends, she gives him a passionate kiss to ’99 Red Balloons'.

Although this is most definitely not a film for cat lovers, the plate-licking scene with Bambi the kitten and Inez Desclin is the only thing worth remembering about a lumberingly formulaic rite of passage that feels like it has been constructed from bolted together sitcom episodes. Resembling Simon Bird playing Will McKenzie at his most insufferable in The Inbetweeners, Jimmy Labeeu is a highly resistible anti-hero and Ben Soussan struggles to generate many laughs from his pathetic attempts to be hip. The dynamic with Sophie Mousel is also pretty low wattage and one can only feel sorry for such fine actors as Sylvie Testud and Charles Berling having to make the most of their slim pickings. Most viewers will find the smugly chauvinist tone hard to take, especially when Ben Soussan (making his feature bow after working online and in television) resorts to puerile fantasy cutaways of girls in bikinis. The depiction of the chattering mothers, Bellocq's homosexuality and Berling's house-husbandry is equally dubious. But Ben Soussan's direction is frequently cumbersome, especially when he tries to add a little visual pizzazz with some split-screen sequences. The last documentary from New Zealand to show in British cinemas was David Farrier and Dylan Reeve's Tickled (2016). But, while the subject matter in Slavko Martinov's Pecking Order might seem equally left field, this account of the preparations being made by the ultra-competitive members of the Christchurch Poultry, Bantam and Pigeon Club's for the 2015 National Show at Oamaru sticks to the tried-and-trusted countdown formula. However, as the opening captions reveal, all is not well as the club approaches its 148th anniversary.

Following a brief tour of the club house of what is billed on the honour board as the Christchurch Poultry, Pigeon and Pigeon Club, we meet 12 year-old Rhys Lilley, who has followed his father Mark into the world of competitive chicken breeding. He loves the thrill of willing and is determined to come out Best in Show at Oamaru. But fellow club member Brett Hawker is just as ambitious and suggests that poultry pageantry is addictive in admitting that his wife thinks he loves his birds more than her. However, this is anything but a male preserve, as Sarah Bunton and her mother Kathryn are as keen as any of the menfolk, with Sarah having been raising chickens since she used to make little costumes for them as a girl.

Even veterans like club president Doug Bain can get a bit soppy over a bird, as he gives a white chicken a bath in the sink and puts it in a special pen so it can get a blow dry from his fan heater. Treasurer Beth Inwood and her son Cliff enjoy club meetings because there is always something new to learn about presenting birds for show and there is a good sense of camaraderie, even though members are often competing against each other.

Eight months out from the National Show, the Lilleys enter a bird at the Ellesmre A&P Show, which is the first major event on the South Island summer calendar. Clubmate Brian Glassey is also competing alongside Sarah Bunton, who thinks it would be nice if judges like Ken Orchard and Dennis Heaven gave the younger breeders a chance. But, while verdicts should be based on Ian Selby's definitive handbook, New Zealand Poultry Standards, the experienced competitors hate being beaten and will do whatever it takes to give them an advantage. Selby is frustrated that many judges don't bother to read the first 60 pages of his book, as they are crucial to an understanding of show poultry. But Sarah and the Lilleys aren't bothered about the precise criteria when they take home prizes and Doug is delighted that so many club members do well.

In a section entitled `Don't Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch', Brian shows us his egg incubator and some of the chicks running around his new-born shed. He has been specialising in Barred Plymouth Rocks for over 50 years and still feels bad about having to `pot roast' those that don't come up to competition standard. But Rhys has learnt that there's no point wasting feed on birds that won't win prizes and Mark concedes that you have to be ruthless to make it up the pecking order.

However, as `You Have to Break a Few Eggs to Make an Omelette' reveals, some of the members are unhappy that Doug succeeded Noel Inwood as president and son Cliff rolls his eyes at his conduct of the Annual General Meeting. Secretary Karen Winter tries to keep things moving, but someone nominates Vice-President Mark Lilley to stand against Doug in an election for the top job. However, he is reluctant to make an open challenge, as Doug has always been a mate and Graeme Coles and Marina Steinke suggest that the club will keep drifting unless it gets some stronger leadership.

