Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 5/10/2017)

Flashing back a few years to a monochrome view of Van Gogh and Gauguin moving into the Yellow House in Arles, all seems set for the friends to establish an artistic colony. But they soon began to feud and Van Gogh severed the lower part of his left ear, which he presented to brothel maid Gabrielle Berlatier, who screams in horror when she realises the nature of his gift. Armand had remembered punching a neighbour who had dismissed Van Gogh as a lunatic, but he is resentful when Joseph finds him drunk in the café and sobers him up before sending him on his errand. He wants Theo to know that Dr Gachet (Jerome Flynn) had held on to the letter and reminds his son to offer his condolences, as Armand may look suave with his dapper moustache and yellow jacket, but he has his rough edges and has little pity for any man who would end his own life.

Unable to find Theo in Paris, Armand visits paint supplier Père Tanguy (John Sessions), who breaks the news that Theo died a few months after his brother. He recalls (with black-and-white accompaniment) how the young Vincent had always felt inferior in his mother's eyes to a stillborn sibling who has been given the same name. He had failed to follow his father into the church and had worked without distinction as a missionary before taking up the brush at the age of 28, with Theo supporting him all the way. Van Gogh had relocated to Paris, where he was teased by drinking companions Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (Adam Pabudzinski) and Camille Pissarro (Keith Heppenstall) for being an egotistical amateur. But Tanguy recognised his talent and was shocked to learn Van Gogh had died after he had seemed so calm after his stay at the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy. He blames Gachet for failing his friend and recalls how he had taken paintings off the wall after the funeral in recompense for his ministrations.

Running for the train, Armand is left in no doubt that Tanguy believes Van Gogh to have been a wronged genius. But he is primarily concerned with fulfilling his father's brief and arrives in Auvers to see Gachet. He is in Paris and housekeeper Louise Chevalier (Helen McCrory) wastes no time in informing Armand that she considered Van Gogh to be evil and knew from the moment she met him that he would bring trouble. Intrigued by her hostility, Armand checks into the Ravoux Inn, where Van Gogh passed away, and the owner's daughter, Adeline (Eleanor Tomlinson), recalls Gachet's refusal to remove the bullet from the painter's abdomen, even though he was an ex-military doctor. She overheard Van Gogh claiming to have attempted suicide and recalls how Gendarme Rigaumon (Martin Herdman) came to search his room for the gun. But he died with only Theo at his side and she felt it was a shame because he had seemed so happy and inspired.

Armand is surprised to hear Adeline's assertion that Van Gogh was so organised and contented. She sends him to speak to the boatman (Aidan Turner) to learn about his love of the river, woods and fields. He remembers thinking he was a lonely man because even the sight of a crow stealing his lunch used to brighten his days. But, then, he grew close to Marguerite Gachet (Saoirse Ronan), even though he was twice her age and looked like a tramp beside her when they went for a row on the river. Adeline also mentions an argument between Van Gogh and Gachet and Armand goes to the church to find Louise to ask what she recalls of the incident. However, she hisses her hatred for the Dutchman and claims to have seen him carousing with some local lads on the Sunday morning before he shot himself. Armand is surprised when Marguerite denies that they were close and blames gossips for misinterpreting the fact that Van Gogh was only friends with Gachet and that everyone else had tolerated him for the doctor's sake.

Back at the inn, Armand confides in Adeline about Marguerite and Louise being so hostile and she hardly seems surprised. She also lets slip that the Van Gogh brothers seem to have argued over money and that Vincent had painted on Revoux tea towels to keep working. Adeline also gives Armand a letter that Vincent had written to Theo urging him to visit, as he often feels so alone. As he tries to sleep in the artist's bed and has nightmares, Armand is woken by a redheaded boy at the window and he recognises him again the next day. He chases him through the village and his peasant uncle (James Greene) apologises for him being such a scamp.

The old man remembers hearing the shot on 27 July and swears it came from the barn rather than the fields. He didn't think anything of it as the time, but checked the next day and saw no sign of the gun or Van Gogh's painting things. Louise happens by to inform Armand that Gachet has returned and insists that Van Gogh had used Revoux's pistol to shoot himself and not the doctor's service revolver. Armand asks her about seeing Van Gogh on the morning of the shooting and she confirms that he seemed in good spirits, but avers that he was an unpredictable soul whose mood could often swing.

Returning to the inn, Armand asks Adeline about René Secretan (Marcin Sosinski) and she recalls him putting a snake in Van Gogh's paint box. She suggests they were pals, if not particularly close, and tells Armand not to believe everything Louise says, especially about guns, as her father had sold his pistol shortly after settling in Auvers. Learning from his father that he has lost his metal-working job, Armand seeks solace beside the boatman's brazier after Adeline throws him out. He asks about the gun and the boatman reveals that René bought it for his cowboy outfit, as he was a bit of a wild child and often teased Van Gogh, who probably only socialised with him because he always picked up the tab. Armand asks why the boatman hadn't intervened if it was so obvious that the Secretans were bullying Van Gogh, but he insists it wasn't his fight and he questions what Armand ever did to alleviate the painter's suffering.

Wandering off the worse for hooch, Armand gets into a fight with some local toughs who are picking on the redhaired simpleton. He winds up in the cells after punching Rigaumon, who remembers thinking that Van Gogh looked an odd sort when he first came to Auvers. It didn't come as a surprise, therefore, when he shot himself, although he recalls him not wanting anyone else to get into trouble for the incident. The gendarme also mentions being pestered for his report into the shooting by Dr Mazery (Bill Thomas), who didn't seem entirely satisfied with Gachet's version of events.

The excitable Mazery runs Armand through a reconstruction to show how Van Gogh could not possibly have shot himself in the stomach and Armand is feeling frustrated when Marguerite finds him throwing stones at crows in a cornfield. She sits on a convenient chair and informs Armand that she always knew Van Gogh was a genius and so did her father. He used to copy the pictures in a locked room and he felt a degree of frustration that such an uncouth man could have been given such a gift. Yet Gachet felt that Marguerite was distracting Van Gogh from his work and she started making excuses not to see him. This resulted in a blazing row between the artist and her father, who was powerless to help him when he was wounded.

Armand tells Marguerite not to blame herself because the real culprit was René, who seems likely to get away with murder because everyone believes he is a buffoon. However, she suggests that Armand concentrates more on Van Gogh's life than his death and leaves to put fresh flower's on her friend's grave. Her father also recommends that Armand sticks to what he knows, as he is clearly no expert in melancholia and has jumped to too many conclusions. Gachet recalls Van Gogh being in good spirits when he left Saint-Rémy, but his mood dipped after Theo had visited with his new wife and child, as Vincent didn't want to be a burden on the brother who had given him so much and only had rooms full of unsold pictures to show for it. Dismissing Mazery's theories, Gachet claims that he drove Van Gogh to suicide because he accused him, in the middle of their furious row, of driving the syphilitic Theo to an early grave with worry and he now bitterly regrets saying something so hurtful.

Riding in the back of a hay cart, Armand reads the letter that Theo's widow had sent Gachet, in which Vincent had vowed to show the world that the lowest of the low had wonderful things in his heart. On reaching home, Joseph shows Armand the last letter that Johanna had copied out to thank him for his efforts. In it, Van Gogh had marvelled at the stars and hoped to become one when he died. He retires to bed in a calm and reflective mood in offering his brother a warm handshake from his `Loving Vincent'.

Following an enigmatic self-portrait, closing captions reveal that Van Gogh sold only one of the 800+ paintings he produced in just eight years and, yet, is now proclaimed the father of modern art. Over Lianne La Havas's tremulously over-emotive rendition of Don McLean's `Vincent', pages turn in a book showing the characters with Van Gogh's portraits of them sitting alongside photographs and brief notes on their fates (among them René's assertion that Van Gogh had stolen his gun). This is a typically thoughtful way to end a painstakingly ambitious feature that tries so hard to do justice to its subject and, yet, keeps falling short.

The attention to detail in the imagery is laudable enough and, while Van Gogh's swirling brushstrokes occasionally threaten to become overwhelming in gentle motion, the animation strains to be sensitive to the original works. Quite whether the monochrome flashbacks work as well is another matter, especially as they dispense with the Van Gogh motifs even though there is no perspectival reason for doing so. Opinion will also be divided as to whether the characters should have resembled the voiceover actors rather than the sitters. But, while this gambit does sometimes distract, it makes more sense in light of the rotoscoping technique being employed than the decision to let people speak in their normal voices, as Robert Gulaczyk's Polish growl and Chris O'Dowd and Aidan Turner's Irish brogue jar against Douglas Booth's Mockney twang.

