Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/11/2017)

Tired of having to do manual labour on the docks in order to survive because no one is buying his paintings, Paul Gauguin (Vincent Cassel) takes the advance afforded him by his agent and informs his small circle of artistic friends that he intends leaving for French Polynesia in order to live a simpler life and find fresh inspiration. When his Danish wife, Mette (Pernille Bergendorff), informs him that she cannot subject their five children to an uncertain future, Gauguin accuses her of hiding behind her family's bourgeois values. He also listens with little interest as poet Stéphane Mallarmé (Marc Barbé) delivers a farewell oration at a boisterous café gathering that reinforces the sense of ennui that Gauguin feels before he sets sail.

As the rain hammers down outside his cramped quarters, Gauguin paints feverishly by candlelight. He consults sketches and etchings, as he daubs paint on to the canvas, as though inspiration is eluding him and he is finding his new environs to be anything but the paradise he had anticipated. His spirits are dealt a further blow when Mette sends a letter informing him that none of his paintings have sold and that her family has coerced her into terminating their union. Staggering away from the store run by Wei (Jean-Pierre Tchann), where he has run up a considerable tab, the coughing Gauguin collapses on the path and is carried to the clinic in Mataiea by a village youth named Jotepha (Pua-Taï Hikutini), where Henri Vallin (Malik Zidi) tells him that he has suffered a heart attack and that his diabetic condition will deteriorate unless he improves his diet.

Tired of painting on the window, Gauguin discharges himself and entrusts a letter to the doctor, in which he promises Mette that their children will one day be proud of their father. He proceeds on horseback through the jungle and emerges in a sunny upland, where he breathes fresher air and bathes in a waterfall pool. However, his attempts to catch fish with a homemade spear and his rifle are unsuccessful and he is grateful to wind up in a remote settlement, where he wakes to find the children playing with his paints.

Welcomed by Onati (Teiva Manoi) and his wife, Ruita (Tiare Hoata), Gauguin takes the name `Kokay' because they can't pronounce his surname. He also accepts their offer to marry their teenage daughter, Tehura (Tuheï Adams), after she serves them during a meal. Despite her youth, the girl seems to know what she wants and agrees to return with Gauguin to Mataiea. However, having asked if he is a good man, Ruita warns him that Tehura will be free to leave after one cycle of the moon if she discovers the union is not to her liking.

As they ride back across the island, Gauguin shows Tehura the stars and teaches her how to draw. She looks through his sketchbook and finds a photograph of his family, but says nothing about it. One night, she tells him the creation myth of Ta'aroa and he is charmed by her innocence and willingness to learn. He poses her with her chin in her hand and they make love on his rickety bed. But Tehura notices Jotepha fooling around with his friends when she does the laundry in the river and is also taken by the sight of the villagers leaving the missionary church after a service.

Vallin comes to visit and reminds Gauguin that he needs treatment if he is to keep his body going long enough to realise his ambitions. He is impressed with the pictures of Tehura and suggests that she is a Tahitian Venus. Gauguin explains that she has an unspoilt savagery that harks back to the dawn of human time and he is determined to do justice to her beauty. Vallin recognises that Gauguin has tapped into a rich vein of inspiration and agrees to take his paintings to the port. Meanwhile, Gauguin raids the shop for sacks, so that he can keep producing images of Tehura, whose vitality has caught the eye of Jotepha, as he watches her playing with the children who have attached themselves to the grey-bearded stranger.

Revitalised by the sense that he is achieving something worthwhile, Gauguin plays with the children and enjoys the sound of their laughter. But he is taken aback when Tehura asks for a white dress so that she can go to church and he tries to tell her that she doesn't need religion to lead a fully and contented life. However, she is moved by the singing during the service and smiles at Jotepha, as she stands next to him in the pew. Sensing something is developing between them, Gauguin follows the pair into the woods and calls for Jotepha to help him cut some branches, as he has run out of paint and has decided to sculpt in wood in order to stay busy. Fascinated, Jotepha copies Gauguin's hammer and chisel technique, only for the Frenchman to urge him create for himself rather than follow the example of others (which is, of course, essentially what Gauguin is doing in taking inspiration from Tahiti's artefacts and people).

Taking a cart to Papeete, Gauguin lays out his wares in the marketplace and watches the civil servants and their families strolling around the colony's capital as if they owned it. Eventually, a young man wakes Gauguin from his slumbers and haggles down the price for one of the sculptures and he uses the money to buy a white dress for Tehura. He also goes to a café and looks on, as drunken Frenchmen paw at the local girls, with a detestable sense of superiority. By the time he returns to his studio, it's already dark and he finds Tehura naked and face down on the bed, as she is frightened that evil spirits have entered the hut because the candles have gone out. Rather than reassure her, however, Gauguin orders her to hold the pose and begins sketching by lamplight.

With Wei no longer willing to give him credit, Gauguin is forced to go fishing and the locals tease him when he catches three fish with the hook in the lower lip, as this means his wife is unfaithful. Tehura is hurt when he tells her about their suspicions and she is deeply hurt and suggests that his jealousy will fester unless he releases his emotions by striking her. He falls silent at her reproach, but does lash out at Jotepha when he declares that he has producing statues for the white folks to buy, as Gauguin hoped he had taught him to channel his creativity rather than simply churn out tourist trinkets. Shortly afterwards, Tehura suffers a miscarriage and asks Gauguin to take her home. He vows to look after her and, after seeing her sleeping beside Jotepha (and deciding against shooting them), he leaves Mataiea and gets a job hauling sacks on the waterfront in Papeete. Meals with Tehura are taken in silence, as he tries to get back on his feet. But Vallin becomes increasingly concerned for his health and Gauguin receives a communication that he is to be deported back to France as a pauper. He refuses to go and, after he sees Jotepha dressed in a smart suit from the money he makes selling his statues in the market, Gauguin takes to locking Tehura in while he is toiling at the docks. But Jotepha finds her and Gauguin returns home to find the front door has been forced. Yet Tehura is waiting for him and he paints her one last time before taking the boat back to France.

A closing sequence of captions informs us that Gauguin was repatriated by the Ministry of the Interior as `an artist in distress'. However, he exhibited 41 of his Tahitian pictures to mixed reviews in the gallery owned by Paul Durand-Ruel. After spending time in Brittany and in Copenhagen with his family, he visited Tahiti again, as well as the Marquesas, where he painted some of modern art's greatest masterpieces. Yet, he died alone and destitute on 8 May 1903. We see some of these as the credits roll and, interestingly, none of Céline Guignard Rajot's costumes correspond with those shown in the paintings. This is a minor detail, but it rather sums up Deluc's approach to reconstructing history.

No mention is made of the fact that Tehura was just 13 years old when she became Gauguin's companion and some will be disconcerted by the fact that Tuhei Adams, who appears topless in one sequence, is only four years older. But, even if we accept that the events depicted occurred in a very different time and place, it seems disingenuous to overlook such a crucial character trait. However, Deluc and his cohorts are more intent on dissecting the colonial mentality and the legacy of the missionary church than they are in exposing an artistic titan as a syphilitic paedophile.

There's nothing salacious about the scenes centring on the physical side of Gauguin's relationship with Tehura and Vincent Cassel manages to convey a sense of tenderness in a committed performance that often requires him to stare through rheumy eyes at a world that he often feels unworthy to capture. Fewer demands are made on Adams and Pua-Taï Hikutini, who are often required to look beautiful and exotic. Consequently, we learn nothing about their inner lives or what happened to them after Gauguin returned to France. But Deluc has a penchant for presuming considerable foreknowledge and for banking on a lack of audience curiosity.

Yet, while this fragmentary episode fails as biography and drama, Emmanuelle Cuillery's production design is notable, while cinematographer Pierre Cottereau ably contrasts the vibrant colours of the island and the canvases with the half-lit gloom in which Gauguin worked. He also makes effective use of a shallow depth of field to suggest Gauguin's insularity on Tahiti and the narrowness of his focus, as someone who lived to paint and little more. With violin score Warren Ellis's score being sparingly employed during the more sombre moments, this is clearly a heartfelt project. But its subject remains suspect, as do Dulac's motives for insisting on airbrushing him.

Having made a decent job of reviving an old tele-favourite in Belle and Sebastien (2013), experienced documentarist Nicolas Vanier returns with School of Life, another period piece that harks back to the 1920s for a rite of passage that feels as though it should have been adapted from a beloved childhood novel. Co-scripted by Jérôme Tonnerre and set in Sologne in north-central France, the story calls to mind Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939), as it pits a poacher against a gamekeeper on a large country estate. But, rather than being a biting indictment of the class system at a time when La Patrie was dancing on the edge of a volcano, this is a rose-tinted recreation that allows a town mouse to discover his destiny in a rugged rustic setting.

Summoned to an orphanage in Paris in 1927, Valérie Karsenti is so shocked by the slap that the director gives to young Jean Scandel in the dormitory that she agrees to foster him for the summer on the vast country estate where she works as a maid. The boy remains politely sullen on the train journey to the Loiret and is reluctant to call Karsenti `maman', even though she claims that they are related because she is the son of her cousin's nephew.

Taken by the yard abutting Karsenti's cottage, Scandel is horrified when she turns the rabbit he had been stroking into supper and he is stopped from opening the hutches to release the others by her gruff gamekeeper husband, Eric Elmosnino. He takes Scandel to feed the hunting hounds belonging to Count François Berléand and warns him to steer clear of François Cluzet, a roguish poacher who belongs behind bars. However, Karsenti insists he is a nice chap and shows Scandel the rickety boat on the river he calls home.

Intrigued by someone who refuses to play by the rules, Scandel watches Cluzet fishing and dives into rescue his little dog, Boy (who is female), when she is swept away by the current. Yet, while he lets Scandel dry out on his gadget-laden boat, Cluzet suspects that he is spying for Elmosnino and orders him to stay away. That night, however, Scandel sees Karsenti put a towel out to dry in the window as a signal to Cluzet after Elmosnino goes on his rounds and he threatens to expose their dalliance unless Cluzet agrees to let him tag along on his scavenging route through the woods.

The poacher teaches the boy how to read animal tracks and shows him how he uses reversible soles on his boots to keep Elmosnino guessing about his movements. They hide behind a rock, as Berléand rides with his hounds in pursuit of stags and reprimands Elmosnino for wasting his energies on Cluzet when he has no objection to him taking the odd rabbit when they are overrun with the creatures and reminds him that he has no time for fences on his land. During a simple lunch of bread and sausage, Cluzet captures a snake slithering through the undergrowth and tells Scandel about the warning chirrups of the warblers that keep watch over the woodland.

Karsenti is content for Scandel to spend his time with Cluzet, even though they often get up to mischief by stealing Frédéric Saurel's barrow when he stops for a nap and hoisting it up in a tree. But she reminds him not to let Elmosnino see them together. She also tells him to keep out of the manor house, as Berléand detests children. But Scandel can't resist sneaking through an open door and he is looking at the animal trophies on the staircase when Berléand spots him. He seems to accept Karsenti's reassurance that it won't happen again. But, when she informs her husband that Scandel's father was killed during the Great War, Elmosnino suspects she is not telling the whole truth, especially when she proves so evasive whenever the boy's mother is mentioned.

Cluzet shows Scandel how to tie a fishing fly and stations him on a bridge over the river to guide his casting in pursuit of a large salmon. They succeed in snaring the fish and Scandel is decorated with the lure on his pullover for catching it in his net. During lunch, Cluzet dismisses religion and curses the arrival of some Gypsy caravans, as he hates the way they steal from Berléand. When Scandel points out that he does the same thing, Cluzet gives him a glass of wine to change the subject and he is still feeling a little tiddly when Karsenti serves her husband a plate of trotters and ears that causes the boy to flee from the table with his hand over his mouth.