Marina and Brett reinforce the message that the weak perish in this uncompromising world and, fortunately, Martinov cuts away before Marina slice through the neck of an ailing chick. But there are also lots of natural predators, including hawks and ferrets, and Brian shows how mice have nibbled through the tail feathers of one of his potential champions. Brett remembers losing 50 birds in a night and complains that it's hard enough competing with the likes of Ian Selby without the impact of outside forces and Martinov reinforces the contention by contrasting Brian and Brett's weather-worn sheds with the pristine office in which Ian keeps the poultry magazines and clippings that help keep him abreast of international developments.

However, as `A Coup in the Coop' outlines, few in the Christchurch Poultry, Bantam and Pigeon Club can concentrate on the National Show, as the pigeon fanciers have decided that Doug should be toppled and Marina has made no secret of the fact that she regards him as a bully and wants him replaced with Mark. He remains conflicted, however, and an emergency meeting is called under QC, Peter Whiteside. He explains that the rules state candidates can only be nominated at the AGM and tempers fray as aggrieved members protest that the club will fold unless it keeps up with the times. The most vocal is Bob Dawber, who resents Doug being parachuted into the president's chair over him and Marina is fully behind him. But the meeting ends with the uneasy status quo being upheld and Mark hopes that people can calm down because ructions can only be bad for the `chooks' heading for the National Show in three months time.

Across South Island, Clint O'Brien of the Poultry, Pigeon and Canary Society is preparing for the big competition with his young daughter, Serena. But they also have hopes of challenging some of the favourites, like two-time champion Wayne Dodd from Taranaki on North Island. Neighbour Vince Naus is Brian's big rival in the Plymouth Rock class and we return to Christchurch to see Brian fussing over his birds during a 20-hour day that he admits makes it hard to find a new partner, although he also jokes that his missing front teeth don't help his cause much, either. He is devoted to his chooks and seems to steer clear of the rumblings at the club, where the caption insists, `A Fowl Wind Blows'.

With eight weeks to go to the National Show, Marina and Bob accuse Doug of trying to cling on to power so he can be president in the 150th anniversary year. So, they put pressure on Karen to resign and leave him exposed, and she quits because she can no longer stand being targeted by the club's malcontents. Doug is furious because he thinks Marina is a glory-seeker who only looks to her own interests. A month later, he also resigns and Marina is suspicious that he chose to do so at a meeting Martinov was not filming. But camera-phone footage shows Pam Jackson assuming the chair midway through the session alongside acting secretary, Karena Hitchcock. Martinov visits Doug in his coops and admires the White Leghorn cockerels he hopes will do well at the Nationals. However, Rhys is also competing in this category and we see him grinding hazelnuts and keeping them out of the son to prevent their feathers from yellowing. At the Rangiora Show, Mark, Rhys and Brian take prizes. But this is just a preliminary to the main event in three weeks time. Brett is putting his faith in a Black-Red Old English Game Bantam, as the club members try to pull together to stage the Christchurch Poultry Club Show. In a section entitled, `Birds of a Feather Flock Together', Karena hopes that people can forget the in-fighting and rally behind Mark, who has taken over from Cliff in readying the showroom. However, she fears that some birds might be poisoned because of the bad feeling. But, under the watchful eye of judge John Taylor, all passes off without incident and Brett wins Best in Show. But `A Poultry Power Vacuum' still exists within the club, as Doug stays away and even Marina has concerns that Graeme (who has only just returned after leaving in protest at Doug's stewardship) is about to make a pitch for the presidency.

With only a couple of days to the National Show, Doug makes a surprising return to the club because he doesn't trust the interim regime to handle its finances properly. However, Bob and Marina vote to have Martinov ejected from the meeting and Sue and Gavin Greenwood are among those unhappy with the subterfuge. Doug is disappointed in Mark for siding against him and he asks Gavin to accept his nomination for the top job. But he also wounds Doug when he laments that things haven't been the same since Noel Inwood died.

In the last hours before the National Show, Mark and Rhys agonise over which birds to select for judging and give their best hope a bath to try and remove some of the yellow from its feathers. As contestants arrive to pen their birds on Day One, Melvin Pike (President of the North Island Poultry, Pigeon and Caged Bird Association) says that a lot depends on settling the birds into their surroundings. Brian and Mark are among those checking out their rivals and their excitement is evident, as this is the pinnacle of their pastime. Doug is late, as two of his roosters had a fight and his truck broke down. But he arrives in time and trusts to luck that the judges take a tickle to his birds on Day Two.