Ultimately, the timbre of the delivery matters less than the calibre of the dialogue. Thus, while Kobiela, Welchman and co-scenarist Jacek Dehnel are right to make the characters sound like everyday folk rather than museum curators, there's a discordance between the banality of some of the utterances and the floridity of others. The plaintiff strains of Clint Mansell's orchestral score further contribute to this tonal imbalance. But, regardless of one's reaction to the sleuthing element that sets the storyline apart from such forerunners as Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), Paul Cox's Vincent (1987), Robert Altman's Vincent &Theo (1990) and Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh (1991), this audacious, but speculative and sometimes specious picture stands and falls on its visuals.

The artwork is necessarily more mundane in Masaaki Yuasa's anime, Night Is Short, Walk on Girl. But this adaptation of a Tomohiko Mori novel is filled with visually arresting details and perplexing plot twists that the audience will need to remain fully focused on in order to follow what's going on. Yuasa has already ventured into Mori's universe before in The Tatami Galaxy (2010). But, while this breathless saga has its beguiling flights of fancy, it also contains the odd creepily chauvinist lapse that many will find hard to excuse.

While attending a wedding in Kyoto, The Girl With Black Hair (Kana Hanazawa) wishes she could get drunk and proceed with her ambition to grow up and get on with her life. She is watched from across the room by the adoring Sanpai (Gen Hoshino), who is always contriving coincidences to be near her. His friend, The Director of School Festival Operations (Hiroshi Kamiya), teases him about his obsession, although Don Underwear (Ryuji Akiyama) sympathises, as he has vowed to wear the same pair of shorts until he finds the girl of his dreams, who was sitting opposite him when apples fell on their heads.

As the rest of the guests head to the reception, The Girl slips away (making a choo-choo motion as she does so) and finds herself in a cocktail bar, where her epic consumption impresses Todo-san (Kazuhiro Yamaji), a red carp farmer who tells her about the mythical Denki Bran cocktail and gets a biff on the nose for trying to cop a feel. He has a sideline in selling erotic woodcuts and The Girl explains to onlookers Seitaro Higuchi (Kazuya Nakai) and Hanuki-san (Yuko Kaida) how her mother taught her the `friendly punch' to use in social situations. They take her to a venue where everyone is having pointless arguments and one man gives them a ranting lecture about the folly of marrying for love.

Having picked up the stooping steps to the Sophist Dance, The Girl follows her new friend to a birthday celebration. All the guests lament the fact that time goes much faster for them than for younger people and they show The Girl how quickly the hands on their watches turn. They are enchanted when she breaks into the Sophist Dance and inform her that she can wish for anything she likes if she manages to drink Rihaku (Mugihito) under the table.

Meanwhile, Senpai has had his trousers and undies stolen by a bizarre thief and winds up on a bar with Todo-san, who tells him how a storm decimated his farm and forced him to find other sources of income. He tries to console him, but Todo-san owes a debt to Rihaku and goes to greet him when he arrives in a large train. His voice booms when he speaks, but he is quite a small, elderly gentleman and is delighted to be distracted to drink with The Girl. She triumphs over him and sets off to an outdoor secondhand book sale.

While she goes in search of a beloved childhood book entitled Ratatatam, Senpai finds himself in a surveillance nerve centre run by the school festival director. He is willing to give Senpai information on The Girl that might help him court her in return for details on the school troublemakers who will need subduing before the festival starts. Desperate to impress The Girl, Senpai agrees. But he hates secondhand books and gets into such a bad mood that he bumps into a small boy whose ice cream cone sticks to his trousers. The child bawls for compensation and Todo-san has to intervene to prevent the browsers from thinking Senpai is a pervert. However, he has a favour to ask in return and sends Senpai to bid in his place for a rare erotic manuscript.

On entering the auction house, Senpai is hit by the overpowering odour of aromatic food and he is appalled to discover that Rihaku the auctioneer will only award volumes to those who manage to consume the spiciest dishes. As The Girl's very own copy of Ratatatam is up for grabs, Senpai begins chomping. Meanwhile The Girl has become convinced that The God of the Old Books Market (Hiroyuki Yoshino) is guiding her to the tomes she most wishes to find. However, Ratatatam proves elusive and she is surprised to discover that The God is the small boy with the ice-cream cone and he shows her how books by everyone from Conan Doyle to Sakunosuke Oda are linked.

While Senpai's lips swell with the spices and he and Higuchi begin hallucinating, The God asks The Girl to pull the guy ropes holding up the auction tent. The canvas falls to the floor and The God uses a spell to liberate all of the books under the hammer so that they can be sold for a fair price at his market. Having outlasted the other bidders, Senpai clings on to Ratatatam as it flies through the air and deposits him at The Girl's feet in the market. Before Senpai can speak to The Girl, however, Nise-Jogasaki (Junichi Suwabe) and Princess Daruma (Aoi Yuki) arrive with their guerilla theatre troupe to erect a stage to perform a rock opera involving an inflatable sex doll entitled, The Obstinate King.

As soon as the song ends, the actors are chased away by uniformed men on a public morality charge. Hanuki has finally run out of steam and Higuchi takes her home, leaving The Girl to march on to the October festival, unaware that Senpai is waiting for her with her book. But he is thrown off key by Jogasaki and Daruma rushing past and the Festival Director informs him that they are a subversive group whose object is to disrupt the celebrations. However, he is coming down with a cold and is prepared to hunker down in his operations room while his oppos round up the players led by a monkey on a scooter whose chattering is interpreted by a parrot on his shoulder.

Feeling pleased with herself for winning a fluffy carp wrap on a shooting range, The Girl strolls through the festival grounds and finds herself dressed in a daruma doll costume to perform the next song in the rock opera because the sneezing bug has hit the troupe. The Festival Director is furious and decides to turn his attention to the writer churning out the ongoing libretto, as no one will be able to act without a script. Scrolling through the CCTV footage, he realises that Don Underwear is the author and Senpai is appalled when he discovers that the finale will be a love scene between Don Underwear and The Girl in her daruma outfit.

Pulling down The Festival Director's pants, Senpai abseils on to the stage to come between Don Underwear and The Girl. She seems pleased to see him and begins singing about all the coincidences that have brought them together being fate after all. But, as he tries to explain that he has always been crazy about her, Senpai falls through a trapdoor and Don Underwear rumbles back on stage to continue his song about searching for his apple girl.

Suddenly, a pink-haired majorette appears on stage and Don Underwear recognises her as his soulmate. However, she turns out to be the Festival Director in disguise and he plans to stop the show. But one of the backstage crew who has always adored Don Underwear sings that she would be willing to undergo plastic surgery to resemble the apple girl. Senpai urges Don Underwear to let romance rather than reason sway his decision, but he declines her offer because it was the moment that he cherishes not the looks of the person he shared it with.

At that moment, the Festival Director declares that he is tired of being lonely and sings that he would be prepared to become a woman in order to make the relationship work. As they close in for a kiss, Senpai hopes for a miracle and his prayer is heard when Todo-san's red carp fall out of the sky and Dom Underwear and the redheaded stagehand are both hit on the head and this makes him fall instantly in love with her. She is lifted on to the stage and they duet, as the crowd cheers and fireworks fill the sky.

But the moment of bliss is ruined when Don Underwear sneezes and we follow Sanpei home to bed with a fever. The Girl seems to be the only person immune to the chill and she visits Don Underwear and his new love before moving on to the Festival Director, who informs her that Senpai adores her and spends his life trying to bump into her. She also calls on Todo-san at his carp farm and he tells her that Senpai was trying to find her to give her a book.

As a storm begins to brew, The Girl bumps into Hanuki at the subway station. She reveals that Higuchi has also succumbed to the cold and she watches him swaying in his hammock as he tells her that Rihaku is also ailing and she treks through the snow to his remote abode. He is feeling sorry for himself because he is getting old and believes that his life has been wasted. However, The Girl points out that his money has helped lots of people, while the cold he has spread has brought lots of strangers together. He perks up and the clocks in his room begin to wind backwards. However, he reminds her that there is still a lonely soul out there and urges her to run to Senpai so that happiness can be restored.

He is lying in bed cursing himself for being hopeless. As he remonstrates with himself for having no talents or prospects, we are taken inside his head, where his conflicting silhouetted emotions are having a debate about how he should proceed. Outside, The Girl battles through a gale to reach Sanpei. But he disbelieves a text warning him that she's on her way and civil war breaks out among his numbskulls. Some try to sabotage The Girl's bid to reach him and she finds herself falling. But Sanpei dons some wings and flies down to pluck her from the abyss and her smile of delight is reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.