While Karsenti is at the market tearing a strip off Cluzet for getting a child drunk, Scandel fishes in a shady bend of the river. He fails to hear Ilona Cabrera sneaking up behind him and hiding his pail and, when he turns to see her skipping away through the long grass, he is immediately enchanted by her. Following her to the camp, he watches her dance when Berléand comes to greet the Gypsy king, Affif Ben Badra. He is still thinking about her when Elmosnino catches him laying traps with Cluzet's knife and he is frogmarched back to the cottage, where Elmosnino warns Karsenti that Scandel will be dispatched back to Paris unless he behaves. Moreover, he informs Cluzet that Scandel has welched on him and vows to use his evidence in front of a judge.

Concerned rather than intimidated, Cluzet goes about his business and chats to Berléand when he finds him gathering mushrooms. The count has taken a shine to Scandel since they discussed stags on the trophy staircase and they the boy mentioned seeing a fabled 18-point monarch roaming the grounds. But Karsenti has to keep reminding Scandel to mind his Ps and Qs and scolds him when he claims to have seen Berléand's daughter riding her horse in the woods, as she died many years ago and the mere mention of her name pains the old gentleman. Yet Berléand confides to Cluzet that Scandel reminds him of someone and they agree that it's a shame that Elmosnino has clamped down on him and made him start school.

Upset by Elmosnino's lie that he has squealed on his friend, Scandel readily conspires with Karsenti when Elmosnino announces that he is going out to catch him poaching with lamps. While Karsenti gets Elmosnino drunk and lures him into the bedroom, Scandel goes in search of Cluzet, who upbraids him for sneaking up on him in the dark, as he could easily have taken a bullet. He is grateful for the warning, however, and sends Scandel home with Saurel.

Shortly afterwards, Scandel breaks into the desk drawer where Karsenti keeps her secret things and reads a letter from a woman with the same name as his late mother. He asks if Karsenti's friend is her mother, but she is too flustered to reply and he goes in search of Saurel, who might know about someone named Mathilde, as he has spent his entire life on the estate. The kindly peasant recalls giving a young girl a ride in his barrow many years before, but she died and this revelation prompts Scandel to visit the small churchyard, where he finds a tombstone bearing his mother's name. Cluzet finds him sitting beside the grave and advises the boy to focus on living to the full rather than fretting about the past, as life passes far too quickly.

Berléand's wastrel son, Thomas Durand, comes for a visit with some bright young friends and the old man seeks sanctuary in the stables. Scandel asks about an ailing white horse in one of the stalls and, when Berléand reveals that nobody has ridden it since his daughter died, Scandel tells him his surname and the count falls to the floor in shock. He is grateful to Karsenti for bringing the boy home, but nothing more is said about the matter, as rumours have spread about the monarch returning to its glen and Berléand and Elmosnino are bent on catching it.

After reading an essay he has written about the stag, Scandel's teacher, Murielle Huet des Aunay, implores him to say nothing of its whereabouts, as she thinks it's a noble creature and that it would be a crime if someone shot it for sport. Fortunately, Berléand feels the same way after a lengthy chase that sees the stag lose the hounds by wading through the river. Cluzet brings the news to Scandel at the school gates and Huet des Aunay joins them in gazing on the beast, as it recovers from its exertions. But Berléand is thrown from his horse while riding home and, while he is bedridden, Durand determines to bag the trophy for himself and orders Elmosnino to flush it out with the hounds. When the gamekeeper protests in front of Durand's friends, he is reminded of his place with a sneer before the party goes out to shoot geese.

When Durand kills a heron by mistake, Cabrera puts a hex on him and he drives to the Gypsy camp and orders them to leave. When Ben Badra protests, Durand informs him that things will be different when he inherits the estate and Scandel learns from Cabrera's grandmother, Claudine Baschet, that the count had always protected them because he had been in love with a Gypsy girl in his youth. His parents had forced them apart and, as Karsenti tells Scandel when he gets home, he had made the same mistake with his daughter, after she had fallen in love with a railroad navvy. They had eloped to Paris, where Scandel had been born shortly after his father had died in the trenches. But the doctors had been unable to save his mother and he had been sent to an orphanage because Berléand couldn't live with the shame of his actions.

He has time to apologise to Scandel for betraying his mother and Karsenti takes him to the lakeside chapel where she is buried. But, no sooner has Berléand passed away than Durand starts to throw his weight around. In addition to fencing off the property to keep intruders out, he declares his ambition to kill the monarch, as it was partly responsible for his father's death. Cluzet is appalled by both decisions, as fencing the estate will restrict the movement of larger animals. But, while Elmosnino dislikes Durand, he has his job to do and he dons his scarlet hunting tunic and blows his horn to guide the pack. However, when Cluzet fires at Durand as he takes aim at the stag, Elmosnino pushes him over when he tries to shoot the poacher. Moreover, he smiles with pride when Scandel leads the hounds away and the old foes even manage to exchange a joke when Durand fires his gamekeeper.

But Durand has a surprise in store when a lawyer arrives to read Berléand's will, as not only has he granted the Gypsies free access in perpetuity to the estate, but he has also left the manor to Scandel, leaving Durand in sole possession of a vinegar factory in Orleans to provide a modest income. As Karsenti and Elmosnino have also been given the deeds to their cottage, everyone is happy, including Cluzet, who is also made a gamekeeper and, as the film ends, he joins with his employer and neighbours to steer some wild boar away from the crops and vineyard.

Despite the hazy glow over this closing sequence and the wildlife images accompanying the credits, it's hard to ignore the fate that awaits the population of this part of France in just 13 years time. But Vanier clearly intends this to be a happy ending, in which the locals are able to retain a stake in their land rather than have it pass to a feckless playboy who would exploit it solely for his own benefit. The political resonance of such a viewpoint is merely tangential, however, as Vanier and Tonnerre invoke the spirit of Marcel Pagnol for purely nostalgic purposes.

At times, they allow their tale to meander and don't strive particularly hard to guard its secrets. Moreover, they pack too much contrivance into the final third, with Durand being a feebly one-dimensional villain. Cluzet and Elmosnino's well-matched adversaries are far more rounded, but even they slip into the background, as Scandel concentrates on uncovering the truth about his ancestry. Indeed, only the kindly Karsenti remains a constant, as the photogenic youth rises to his rightful place. Yet, even this Gallic Fauntleroy is rather sketchily limned, as his rough city edges slide away and he grows increasingly to the manor born.

As one might expect of a heritage picture of this kind, the production values are admirable, with Éric Guichard's views of the house and grounds almost giving the action a fairytale feel. Production designer Sébastian Birchler does a nice job of the gamekeeper's cottage and the poacher's boat, while Adélaïde Gosselin's costumes stop well short of shabby chic. Similarly, Armand Amar's gentle orchestral score resists the temptation to gild the engagingly restrained narrative with emotional swirls. Consequently, while it may be overly cosy in its evocation of both time and place, this should find a ready audience among those raised on Sunday evening serials.

Guadeloupe-born comedian Éric Judor is best known for his collaboration with Ramzy Bedia in comic romps like Charles Nemes's Don't Die Too Hard! (2001) and Philippe Haim's Lucky Luke and the Daltons (2004). The pair co-directed Seuls Two (2008), while Judor took the helm alone for La Tour 2 contrôle infernale (2016). But there's no sign of Bedia in Problemos, which sees Judor star and direct in an end-of-days scenario scripted by Noé Debré and Blanche Gardin. Proving conclusively that jokes don't always translate or travel well, this satire on New Age ideologies gets off to a rocky start and flounders around in an increasingly tiresome bid to find something to ruffle, if not exactly offend everyone.

Éric Judor is far from happy that wife Célia Rosich has talked him into spending a weekend at the alternative community where her former yoga teacher, Michel Nabokoff, resides. The couples teenage daughter, Marie Helmer, is even more annoyed when she is forced to hand over her tablet because all electronic gadgets are banned from the site because one of the group suffers from electro-sensitivity. When Helmer makes a scene and screams, Judor unleashes a torrent of verbal abuse that results in everyone staring at him and he takes an immediate dislike to Nabokoff when he patronises him.

Once this prologue is completed, Act One, `The Best Tomatoes in the Region', begins with Helmer creating another commotion when she refuses to play with young Zakaria Benyahya and his mother, Blanche Gardin, makes it clear that she disapproves of Judor and his attitude towards their retreat. While Helmer is allowed to leave the perimeter for 15 minutes to calm down with her tablet, Judor and Rosich go for a walk around an area of wetland that the group is bent on stopping becoming a water park. Suddenly, riot police appear and fire tear gas into the compound. A local activist urges them to negotiate rather than blockade themselves in. But Dorothée Pousséo peels off her top and dances in defiance, while her friends chant `resistance' and `revolution' at the cops.

Needing some time to himself, Judor slips away from the family and bumps into Nabokoff's 16 year-old bikini-clad daughter, Claire Chust, who has come for a two-week visit. She asks Judor to fetch some cooking-oil from the kitchen to help her tan and he hurries back to the camp with a leering grin on his face. However, no sooner has he started massaging Chust's back than Helmer appears with her tablet and starts filming her father in compromising action. Nabokoff also comes through the undergrowth and chides Chust for wasting precious foodstuffs.

Having escaped censure, Judor finds himself upsetting the group again at dinner, when he shouts at a dog that has stolen his chicken. He is reprimanded by Marc Fraize and his adoring wife Blandine Ruiz for not treating animals with due respect, as they roamed the planet before humans and we should be grateful to them for allowing us to share their home. But the disdain is even more vehement when Judor mocks Gardin's song-filled seminar on alternatives to sanitary towels and he is branded a chauvinist oaf. Fraize becomes emotional while calling for gender equality and Gardin and Pousséo rip into Judor again when Rosich complains about having to wax her bikini line. They suggest that he should abandon outdated proprietorial attitudes and suggest he embraces polyamory. Rosich shoots him a dirty look when he doesn't dismiss this proposal out of hand and Judor is once again subjected to criticism when he flinches at an elderly woman offering her services.

At that moment, they are summoned to the barricade, as the police cordon has been lifted and Nabokoff is suspicious that the authorities are trying to catch them off their guard. He suggests that they put on a show of harmony and Rosich enters into the spirit by announcing that they are going to stay for a fortnight. Judor is horrified, but his protests are shouted down by Fraize, who urges them to shun the `Babylonian' urban bubble, in which supermarkets have no exits and crisps have artificially added crunchiness.

Judor is wondering what on earth he is talking about when Chust pipes up that everyone on Twitter is discussing `panda mix'. Snatching the phone, Judor realises that the hot topic is a pandemic that has wiped out millions of people since spreading from Venezuela. They deduce that this is probably why the cops have vanished and Nabokoff, Fraize and Eddy Leduc volunteer to go to the nearby village of Lantenay to investigate.

Venturing into the outside world, they drive slowly along the country lane until they come to a pile of dead bodies beside a road block. Fraize goes to check on them and promptly collapses, leaving Nabokoff to console the grieving Ruiz. Gardin is criticised for dismissing everything on social media as drivel, but reasserts her position when Nabokoff declares the next morning to be the first day of the New World and she brands it `Oonday the krisken of Tarkoon'. A despairing Judor begins to feel he is surrounded by idiots and fears for the worst when Nabokoff's suggestion that they should abandon all imposed laws and start making their own is approved by a show of jazz hands.

