Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 15/3/2018)

Since Sweden abolished its monarchy, the royal palace has been converted into a modern art gallery known as X-Royal Museum. The senior curator is Dane Christian Nielsen (Claes Bang), who is the epitome of artsy trendiness. Yet, he struggles to explain a pompous piece of postmodernist jargonese on the museum website when challenged by an American journalist named Anne (Elisabeth Moss). She shrugs at his response and terminates the interview, while trying to work out whether her handbag really would become a work of art if placed in a gallery. Outside, as an equine statue is hauled down from in front of the palace, workers install in its place an exhibit made up of neatly arranged cobbles that is fitted with a brass plaque that reads: `This Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring. Within its boundaries, we all share equal rights and obligations.'

One morning while walking to work, Christian sees a distressed woman (Sofie Hamilton) running away from a thuggish pursuer. When she asks a stranger (Robert Hjelm) for help, Christian feels compelled to support him and they manage to repel the angry man, while the other commuters on the square melt away. The have-a-go heroes congratulate each other on their response to a crisis and Christian walks away feeling good about himself. However, when he checks his pockets for his phone, he realises he has been robbed and he suddenly becomes as invisible as the man sleeping rough nearby when he asks a woman if he can borrow her mobile to report the robbery.

Arriving for work, Christian goes to a meeting with the PR company handling the launch of The Square. The account manager (John Nordling) dandles his new-born baby while his hipster hotshots (Daniel Hallberg and Martin Sööder) waffle on about the need to generate a controversy that will persuade journalists into writing something about what is, to all intents and purposes, a dull bunch of stones. Christian protests that this is a significant work of art that encourages viewers to reflect on the world around them and the PR people nod sagely before promising to return with an eye-popping campaign.

Christian ends the meeting by describing his experience and assistants Michael (Christopher Læssø) and Maja (Maja Gödicke) later join him at his desk to watch the progress of the tracking device in his phone. However, he is scooted off by Elna (Marina Schiptjenko) to address the Friends of the Museum, who have been invited to a sneak preview of The Square. He begins by talking about its creator, Argentinian artist Lola Arias, but is interrupted by a phone ringing. Christian uses the interruption as an excuse to ditch his notes and speak from the heart (a gambit he has just rehearsed in the washroom). While he receives a warm round of applause, no one bothers to listen to the chef (Jonas Dahlbom), as he outlines the menu he has laid on for the guests. So, he bellows at them until they let him finish.

Having tracked down the signal to a residential block in a rundown part of the capital, Michael suggests that Christian posts a threatening flyer through every letter box demanding the return of his property. He is sceptical, but Michael convinces him that aggression is the only language the thieves will understand. They get the giggles composing the text over supper and wine and belt out a track by a band called Justice, as they drive to the estate on the outskirts. Christian is disappointed with Michael when he refuses to go inside and post the letters and questions whether he can trust him in a professional capacity when he is willing to let his high-profile boss risk detection. But, having put on gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, Christian gets a rush out of dashing along the corridors and down the staircases. Sat in the car, however, Michael (who is black) keeps being pestered by likely lads and he is mightily relieved when Christian comes back and they can speed off.

Undaunted by finding the heirloom cufflinks he thought had been stolen, Christian heads for work the next morning through a city centre full of people being ignored as they beg. He calls into the 7/11 he had denoted as the drop-off point for his stuff to see if anyone had left a parcel and gets waylaid by an angry woman who demands that he buys her a chicken ciabatta without onions. Smiling graciously, Christian orders the sandwich, only to toss it on to the table with a curt insistence that she fishes out her own onions.

At the museum, an invigilator stops the only person who has shown any interest in an exhibit comprised of small hills of dirt and a neon sign reading `You Have Nothing' from taking a photograph. In another room, Sonja (Annica Liljeblad) starts a Q&A session with a celebrated artist named Julian (Dominc West). However, their dialogue keeps being interrupted by the interjections of a man with Tourette's Syndrome (Stefan Gödicke) and Julian insists on continuing, even though some of the audience members are offended by the graphic language. Meanwhile, Christian gets a call from the 7/11 to inform him that a package has been left for him and he is so pleased that his ruse has worked that he gives all of the cash in his wallet to the chicken ciabatta woman, who is begging outside.

That night, Christian dances furiously at a museum function and plays a harpsichord during an impromptu tour of the royal apartments. While queuing for the bathroom, he bumps into Anne and, despite promising himself that he will not sleep with her, winds up back at her apartment. He is taken aback when a chimpanzee wanders past and starts looking at drawings on the sofa. But Anne enters the bedroom to initiate a vigorous session of love-making that ends with an argument over the disposal of the condom. Christian insists he will handle the matter, but Anne stomps in carrying a pedal bin and accuses him of thinking so highly of himself that he protects his semen. She tugs at the condom and Christian lets go for fear it will break and Anne dumps it in the bin and strides off with a sense of seething satisfaction.