Back in his room, The Girl finds the copy of Ratatatam and she is thrilled. Senpai invites her to his favourite secondhand bookshop and, as she walks to the coffee shop, she reminds herself to ask about his night in Ponta town, just as he is planning to ask her the same thing. As she walks in, they look up at each other and put it down to coincidence.

If anyone tells you that they understand every second of this madcap adventure, they are fibbing. Even the film-makers must have had the odd head scratch along the way, as the only word for this picture is `bonkers'. Little or nothing makes sense in a world that is haywire even by Japanimation standards. Yet, it's impossible not to be swept along by the bravura storytelling or be intoxicated by the dazzling colours and shifting graphic designs. Taking on the smooth Studio Ghibli style in much the way that United Productions of America used free-drawn cartoons to cock a snook at Disney in the 1950s, this feels like a statement of defiance. But non-aficionados of anime are going to find this frantic and often cacophonous rattlebag of colliding ideas and images something of a slog.

A disciple of Antonio Reis, Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues has spent the last two decades provoking audiences with such homoerotic outings as O Fantasma (2000), Two Drifters (2005), To Die Like a Man (2009) and The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012). However, he is likely to ruffle the most features with The Ornithologist, a loose reworking of the life of St Anthony of Padua, whose self-reflexive, hagio-sceptic subversion contains flashes of Luis Buñuel, Derek Jarman and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Although he died in Padua, St Anthony was born Fernando Martins de Bulhões in Lisbon in 1195 and the film opens with a quotation from the Franciscan's Whit Sunday sermon at Forli in 1222, which proclaims the sense of warmth and exaltation to be derived from accepting the Holy Spirit. As he swims in a woodland river near some nesting birds, ornithologist Fernando (Paul Hamy) certainly seems to be at one with Nature. He chats briefly to his friend, Sergio, who reminds him to take his medication. But the signal is weak and they hang up before the brown-hoodied Fernando packs away his camping equipment and heads upstream in his kayak.

The craft looks fragile from the gliding aerial shots approximating the perspectives of the birds Fernando watches through his binoculars. He makes dictaphone notes as he sees birds of prey nesting on craggy inclines and even spots a goat that has strayed close to a nest. But he is so busy watching one large swooping bird that he fails to notice has is drifting towards some rapids and he capsizes and is found on the shore by lesbian Chinese Catholics Fei (Han Wen) and Lin (Chan Suan), who are trekking along the Camino de Santiago to the shrine of St James at Santiago de Compostela. Lin takes a picture of him (a montage of her snaps en route precedes the discovery) and she reminds Fei that St Anthony would expect them to tend to a fellow mortal in need.

The pilgrims revive and feed Fernando and explain in English that they are lost. He reveals that they have crossed into Portugal and they ask him to escort them back to the right path. They also ask him to protect them from the forest spirits that have been frightening them and are so disappointed when he denies the existence of God, the Devil and ghosts that they force him to sleep outside their tent. When he wakes the next morning, however, they have trussed him with ropes like St Sebastian and Lin slaps his face when he spits at her after refusing food. Wearing only his white underpants, he struggles to get loose, but waits until darkness falls before freeing his hands and stealing back his clothes. As he rummages in their rucksacks, the women plot in Chinese to castrate him, as he deserves no better.

Striding out across country, Fernando finds a high outcrop to check his messages and realises the women have stolen his medication. He spots the shattered hull of his kayak and tosses his phone away in frustration when he fails to pick up a signal. But he retrieves it and continues on his way inland without the benefit of his map, which has also been pinched. Eventually, he finds his camp and is puzzled by the fact that the other half of his kayak has been erected like a totem pole and that white balloons have been tied to the bare branches of the nearby trees. His eyes have been burnt out of his ID card photo and he note on his dictaphone that Lin and Fei were right about something odd going on in the forest.

Having crossed the river with his backpack out of the water, Fernando goes for a swim and is conscious of a hawk hovering over him, just as he was earlier aware of a helicopter flying overhead. As night falls, he is woken in his tent by the round of revelry and he creeps out to find a group of seven men in bird costumes whooping around a fire in the Mirandese dialect. One goes to relieve himself close to where Fernando is hiding and, having received an unconventional baptism, he looks on with trepidation as they slaughter and decapitate a wild boar while proclaiming that no one can stop them from realising their destiny.

He is woken by a sheepdog the following morning and he is surprised to see Jesus (Xelo Cagiao) drinking milk straight from a goat's udder. He is deaf and unable to speak, but he shows Fernando how to use a whistle to control his dog. He also writes his name in the sand after they skinny dip and Fernando lets Jesus use his binoculars to watch the swimming birds. The naked youth leans into the older man and they kiss. As they dress after making love, however, Fernando recognises his brown hoodie and accuses Jesus of stealing it. They fight and Jesus is accidentally stabbed with his own knife. The dog laps at the blood pouring from the wound in its master's side, as Fernando washes his shirt in the river and climbs up towards a cross fixed to a high peak.

Trudging on, he finds apples on a tree and takes some eggs from a nest. He eats them while resting in an abandoned graveyard and he is spooked by the statues of Christ with a Roman soldier and an angel with piercing eyes. Taken aback by a playfully threatening message from Fei and Lin on his dictaphone, Fernando settles to sleep in his tent and is disturbed by a white dove with a broken wing. He applies a simple splint and makes a nest for the bird to sleep. But it appears fine the next morning and flies away with a cheerful coo.

However, it perches on a stone after Fernando passes through a grove filled with stuffed wild animals and he throws his phone at the bird to make it fly away. Looking down, he sees a human skull in the undergrowth and his box of pills. He empties them on to the ground and puts his ID card inside a plastic bag and floats it off downstream. Having burnt off his fingerprints, Fernando talks to the fish that gather when he tosses some of his supper into the water and he urges them to leave this dark place and swim somewhere cleaner.

When he wakes next morning, he hears a hunting horn and sees a blonde hunter (Juliane Elting) riding with two topless female companions (Flora Flora Bulcão and Isabelle Puntel). He is stunned when a shot rings out and the Latin-speaking blonde is touched by how calm the animals are around the stranger. They offer to help him back to civilisation, but he insists he is happy where he is. Bidding farewell, the trio rename him Anthony and they entrust him to the dove, which is sitting in a nearby tree.

Following the bird's lead, he finds one of the birdmen lying in a clearing. Finding a gash in his side, Anthony puts his fingers into the hole and cuts away the mask to reveal Jesus. However, on giving him the kiss of life, he reveals himself to be his twin brother, Thomas (also Cagiao), who recognises his sibling's knife and whistle. He threatens Anthony, who insists he is no longer the man he was (as he is now being played by João Pedro Rodrigues himself). But Thomas stabs him in the throat and Fernando/Anthony's face changes between Hamy and Rodrigues as he clutches the spurting wound and the moon bathes the woods in a red glow.

The next morning, a magpie lies dead in a gutter beside a busy road leading into Padua. Anthony (Rodrigues) walks along with his hood up alongside Thomas in his bird costume. A couple of girls (presumably Lin and Fei) call out to him from across the road and he blesses them before taking Thomas's hand and walking into the city.

Those unfamiliar with Christian iconography and Portuguese folklore might find themselves at a loss at various points during this demanding rustic reverie. Yet there's still much to ponder, as Paul Hamy puts his survival instincts to the test on a journey of self-discovery that is made all the more tantalising by Hamy's climactic transformation into the director and Fernando's reinvention as the patron saint of the lost. In addition to musing on the relevance of religion to modern society and the difficulty of communicating in our hi-tec age, Rodrigues and co-scenarist João Rui Guerra da Mata also explore man's relationships with women, animals, birds and spirits and seem to suggest that there is still much to be learnt from simpler and purer lifestyles.

However, one suspects that the majority of viewers will derive their own message from an exercise in Slow Cinema that has been beautifully photographed by Rui Poças, whose evocative images of the northern Portuguese countryside are enlivened by Nuno Carvalho''s magnificent sound design. The jagged riffs of Séverine Ballon's shrill, but sparingly used score are equally effective at keeping the audience on its mettle. But, for all its moments of wonderment and wondering, this parable is also laced with quirkily iconoclastic humour that reinforces the unmistakable Buñuelian undertones.

A quarter of a century has passed since Justin Edgar first began experimenting with short films while on a media course at Sutton College. A graduate of Portsmouth University, he worked in television before making his feature bow with the cult comedy, Large (2000). He made a greater impression with Special People (2007), which centred on an aspiring film-maker's encounter with a class of wheelchair-bound students, and the Brummie rite of passage, We Are the Freaks (2013). However, he reveals an altogether darker side with The Marker, a gritty crime drama that bears echoes of Gangsters (1975-78), a classic BBC series focusing on the Second City's underworld, and brings a whole new meaning to the notion of `Marley's Ghost'.