This decision takes us into Act Two, `Tonight You Don't Sleep in the Tent', which opens with a `circle of speech' discussion about the sleeping arrangements. However, Leduc is unhappy that Youssef Hajdi has returned from a foraging expedition in the woods and everyone takes cover in a large tent until Hajdi agrees to undergo a period of quarantine to prove he isn't contaminated. As Nabokoff knows the virus kills instantaneously, such precautions seem preposterous. But no one is prepared to take a chance and they also insist that shaman Bun Hay Mean should also remain outside the sanctuary because he smells.

While preparing dinner, Rosich and Pousséo upset Gardin by inquiring about Benyahya's gender and she claims that she has no right to impose a personality upon her child. But the camp is disturbed soon afterwards by the sound of loud music and everyone is astonished to discover that Hajdi has built himself a magnificent treehouse. They are impressed that he has made his own glass window and, as they prowl round by storm lantern, they realise that he has also erected a windmill to generate power. As Bun sleeps beneath the stilts on which the edifice rests, Hajdi invites his neighbours to see what they can find at the dump, as the kind of gadgets they had forsworn might come in useful.

Leduc finds two sheep and announces that he intends raising a flock. However, everyone is too hungry to consent to his plan and he draws on the killing skills learned on duty in Syria to slaughter one of the animals for the communal table. After supper, Pousséo announces that the meat has given her a blood rush and Gardin's brother, Arnaud Henriet, takes up her offer of some canoodling. But the siblings fall out when Henriet sees nothing wrong in Chust using the exercise bike that Hajdi has attached to his water heater and shows a little too much interest in the moans of ecstasy that the teenager emits while having a hot shower.

Furious when Henriet accuses her of being a repressed lesbian, Gardin asks Nabokoff to reprimand her brother and force him into doing some chores. Meanwhile, Leduc has also been seduced by the prospect of getting clean and he agrees to paint Hajdi's windows in return for some hot water. His bellows of pleasure also ring around the camp and Gardin accuses Hajdi of sex slavery before she begins bickering with Henriet again.

Concerned by these internal divisions, Nabokoff goes to see Hajdi at the start of Act Three, `That Wasn't Our Conception of Society.' Once inside the house, however, Nabokoff is mightily impressed and also takes a shower. As he returns to the camp, he bumps into Judor, who is puzzled why Chust is talking to a tree. Nabokoff explains that he convinced his daughter to come and stay by informing her that she would be on a reality TV show and that she thinks cameras are embedded in some of the trees. Spotting an opportunity to exploit the naive teen, Judor tells her that he is from the network and can guarantee that she will get more viewer votes that Pousséo if she sleeps with him.

Unsure what to do for the best, Chust seeks out Bun, who is spaced out on datura. He makes some dubious remarks about black men that echo Hajdi's earlier comments about Asians before slipping into a fatal coma. The group hold a funeral service and float Bun's body down river on a decorated bier. However, Gardin blames Hajdi for failing to keep an eye on him and the others tell her to cut Hajdi some slack as he is entitled to live as he pleases. Moreover, they have all benefited from his generosity. But his little fiefdom survives no longer than Leduc, who gets swept away while trying to free Bun's bier from some rocks, as Benyahya causes a fire by throwing a stone through the window and Gardin has to stop Hajdi from throttling her child.

Disowned by the others, Hajdi leaves the camp and Fraize's ghost appears to advise Nabokoff to go north in searching for him. No one joins the expedition, however, so Judor mooches around the compound in a bid to determine whether Benyaliya is male or female. Unfortunately, Gardin catches him in the act and denounces him as a pervert. Chust also accuses him of trying to groom her and Gardin seizes the opportunity to call an election for new leadership. Judor is dismayed when Rosich abandons Nabokoff to support Gardin and stalks into the wilds to find Hajdi. He has taken up residence in a hole in the ground and has concocted a taser to catch rabbits. Still smarting with Gardin, Judor borrows the device to teach her a lesson and finds her trying to persuade Leduc to sleep with her so they can save the species.

Having incapacitated Gardin, Judor puts her behind bars. But, when Chust finds Nabokoff's head on a spike in the woods, he realises that a rival gang of feral survivors must be on the rampage and releases Gardin to negotiate with them, as camp leader. As her friends watch from the bushes, Gardin is seized and butchered by the ringleaders and they blame Judor for her death. They demand he comes up with a plan of action, but he can think of nothing other than a wall to protect them.

He tries to boost morale with a speech about honouring the memory of those lost. But he forgets to mention Fraize, whose ghost warns against the evils of war. As everyone starts singing `Lollipop' by The Chordettes. Victor smiles at the peaceful sentiments of these well-intentioned kooks. But he insists that their only hope of survival lies in wasting their foe and the picture ends with a bravura assault on the marauders' camp.

During the closing credits, a cutaway reveals that Judor was in the process of coercing Chust into sleeping with him when she found her father's head on a spike. Designed to sign off on one last near-the-knuckle gag, it merely serves to remind us how ill-judged this entire enterprise is. The risible storyline, crass caricatures and lazy satire are bad enough, but the incessant sexism and throwaway racist banter are unpardonable and it adds to the sense of unease that Blanche Gardin helped write the script.

The performances are spirited, while cinematographer Vincent Muller conveys something of the camp's aura. But the only notable contribution comes from production designer Arnaud Roth, who revels in filling Hajda's luxury retreat with quirky mod cons. Little else about this resistibly smug farrago will linger long in the memory, however.

A graduate of café-théâtre, television and stand-up comedy, Florence Foresti has spent a decade taking offbeat character parts in such local releases as Anne-Marie Étienne's Si c'était lui... (2007) and Éric Lavaine's Barbecue (2014). But she demonstrates that she has the personality and presence to carry a weighty drama in costume designer Anne-Gaëlle Daval's directorial debut, De Plus Belle, which examines how women who have beaten cancer come to terms with how they and other people see their bodies.

Despite having been told she is in remission from breast cancer, 40 year-old Lyon single mother Florence Foresti is struggling to throw herself into a night of clubbing with her friends and younger sister, Olivia Bonamy. Feeling uncomfortable in a long, black wig, she slips outside and calls doctor brother Jonathan Cohen at one in the morning to make an urgent appointment, so that he can reassure her that she really is clear after a four-year battle.

On returning to the nightclub, Foresti dismisses the attention of handsome stranger Mathieu Kassovitz, as she thinks he is far too young for her and has only come over to flirt with Bonamy. When he insists that he is interested in her, Foresti explains that she isn't looking for a man at the moment, especially one with a talent to amuse and infuriate her at the same time.

Later that morning, Cohen confirms that Foresti is cured and suggests that having a love affair might be a good way of channelling her energies now that she doesn't have to focus on beating a disease. Foresti declares that she has enough to do raising teenage daughter Jeanne Astier. But she is less than impressed when her mother buys her a box of tampons as a gift to celebrate becoming a woman and informs Foresti that her wig makes her look like Morticia Addams. The next day, therefore, Foresti ventures into a chic wig shop run by Nicole Garcia, who gives her a makeover and reminds her that 7/10ths of anyone's beauty is made up on refinements.

Pleased with her new look, Foresti shows it to her fussy florist mother, Josée Drevon, while they work on the bouquets for a funeral. She thinks that Foresti should think less about herself and could benefit from confronting some real problems by joining her in volunteering to help the poor. Trying to remain civil, Foresti is almost relieved to get a phone call from Kassovitz and agrees to a date when she can't think of enough credible excuses to put him off.

On her way home, she returns the bobbed wig to Garcia. However, she is in her upstairs studio giving a body image seminar to a group of middle-aged women who are required to gaze at themselves in a mirror while caressing their faces and arms in an effort to remind themselves what it felt like to be beautiful and desired. As she is too timid to leave, Foresti finds herself in the line-up, as Garcia urges the class to reclaim themselves as women. Initially, she feels self-conscious. But, as she looks around at women of all ages, shapes and sizes, she begins to relax and enjoy the sensation.

The next day, Foresti teeters along some cobbles in a pair of turquoise heels and waits for Kassovitz outside a café. When he arrives on a motorbike, however, he tells her that there has been a change of plan and hands her a helmet. Clambering on to the back of the bike, Foresti clings on, as Kassovitz heads for the retirement home where his grandmother lives. Perrette Souplex adores Kassovitz and reassures Foresti that he's a good boy really. They go to the canteen for lunch, where Souplex informs friends Michel Charell and Claude Leveque that Kassovitz is an expert when it comes to women and that they should listen to his tips. He tells them to look around and urges them to read the body language of the female residents, as they want to feel affection as much as they do.

Foresti confirms that women like to be touched and she smiles at Kassovitz for making Souplex and her pals feel so good about themselves. However, the amorous mood is shattered when one of the seniors blows his nose loudly and Kassovitz despairs at the talent he has to work with. On arriving home, Foresti thanks him for a fun day and tries to hand back the helmet. But he urges her to keep it, as it's going to come in useful.

Unsure of her feelings, Foresti says nothing about Kassovitz to Drevon, who is trying to set her up with a gap-toothed organist at her church. She criticises her daughter for working too slowly in their nursery greenhouse and suggests that she takes a leaf out of Bonamy's book. But Foresti loses her temper and says she is tired of being compared with her beautiful sister and wishes that people would realise that she can't pass a reflective surface without being reminded of her own deficiencies.

Needing a confidence boost, therefore, she returns to Garcia's workshop and dons a tight black vest, leggings and strappy heels to shuffle, stomp, shout and clasp her elbows in an exercise designed to channel aggression into strength. During the cool-down session, Garcia informs the class that she intends to put on a show that will require them to learn striptease techniques. However, Foresti refuses to undress in public, especially if her mother is in the audience. But Garcia reassures her that it will be an empowering experience and the rest of the group seem keen to give it a try.

That night, Astier helps Foresti choose a dress to return the crash helmet to Kassovitz. She takes a ferry to his part of town and he is disappointed that she has brought the helmet back. He makes tea and jokes that he has a `listening and sympathy' routine that is guaranteed to lure women into bed. Forest admits that she hasn't been with anyone for three years and dances with him when he puts Joe Cocker's `You Are So Beautiful' on the stereo. Kassovitz lifts her off the floor and Foresti clings to him. But, she feels the need to take stock in the bathroom and emerges to tease Kassovitz about the number of products he has purchased from the shopping channel. He protests that he is an insomniac and has bought tons of gym equipment and kitchen appliances he simply doesn't need.

At that moment, his grandmother calls to ask if he has snapped up any bargains and Foresti is touched by the fact that he has purchased magic sweepers and wonder massagers to maintain a connection with Souplex. However, she backs away when Kassovitz tries to put an arm around her and feels flustered as she says her goodbyes. Sitting on the quayside, Foresti wonders what to do, as she likes Kassovitz, but doesn't feel ready to let him see (and judge) her body.

Seeking reassurance, she makes an appointment with Cohen and ribs him about a nurse who clearly has a crush on him. He insists he is too busy with his family for any distractions and Forest is surprised when the lunchtime discussion among Garcia's class turns to relationships. They have moved into a larger hall with a stage and Foresti is appalled when Garcia shows up with bodybuilder Victor Chambon and cleaner Alexander Michel, who will be their audience for their first-time strips. Farida Ouchani, Sabine Pakora, Claudette Walker, Murelle Boura, Sarah Espour and Angélique Vergara all seem up for the challenge, however, and the elderly Walker is the first to take the plunge.

Gripped by panic, Foresti rushes into the washroom to compose herself. She wants to run away, but knows that she needs to face up to her situation and she emerges with renewed resolve and, even though Chambon keeps his head on the table, she feels proud of herself when Michael joins her classmates in applauding her routine. Buoyed by the experience, she meets Kassovitz for ice cream beside the river. She asks why he collects girls and he reveals that he was teased at school for having a nose like Nicolas Sarkozy and now feels better about himself. Forest examines his nose and compliments him and he kisses her as the sun sets over the city.