A cockerel crows as the lights are turned on in the hall and Martinov captures one hen laying an egg. But there's no time for whimsy, as Australian judges Ken Bergin and Graeme Kemp join their Kiwi counterparts in making a tour of inspection. Fiona Taylor goes into action, while Doug suggests that some of the judges need to smarten up their footwork and Ian claims that his role as an author gives him a head start over other judges because he knows the standards by heart. Ken and Ian deliberate over a Black Orpington bantam and the latter has to remind the guest judge to avoid imposing Aussie criteria on New Zealand birds.

After a long and intense session, we get the results in `Cock of the Walk or Feather Duster?' Rhys paces around waiting for the stickers to be appended to the cages, but loses out to Brian in a couple of categories. However, he is pipped by Vince in the Barred Plymouth class and Rhys is delighted to come second in the White Leghorn race. Brett goes one better with his Black-Red Old English, as does Doug with his Rosecomb Black Cockerel. Clint takes the Hard Feathered Bantam prize and has a crack at the overall award. But, as Mark shakes hands with Doug for doing so well and the old boy teases Rhys for winning with a descendant of one of his birds, they all head off for an evening's socialising and a rather underwhelming talent show.

As Day Three dawns, a piper leads a procession of the top six birds through the streets of Oamaru to see `Who's Got the Eggs Factor?' Everyone sits in silence as the Australian duo examine the contenders and give their judgements in reverse order. Clint misses out to Wayne by the narrowest of margins, although his bird does stick up for itself by pooping at Ken when he lifts a tail feather. But some familiar faces go home clutching plaques after the final prize-giving, with Brian doing particularly well. However, he is already looking to next year and improving upon his performance.

Yet, while things are done at the National Show, tensions are still rumbling at the club and Doug opens `Who Will Rule the Roost?' by trying to convince Mark that he is being manipulated by Marina and Pam. At the MGM, Mark is acclaimed unopposed as president and Bob and Marina seem pleased to have got their candidate into office. Doug and Brett hope he keeps the cocky brigade in place, but he seems intent on being as conciliatory as possible as he embarks upon his term.

Ending on something of an anti-climax after all the political skulduggery, this affectionate `chookumentary' is always watchable without ever delving far below the surface. We don't really get to know Doug, Brian or Brett that well and, thus, never really find out why Marina, Bob and Graeme are so opposed to the old guard. Is this a straight fight between poultry and pigeon fanciers and, if so, whatever happened to the canary folk, who seem to have fallen victim to a previous night of the long knives? Obviously eager not to upset anyone while filing, Martinov tries to steer an even keel and it remains unclear where his exact sympathies lie. But the audience needs a villain to hiss at and a more dynamic hero than the amiable Mark, who seems to take the chair because he is the least objectionable candidate rather than the most suitable.

Despite following the principals around their yards and gardens, we don't learn a huge amount about show birds, either. A few breeds are identified and their handlers allude to areas that tend to sway the judges. But, for all Ian's pomposity and Aussies Ken and Graeme's bluster, it's never entirely evident why particular birds win the day - although Melvin comes close to giving away the fact that (as with any judged show) it's something of a lottery when he declares, `It's like humans. You have some who breed beautiful children…and some who don't.' To some extent, this skirting of the salient issues doesn't matter, as Martinov is more intent in examining the behaviour of the human cast. However, he sometimes seems uncertain about what tone to take, as he strives to depict his subjects in a fair light while also flirting with the mockumentary approach of Christopher Guest's Best in Show (2000).

Bruce Parry will be known to millions for TV series like Tribe (2005-07), Amazon (2008) and Arctic (2011). However, the onetime Royal Marine and Trekforce expedition leader has clearly had a lot of time to think while on his travels and he ventures on to the big screen to share some of the wisdom he has accrued in Tawai: A Voice From the Forest. Co-directed by Mark Ó Fearghail (aka Mark Ellam), this sincere study of ancient approaches to sustainable living takes its title from the sense of oneness with the forest practised by the Penan people of Sarawak. There's no doubting Parry's conviction or courage and his encounters with the remote tribes in Borneo and the Brazilian Amazon are genuinely poignant. But, while the ideas he posits to recalibrate Western civilisation have a certain potency, he doesn't always communicate them in the most cogent manner and many will feel a bit put off by the New Ageiness of the otherwise laudable message.