Marley Dean Jacobs is the character played by Frederick Schmidt, who works for Birmingham-based Irish gangster John Hannah. Shortly after identifying his addict mother's corpse, Schmidt is involved in a raid on a Romanian drug den that culminates in him receiving a 12-year sentence for the manslaughter of Ana Ularu, whose throat he slashes with a machete during a struggle while she attempts to protect the daughter who is hiding under the bed. Beaten by a fellow inmate on his first night in prison for killing a woman, Schmidt wakes to find Ularu's ghost glowering at him from the corner of his cell.

Initially, Schmidt finds Ularu's presence an irritant, as he tries to keep his head down and starts to learn the banjo. But she continues to hover in his eyeline and even takes the cigarette he offers her when he wakes to find her at the foot of his bunk. She even corrects his spelling when he tries to write to the foster parents to request a meeting to apologise for his crime. However, when a guard sees him thrashing wildly after Ularu attacks him, Schmidt is deemed to be suffering from psychological issues and he is subjected to electro-shock therapy. Back in his cell, he promises to take care of her daughter when he is released.

Six years later, Schmidt is released for good behaviour and is collected by Hannah's gofer, Simon Lowe, who informs him that Hannah has moved into property redevelopment. He still requires muscle in the form of Ian Sharp, but takes Schmidt for a drink and finds him work washing dishes because he has always regarded him as a son. However, he hides the fact the Ularu's daughter was fostered by his older brother, Struan Rodger, a former mayor who asks Schmidt to find the 16 year-old Lara Peake because she has run away with boyfriend Jack McMullen and the police refuse to interfere because she is legally an adult.

As he is renowned for his tracking skills, Schmidt quickly finds McMullen who reveals that Peake has been taken hostage by drug dealer Barry Aird to ensure that he repays a £5000 debt. Schmidt offers to help if McMullen co-operates, but he doesn't see that Sharp is watching his every move. Requiring oxygen to alleviate a terminal condition, Rodger gives Schmidt the cash and he makes a deal at Aird's strip club. However, he doubles the price and Schmidt has to pull the gun he has hidden in McMullen's waistband to blast his way out.

Peake doesn't recognise Schmidt (as he was wearing a mask when Ularu died), but she clearly resents the fact that he is taking her back to Rodger, But Ularu nuzzles her on the backseat of the car, as they speed through the city. He stops to buy tea from a kiosk and Peake tries to run away. She bites Schmidt's hand when catches her and Ularu glares at him when he raises a fist to strike her. Instead, he delivers her to Rodger and Hannah, who inform him that she knows too much and needs to die. Hannah lays a plastic sheet on the carpet and proffers a knife. But Schmidt pulls his gun and, even though Hannah reveals that her protector killed her mother, Peake leaves with him and they disappear into the night.

She is unimpressed when he tries to apologise and scarpers at the first set of traffic lights. Schmidt makes a pathetic effort to find her before heading for McMullen's flat. He beats up his flatmate and pounces on McMullen when he gets home. But, as he tries to question him, Aird enters and pulls a gun on Schmidt who is ordered to kill McMullen to demonstrate his continued loyalty to Hannah. Ularu forces his hand as he pulls the trigger and Aird taunts him about being on all fours in prison as he clears the blood and brains off the wall.

Returning to the drug den where he killed Ularu, Schmidt has violent flashbacks as he lies on the mattress. But he finds a notebook with an address in Peake''s handwriting and seeks to convince foster carer Cathy Tyson that he is her long-lost uncle. She tells him to go through social services and he resumes his search. On arriving home, however, he finds Hannah waiting for him and he orders him to drop his trousers and assume the position for him to slice into his buttocks with a blade. He tells him to do his duty or face the consequences and a sobbing Schmidt clings to Ularu's foot and for solace and she ruffles his hair.

Checking Peake's phone, he sees footage of Lowe taking one of her friends to a new address. He realises this is Tyson's place after seeing Lowe picking up a homeless teen off the street and he bundles her into the boot of his car and demands to know what's going on. She admits to supplying Hannah and Rodger with vulnerable girls for them to sell to rich clients. But Rodger wanted Peake for himself and that's why she fled. At that moment, Aird shoots under the garage door and wings Schmidt in the ankle. He kills Tyson through the car metal and they exchange shots in an abandoned car park before a badly wounded Aird tops himself after mocking Schmidt for being unable to protect Peake.

Laying low with old pal Andrew Shim while he dresses his leg, Schmidt recalls being neglected by his mother. But Ularu has no intention of letting him quit and he drives to see Rodger. He takes him into the basement where he keeps his victims and shows Schmidt a masked naked corpse on a table. With Ularu standing behind him, Schmidt executes Rodger, but realises the dead girl isn't Peake and he hastens to the nearby children's home, where Sharp is waiting for him. He dispatches him with a single shot and enters to find Hannah dying on the floor with his throat cut and Peake clutching the blade. Reassuring her that she won't be going to prison, he sends her to Shim and sinks down into a chair. Ularu puts her hands on his shoulders and he turns to kiss her goodbye before she stands behind him with a gun to his head.

Markedly better than the average Mockney contribution to the over-stuffed BritCrime genre, this may not have much to offer by way of narrative novelty. But Edgar generates a seething sense of menace in exposing the seamy side of city life and the sickening ease with which systems designed to protect children can be manipulated to exploit them. Wheezing and tottering on his stick, Rodger makes an even more sinister villain than the more archetypical Hannah, as he has abused his power as a council official to satiate his perverted lust. But the fascination lies in the relationship between Schmidt's redemption seeker and Ularu's avenging angel.

The leads impressively convey the physicality of their ethereal bond, but Edgar also makes claustrophobic use of Liam Iandoli's camera to keep the characters in tight close-ups that are often shot from disconcerting angles. He also employs fluid camera movements to suggest Schmidt's relentless pursuit, while editors Philip Arkinstall and Carmela Iandoli cut precisely to bolster the `show not tell' ethos that makes the visual aspect of the storytelling so efficient and effective. The idea that every saint has a past and every sinner a future may not be borne out by the climactic cut to black. But Edgar keeps a tight enough rein on the generic clichés for this intensely sad study of pain, guilt and expiation to have an unexpectedly potent effect.

CinemaItaliaUK returns this week with Dario Migianu Baldi's La Leggenda di Bob Wind, another melodrama with a Citizen Kane-like structure that delves into the background of Roberto Cimetta, a leading figure in Italian experimental theatre in the 1980s. Those unfamiliar with his achievements will initially find this a bit of a puzzle, as it takes a while to settle into its rhythm. But, even though a major subplot fails to gel, this slowly begins to draw the viewer in and many will be thoroughly absorbed by the poignant denouement.

Annoyed by an interviewer asking about the identity of her father, award-winning journalist Anna Vanqueur (Lavinia Longhi) goes to Ancona to delve into the background of Roberto Cimetta (Corrado Fortuna), who had grown up in the city. Anna finds Cimetta's mother, Teresa (Mugia Bellagamba) in the market and she invites her for a meal and recalls the problems she had with her rebellious son when she was younger (Novella Palandrani). She mentions being grandmother to Tommaso (Paolo Briguglia), but admits to not knowing if Cimetta also had a daughter, as he didn't always confide in her.

Anna goes to the local theatre to find Cimetta's loyal lieutenant, Riccardo Baciocchi (Victor Carlo Vitale), who curses him for dragging him away from a steady job as a bartender to work on his experimental theatre projects. He thinks back to when his younger self (Gianluca Musiu) shared a flat with Cimetta and he became enamoured of landlord's daughter Silvia (Valeria Romanelli) after she had walked in on him stark naked apart from a wartime soldier's helmet. The show had been a disaster, but Silvia had loved it and kissed Cimetta backstage.

She soon became pregnant and gave birth to Tommaso (Kevin Schiraldi), but her parents had made Silvia live with them because Cimetta couldn't provide for them (he had missed the birth doing a protest performance piece dressed as a Native American on the steps of a public building). He continued to refuse offers of regular work and had striven to develop a brand of street theatre to push a socio-political message. The young Tommaso had been roped in to wave a red flag in one production, but his father had been seduced by a pretty onlooker and the boy had been taken home by a friend.

Anna has also caused some consternation by disappearing, as she is pregnant. But she reassures her friend Verena (Cristina Cirilli) via Skype that she needs some time to herself and keeps investigating Cimetta's chequered career. While trying to convince the stage manager at the theatre to give him a shot, Cimetta had overheard the mayor of Offagna (Fabio Balasso) asking for someone to devise an historical spectacle for the district's annual festival. His impudence appeals to the mayor and they strike up a rapport, even though he is puzzled by Cimetta's neo-realist insistence that ordinary people play the parts instead of professional actors. But his faith is rewarded when Cimetta arrives for the performance at the head of a convoy of tractors bringing the local farming community to see the show.