Just as she starts to feel she has turned a corner, however, Foresti learns that her cancer has returned. Cohen lies beside her to comfort her and suggests that she has a double mastectomy. Foresti tries to put on a brave face and requests implants like Angelina Jolie's. She also recalls how her brother had climbed into her bed during childhood storms and he urges her to be brave because things could get pretty frightening. When Kassovitz calls round, however, she refuses to answer the door without her wig, even when he claims that he wants to know everything about her. Eventually, her silence prompts him to give up and Foresti slumps to the floor in self-pity.

She also tells Garcia that she is pulling out of the show. But she gives Foresti a pep talk and suggests that she should view her striptease as a farewell celebration of her breasts. Reluctantly, Forest agrees to stay with the group, but she is still feeling fragile when Bonamy criticises her for not pulling her weight at work. Fuming that she is entitled to a private life, Bonamy leaves her sister to cash up alone. Taking advantage of the space in the darkened greenhouse, Forest practices her striptease and removes her bra just as Bonamy returns to apologise. She is upset because she knows that her husband is cheating on her and they ponder the male fascination with breasts after Foresti explains what she is doing and why.

The sisters hug, as Bonamy offers to swap bodies and they meet up again a few days later for a family lunch. Cohen chides Foresti for keeping the news from Drevon and she promises to broach the subject while cooking. However, she storms off when Drevon criticises her for snapping too many green beans and she sits with niece Zoe Laroche, while she draws herself as a princess. Trying to make conversation, Cohen asks about Kassovitz and Foresti confesses that she broke up with him to avoid him learning the truth about her illness. Asking Drevon to make his favourite French fries to distract her, Cohen dispatches his sister to make up with Kassovitz. But, as they chat in his living-room, a girl descends the stairs in her underwear and Foresti leaves an invitation to the show on the sideboard before taking her leave.

Returning to the lunch table, Forest finds herself having to defend Astier when Drevon criticises her for wearing make-up and a t-shirt with a blasphemous slogan. However, her ire switches to Cohen's teenage daughter, Lorraine Thebault, who is stoned after smoking a joint on the garden swing. Cohen tries to keep the peace, but Foresti congratulates Astier for having the confidence to express herself at 15 and wishes that she had been able to do the same.

After lunch, however, Foresti attempts to patch things up and tells Drevon that the cancer has returned. She asks why her mother had stopped her from attending ballet classes as a child and she insists that she had only been trying to spare her taunts, as she had been so podgy and the other girls would have been merciless. Foresti persists and inquires whether Drevon thinks she's ugly. But she explains that she looks like her late father and reveals that she had never understood why such a handsome man would have chosen someone as plain as she was. She had spent their entire married life waiting for him to betray her and she had deeply resented how insecure this made her feel. Yet, he had remained faithful until his dying day and she now values Forest because she is such a clear reminder of the man she had loved.

Touched by the idea that she has a filial duty to keep her father's spirit alive, Foresti commits to the show. As she puts on a blue feathered head-dress with the audience taking its seats, however, she gets a phone call from Astier saying that she is stranded at a bus stop in the sticks and needs picking up. Promising Garcia that she will be back in time, Foresti goes to find her daughter, who explains that she had refused to sleep with her boyfriend when she went to study at his house and he had thrown her out. Proud her Astier for standing up for herself, Foresti calls Cohen to collect them. He already has Bonamy and Drevon in the car and the latter has to intervene when the sisters start bickering about Cohen's driving. Bonamy complains that Cohen is Drevon's favourite and Foresti pulls a face when her mother insists that she loves them all equally.

Arriving back at the venue, Foresti rejoins her fellow performers, as her family shuffle into their seats. The lights dim and `Gopher Mambo' plays over the speakers, as Foresti appears in a jungle setting as a bird of paradise. The others strut their stuff about the stage and remove their bustiers. But, just as everyone unhooks their bras and turns their back on the audience, Foresti spots Kassovitz lurking at the rear of the auditorium. Facing front, she pulls off her wig to reveal her bald scalp and Drevon applauds her courage and confides to Astier that she saw a lot worse when she was at boarding school. Foresti beams with relief at having survived this ordeal, but she sees Kassovitz slip away and doesn't expect to see him again, as she accepts the congratulations of her family in the foyer.

Some time later, Foresti is on a hospital ward waiting for her operation. Cohen arrives with a wheelchair and promises he will ensure she gets the full Jolie treatment. Cohen reprimands them for being vulgar and they make her smile by taunting her for being such a strict and disapproving mother. Before they set off, Cohen places the wig on his sister's head and they venture into the corridor. Much to Foresti's surprise, she sees Kassovitz waiting for her. He asks if her breasts had been nice and she says his hands would have been too big for them. So, he hold up his span and tells Cohen to produce something that would make a nice fit. Kassovitz puts his hand on Foresti's shoulder and their fingers intertwine, as she is wheeled towards the operating theatre.

Reminiscent of latterday woman's pictures like Herbert Ross's Steel Magnolias (1989), this is the kind of French feature that used to be snapped up for a Hollywood remake. It would certainly be intriguing to see how someone like Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig or Amy Poehler would handle the Foresti role, while Shirley MacLaine or Jane Fonda would be perfect for the part of the judgemental mother. But, fun though such re-casting games are, the heyday of the Euro reboot has passed and, besides, there are too few frontline American women directors who would be considered a sufficiently safe pair of hands to turn this feel-good weepie into a box-office hit.

In the event of a remake, Anne-Gaëlle Daval's storyline might need tidying up a bit to refine some of the more obviously melodramatic contrivances and to make more of Garcia and the members of her self-help group. But the body image theme is explored with trenchancy and tact, right down to the role that mothers play in their daughter's sense of self. Similarly, while the romantic subplot doesn't quite ignite because Kassovitz's soft-centred womaniser is too much of a cipher, the family dynamic is thoughtfully realised. Admittedly, Bonamy and Cohen's siblings and Astier's daughter could do with fleshing out, but Foresti makes the most of a well-written role, with her self-deprecating wit keeping both glibness and mawkishness at bay. Prioritising plot over insight, Daval directs steadily. But, while Philippe Guibert conveys something of the look and feel of Lyon, the cinematography is rather perfunctory, as are Nicolas Migot's production design and Alexis Rault's score. Yet, this is a well-meaning and frankly affirmational film that says a lot of important things that many men, as well as women, could do with hearing.

Having disappointed with his English-language debut, Louder Than Bombs (2015), Norwegian director Joachim Trier returns closer to form with Thelma, which curiously reaches British cinemas a day or two past Halloween. While not on a par with his earliest outings, Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), this variation on the story that Brian De Palma told in Carrie (1976) often feels like a conscious attempt to de-genrify a drama centred on telekinetic powers. Yet Trier and regular co-scenarist Eskil Vogt (who made a considerable impact with his own directorial bow, Blind, in 2014) also dot the action with hommages to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock (more of whom anon) to keep the audience on edge.

When she was six years old, Thelma (Grethe Eltervåg) had gone hunting with her father, Trond (Henrik Rafaelsen). She had been intrigued by the fish swimming beneath her feet as the crossed a frozen pond and had sipped a hot drink while watching her father load his rifle. But she had also turned as he had pointed the gun at her head rather than at the young deer in the middle distance.

Now, several years later, Themla (Eili Harboe) has started college in Oslo and Trond looks on as her wheelchair-bound mother, Unni (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), calls to check she is settling in. Thelma seems reluctant to chat, but tells her parents she loves them as she hangs up. The next day, she suffers a fit after Anja (Kaya Wilkins) sits beside her in the library and a flock of birds flies up from a tree int he courtyard. She undergoes tests, but is keen for the doctor (Marte Magnusdotter Solem) to be discreet about contacting her GP, as she doesn't want her parents knowing anything is wrong or that she has been having bad dreams about slithering snakes.

They come for a visit shortly after Anja makes herself known to Thelma at the campus swimming pool and Thelma looks up her profile on Instagram. When they go for dinner, Thelma tries not to draw attention to a gay couple sitting nearby and is admonished by Trond for mocking Creationist ideas when she knows to respect other people's beliefs. On returning to her digs, he asks if she is okay and she laments that nobody seems to want to be friends and he urges her never to forget that she is a wonderful person.

Leaving the library at closing time, Thelma checks Anja's profile and heads to the bar where she is drinking with her friends. She is introduced to Julie (Ingrid Giæver), Daniel (Oskar Pask) and Kristoffer (Steinar Klouman Hallert), and, when the latter teases her about being teetotal and a devout Christian, she makes him look foolish by asking if he knows how his mobile phone works. They go on to a nightclub and Anja coaxes Thelma on to the dance floor. But, just as she is having fun, Trond calls to chide her for not returning their calls and makes her feel guilty for Unni's anxiety.

Walking home alone, Thelma gazes at Anja's picture on her phone, as she tries to sleep. The intensity of her feelings wakes Anja, however, and she feels herself being drawn to the nondescript apartment building in which Thelma lives. Sensing she is close, Thelma goes to the window and sees Anja lingering on the footpath beneath a streetlight. She hurries down to greet her, but has a fit and has to be helped upstairs. Anja insists on staying and they share the bed, with Thelma reaching out in the night to touch her friend.

The next morning, Thelma asks Anja why she came over and she searches her phone in vain for the text she thought Thelma had sent her. She also admits to having no idea how she knew where Thelma lives and they laugh it off before leaving for college together. But Thelma knows she is developing a crush on Anja and treasures a hair she finds on her pillow. During a lecture, she shows her a bottle of wine she has bought and they get tipsy and imagine the worst things to say to a Christian. Thelma even tries a cigarette on the balcony, but Anja reassures her that she doesn't have to smoke.

A few days later, Anja invites Thelma to a ballet at the Oslo Opera House with her mother (Vanessa Borgli). As they sit in the impressive auditorium, Anja reveals that she has broken up with Daniel and takes Thelma's hand as the lights go down. During the performance, Anja lets her fingers stroke Thelma's bare legs and she becomes increasingly tense, as she feels emotions that she has been taught to suppress. Pinned back in her seat, Thelma gives off such powerful forces that a fixture above the stage starts to sway and she rushes out into the foyer to regain her composure. However, Anja follows her to the cloakroom, where they kiss and Thelma responds eagerly before another wave of guilt prompts her to flee.

Back in her room, she calls home and Trond detects her distress. She confesses to drinking beer and he sounds disappointed. But he accepts that she has to make her own decisions, while warning her not to lose sight of her true self or to let her new friends have undue influence over her. Thelma goes to a student church service and, during a hymn, tries to reconnect with what she has been taught. But she goes to a party with Kristoffer and surprises Anja by drinking wine and lying about being too busy to return her calls.

Anja is even more taken aback when Thelma accepts a joint and takes a deep puff before going into a reverie, in which she imagines Anja's hand slipping into her underwear and the snake from her nightmare coiling itself around her neck before sliding into her open mouth. She jolts back into consciousness and is embarrassed to discover that Kristoffer had only given her a cigarette and Anja looks ashamed at having been in on the prank, as Thelma throws up on the floor before hurrying away.

At the suggestion of her doctor, Thelma has an MRI scan and is asked about the breakdown she suffered when she was six. Thelma has no memory of this and the doctor recommends that she asks Trond about it when she lets slip that he is a doctor. As they need to measure her brain during a seizure, Thelma is hospitalised for a few days and she flashes back to Unni fussing over her baby brother and how she had been told to play on her own. When the infant had started crying in his playpen, Thelma had closed her eyes and concentrated hard to make him stop. But she had also managed to move him and Unni and Trond are shocked to find the child trapped beneath the sofa.