Over clips from some of his BBC adventures, Bruce Parry commends humanity for finding such diverse ways to live. But he worries that we are putting such a strain on our fragile planet that we need to find new ways of co-existing with each other and the natural world. Convinced that we have much to learn from traditional societies, Parry decides to revisit the Penan of Ba' Puak in the Borneo rainforest, who are one of the last hunter-gatherer peoples on Earth. However, even they are being forced to settle and cultivate land in order to stake a claim on the forest the Malaysian government is hoping to exploit to produce palm oil.

So light is the nomadic Penan footprint that they have been forced to move into longhouses and start planting fruit trees rather than exclusively forage and hunt. Having been smuggled across the border through a swamp, Parry remeets people who remember him with fondness and he is surprised to find them wearing watches and gazing at television sets as the outside world intrudes upon their ancestral home. He is saddened that the Penan have become part of the consumer boom that is decimating their environment because they have such an innate understanding of and respect for their surroundings.

As he mingles with them, Parry is touched by their readiness to share and revels in the sense of tranquility. But they express their fears about the logging companies exceeding their quotas and the pipeline that could pollute their water. Yet, some things never change, as they still rely on the flight of a bird to let them know what certain fruit are ripe and still go on mass hunting expeditions, with the women and children tagging along and sleeping in temporary shelters while the men go in search of wild boar. Parry joins Arau and is enthralled by his concentration while poised with his blowpipe and listening for telltale signs of prey. However, he fears that these skills will be dissipated as agriculture becomes a bigger part of Penan life and ponders the extent to which our evolving way of life has changed humankind as a species.

In order to learn more about focusing on what is important, Parry heads to Allahabad in India to meet the Giri family from Haridwar, who have agreed to take him to the Kumbh Mela, a ritual gathering for cleansing in the Ganges that attracts some of the biggest crowds in recorded history. Mahant Jagadesh Giri, Yogeshwar Giri and Ramanand Giri are Hindu Sadhu aesthetics and they urge Parry to forget what he has read in books in order to clear his mind and attain inner consciousness. However, he is acutely aware of the chatter in his head that is preventing him from concentrating on his body and senses and finds it difficult simply to accept that the heart can discern truth when he has been taught to draw conclusions from observation and analysis.

Parry goes to the Isle of Skye to see experimental psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, the author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He explains how the left hemisphere of the brain is more intense and focused in a serial manner in its assessment of information, while the right takes a parallel approach and embraces other ideas in reaching conclusions. This leads into a discussion of tawai with Jeffrey and Selapan in Borneo, in which they describe how the forest tells then when foods are in season and provides the shelter for the animals and birds they wish to hunt. They are afraid that loggers will keep taking the biggest trees and that the wildlife on which they depend will disappear forever.

Deeply moved by their empathy with every element of their environment, Parry reflects on McGilchrist's theory that the left side of the brain makes us cocky and convinces us that we can do anything we put our minds to. Parry wonders if this addictive hubristic sensation dates from the time when we began to try and master the land rather than receive and protect its bounty. In order to test the idea, he visits anthropologists Jerome and Ingrid Lewis, who have devoted themselves to the study of hunter-gatherer groups.

They lament the fact that only a few societies in South-East Asia and Africa remain committed to sharing what the land offers and blame Neolithic man for domesticating animals and sewing crops, as this introduced the potentially suicidal concept of property and competition into human civilisation. Jerome reveals that avoiding hierarchies has become hard work, but our ancestors achieved an egalitarianism that the Penan exhibit and he notes that it is no surprise that they are among the most peaceful peoples on the planet.

During his stay, Parry watched a pair of elderly women, Ubong and Kulat, supervising the division of meat and he notes that an inability to store means that they take only what they need for one day. He also deduces that they take pleasure in caring for each other and regrets that transactions in a cash-based society can never be as holistic. McGilchrist puts this down to the left side of the brain blundering along in its assumed rectitude, while the right side is trying to take information, contextualise it and reintegrate it into a beneficial whole.