Learning that Anna is researching in the library, Rebecca (Elisabetta De Vito) introduces herself and relates how she was working as a cleaning lady in the council offices (Silvia Salvatori) when Cimetta had cast her as a medieval princess. As it was the 70s, free love was still in vogue and she had fallen in love with him. So had a French girl named Adeline (Veronica Baleani) and Anna reveals that she is her mother. However, she is unsure if Cimetta is her father and - following a flashback to how Cimetta and Adeline met at a camping ground and she inspired him to hold an international stage festival - Rebecca suggests that Anna goes to Polverigi to find out more. As she returns to her room, however, she is seized by Edin (Ivan Franek), who has come looking for her on behalf of Philippe (Andrea Bruschi). He tells her to take care of herself, as she is about to start working on a major new project.

Wandering into a back alley, Anna sees carnival characters in costume and they keep asking her about her name. When she wakes, Riccardo is looking after her and he tells her how Cimetta turned down an investment offer from Silvia's father (Ciro Scalera), who warned him not to distance himself from Tommaso, as he would come to regret it. But Cimetta is stung when Adeline leaves at the end of the festival, as she refuses to be tied down.

Anna has told Riccardo that she is writing a book on avant-garde theatre and agrees to help, even though he doesn't believe her. Edin also starts snooping and he finds a suitcase belonging to `Bob Wind' while Anna is visiting the cemetery and she sees Silvia (Elisabetta Parisini) tending to Cimetta's grave. She is furious with him for interfering in her life and tells him that what happened between them in St Petersburg was folly. However, she is more concerned that Philippe has come to Ancona and he tells her that he has no time for loose cannons and that his investors need her to focus on her job and not follow private hunches. He orders her to return to Paris with him the next day and, much to Philippe's fury, she slips away in the night.

She hasn't gone far, as she meets up with Silvia. She is reluctant to talk about Cimetta, but Anna feels faint and she invites her in for water, just as Cimetta and Tommaso turn on their heels on the same path to head for Lisbon in a battered car to set up a new theatre. They break down on the way and Tommaso is shocked when his father trades their car without mentioning that it's kaputt. However, he feels exploited when Cimetta includes him in a play while he is sleeping on the stage and the boy runs away. But, while Cimetta manages to cheer him up by doing the `lonely eagle' routine he had learnt in acting class, Silvia is appalled by his reckless behaviour and bars him from seeing Tommaso outside the house ever again.

Anna asks Silvia for Tommaso's whereabouts, but she refuses to say anything more, as she had wanted to forget the past. However, Anna gets a shock of her own when Verena arrives to bring her the results of a DNA test that suggests she is not Cimetta's daughter. She storms off into the rainy night, leaving the envelope on the puddled ground by a container dock and its on the Ancona waterfront that one of the crew erecting a stage is knocked unconscious by a piece of backdrop and Cimetta waits anxiously for news at the hospital. But, while the show gets indifferent reviews and Cimetta is ready to quit, he is confronted by a crowd of people outside the house he shares with Riccardo, who are ready to do his bidding to make his brand of theatre work.

An unexpected encounter gives Anna renewed hope, as Silvia gives her the keys to the garage when Cimetta left his Mercedes and Riccardo and Rebecca accompany her to see what they can find. She is intrigued by a cassette in the dashboard with Tomasso and Adeline's names on the label and this convinces Anna to drive to Trentino. She asks around for Tommaso Cimetta, but no one knows who he is. One shopkeeper, however, knows as Thomas Fint and this leads Anna (while a flashback shows a coughing Cimetta being invited back to Portugal) to the country estate where Tommaso is doing a performance piece in a living room in the back of a pick-up truck. She reveals her identity and gives him the key to the car. They hug tearfully, but he admits he never thought they were siblings because his father had told him so before heading to Lisbon, where he died in his dressing-room after a triumphal performance.

As Anna puts flowers by the tree bearing Adeline's silver nameplate, she remembers a photograph taken with Cimetta and Tommaso and this happy moment is followed by a caption revealing that Cimetta founded the Inteatro Festival in Polverigi in 1977 with mayor Domenico Mancia and Velia Papa and it is still going strong. He also founded the Lisbon event in 1987 and ran it for two years before he died at the age of just 39. We see him in a monochrome insert, as details are shown of the International Robert Cimetta Fund that was established in Paris in 1999 to aid the mobility of artists in the Mediterranean.

Echoes of the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s reverberate around this intense, but occasionally obscure saga. Co-scripted by Baldi, Alberto Nucci Angeli and Elena Casaccia, the narrative plunges into two parallel storylines that remain stubbornly apart, as the subplot involving Anna's pregnancy and new job fails to integrate or intrigue. Given that paternity drives the central plot strand, it seems capricious to make Edin and Philippe ciphers whose power over Anna is never satisfactorily explained. Clearly, her readiness to toss away a potentially life-changing opportunity confirms that she's her mother's daughter, but the duo's sudden appearance just as Anna is about to make a major discovery proves a dead-end distraction. The restless storytelling style also places demands on the audience and those unfamiliar with Roberto Cimetta will find the opening stages heavy going, as so many characters are introduced only to be whisked off to the periphery. But, as Anna's investigation begins to take shape, the pieces fall into place and Cimetta's self-serving irresponsibility becomes more obviously boldly subversive commitment to his vision. Corrado Fortuna and Lavinia Longhi ably hold up their ends of the story, while Timoty Aliprandi's gritty imagery and solid sense of place eventually enables the audience to get their bearings.

Although the circumstances were bound to upset anyone, it was fascinating to watch Donald Trump speak to the American people on Monday night about the Las Vegas massacre. Rarely has such a consummate performer looked so ill at ease in front of the cameras and, one suspects, the president would have much preferred to have addressed the nation via Twitter rather than having to put in a personal appearance. Curiously, as documentarists Pacho Velez and Sierra Pettengill reveal in The Reagan Show, Trump's discomfort matched that of another celebrity occupant of the Oval Office, when Ronald Reagan had to face questions about what came to be known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Yet, even though the footage of the usually assured Reagan feeling the heat reinforces the extent to which the media's attitude towards the establishment has changed over the last three decades, this slickly assembled trawl through the archives of White House Television rather wastes its unique access to the inside track of history in the making by straying off message.

During his final interview as commander in chief in December 1988, Ronald Reagan confided that he had no idea how any of his non-acting predecessors had coped in the job. Although his botched attempts to pronounce the name of New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate John Sununu might suggest otherwise, Reagan was known as `The Great Communicator'. However, as his eight-year tenure came to a close, many commentators felt that his presidency had been more about style than substance. Certainly, no one had made more extensive use of film and video to chronicle his time in office - indeed the Reagan archive is bigger than that of the previous five administrations combined - and this documentary sets out to show how the onetime screen actor and radio sportscaster created a political persona that was able to convince the electorate that he was a safe pair of hands where domestic and foreign policy was concerned.

As Reagan was so used to working with scripts and adapting his body language to suit a scenario, advisers like David Gergen and Lyn Nofziger realised they could stage manage photo opportunities that played into the president's wheelhouse. A montage shows him meeting Michael Jackson and Mr T, throwing pitches at baseball games and scoring ice hockey goals on the White House law. He even makes chatting with the Thanksgiving turkey seem significant, as he puts the nervous farmer at his ease and laughs at his anecdote when no one else does.

As Reagan reveals in an interview with David Frost, he often found himself acting and writing the script at the same time. But Velez and Pettengill rush through his Hollywood phase that saw him make 53 pictures, including This Is the Army (1943), That Hagen Girl (1947), The Winning Team and She's Working Her Way Through College (both 1952). In the majority, he played upstanding characters in such thrillers as Code of the Secret Service (1939) and The Bad Man (1941), war flicks like Desperate Journey (1942), and Westerns like Law and Disorder (1953) and Cattle Queen of Montana (1954). But the clips are too short to show Reagan's star quality and, besides, Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver tells one interviewer that it takes more than looking the part to be an effective leader.

However, rather than discussing Reagan's terms as President of the Screen Actors Guild and Governor of California, the co-directors seem to lose interest in how he developed his vote-winning folksiness and plunge us instead into the mounting tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1983, which prompted a move in the fingers of the Doomsday Clock. We see Reagan introducing citizens to the concept of `Star Wars', the Strategic Defence Initiative that would intercept missiles in space and, thus, make the nuclear threat obsolete. Yet, while he was being branded a trigger-happy warmonger by some in the media, Reagan was also being accused of being disengaged and dominated by his staff. He is also criticised for spending lengthy periods on vacation (and few will miss the implied swipes at the equally leisure-loving George W. Bush and Donald Trump).