While being subjected to flashing lights in an effort to provoke a fit, Thelma has to answer questions about her past while breathing deeply. However, she struggles to register any abnormal patterns until the doctor mentions romance. As she recalls the places where she met Anja, Thelma begins to lose control. Down in the laundry room of her residence, Anja starts to feel something unusual surrounding her and she is disturbed to find music playing in her room when she returns upstairs. Turning away from the window, she feels the glass shatter behind her and Thelma is shunted into a full fit, as she sees Anja's library and lecture hall chairs empty.

Rushing back to her room, Thelma calls Anja, but there is no reply and she is appalled when her nose begins to bleed into a glass of milk, which she drops on the floor. The specialist (Anders Mossling) informs her that she does not suffer from epilepsy, but could well be experiencing psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. He asks about the condition afflicting her grandmother and Thelma is puzzled because she had been told she died years ago. She looks up the symptoms online and sees lots of old religious paintings depicting fits, as well as black-and-white photographs and case studies.

Determined to get to the bottom of the family mystery, she visits her grandmother (Vibeke Lundquist) and is disappointed to find her so unresponsive. A nurse (Ingrid Jørgensen Dragland) informs her that she used to be lucid and had told her that she had caused herself to have cancer as punishment for her husband disappearing off his boat. She thinks the old lady's medicine is too strong, but Trond believes he knows what is best for his mother.

Unable to raise Anja on the phone, Thelma has a fit in the swimming pool and struggles to surface. But she hauls herself out of the water and goes to visit Anja after her mother sends a worried text. She finds the door of her bedsit open and is relieved to see the glass intact in the window. But she also notices a strand of hair seemingly encased in the glass and, convinced that she is somehow responsible for her friend's disappearance, she asks if she can come home.

Trond and Unni are happy to see her, in their buttoned-up way. He recognises the symptoms she describes and urges her not to be afraid. However, he laces her tea so that she sleeps and confides that he has something painful to tell her. He takes her back to the night her baby brother Matthias vanished from his bath and she pointed to the place in the frozen lake where his body could be found. Her mother had tried to kill herself by jumping off a traffic bridge, but she had been left disabled and bitterly resentful. As Thelma takes in this revelation, Trond warns her that she has a power within her that can make awful things happen and swears that they have always tried to help and protect her. When she tells him about Anja, he suggests that she misused her powers to trap her into a relationship and that Anja would walk away if her free will was restored.

Hurt by this assertion, Thelma begins to resent being made to pray on her knees for forgiveness for her wicked desires. She also tires of taking pills and being locked in her room each night and asks Trond if he is trying to do to her what he did to his mother. The next morning, he goes on to the lake in his boat. Smoking, he looks up to see birds circling overhead. He thinks he catches a glimpse of Thelma on the shore, but looks down to see that the palms of his hands are burning and he throws himself overboard when his entire body is engulfed by flames. Thinking the blaze is out, he tries to clamber into the boat, only for the fire to begin again and he disappears beneath the calm surface of the water.

Suddenly, Thelma wakes from a nightmare and she rushes to the edge of the lake. Wading in, she dives deep into the inky depths, only to surface in the campus pool, where Anja is waiting to embrace her. With memory, fantasy and reality now blurring beyond distinction, Thelma struggles on to the bank and vomits. A caterpillar crawls over her skin and she lies on her back and tries to work out what is happening to her.

Striding back into the house, she goes to the dresser where her phone has been hidden to find a message from Anja. Unni calls to her husband and is astonished when she gets out of her chair and walks after Thelma touches her knee and cheek. But her daughter refuses to remain and she is next seen waiting for Anja on the sunlit campus. She anticipates her arrival and the kiss on her neck and smiles at seeing her lover before they wander hand in hand across the square, as the camera pulls away from them to depict them as two insignificant dots moving in space.

If Stephen King ever decided to re-imagine Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966), it might end up looking something like this initially compelling, but increasingly improbable saga. While Trier and Vogt keep the focus on Thelma's struggle to find her niche and some friends at college, this remains an intriguing study of relocation anxiety and social awkwardness, which is made all the more teasingly credible by the fact that parents Trond and Unni appear to have been imposing their conservative religious values on a daughter who is as insecure in her sexuality as she is in her suppressed sense of self. But the nature of the story changes the moment Thelma has her first seizure and her burgeoning feelings for Anja are steadily sidelined to make way for the dark revelations about her past and the discovery that her parents have been raising her so strictly for good reason.

The notion that a young girl could have inherited her grandmother's ability to use her willpower and telekinetic talent to get whatever she wants is amusing enough. But, after such a meticulously crafted opening, it feels more than a little anti-climactic, especially as Trier is unable from his vantage point of lofty detachment to prevent the growingly significant paranormal elements from tipping the premise down a generic slope. Jakob Ihre's unsettling camerawork, Olivier Bugge Coutté's deft editing and Ola Fløttum's brooding score sustain the air of suspense. But, notwithstanding Anja's unexplained disappearance, Trier fails to impart any palpable dread into proceedings that often seem frustratingly short of bleak humour, sensual potency and a reckless sense of risk.

Eili Harboe makes a stoic heroine, as she endures shuddering fits, as well as an array of medical tests and the joshing of her worldlier classmates. But her most chilling moment comes when she greets Kaya Wilkins in the enigmatic closing scene, as there is no guarantee that she has reined in her powers and allowed true love to find a way. As the dour parents, Henrik Rafaelsen and Ellen Dorrit Petersen do well in roles designed to mislead the audience, but their contrasting fates reinforce the impression that Trier miscalculates in jettisoning character analysis in order to generate a few superficial thrills.

Published to mark the 30th anniversary of a landmark picture in the history of both Hollywood and genre cinema, Stephen Rebello's Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (1990) remains one of the best single-movie studies in print. Now, Alexandre O. Philippe has ventured into the same territory for 78/52, which takes its title from the number of camera set-ups and edit points that Alfred Hitchcock required to kill off his main character in the infamous shower scene. The tone here is one of cineastic celebration. But, as director Karyn Kusama points out, this defiant challenge to the Production Code that determined the permissible content of American films was also `the first modern expression of the female body under assault'. Therefore, its release against the backdrop of a scandal centring on notions of male entitlement within the entertainment industry could not be more timely.

The name Marli Renfro won't mean much to non-aficionados of Playboy Bunnies. But, as Janet Leigh's stand-in for much of the week-long shooting of the shower murder in Psycho (1960), she found herself playing a crucial part in one of the most iconic and influential sequences in the history of motion pictures. Following an Edgar Allan Poe quote about the death of a beautiful woman being the most poetic topic of them all and a recreation of the moment that fugitive Marion Crane pulls into the Bates Motel during a rainstorm, we are introduced to Renfro, who recalls that she had to strip down to her underwear for both Hitchcock and Leigh as part of her audition.

She was hired for two days, but wound up working seven and Hitchcock's granddaughter, Tere Carrubba, marvels that Universal allowed him to devote so long to such a short scene. Alan Barnette, the producer of Sacha Gervasi's Hitchcock (2012), and director Richard Stanley concur, while Elijah Wood, Josh C. Waller and Daniel Noah sit together on a sofa to declare that such dedication has to denote obsession.

Over footage of Hitchcock wandering around the Bates sets, novelist Bret Easton Ellis suggests that he set out to film the scene in order to make murder an acceptable part of entertainment. As clips from Roger Corman's A Bucket of Blood (1959) and Robert Day's The Haunted Strangler (1958) testify, there had been violence on screen before. But Saw writer Leigh Whannell asserts that Hitchcock realised that he had an opportunity to go further than had previously been attempted by making this sequence crucial to the entire picture. At this juncture, as trailer footage of Hitch tutting at the amount of blood that had been shed during the murder, Karyn Kusama makes her point about the female form under assault and director Peter Bogdanovich reinforces it by declaring this the moment that women - who had been the focus of the majority of films in the silent and early talkie eras - became subservient to men in terms of their narrative and commercial significance. But Scott Spiegel and Daniel Noah avow that Hitchcock was more concerned with breaking away from the glossy escapism of North By Northwest (1959) and the cosy quirkiness of his TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and felt the best way was to play a prank on Hollywood by making a B movie.

In a 1965 interview with Huw Weldon for Monitor, Hitchcock himself had insisted that Psycho was a joke designed to make people scream as on a funfair ride and that he had been hugely disappointed by the number of people who had taken it seriously. Mike Garris (who directed Psycho IV: The Beginning, 1990) agrees that it was not a tuxedo film, while critic Stephen Rebello notes that it was a conscious effort to stray outside Hitchcock's comfort zone and attempt something along the lines of Henri-George Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955), which had combined artistry and the macabre in a manner that made Hitck envious. Noah even opines that it was an act of aggression towards the fans and critics who had caused him to become complacent, while academic Marco Calavita more speculatively claims that it reflected the fury shown in wartime features like Foreign Correspondent (1940), Saboteur (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Lifeboat (1944) that Britain and the United States had been insufficiently prepared for the threat posed by the Axis.

Horror specialist Eli Roth states that Psycho and The Birds (1963) were dissertations on the randomness of life and Calavita continues that these films were reminders that America could no longer be isolationist, as the threats posed by the modern world were so grave that no one was even safe in their shower. Rebello hails the picture as a precursor to a decade of assassinations and civil strife and he intimates that Hitchcock felt something was in the air that meant lavish adventures with landmark settings were no longer appropriate. Critic Howie Movshovitz agrees that Hitch had become bored peddling Technicolor romps when Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer and Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (all 1959) were taking greater creative and thematic risks. But Roth figures that Hitchcock was also keen to alert audiences to the shocking reality of carnage at a time when science-fiction and horror movies were offering far-fetched doomsday scenarios.

As the shoutily insistent Calavita recalls, the Clutter murders that inspired Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966) occurred just as Psycho began shooting. More spuriously, he cites the opening of the first Playboy club, the introduction of the birth control pill and the divorce of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Jr. as being equally seismic indicators that America was about to change forever. Nobody thinks to mention the Cuban Revolution or the nouvelle vague, but Roth concludes that the shower scene felt like the lancing of the tensions and restrictions that had been boiling up in the US during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. Bogdanovich was a critic in New York when Psycho previewed at the Loews State in Times Square and he remembers Hitchcock's voice booming through the speakers at the start of the press show warning against giving away the plot twists. Editor Walter Murch also comments on the fact that Hitch insisted on barring admissions once the film had started rolling to stop those who missed the opening wondering where Janet Leigh was. This gambit changed the way in which pictures were exhibited, as continuous shows at which people could come and go as they pleased became a thing of the past. Ever the showman, he had also led people down the wrong path in the trailer, as Vera Miles was shown screaming behind the shower curtain and not Janet Leigh. But Bogdanovich remembers the audience emitting a deafening scream when the knife first struck and Belgian composer Pepijn Caudron (aka Kreng) rejoices at how manic it must have been at a screening that left Bogdanovich so shaken he felt as if he had been raped.

For some reason, it requires both critic David Thomson and director Neil Marshall to take us back to the Lumière short, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895), to show how audiences had loved being scared since the new artform's first flickerings. Composer Danny Elfman recalls it being the only film his mother wouldn't let him see, while editor Bob Murawski admits that he initially thought it was about a killer on a motorcycle until he got a Super8 copy and ran it constantly.

Calavita returns to squeal that nobody expected a relatable character played by a star of the magnitude of Janet Leigh would bite the dust so early in proceedings and especially not at the hands of an old lady who is obscured by the shower curtain. Director Guillermo Del Toro and Jamie Lee Curtis (who is, of course, Leigh's daughter) agree it was a grand coup de cinéma, but Rebello goes further to declare it a moment that changed the direction of film-making worldwide. Wood, Waller and Noah slap themselves on the back as they wonder whether an obscure Czech picture pipped Hitch to the post in killing off a protagonist in such a brutal way, while Kusama likens the cultural impact to the beheading of a key character in Game of Thrones.