Distracted by a note left at the 7/11 threatening chaos for accusing the author of being a thief, Christian is late for a meeting at the PR team announce that the museum is competing for attention with terrorists, natural disasters and the bile of right-wing politicians. Consequently, they have created a promotional film to stop people in their tracks by showing a young blonde beggar girl being assaulted inside The Square. Michael and Nicki (Nicki Dar) can barely suppress their mocking amusement at the concept, while Sonja and Maja are stunned. But, when Christian pops in to drag Michael and Nicki away, he gives the artwork a cursory glance and urges the publicists to develop their theme.

Christian sends Michael and Nicki to collect the note from the 7/11 and the former is cornered by a tweenage immigrant boy (Elijandro Edouard), who points out that his parents have grounded him because the letter posted through their door accused him of being a thief. When Michael tries to explain that he isn't Christian, the kid becomes aggressive and knocks over a rubbish bin in demanding to be taken seriously. Back at the museum, Anne finds Christian to ask why he has been avoiding her since they slept together. Sonja interrupts briefly to tell Christian that a cleaner has sucked part of the `You Have Nothing' piece into their sit-on vacuum and he promises to come and help her sort things out. But, first, he has to endure a dressing down, in which Anne suggests that he enjoys using his status to seduce women and he struggles to gainsay her without tripping himself up. One of the invigilators tries to eavesdrop on them from beside a noisy exhibit of some piled schoolroom chairs, as Christian tries to deflect Anne's assertion that she finds him both fascinating and sinister.

Alone in his apartment, Christian is reading the migrant boy's letter when he hears someone rattling his door handle. He is relieved to find it is daughters Lise (Lise Stephenson Engström) and Lilly (Lilianne Mardon), although it takes a while before he is able to stop them squabbling. In order to keep them amused, he takes them on a tour of the museum and they are puzzled by the exhibits, including The Square. He also takes them shopping. But, while he is waiting for them to meet him, Christian receives a phone call from YouTube congratulating him on the promo film going viral. Leaving a beggar (Copos Pardaliam) to mind his bags, he goes searching for his daughters.

By the time he arrives at the museum, we have seen the footage of the tiny child being blown to smithereens while holding a kitten inside The Square. Elna is waiting in Christian's office to inform him that he must abide by any decisions that the board takes on his future and he reluctantly agrees, despite protesting that he had nothing to do with the offensive content. That night, they both attend a fund-raising gala, where Christian has arranged for performance artist Oleg Rogozjin (Terry Notary) to interact with the guests a a human ape. Initially, the antics are greeted with nervous laughter. But one man storms out after Oleg knocks his glass out of his hand and squares up to him when he tries to laugh off the incident by making monkey noises. Christian stands to call for applause to end the show, but Oleg is in no mood to back down and leaps on a table and begins pawing a woman (Madeleine Barwén Trollvik) before he pulls her behind him by the hair. A number of men in dinner jackets leap to their defence and, with one woman calling for them to kill Oleg, the set about beating him to a pulp.

Returning home in a downpour with Lise and Lilly, Christian runs into the boy from the flats at the foot of the stairs. He demands that Christian comes to speak to his parents to clear his name and apologises for getting him into trouble. Sending the girls upstairs, Christian tries to reason with the boy, but he starts knocking on doors in order to humiliate Christian in front of his neighbours. Outside his own apartment, Christian gives the kid a push and he falls backwards down the stairs. Bundling his daughters inside, Christian tries to ignore the cries for help (as does everyone else in the building) and it's only when he's sure he is gone that he goes down to the dumpster and scrambles through the bin bags in an attempt to find the piece of paper on which the youth had scrawled his phone number.

Back on his sofa, Christian records a message in which he apologises for his baseless accusation. However, he feels the need to justify his actions and claims that he is not solely responsible for the divisions in society. He even suggests that those on the lower rungs have misconceptions about the privileged that match their own mistrust of the marginalised. But his inability to express himself causes him further problems when he announces his resignation at a press conference and one journalist accuses him of imposing a limit on what might be considered acceptable levels of free speech. When Christian suggests that freedom to say what one wants comes with a degree of responsibility, the reporter condemns such self-censorship. Another demands to know why the girl was blonde when the migrant crisis in Europe suggests she should have had darker hair. But Christian strives to put a lid on things by quoting the plaque in the middle of The Square.

Next day, the papers are united in their condemnation of the museum for its sick provocation and a priest, a rabbi and an imam join forces to condemn Christian. That afternoon, he goes with Lilly to watch Lise perform in a cheerleading competition. On the way home, he stops on the estate to apologise to the boy who tumbled down the stairs, only to learn that his family has moved away. As the film ends, Lise and Lilly look at their father from the backseat and wonder what is going on.

Coming in at a gruelling 151 minutes, this scathing satire on the slow death of complacent Western liberalism will seem astute or harsh depending on the viewer's political standpoint. As in his previous pictures, Östlund refuses to compromise in his depiction of protagonists sinking further out of their depth and his insights here into class, race, gender, political correctness and the commercialisation of culture have jagged edges that carve through audience preconceptions. Echoes abound of Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Federico Fellini, Roy Andersson and Paolo Sorrentino, as Östlund takes dark comedy to its bleakest extremes to chart the decline and fall of a smug, superficial chauvinist who makes so many poor choices that one is forced to question the judgement of those who placed him in a position of such power and influence.