This leads to a digression about Reagan's relationship with his wife, Nancy, who had acted as Nancy Davis before they married. She is asked in interview if she is the Lady Macbeth of the team and she insists she just wants to stand by her man like any good American wife. But she looks distinctly uncomfortable on horseback at the family ranch and seems unimpressed when her husband suggests they should pose for a photo of her trying to stop him cutting down a tree with a chainsaw.

Cutting abruptly back to the threat of thermonuclear annihilation, Velez and Pettengill show an extract from Nicholas Meyer's teleplay, The Day After (1983), which did much to put the frighteners on the average American about the possible ramifications of a showdown with the Kremlin. Reagan had been among the 100 million compatriots who had seen the film and, so, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the new General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, Reagan saw a chance to bring an end to the Cold War by hitting the Evil Empire when it was down, as it could no longer afford a defence plan that was draining resources from other aspects of social policy.

With Margaret Thatcher declaring the 53 year-old Gorbachev a man she could do business with, Reagan felt confident that he could use his charm to out-manoeuvre the novice and take the credit for making the world a safer place. However, he had underestimated Gorbachev's appeal to the Western media and he found himself being betrayed as a sabre-rattler while his Russian counterpart was being hailed as the last hope for peace. In order to win back the initiative, Reagan agreed to a summit in Geneva in November 1985 and the press circus even followed him to the Chateau Fleur d'Eau to witness him trying out the chair in which he would meet Gorbachev. When Nancy sat opposite him, Reagan supposedly quipped that the Soviet leader was much prettier than he had expected and TV pundits hope such wit will help him strike up a rapport.

The encounter fails to produce a treaty. But, as glasses clinked over dinner, hopes were still high for an arms control agreement and most correspondents concluded that Gorbachev had run rings round his 74 year-old adversary, in both achieving his strategic goals and in charming the world's media. Yet Reagan receives a warm reception from Congress when he reports back and is praised for exchanging TV messages with Gorbachev at New Year 1986. A fortnight later, however, he is outflanked when Gorbachev publishes proposals to outlaw all nuclear weapons by 2000 and insists on adding Star Wars into the package. According to the US networks, Reagan has been caught flat footed and seems to have lost his position as chief peacemaker.

Nevertheless, he agrees to meet in Reykjavik in October 1986 and takes every opportunity in the interim to trot out the Russian proverb `doveryai, no proveryai', which translates as `trust, but verify'. Despite the pre-summit optimism, Star Wars proves a stumbling block and Reagan is blamed for being obsessed with putting weapons in space instead of focusing on forging peace on terra firma. Yet, in the days that follow, Reagan's people spin the message that agreement is close and that the media has misunderstood the president's pronouncements on the intense 36-hour meeting in Iceland. However, the networks accuse him of dodging questions and there's frustration when he proves more open to kids at Camp Ronald McDonald than his is with the press corps.

In December 1986, however, rumours of a deal to trade arms for hostages with Iran deflects the focus and Reagan finds himself firmly on the back foot for the first time in his presidency. While he sometimes appears to flounder at the microphone, what is perhaps most telling is how inept his team proves at micro-managing the situation and, thus, exposes a man prone to gaffes to fierce scrutiny at a delicate point in the negotiations with the Soviet Union. As foes delight in his discomfort in Europe (including Labours Denis Healey), TV commentators go for the jugular of the good guy who has become so tarnished that he is little more than a lame duck.

But Reagan drew on his `aw shucks' image one last time to bail himself out of trouble by claiming his heart still believes he did nothing wrong even if the facts say otherwise. This cornball confession goes someway to appeasing his supporters and they cheer to the echo when he promises something special in `the third act'. He began with the famous `Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall' speech in Berlin in June 1987 and, in the process, went some way to reinstating himself as the peacemaker in chief. The taunt suited Gorbachev, however, as he needed to concentrate on boosting the Soviet economy and the last obstacles to a treaty were overcome with surprising haste.

Interrupting a flight to Denver to relay the news of the breakthrough, Reagan avers that he should have little difficulty getting the terms through the Senate. However, the negotiations prove trickier than he had anticipated and go to the wire as Gorbachev arrives in Washington. Despite Democrats like Joe Biden backing Reagan, conservative Republicans brand him a disgrace to the party and suggest he has become too dazzled by Gorbachev to see the reality of the situation.

As Reagan informs the waiting press that the 1987 Thanksgiving turkey is called Wilfred because the name means `resolute for peace', the Senate keeps him at bay. Indeed, when he flies to Moscow in May 1988, the treaty has yet to be ratified. But Reagan wins the day in time to sign the first-ever reduction in nuclear arsenals after a walkabout in the city with Gorbachev that was notable for the efforts of US journalists to embarrass their man with questions about the Evil Empire in front of Soviet citizens.

A decision on Star Wars is delayed, but Reagan returns home a hero and quotes Lee Greenwood's `God Bless the USA' in his speech. The song is sung in honour of the First Couple at the Republican Convention that nominated George HW Bush and, as Reagan leaves the Oval Office for the last time, TV anchor Tom Brokaw shudders at the prospect of future presidents having to match Reagan's ability to cope with the media glare.

Ably edited by David Barker, Francisco Bello and Daniel Garber to juxtapose the White House TV version of events with newsroom observation, this makes for instructive viewing. But Velez and Pettengill lose sight of their initial objective of examining Ronald Reagan's communications credentials and turn their attention squarely on his duel with Mikhail Gorbachev to be seen as the saviour of humanity. Often accompanied by the ominous creep of the Second Movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, this section has a certain suspense. But few will be unaware of the outcome of the talks and the co-directors might have been better advised to focus on the domestic political reaction to the deal rather than the detente brinksmanship between leaders who evidently got on and trusted each other more than they did their own élites back home.

Indeed, Velez and Pettengill seem so obsessed with the Star Wars aspect of their story that they neglect several other key phases of Reagan's career that helped him become as effective a negotiator as he was a communicator. This isn't a biographical study, but he didn't become president by chance and omitting any reference to his stints at SAG and Sacramento seems perverse. Clearly, the film-makers also have half an eye on Donald Trump's fixation with fake news and his hamfisted efforts to discredit the mainstream media. But their purpose is blunted by the emphasis on the Gorbachev saga and, consequently, any useful comparison between Reagan and Trump's approaches to persuading those in the downtrodden heartlands that they're on their side is lost in the patriotic clamour.

Marilyn Monroe once opined, `Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.' Yet, to many, fetishising footwear and declaring those who design it to be artists is a clear sign that the world has got its priorities wrong. Others might applaud the craftsmanship of what are essentially glorified cobblers, but deride those with more money than sense who are willing to pay astronomical sums for what are, after all, nothing more than shoes. Yet, as illustrator-editor Michael Roberts points out in Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards, there are those (and not just the usual fashionistas) who consider the work of shoemakers like the seventysomething Manolo Blahnik to be much more than mere functional facets of everyday attire.

During an opening credit sequence in which twee animations are juxtaposed with talking heads, Blahnik is variously described as a visionary poet on a par with Beaudelaire and the Emperor of Shoes, and this sets the tone for the swooning paean that follows. However, the torrent of Ab Fab gushing is momentarily held back as Blahnik recalls his idyllic childhood in Santa Cruz on the Canary Islands, which Roberts illustrates with monochrome flashbacks featuring River Hawkins as the young Manolo making shoes out of Cadbury chocolate wrappers for the lizards in the garden. However, while his multi-lingual Austro-Hungarian father and innovative mother sent him to school in Geneva in the hope he would work for the United Nations, he became hooked on fashion and spent his spare cash on magazines like Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.

Eventually, he settled in Paris in the 1960s, where he befriended jewellery designer Paloma Picasso and opened an antique shop. But, while Picasso was chased by riot police during the 1968 demonstrations, Blahnik stayed away, as he was apolitical and hated the smell of crowds. So, in 1971, he relocated to London, where former Vogue editor Anna Wintour (who was still at school at the time) claims that rules were being broken because hairdressers and duchesses were communicating. Fashion journalist Carlos Garcia Calvo insists designers were fearless, while an archive clip shows Julie Christie declaring that it was now easier than ever to have a good time. But Blahnik had to settle for working at Joan Burstein's Feathers Boutique because he never got round to showing her the shoe portfolio he had started to assemble.