Editor Chris Innis muses on the opening scenes holding up a mirror to contemporary society and notes that the freeways that had made it so easy to travel between big cities had killed off small towns like Fairvale and businesses like the Bates Motel. Calavita also points out the irony of the fact that, by heading west, Marion was following the Manifest Destiny that had provided the country's founding mantra. But, rather than pursue these intriguing avenues, Philippe veers off at a tangent to examine how the depictions of the shower scene differed between Robert Bloch's source novel and Joseph Stefano's screenplay. We see Philippe's own version of the action over Murawski's reading of the book text before we digress again to the theory that Hitchcock recognised the importance of this sequence and hired credits specialist Saul Bass to help him storyboard the action.

An unidentified voice reads Stefano's stage directions (written at a time when Leigh's character still had the Bloch name of Mary), as we see Bass's pencil sketches detailing the hideous crime. But, no sooner has Waller gushed that this is the scene that transformed film forever, Philippe whisks us out of the cabin and back to the hotel room where Marion had enjoyed some afternoon delight with boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin). We then get samples from scenes on the road and in the motel office, as various talking-heads coo over Hitchcock's bleakly humorous eye for details, such as the glimpse of the shower head in Marion's apartment as she packs her case after having stolen $40,000 from her employer.

Anthony Perkins's son, Osgood, reflects on how the movement of the windscreen wiper blades during the downpour anticipates the slashing of the kitchen knife, while Stanley speculates over clips of a shower in The Lodger (1926), a bread knife in Blackmail (1929) and bathroom tiles being cleaned in Rear Window (1954) that Hitchcock had been working towards this scene his entire career.

Such sweeping statements are common in a film in which just about everyone delivers their pronouncements with a gravity and intensity that suggests they are straining to ensure they make the final cut. But Philippe seems intent on preventing the audience from developing a logical train of thought, as he flits away to the significance of the conversation between Marion and Norman Bates (Perkins) in the parlour, as it establishes a rapport between the pair that makes the ensuing slaughter all the more shocking. Yet, while this is a crucial moment, Philippe opts to view it through Wood, Waller and Noah doing a Beavis and Butt-Head impression, as they sniggeringly comment on the change in mood after Marion suggests that Norman could reclaim his life if he put Mrs Bates in a home.

During his guided tour around the motel, Hitchcock pointed out the Baroque painting in the parlour and museum curator Timothy Standring reveals that it is Frans Van Mieris, le Vieux's `Suzanne et les Viellards', which depicts a scene from the Book of Daniel in which a woman is spied upon while cleansing herself after committing adultery. Earlier in the day, Marion (or Mary, as he calls her, suggesting that he doesn't know the film particularly well) had been copulating with her married lover and Strandring applauds Hitchcock's choice, as Norman removes this voyeuristic scene from the wall in order to become a peeping Tom through the spyhole looking into Cabin No.1.

A number of contributors ponder the number of shots depicting eyes looking out of the screen, as well as God's eye views gazing down on to this scene of murderous mayhem (to which Hitchcock would return in The Birds). Academic Jim Hosney notes the angle of the knife as it rips into Marion's flesh and posits that the blade appears to be coming toward the audience, as though Hitchcock had intended them to be his victims. However, as Hitch tells François Truffaut during their celebrated interview, he had often relied on the fact that people tend to rubberneck rather than turn away from awful or suspicious sights and, thus (over a montage of staring eyes from various Hitchcock pictures), we learn that he tapped into the ghoulish curiosity that is common to us all, whether we care to admit it or not.

As we listen to Hitchcock revealing during an American Film Institute masterclass the importance of building suspense rather than providing short, sharp jolts, Innis comments on how the instances of voyeurism during Psycho clue the audience that something unsettling is about to occur without giving the game away when the knife will strike. But, even though the suggestion that this is a film about fragmentation and not letting the audience settle is wholly valid, it doesn't quite justify Philippe's decision to make his analysis as skittish as possible.

Nonetheless, he is already off on the next tangent, as Bill Krohn, the author of Hitchcock at Work, draws our attention to the ghastly mothers in such Hitchcock outings as Easy Virtue (1928), Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951) and North By Northwest (1959). But, as Calavita reveals, the apple pie view of American motherhood had been called into question during the 1950s by the rising tide of juvenile delinquency. He claims that there was a prevailing concern that moms were going to mollycoddle their kids to death, as they did in sitcoms like Father Knows Best and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Hosney chimes in that Douglas Sirk had dissected the myth of the all-American family in melodramas like All That Heaven Allows (1955). But Psycho literally turned mom into a monster.

We see Hitchcock telling chat show host Dick Cavett in 1972 that his mother had given him a fright when he was three months old by saying `boo' before Hosney highlights the number of references to the malign influence of mothers during Marion's scenes with Sam and a co-worker (who is played by Hitckcock and Alma Reville's daughter, Patricia). But Calavita bursts in to declare that many would have watched the film with a growing conviction that Mrs Bates was a malign influence and would have drawn the conclusion that mom really was going to be the death of them all.

This speciously reasoned argument is quickly laid to one side, as we go in search of Hitch's Victorian obsession with bathrooms with bright white tiles. Over shots of such décor in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Mr & Mrs Smith (1941), Spellbound (1945) and North By Northwest, we are informed by Garris and Stanley that the sight of the first flushing toilet in American film history tips us the wink that a major taboo is about to be shattered. Rebello even goes so far as to suggest that by setting such a grisly scene in a room synonymous with sanitary civility was tantamount to desecration. Murch recalls editing a bathroom sequence in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), which paid homage to Psycho and the screen splits to compare them.

However, the suggestion of Janet Leigh's nudity would have been a much bigger deal with audiences in 1960 than a flushing loo. Rebello and Garris ruminate on how red-blooded males might have reacted to being teased in such a way and Hitchcock informs Granada's Cinema programme during a 1969 interview that it's always better to retain a sense of mystery than be too graphic. Osgood Perkins questions whether anyone would get into a shower without letting it run first, but sound designers Gary Rydstrom and Shannon Mills are less cynical, as they discuss the hiss and whoosh of the water that reinforces the idea that Marion is enjoying the sensual sensation of being cleansed.

Yet, after a brief pause to show us scenes from Rear Window and The Birds in which Hitchcock made effective use of silence, academic Norman Hollyn pulls us away to consider the fact that Marion doesn't smile naturally once before she steps into the shower. But, while she experiences a release of tension as the water hits her body, Stanley suggests that Hitchcock enjoyed the greater sense of liberation, as he was finally able to get one of his ice-cool blondes in the altogether. But Del Toro reckons that the scene reveals the depth of Hitchcock's Roman Catholicism, as, even though Marion has repented of her crime and has vowed to return and face the consequences, she cannot be shriven by water alone and must pay her debt in blood. However, actress Illeana Douglas shrewdly avers that Marion's gravest folly was not the theft of some money, but the arousal of Norman Bates.

Rather than take this further than a throwback reference to the strangling of another loose woman in Strangers on a Train (who was played by Patricia Hitchcock), Philippe has Innis describe how the angle of the shots and their assembly places the viewer in the shower with Marion. Fellow editor Jeffrey Ford picks up on this, as the screen quarters to contrast Norman's spyhole with the plughole of the bath and Marian's vulnerability in her robe under his flustered gaze and in the water unaware of his imminent approach while dressed in his mother's clothes. These images shift to compare Norman's eye pressed against the holed plasterboard and Marion's glassy stare, as she slumps out of the tub. But Philippe isn't content with splitting the screen. He also wants to put a timecode on the images of Marion in the shower and use the rewind button so that the audience can fully appreciate the nuances that Ford and Murch have identified in Hitchcock's use of diegetic space and the breaches of the 180° axis of action that shift the focus and, in the process, disconcert the viewer by opening up spaces that will be filled by the looming outline of the rampaging Norman.

Editor John Venzon opines that Norman's appearance in the blurred background defines the difference between suspense and surprise, while, over clips from The Lodger, Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941), Douglas suggests that Hitchcock clearly had a fear of figures lurking in the shadows and she declares that the pent-up dread was unleashed in Psycho. In fact, Anthony Perkins was in New York that day rehearsing a play and Margo Epper attacked Leigh with her face blackened to disguise the identity of the assailant. According to Rebello, Leigh told him that she pictured Norman bearing down on her, so she conveyed the shock of being betrayed by someone she had tried to befriend.

In a rather self-consciously decorated room, Roth remarks upon the wallpaper in the bedroom behind Mother and notes that Stanley Kubrick went for a similar effect in The Shining (1980). But Murawski lets slip that he had always been disappointed by the mushroom-shaped wig that diluted some of the terror. However, Carrubba also reveals that her grandfather had been so underwhelmed by the rough cut that he was about to trim it down for an hour for inclusion in his television show when Bernard Herrmann played him the music he had composed for the shower scene.

Caudron shows off the tattoo on his forearm showing the wave pattern created by the shrieking strings and Noah tells his pals that his seven year-old daughter is aware of the cultural significance of that sound. Roth compares it to the steady drone of John Williams's music for Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), but Caudron and Elfman set it alongside the theremin and brass sound that Herrmann devised for Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and the eerie `Living Doll' score for The Twilight Zone (1963). Moreover, Caudron praises the precision of the spotting of the musical cues, as ambient sound dominates until the curtain is pulled back and the strings symbolise Marion's heartbeat at the realisation that she is in danger. The music slows and the strings move into a lower register, as her hand slides down the wall and silence returns as she slips out of consciousness and all we hear are the rattle of the curtain rings and the shush of the shower.

Ann E. Duddleston, who edited Gus Van Sant's 1990 remake, states that Elfman re-recorded the original score. But he reveals that he was under pressure to give it the full-orchestral treatment and had to plead with the producers not to force him to tinker with such a revered passage. Yet, while Herrmann helped immortalise the shower scene, it would not have become so iconic without the speed of the cross-cutting achieved by editor George Tomasini. Del Toro compares the sequence to a stainless steel trap snapping shut and trapping the viewer and compelling them to watch an act of unspeakable savagery. Amidst a gaggle of admiring voices, Garris and Ford comment on the ingenuity of the splicing at a time when this was a physical process involving celluloid and cement rather than something that happened at the push of a computer key.

Murch takes us back to Edwin S. Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903), which was one of the first films to use editing as a dramatic device, as he explains how audiences had to learn how to make associational leaps between transitions for the cross-cuts between parallel actions to make narrative sense. But Hitchcock, Bass and Tomasini bombarded the viewer with images that had vanished before their complete information could be absorbed. This introduced supposition into the equation and represented a major leap away from the classical forms of Hollywood editing. Wood pipes up that it resembles a magic act, as people left the cinema convinced that they had seen things that had not appeared on screen.

Editor Fred Raskin draws attention to the sound effects used to simulate the knife piercing flesh and Rebello describes how Hitchcock sent prop man Robert Bone to find as many kinds of melon as he could. He eventually decided upon casabas, although he also had sound men Waldon O. Watson and William Russel plunge a blade into a large sirloin steak to add into the audio mix and Rebello delights in revealing that one of the unnamed duo took the meat home for his supper. Rydstrom and Mills extol the less is more authenticity of the effects and Venzon and Innis similarly laud the three swift cuts that take the action from Marion turning to a close-up of her open mouth. But Murawski recalls a similar three-cut effect in closing in on Boris Karloff's face in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) and we see how he employed the gambit in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness (1993), Spider-Man 3 (2007) and Drag Me to Hell (2009).