The Giris claim we have an innate wisdom beneath our layers of conditioning and that we should strip away the inessentials to know ourselves and seek the light of truth that animals and plants know all about, but which humans have forgotten about. They explain the interconnectedness of things and Parry sees a similarity in the way the Penan operate. But he suspects that they may be losing their old beliefs and it's noticeable that an old man named Moyong is shushed when he begins to tell Parry that the younger generation no longer believe in ghosts, spirits and omens.

Parry reflects on the old school lesson that the beliefs of indigenous tribes are mostly baseless superstitions and decides to visit the Pirahã on the Upper Maici River in the Amazon rainforest. They supposedly focus so intently on the here and now that their language has no past or future tense and he wonders how they learn from history or plan for tomorrow. He goes hunting with Apabisi and Toibaiti and they tell him about the spirit of Kaoáíbógí, which guides them in all things from finding food to taking wood for dwellings and fires. They claim that they let Kaoáíbógí protect and instruct them and Parry wonders whether this trust is akin to the innate belief in the truth the Sadhus have.

When sharing with them, he feels a tranquility similar to the one he experienced with the Penan. But, while the Pirahã have resisted the consumer temptations that have seduced neighbouring tribes, they have also been driven to cut down trees in order to plant crops and some of the villagers believe that Kaoáíbógí is angry with them for depleting their resources and Parry bemoans the fact that the vast majority of humanity has ceased to listen to what the natural world is trying to tell us.

As he prepares to bather in the Ganges, he wonders if meditation was invented as a means of creating the silence that might allow us to hear our surroundings speak to us. He speculates about the extent to which religion can reconnect us and Gilchrist opines that the right side of the brain is more inclined towards meditation, while the left seeks thrills. The right hemisphere is also more receptive to music, art and poetry and we should cherish it because the moment we first experience such sensations (before we start to rationalise them) is precious, as are the impulses that the right side of the brain picks up from the heart.

As aerial shots show the vastness of the gathering, Parry joins the throng at the Kumbh Mela and has an epiphanal moment, as he feels a powerful sense of common humanity with everyone else (who are all male) rushing towards the water. But he also felt at one with the river and the clouds and this awareness of being a separate part of a whole gave him a greater appreciation of his place in the world. As a consequence, he felt better able to recognise the impact that his actions have on the rest of humanity and on nature.

Walking up a hill, McGilchrist and Parry discuss the tyranny of empiricism and blame the left-hand side of the brain for discarding ancient ideals that may well contain more than a kernel of truth. Over images of the Penan living in simple harmony, Parry declares that he has discovered a new way to envision himself within the context of humanity and nature. Trekking out with Leyon to see the trench that has been dug for the pipeline, Parry says it would be easy to blame governments and conglomerate for the problems facing the Penan. But his own lifestyle choices have contributed to a jungle that once teemed with life being barren and polluted.

Witnessing the impact of human intrusion into what was once total seclusion, Parry concludes that if we are to save the world, we need to take responsibility for our part in its destruction. He suggests that we can only do this by re-balancing our inner selves and finding empathy beyond our family and friends to other peoples and species because if we are to save ourselves and pass the planet on to future generations, we need to feel the pain that makes change imperative.

The closing image of the pipeline trench running like a livid orange scar through the lush green landscape will leave a deeper impression with many viewers than the high-minded pronouncements crafted by Parry and his team of writers for the frequently florid voiceover. The eloquence of McGilchrist and the Lewises also feels strained beside the wise words of the Penan, the Sadhus and the Pirahã. But this has less to do with the significance of their input than the clumsy way in which Parry and his fellow scribes integrate their ideas into the somewhat superficial central thesis. Yet, there's no denying the attractiveness of an increased awareness of the interconnectivity of earthly existence and if Parry persuades one person to rethink their lifestyle then this often deeply moving picture has to be considered a success. Parry himself is a genial and respectful travelling companion, while Ó Fearghail has a remarkable eye for a telling shot. Nicolas Jolliet's aerial and timelapse sequences are also striking, as are the sounds captured by Daniel Hewitt and Pablo Villegas. But Nick Barber's score complements them ably without being overly generic.