Picasso took Blahnik to New York to meet legendary Vogue matriarch Diana Vreeland and model Penelope Tree (who has peasant feet in Blahnik's estimation) recalls how enthusiastic she always was when it came to new talents. Fashion editor André Leon Talley arranged a meeting and jokes about the normally garrulous Blahnik getting tongue-tied - in a scene recreated by Rick Kissack and Rifat Ozbek - but Vreeland urged him to focus on shoe design and the rest is history. As if to emphasis the point, Roberts slips in a voyeuristic montage of close-ups of Blahnik designs before returning to 1971 for the launch of his first collection, Quorum Black Magic. He remembers forgetting to put metal in the rubber heels and how difficult it was for the models on the catwalk and Picasso admits the first efforts were uncomfortable to wear, even though they looked beautiful.

However, his big break came when he designed shoes for Bianca Jagger in 1972 and a montage of photographs shows the fun he had hanging with her Cheyne Walk set. Away from the fancy dress lifestyle, however, he was dedicated to his art and fashion writer Colin McDowell describes the thrill he gets watching him work. Roberts films Blahnik adding paint to a sketch and Talley avers that no one other than Yves Saint Laurent could match his flair for colour. Jamie Prieto agrees that his work takes people into another world and he gets to see their expressions on a regular basis as he has spent 33 years at the Old Church Street shop that has enchanted everyone from Wintour and Tree to actor Rupert Everett, who jokes that Blahnik's men's shoes are even more feminine than the ones he makes for women.

Model Iman and photographer David Bailey extol the virtues of Blahnik's dress sense and McDowell mentions the influence on his taste of the clothing worn by 18th-century Sicilian aristocrats. But he could be difficult, as Bailey and Anjelica Huston concur while reflecting on the Corsican shoot that culminated in Blahnik becoming the first male to grace the cover of British Vogue. Such exposure only raised his profile and he became frantically busy in the 1980s after Princess Diana wore a pair of his black heels. What's more, his burgeoning reputation took him back to New York, where he opened a shop in 1983 and forged a partnership with designer Isaac Mizrahi. American shoe distributor George Malkemus suggests that Blahnik has an intuitive feel for the way women move and want to feel, while Mizrahi adds that his secret is making shoes that are comfortable, as well as glamorous.

His closest friendship, however, was with the Gibraltarian designer John Galliano, whom he helped back on his feet after he went bankrupt in 1990. They fuss over each other on a sofa while looking through a book of Blahnik's designs, which are all given names like `Agatha'. Yet Wintour suggests that he remains a modest man who is genuinely surprised that he has achieved so much and acquired such a cult status. Forever wearing white gloves, he wanders through the limelight in something of a daze and, over footage of him signing shoes in a department store, Naomi Campbell says she can understand his reticence at being a superstar.

The scene in Sex and the City in which Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) loses her shoes in a mugging also did much for the brand and director Sofia Coppola insists she had no hesitation in asking Blahnik to design the shoes for Marie Antoinette (2006), as she knew the doomed French queen would have chosen him herself. Yet, Coppola only appears in voiceover and we have to be content with stills because Roberts was clearly unable to access clips from the picture. Costume designer Milena Canonero won an Oscar for her work, but Blahnik didn't make it on to the nomination.

When not wowing the world, Blahnik retreats to his home in Bath and journalist Elsa Fernández-Santos asserts that he owes a lot to English culture. He reveals how he loved Enid Blyton as a child and remembers his mother reading him Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit. But his biggest British influence was Cecil Beaton, as he combined elements in his search for perfection and this fearless attitude has always sustained him. Clips from David Bailey interviewing Beaton reveal the extent to which Blahnik has assumed some of his affectations and photographer friend Lucy Birley and creative fashion consultant Amanda Harlech sing his praises. Prado curator Manuela Mena commends him on his memory for details in the paintings of Velázquez and Goya and Calvo proclaims him one of the three greatest Spaniards of the 20th century along with Pablo Picasso and Pedro Almodóvar.

Blahnik also adores nature and we see him tending his garden and showcasing designs alongside the flowers that inspired them. Another source is Josef von Sternberg's Marlene Dietrich drama, Blonde Venus (1932), as it put him in touch with a stylised vision of Africa that Roberts pastiches in a hallucinatory nightclub reverie that features Eva Herzigova as Helen the Hot Voodoo dancer. Talley. Iman, Campbell, McDowell and Fernández-Santos wax lyrical about his African vision. But Roberts opts to digress to let Blahnik discuss his friendships with departed style icon Anna Piaggi, Isabella Blow and Tina Chow. This flows into a section on his refusal to live with anyone and his asexuality, which sees Talley and Everett suggest that there's a macho naiveté about his shoes, even though they are also highly sensual.

He does have favourite places, however, and Everett claims Blahnik is closest to being at home in the Four Seasons Hotel in Milan, where chambermaid Ignazia Gamicchia speaks very fondly of him. But he also enjoys spending time in his factories and Talley compares Blahnik carving a heel to Benvenuto Cellini working with gold. Yet, as a montage passes of his employees turning his designs into reality, Malkemus warns that Blahnik can be hard work because he is not a natural collaborator.

While no one has yet dared to mention price or explain how Blahnik does things differently from such predecessors as Pietro Yanturni and competitors like Jimmy Choo, Roberts does pause at this point to muse on Blahniks contributions to the evolution of the pump, the kitten heel and the mule. He also introduces us to the concept of the `toe cleavage' before hurtling off in another direction, as fashion stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele esteems him for keepin the fun in fashion.

His current muse is Rihanna, whom he considers the new Grace Kelly. They flirt awkwardly as he shows her some new designs and the singer bleats on about being aware that not every girl can cope with a high heel. Wintour finds it touching that Blahnik is so devoted to making women beautiful and, over a clip from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes (1948), she compares him to a Dickensian tradesman living above his shop. Model Karlie Kloss informs him during a fitting that she used to be a ballerina and he lets her prattle in an impeccably gallant `customer is always right' kind of way as she dances for him.

A regular visitor to Sicily, Blahnik reveals his fondness for Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel, The Leopard, and meets the author's nephew, Gioacchino Lanza Tomassi, while lauding Luchino Visconti's 1963 screen adaptation starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. By this stage, Roberts simply seems to be cramming in the bits he couldn't make fit elsewhere and he follows up a confession that Blahnik always looks at the feet of a statue by having Cambridge classicist Mary Beard discuss Hellenic culture's fixation with feet.

Returning to the more mundane matter of ageing, Roberts prompts Blahnik into admitting he ignores birthdays and has no notion of a legacy. He simply lives for the day and for making women desirable for men. The local woman journalist at the book signing in Bath asks a more perceptive question about who has worn his shoes the best and Blahnik recalls a middle-aged blonde with a bun at the city station wearing one of his pumps with an everyday elegance that reassured him that he was doing the right thing.

A summation montage closes proceedings, with Tree liking the fact Blahnik calls his shoes `creatures'. All agree he is a one-off and he laments that the younger generation doesn't take the time to study and learn because it's always in such a tearing hurry. But what lingers long after this fawning, but fond portrait ends is Blahnik's refusal to take himself and his milieu too seriously.

Roberts also strives to keep things light. But, as a result, he deprives the viewer of any kind of historical context or critical analysis. Blahnik has clearly had an incalculable impact on his sphere and yet all we hear is a chorus of unstinting approval bereft of any kind of artistic or social insight. As a film critic who has little knowledge of and even less interest in the world of haute couture, how one longs for a documentary that takes a brass tacks approach to its topic and eschews the poised posturings of flatteringly lit experts and admirers falling over themselves to eulogise and (more importantly) not upset the designer under discussion.

This makes for engaging viewing, with the debuting Roberts placing Blahnik in a range of evocative settings and making imaginative use of cut-out animation (although the jokey beheading of Marie Antointte is a little crass). However, he gets carried away during the Blonde Venus sequence, while the organisation of the material is often as haphazard as the musical selections are gauche. Moreover, we get to know little about the man or his shoes. Even the justification of the subtitle is thrown away in a hazy recollection and a contrived shot of a lizard crawling over a shoe.

Part of the problem lies in Blahnik's evident evasiveness, but what most enervates this handsome tribute is the fact that so many of the assembled worthies prove incapable of assessing any aspect of their friend's career in any depth or in plain English. Far too many also play up to Nicola Daley's camera and, even those with something worthwhile to say, like Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley, feel the need to give every pronouncement a purple fleck. Oh for more Paloma Picassos. Yet, the majority of those who view Manolos as objets d'art will probably find this glossy infomercial an irresistible treat.