In pointing out how Hitchcock slipped non-subjective perspectives into the scene to reinforce the sense of threat, Murch also notes the various crossings of the stageline in a bid to convey the sense of struggle. He reveals how he used a similar technique in cutting the love scenes in Jerry Zucker's Ghost (1990) to suggest a sense of passion. But, as Innis confirms, such visual breaches also have famous precedents and the screen quarters to compare shots from Psycho with those from such Expressionist masterpieces as FW Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and Sunrise (1927). Murawski also singles out a blurred image of a cowering Marion and he laments that modern producers would insist on its removal, even though it works so well within the overall illusion.

This latter word is key for, as Venzon and Roth explain, viewers watching the shower scene become convinced that they actually see the blade touch the skin. Hitch told Bogdanovich that he avoided any direct contact after rejecting an ingenious body rubber that spurted blood on impact and trusted instead in the suggestive power of montage that Sergei Eisenstein had employed on Battleship Potemkin (1925). Yet, Renfro insists that Hitchcock placed a real knife against her torso and rapidly pulled it away so that it appeared as though it was stabbing her for real when the film was reversed. She is also proud of the fact that Hitch managed to smuggle in a shot of her bare belly button, at a time when Annette Funicello had to cover up even while wearing a bikini in teenpics like William Asher's Muscle Beach Party (1964).

Hitchcock had spent much of his career battling the guardians of the Production Code and Wood and pals giggle like schoolboys at the closing shot of North By Northwest depicting a train entering a tunnel, as Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint settle down for the night. Carrubba and Calavito reveal how he invited officials to watch him filming the shower scene and then accused them of seeing offensive content that didn't exist when then demanded changes to the scene. Thus, he called their bluff and preserved the dramatic integrity of a sequence that was crucial to making Psycho the phenomenon it would become.

But it wasn't the only picture released in 1960 to push the boundaries, as Michael Powell's Peeping Tom also seemed graphically to present the violent deaths of women. Yet. Like Hitchcock, Powell allowed the viewer to join the dots and Noah compares this teasing approach to depiction with the way producer Val Lewton left things the audience imagination in classic horrors like Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942) and The Leopard Man (1943). Waller cites a modern example in the rape scene in Gaspar Noé's Irreversible (2002), which contrasts with the shower sequence, as it was filmed slowly at a remove from the action. However, while Hitchcock could promise a Telescope interviewer in 1964 that the shooting of the naked abdomen had been utterly discreet, Murawski points out that flashes of breast are visible in a frame-by-frame breakdown.

Murch notes the brevity of the shots towards the end of the assault and reminds us that audiences in 1960 would have seen nothing like this before. The sight of the blood splashing into the water would also have been shocking and directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson refer to the fact that chocolate sauce was used to show up better in black and white. Renfro confirms that she was splattered with Hershey's syrup, while Hitchcock confides that he opted for monochrome because the sight of red gore swirling around Marion's feet would have been too grotesque.

Roth, Venzon and Murawski debate the efficacy of Norman's swift retreat without waiting to check that Marion dies, while Garris latches on to the fact that the focus switches to her hand during her final moments. Moorhead compares this to the way that Steven Spielberg filmed the first death in Jurassic Park (1993). But what was so significant about Hitchcock lingering over Marion's last breaths is that the deaths in standard fare like Max Nosseck's Dillinger (1945), Richard Fleischer's The Narrow Margin (1952) and Lewis Allen's A Bullet for Joey (1955) were relatively speedy. Yet Hitchcock would continue to show that killing someone could be a slow and messy process in Torn Curtain (1966) and Frenzy (1972).

Comparing the opening and closing shots of Marion against large expanses of white tiles, Venzon applauds Hitchcock's use of negative space in these bookending shots, while Ford recognises the emotional potency of the shot of Marion grasping the shower curtain before she collapses. Renfro reveals that this is her hand and points out the slight disfigurement of the ring finger, which came about when it was cut off when she was helping her brother with a lawnmower when she was three years old. Yet, while this is a hugely effective shot, it wasn't original, as Nita Naldi had also pulled on a shower curtain during the modern story segment of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923). Moreover, as Joseph Stefano reveals, the censors refused to let Hitchcock use a top shot of Marion slumping forward across the rim of the bathtub, even though it was storyboarded. But, as Duddleston explains, Van Sant was able to include the image in his remake and we see Anne Heche's lacerated form lurch forward in disturbing colour.

As Venzon shows, Hitchcock repeated the up shot into the shower head to contrast the hope of a fresh start as Marion begins to wash and the draining away of her existence. Stanley compares the close-up of the lifelessly staring eye with the eddy of a celestial formation and references a similar plughole shot in Joel and Ethan Coen's Barton Fink (1991). But Ellis detects a deeply personal element to this image, as Hitchcock confronted the increasing inevitability of his own demise, as he had done in Vertigo (1958), which is also replete with swirling symbolism.

However, Krohn is keen to point out how remarkably intimate these shots are, as cinematographer John L. Russell was using a cumbersome Mitchell camera. While others enthuse over the seamless effects shot used in the slow pull away from Marion's eyeball, Duddleston reveals that Van Sant used a robotic camera to shoot in real time. However, when she came to edit the sequence, she discovered that the shot-for-shot approach was not working and they had to interpolate images to make it feel less like a pastiche and more like a Van Sant variation on the theme. But Hitchcock and Tomasini also had problems with the last shots of Marion, as Janet Leigh found it impossible to remain motionless and numerous takes were ruined by her eye twitching or her inhaling being too blatant. Indeed, as Rebello recalls, Alma Reville spotted a breath during a test screening and Hitch had to cut back to the shower head to disguise the flaw, while sustaining the rhythm of the edit.

Always one for a sly gag, Hitchcock exposed the redundancy of the MacGuffin by concluding the sequence with a pan out of the bathroom to the stolen money wrapped in a newspaper with the word `okay' in its banner headline. Clearly, everything is far from fine and Movshovitz sees this as a reinforcement of the concept of the uncaring universe. It pains Murawski that this epochal sequence is followed by such a clumsy piece of exposition, as Norman wails off screen about Mother returning to the house covered in blood. But the ensuing cleaning sequence is vital to the success of what has gone before, as we now enter Norman's world and have to deal with the consequences of the deed. On first viewing, we don't know that he is the killer, but we have a pretty good idea and Kusama suggests that Hitchcock is implicating the viewer in Norman's delusion by showing him tidying so methodically. Douglas claims that cleaning is always a sign of sexual guilt, but it's also noted that this ordeal is designed to coax the audience into feeling sympathy with Norman, who is living this nightmare and evidently seems practiced at protecting Mother by removing all traces of her madness.

Stanley and Calavita declare Psycho the progenitor of the slasher genre, although Roth points out that Mario Bava had been edging in this direction before he made The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and A Bay of Blood (1971). However, he was less hindered by strict censorship and Dario Argento was equally free to take giallo into dangerous new territory in depicting the murder of female victims in the likes of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), Suspiria (1977) and Tenebrae (1982). The success of these pictures fed back into American cinema with Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Robert Hiltzik's Sleepaway Camp (1983), although Stanley is right to indicate that Hitchcock started the trend for having female victims undress before their murder.

Hosney also mentions that Martin Scorsese based the Sugar Ray Robinson fight in Raging Bull (1980) on the shower scene and we see a montage of copycat clips from William Castle's I Saw What You Did (1965), Mel Brooks's High Anxiety (1977), Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980), Tobe Hoopers The Funhouse (1981), Stephen Chiodo's Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988), Lucio Fulci's A Cat in the Brain, Richard Stanley's Hardware, The Simpsons (all 1990), Scott Spiegel's From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999), That 70s Show (2000), Kirby: Right Back At Ya! (2002), Joe Dante's Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), Bricktease's LEGO Psycho (2015), Gina Otalvaro's Black & White [Psycho] and Scream Queens (both 2016). The last is perhaps the most self-referential of them all, as it features Jamie Lee Curtis escaping an attack by a red devil because her character had seen Psycho around 50 times.

Following her week with Hitchcock, Renfro went to work in the Playboy Mansion and featured on the cover of the September 1960 edition. But she told nobody about the film and smiles as she recalls Anthony Perkins hauling her out of the bath and dragging her along the floor before picking her up wrapped in plastic and lugging her out to the car. A tracking shot takes us towards the house on the hill and we creep up behind Mother rocking in her chair. But this seems a rather abrupt end, as though the documentary has shot its bolt and finally run out of things to say just when a terse summation of Psycho and its mystique is needed.

Having already directed The People vs. George Lucas (2010) and Doc of the Dead (2014), Philippe clearly has a penchant for screen history. The problem here is that this ground has been more than adequately covered before in Laurent Bouzereau's The Making of `Psycho' (1997) and Robert V. Galluzzo's The Psycho Legacy (2010), while Christophe Girardet and Matthias Müller pipped him to the idea of linking images by theme in their masterly Phoenix Tapes (1999). This would matter less if the talking heads had a surfeit of fresh revelations and insights. But much will be familiar to serious film students, who will be more than a little irked by the excessive amount of inaccurate dating throughout the film. Hitchcock's The Lodger and Foreign Correspondent are respectively dated wrongly as 1928 and 1942, while similar slips are made in the cases of Battleship Potemkin (which is given as 1926), The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1964) and Tenebrae (1987). Even more glaringly and sloppily, Sergio Martino's Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972) is cited as an example of the kind of American film that was influenced by giallo when it's actually an Italian release.

This may seem like nitpicking, but such errors undermine the picture's claim to be an authoritative analysis of the making and legacy of Hitchcock's final undisputed masterpiece. The laddish interjections of Elijah Wood and his buddies also have a deleterious effect, even though Daniel Noah and Josh Waller do occasionally come up with a worthwhile observation, while the excitable Marco Calavita feels like a media don on a British TV clips`n'quotes show straining to seize his chance of coming across as a bit of a character. But he is not alone, as a good number of the more hyperbolic remarks feel sweepingly generalised and/or calculatingly sound bitey. As a consequence, this can sometimes feel more like a Film Studies 101 powerpoint or a DVD extra than a work of serious cinematic scholarship.

Yet, even though it can seem haphazard in its organisation (in spite of the redoubtable efforts of editor Chad Herschberger) and often feels as though it has been hijacked by fanboys, this contains plenty of thought-provoking reminders of what an inspired director Hitchcock could be. The likes of Stephen Rebello and Walter Murch wear their expertise lightly, while it's nice to see Marli Renfro getting a moment in the spotlight. But Margo Epper is also still alive and it might have been useful to garner her recollections. More might also have been made of the parts played by Joseph Stefano and Saul Bass and it seems odd that neither the cinematographer nor the sound engineers should be mentioned by name. But this is an affectionate and effective overview that should send viewers back to the original with a new perspective and that, surely, is the whole point.

Petrolheads have been royally served by the documentary fraternity in recent times. Mark Craig got the ball rolling with a trio of BBC film: Jackie Stewart: The Flying Scot (2001), Graham Hill: Driven (2008) and Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion (2009). But it was Asif Kapadia's Senna (2010) that changed the rules of the motor sport actuality and inspired the likes of Richard Heap's Grand Prix: The Killer Years (2010), Paul Crowder's 1: Life on the Limit (2013), Hannes M. Schalle's Lauda: The Untold Story, Diarmuid Lavery and Michael Hewitt's Road, Charlotte Fantell's Journey to Le Mans (all 2014), Seán Ó Cualáin's Crash and Burn (2016), Roger Donaldson's McLaren and Morgan Matthews's Williams (both 2017).

The next to line up on the starting grid follows the same basic format. But Daryl Goodrich's Ferrari: Race to Immortality is by far the saddest dissertation on the world of Formula 1 and the men who risk their lives to secure its fleeting glory. Adapted from Chris Nixon's book Mon Ami Mate, this marks something of a departure for Goodrich after We Are the People We've Been Waiting For (2009), which featured Tony Blair, Richard Branson, Germaine Greer and Bill Clinton in an analysis of the British education system. But, while it adheres to the trusted archive and anecdote approach, this offers intriguing insights into the contrasting mindsets of team owner Enzo Ferrari and the five drivers entrusted to win him the world championship in the mid-1950s.

The picture opens with a chorus of unidentified voices stating the importance of Ferrari for Formula One and recalling the dangers of motor racing in the 1950s. In particular, they dwell on how drivers like Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins took extraordinary risks in their stride in order to bounce back from accidents and even the deaths of friends to race again the following Sunday. They were daredevils, but never considered themselves to be superhuman. They were simply prepared to lean out of the window to see how far they could reach before they fell.

The founder of the team, Enzo Ferrari, always told his drivers that they would become immortal whether they lived or died and his spirit of romance remains a key element in the enduring appeal of the red car. As biographer Richard Williams recalls, Ferrari had a tough early life, but he threw himself into motor sport with a passion. He soon proved to be a decent talent scout and F1 historian Doug Nye recalls that he was particularly impressed with Hawthorn and Collins, who had been tearing up the circuit in the UK. Fellow driver Innes Ireland suggests they were akin to naughty schoolboys, as they were always looking to have fun.

Stirling Moss considered Hawthorn a flashy character, who saw racing as fun rather than the be all and end all. But he concedes that he was one of the boys, while fellow driver Tony Brooks declares Collins to be someone who lapped it all up, especially the attention of the girls. Driver Lance Macklin's ex-wife, Shelagh Montague-Brown, remembers Collins as being someone who enhanced life and admits to having had a crush on Hawthorn. But he dated Sally Young, who enthuses about the family sense that existed among the drivers and we see lots of clips of them larking around, as well as striding around the pit lanes and being feted by adoring fans. However, the shadow of danger was forever hovering over them.

In 1955, Hawthorn and Juan Manuel Fangio had decided to liven up the Le Mans 24-Hour Race by putting on a driving exhibition during their first two-hour stint. However, as Hawthorn came towards the pits, he tried to overtake Macklin and caused him to swerve so that Pierre Levegh shot up and over his car and landed square on the safety barrier causing the chassis to shatter and send debris along the front row of the crowd like a torpedo. Eighty-three spectators were killed and almost 100 more were injured, with numerous children among the casualties.

Macklin remembers Hawthorn being shattered by the carnage he had helped cause and claimed he had vowed never to race again. But, as the organisers kept the race going to enable the emergence vehicles to get away without having to negotiate the crowds, Hawthorn was back behind the wheel for his next stint. Nye commends him on a brilliant drive and regrets the fact that the press seized upon a still from some newsreel footage showing a grim-faced Hawthorn breaking momentarily into a smile, as he waved to the stands after his victory. Fiancée Jean Ireland shares Nye's distaste for the fact Hawthorn was vilified for seeming to celebrate in the wake of a tragedy and she says the whole incident hurt him deeply.

Among the drivers within Scuderia Ferrai in 1956 were Italians Eugenio Castellotti and Luigi Musso, as well as Fangio, Collins and the Spanish marquis, Alfonso de Portago. The latter's versatility impressed Ferrari, as did the fact that he befriended his terminally ill son, Dino. As Collins's wife Louise King reflects, this possibly explains why he showed him greater affection than he did his other drivers, as Ferrari had a reputation of being a manipulative individual who was happiest setting people off against each other. However, it also helped that he was in with a chance of winning the 1956 world title.

Journalist Nigel Roebuck remembers Collins going into the Italian Grand Prix as the favourite. But Castellotti and Musso were keen to catch the eye of the home crowd. So, when Fangio's car broke down, they refused to let him take their vehicles to finish the race. Yet, Collins had no such qualms and considered it an honour to help a legend of the sport reinforce his reputation. Ferrari was deeply touched by this gesture and agreed that Collins would have plenty of opportunities to take the laurel wreath for himself.

As 1957, Collins married actress Louise King after a whirlwind romance in Miami. But, Williams avers, Ferrari disliked his drivers having personal attachments because it gave them something else to live for other than his team. He was also shocked when Fangio left for Maserati. But he welcomed Hawthorn back to the fold in order to ensure there was fierce competition for the four cars and he always kept his drivers aware that their place depended solely upon their results. Tony Brooks's wife Pina recalls how everyone in Italy at this time was mad about motor racing and F1 journalist Peter Windsor describes the elegance that Castellotti brought to the Scuderia. But rival driver Phil Hill dismisses him as a mediocre amateur, who had been born with a silver spoon and had started racing with a Ferrari sports car that had been purchased by his mother. However, he did what he was told when Ferrari ordered him to break the track record at Modena after it had been claimed by Maserati. Reluctantly, Castellotti took out a vehicle still in development and was thrown clear when it failed and catapulted into the top row of an empty grandstand. But he died from his injuries and Ferrari barely acknowledged the loss before asking if the car had survived in one piece.

Moss clearly found Ferrari a difficult man to like, but he respected his commitment to his cars and suggests that his legacy is that fans today still worship the red car rather than the man behind the wheel. Portago also recognised that Ferrari could be a dictator, but he loved racing for him and adored his car. Indeed, he had such faith in it that he told one interviewer that he knew it would never kill him. But, in 1957, during the Mille Miglia touring race, the car let him down. During a pit stop, a mechanic had noticed that the metalwork had been dented and had been pushed close to the rear tyre. But Portago only had time to kiss movie star girlfriend Linda Christian before setting off again and, in sight of the finish, the tyre blew and Portago and navigator Edward Nelson perished along with nine spectators when the car careered into the crowd.

With the Vatican leading a chorus of disapproval, the race was removed from the calendar, while Ferrari fought a manslaughter case after five children lost their lives. Meanwhile, Hawthorn was facing his own trials, as questions were being asked in the House of Commons why he had not performed his National Service. In fact, he had a congenital kidney problem that he insisted was kept quiet, as it might prevent him from getting a racing licence. He could also be tetchy and a bit arrogant. But he and Collins became firm friends and called each other `mon ami mate' after they had heard the phrase in a cartoon about a Martian. But, as Windsor and Roebuck speculate, their closeness blunted their competitive edge and this impacted upon the overall performance of the Scuderia.

Ferrari preferred his drivers to spur each other on and, as the 1958 season began, he felt Hawthorn and Collins were ganging up on Musso. Girlfriend Fiamma Breschi remembers getting letters in which he complained about them sidelining him. But Brooks remembers he had problems outside the pits, as he had got into financial difficulty while importing American cars and had also run up some gambling debts. So, he saw the French Grand Prix as a chance to make a splash and he had recklessly tried to overtake Hawthorn and had spun off the track. He died of his head injuries and Breschi was distraught. But Ferrari took a shine to her and set her up in a flower shop and they enjoyed a lengthy relationship.

The nation mourned, as Musso's death left Italy without a leading driver. But, as Pina Brooks and Louise King assert, his teammates had no option but to carry on and accept that these things happen and that they won't happen to them because they will be sufficiently in control not to make mistakes. Ferrari himself went on record as saying that fatalities occur because of a confluence of factors rather than a single piece of misfortune. But Montague-Brown states that everyone knew the dangers and Nye and Brooks confirm that nobody raced under duress, as they were there because they wanted to be.

Collins and King had just put a deposit down on a house and everything looked rosy after he beat Hawthorn into second place at Silverstone. Indeed, he had decided to retire at the end of the season and Ferrari was concerned that his heart was no longer in his duty. No one suspected what would happen at the Nürburgring, however, even though this winding, undulating mountain circuit had a reputation for unpredictability. Brooks had been leading the race, but the Ferraris had been struggling to maintain pace and they had dropped off the pace when Hawthorn saw Collins misjudge a turn and flip his car on a bank. He had been flown to a hospital in Bonn, where King learned he had died from her father (who was a bigwig at the UN), who kept tabs on his son-in-law's races.

They had only been together for 18 months, but King would not have changed anything. Hawthorn was bereft and the interview footage of him trying to express his emotions is harrowing. But he insisted on finishing the season as a tribute to his friend and persuaded Ferrari (who had considered quitting the sport altogether) to give him a car. As they went into the last race in Morocco, Moss needed to stay ahead of Hawthorn to become the first British world champion. But, with Phil Hill ceding second place, Hawthorn won by a single point and Ferrari had ended a catastrophic year with the title.

However, when compatriot Stewart Lewis-Evans was rushed from the track after his car caught fire, Hawthorn informed Ferrari that he was retiring and Jean Ireland recalls the team owner being apoplectic at what he felt was treachery in the face of triumph. To Ferrari's mind, one worked in order to avoid having to confront one's mortality and he couldn't understand why Hawthorn would want to bow out. But, when Lewis-Evans died six days after his victory, he knew he had made the right decision.

On 22 January 1959, Hawthorn had a lunch appointment in London and he had agreed to meet King in her hotel afterwards. Ireland recalls him being in pain that morning and he had gone to town with great reluctance. On the road, he had spotted team owner Rob Walker and they began to race. Walker recalls how hairy it quickly became, but felt he couldn't back down. King remembers being informed at her hotel that Hawthorn had died and we see the shock still on her face six decades later, as she had been very fond of him.

Until now, the voiceovers had all been delivered off screen. But, in this final summation, we get to see them all. Nye also looks saddened, as he recalls Walker telling him how he had rushed to the car and seen Hawthorn's eyes glaze before he took his last breath. As we see images of the mangled wreckage, Ireland and Brooks reflect on hearing the news, with the latter admitting that his death was so unnecessary. Ireland suspects he had a blackout and Windsor and Roebuck concur that associates felt he was a sick man and would not have lived past his mid-30s.

But Ferrari had already moved on, as he had little time for those who didn't dedicate themselves to his ambition. He admits in an interview that he lived for his own pleasure and expected those around him to contribute to his success. But he insists he did nothing detrimental to anyone in his circle and Williams and Montague-Brown agree that the five drivers who lost their lives in such a short space of time had been grateful for the opportunities and had died doing what they loved. Nye calls them warriors and a military drumbeat drives the score during a final montage of triumphs and disasters before the picture ends with Ferrari's promise to his drivers: `Win or die, you will be immortal.'

A closing caption reveals that 39 drivers died between 1950-60, yet Ferrari lived to be 90 and his team remains the most successful in the history of the sport. But he doesn't emerge with much credit from this shadow profile, whose sympathies lie squarely with the driving quintet of Musso, Castellotti, Portago, Hawthorn and Collins. It might have been interesting to learn more about the reaction of the Italian public and press to the British pair, especially as they seem to have given Musso such a hard time. But the tone remains resolutely hero-worshipful, as friends, family and fans alike stick to the `good eggs' party line.

There is also unanimity on the devil-may-care attitude to danger, which echoes down from all of the recent documentaries on this most romanticised of sports. Yet, while the carefully chosen quotations from Ferrari suggest a `them and us' disparity between the owners and officials on one side and the drivers on the other, all seem to agree that spectators were entitled to see thrills and spills for their money and no one seems disconfited by the fact that punters were almost disappointed when drivers walked away unscathed from terrifying smash-ups.

On the technical side, Goodrich and editor Paul Trewartha maintain their focus on the vintage visuals by keeping the talking-heads out of sight until the final reel. The archive footage is certainly evocative, especially the glossy colour clips that show off the famous Ferrari red. Moreover, Jerry Lane and Andrew Lancaster's score avoids undue emotional emphasis. But few concessions are made to those coming fresh to this tragic tale and, consequently, this is primarily a treat for F1 aficionados.