No one could ever accuse Michael Winterbottom of getting stuck in a rut. But he follows a well-trodden path in On the Road, his documentary account of indie band Wolf Alice's 2016 UK tour with support acts Bloody Knees and Swim Deep. Indeed, Winterbottom even comes close to repeating himself, as the fictional romance woven into the familiar touring tropes bears a softcore resemblance to the one that linked the action in 9 Songs (2004).

Sent along by the management company, Estelle Johnson (Leah Harvey) keeps to herself as Joe (James McArdle) and the other roadies load Wolf Alice's equipment for a gig in Belfast. Joe recommends that Estelle sleeps with her head pointing to the back on the tour bus so that she stands a better chance of surviving a crash and checks she is coping on the chopping voyage across the Irish Sea. On arriving at the venue, Estelle introduces her to singer Ellie Roswell, guitarist Joff Oddie, drummer Joel Amey and bassist Theo Ellis to let them know that she will be taking pictures during the soundcheck and the concert. She smiles watching them get used to the stage, as their driving grungy style packs a wallop.

They go down well and the Dublin reception is just as effusive, as Estelle watches `Giant Peach' from the audience. However, a DJing set at a nearby club doesn't go quite as well when two of the lads kill the sound system. Estelle is also told to keep the noise down, as she strums her guitar on the bus en route to Keele and she goes to sit instead with one of Roswell's school friends who has been invited along for the ride.

Glimpses of Bloody Knees and Swim Deep on the Students Union stage are followed by Wolf Alice coming on and going off before we are shown the roadies taking great pains to pack the gear away. Back on the motorway, Joe watches Estelle as she gets up in the night and flirts with her over breakfast, as she admits that she hasn't been to half the places the tour is visiting. She brings a journalist to the Arts Club in Liverpool and Roswell reveals that she took the band's name from a story in Angela Carter's short story collection, The Bloody Chamber. Once again, the camera fixes on the rapt faces of the fans during the snippet coverage of the gig, which culminates with Ellis doing his customary bit of crowd surfing.

In Manchester, Roswell dedicates `Blush' to her boyfriend and smiles at her extrovert bandmates enjoying themselves at the after-show party. Joe's pal Gordon (Jamie Quinn) joins the bus and he suggests that he looks up his mother (Shirley Henderson) when they get to Glasgow because she's in a bad way. He's embarrassed and Estelle shoots him a sympathetic smile, as the bus heads east to Norwich. In a little in-jokey nod to Winterbottom's regular collaborator Steve Coogan, the band do an interview at BBC Radio Norfolk and perform an acoustic version of `Fluffy' before wandering the campus of the University of East Anglia. In the green room, Estelle plays her treble guitar and Oddie has a strum on it before they go on and Amey sings `Swallowtail' from behind the drums.

This segues into more motorway footage as the bus wends its way to Oxford for a gig at the O2 Academy in Cowley Road. A roadie notes that this used to be a carpet warehouse and Estelle video-chats with some teenagers queuing outside. She goes for ice cream with Joe, who reveals he is 26 to her 21 and she is surprised he is so young when he seems so much older. Feeling in a good mood, she sings a love song with another girl on the bus outside the venue and they high-five in delight at their impromptu harmonies. On stage, Wolf Alice play `Freazy' to the eager faces beside Estelle on the front row, but we only get the end of the song, as this is a snapshot of the tour rather than a complete record.

Arriving in Glasgow, Estelle goes in search of towels at the famous Barrowland venue, while Joe hooks up with his mother at the Lauriston pub. Their nothing conversation is intercut with Roswell telling an anecdote about boasting at school about her mum going to New York when she had really only gone to York. Seeing Joe needs cheering up after his dispiriting encounter, Estelle gives him a long kiss before watching Bloody Knees keeping everyone amused in the green room with a stomping acoustic rock pastiche. Once again, the gig is reduced to the final notes before Ellis does his crowd-walking stunt and everyone goes drinking.

By the time the bus arrives in York, the roadies are ready to do their stuff. But Estelle and Roswell are up late and they chat about the strain road life puts on friendships and what it might be like to be in an all-girl band. However, she also slips away to a hotel room with Joe and thinks back on their love-making as she listens to `Bros' that night. In the dressing-room, Ellis relates how a security guard smacked a member of the audience, while Amey slumps back with a sense of anti-climax that the hour-long set they came to do is over and it's back on the bus.

They chat on the bus next day about things that happened during the gig. Oddie footles on the guitar, as the others doze off en route to Folkestone. The band wander to the beach for a photo shoot, while Joe and Estelle fool around on the tideline before finding a room. As they lie naked, she describes life in Peckham and how she used to help her mother with her foster charges and she gets misty-eyed remembering the baby she helped learn to walk before she was adopted. But she is back on the front row at the Leas Cliff Hall for `Silk', while Joe chugs beer in the wings before swinging into action to dismantle the set while the bandmates enthuse about the audience in their changing-room.

Along the coast to Brighton, where band members and roadies have a game of football on the beach, while Estelle supervises a Roswell video shoot on a merry-go-round on the pier. She sings one of her own songs to the admiring nods of the assembled, with Joe smiling proudly. But she is just one of the crowd as Wolf Alice rip through `The Wonderwhy' to boisterous acclaim. A birthday party for one of the support players is equally rowdy and Estelle seems pleased to get some quiet in her bunk, as the bus heads north again to Rock City in Nottingham.

The pace seems to have sapped Roswell's energy and she turns up at the local BBC station (where the big news of the day is a disease attacking the county's ash trees) to record `Fluffy' with a sense of duty rather than enthusiasm. She jokes that she is not on the ball as she can't think of anything to say before `Bros'. But Estelle's mind is also far away, as she thinks back to her latest hotel session with Joe. Wolf Alice have a soft spot for the venue, as it formed their first mosh pit, and they throw in a couple of extra encores to appease the chanting crowd. The Cardiff audience is just as up for it during `You're a Gem' and `Blush'. But, as the camera fixes on the glittered face of an adoring female fan, the trudge back to the dressing-room reminds viewers that what is a special night for those who have bought the tickets with keen anticipation is just another night after just another night for the increasingly exhausted combo.

Ellis complains of a sore elbow, while Oddie plays a lovely acoustic lament over Rowsall having to disappoint a fan who was hoping there would be an after-party. On the bus, Estelle asks Joe about going with the band to America, as she isn't due to fly with them. He jokes he needs to go back to Glasgow and do his washing before he leaves, but she is sad because the adventure (and possibly the romance) is coming to an end, as the roll back into London.

As Bloody Knees prepare for a return to 9 to 5 because they don't earn enough to play full time, Ellis throws up during the soundcheck with the pain in his arm and he heads home to his mum while the replacement bassist, Gengahr's John Victor, learns the songs with Oddie backstage. The crowd begin to filter in and he is still listening to baselines on his phone, while Bloody Knees go through an hilarious psych-up session in their changing-room before going out to have fun on stage. Swim Deep also go down well, as the new-look Wolf Alice hug on the stairs and head out to meet their public.

Snatches from a set that includes `Moaning Lisa Smile' show a band on form and Oddie sings an acoustic paean to Victor once they return to the changing-room. Friends and family come backstage, while the roadies dismantle the gear. Estelle and Joe go to a hotel room, where she reads out the punishing US schedule for April and May before they make love. She accompanies him to the station, but he is clearly not one for goodbyes and she retreats when he doesn't respond to her admission that she is going to miss him.

She takes the Tube back to her flat and, as `Your Love's Whore' plays in the background, she returns to hugs at the office and the tricky task of getting back to normal. Meanwhile, as the credits roll, we see insert highlights of Wolf Alice's Americn tour, as they appear to go from strength to strength.

Despite the best efforts of the excellent Leah Harvey and the admirably low-key James McArdle, the fictional aspect of this rockumentary struggles to capture the imagination. The hints at backstory complexity are teasingly intriguing, while some of the disapproving looks that the roadies shoot Harvey as seizes the opportunity to showcase her own talent are telling, as is the fact she is the only non-white character on the tour. But Winterbottom, cinematographer James Clarke and editor Marc Richardson are primarily intent on conveying the punishing relentlessness of being a band on the road.

In truth, we learn little about Roswell, Oddie, Amey and Ellis, as they were either unwilling to divulge too much or Winterbottom felt his sham romance was more interesting. However, anyone coming fresh to the Grammy-nominated Wolf Alice will be mightily impressed by their neo-grungy sound and the dynamism of their shoegaze stage shows (despite the curious reluctance to show that much of them in full-song action). They will also be charmed by Harvey's soulful contributions to the soundtrack. But, one suspects, this is strictly one for Winterbottom completists and those hoping to relive a cherished experience or spot themselves in the concert footage.