This is, of course, the whole point, as we are the guilty ones who allow status, privilege and freedom of speech to be abused by our failure to hold the rich, famous and powerful to account. But there is still something ghoulishly satisfying about watching a preening popinjay like the mischievously named Christian getting his just desserts, even if some of us do hope that the experience of being reduced to nothing under the unblinking gaze of his daughters will prove his first step on the road to salvation.

Oozing bourgeois hubris and passive hypocrisy, Claes Bang excels as the third-rate alpha male whose shortcomings are exposed with such cruel precision. His scenes with the marvellously pugnacious Elijandro Edouard and the typically riveting Elisabeth Moss are particularly squirm-inducing and, by all accounts, there are some astonishing out-takes of the condom sequence hidden away in Östlund's vaults. He is splendidly served by production designer Josefin Åsberg and cinematographer Fredrik Wenzel, as every gallery space, office and dwelling sheds light on Christian's milieu and mindset. A few gags fall flat, such as the Tourette's interlude, while he lets Christian give Anne the slip a little too easily. But, as the exploding waif and human ape sequences show, Östlund is a film-maker prepared to take chances, as he knows that the more he risks alienating the audience, the closer he is getting to their truth.

Director Armand Desplechin and actor Mathieu Amalric have been collaborators since the former debuted with La Sentinelle (1992). Along the way, they have developed a habit of revisiting characters, with Ismaël Vuillard from Kings & Queen (2005) resurfacing in Ismaël's Ghosts (2017) and Paul Dedalus from My Sex Life or, How I Got Into an Argument (1996) returning to reflect on his youth in My Golden Days (2015). The fact that the latter has rather limped into cinemas a good two years after its domestic release suggests that this may not be on a par with earlier Desplechin outings like Esther Kahn (2000) and A Christmas Tale (2008). But it celebrates a distinctive style of French film-making that has managed to endure for over half a century and continues to define the arthouse mode.

As he bids farewell to lover Irina (Dinara Droukarova) in Tajikistan, anthropologist Paul Dedalus (Mathieu Amalric) flashes back to his childhood, when he (Antoine Bui) had confronted his mother, Jeanne (Cécile Garcia-Fogel), on the staircase of their home in the middle of the night. Siblings Ivan (Timon Michel) and Délphine (Ivy Dodds) had tried to mediate, but Paul moves out to stay with his great-aunt, Rose (Françoise Lebrun), and her lesbian lover, Madame Sidorov (Irina Vavilova). She tells Paul how she decided not to return to the Soviet Union with her diplomat husband and was widowed when he was tried and executed as a traitor. Loss also hits Paul when Jeanne kills herself and his father, Abel (Olivier Rabourdin), struggles to cope with having to raise three children alone.

On returning to France after a decade away to take up a post at the foreign ministry on the Quai d'Orsay, the adult Dedalus is questioned about his passport by a government official named Claverie (André Dussollier). He reveals that he has an identical bureaucratic twin in Australia and prompts Dedalus into recalling how he came to lose his documents during a school trip to Minsk in the mid-1980s. The young Paul (Quentin Dolmaire) had been persuaded to go on the expedition by classmate Marc Zylberberg (Elyot Milshtein), whose parents supported various Jewish dissident groups in the USSR. Before they left, Eli (Gilles Cohen) and Dimitri (Stéphane Touitou) had convinced them to take some papers and money to a refusenik cell led by Ephraim Ilych (Gennadiy Fomin). However, Paul had also been talked into leaving his passport behind so that an activist could escape to Israel.

Discovering that one of the teachers is their handler, Paul and Zyl slip away from a museum tour and don Russian clothing to take the tram across Minsk and make the drop. Ephraim is delighted to see them and thanks Paul for donating his passport to Nathan (Grigori Eifits). On the way back to the museum, however, they have to bribe a cop and Paul runs into a concrete pillar to make it look as if he lost his documents in a mugging. For a terrifying moment, it looks as though the secret police are going to insist on detaining him. But the staff vouch for them and they returned home. Claverie smiles at Dedalus, as he reflects upon his teenage heroics, and brings him down to earth by showing him his name on Nathan's Australian death certificate.

This jolt send Dedalus into another flashback, as he returns to provincial Roubaix after his first term studying in Paris. He is picked up by his pal, Jean-Pierre Kovalki (Pierre Andrau), and hooks up with Délphine (Lily Taeib) and her friend Pénélope (Clémence Le Gall), who are now at high school. As the screen splits to show the exuberance of youth, Paul's attention falls on Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet), a classmate  of his 16 year-old sister, who draws slowly on a cigarette on the other side of the playground. Délphine warns him that she has a reputation as a maneater, but Paul is intrigued by her long blonde hair and defiant mien. But he is surprised when she takes him up on his invitation to teach her how to play Go and she teases him about how seriously he takes life.

Since Paul left, Ivan (Raphael Cohen) has become religious. Moreover, he has become friends with Mehdi (Yassine Douighi), who has persuaded him to buy a gun so that they can perform a robbery. Paul gives Ivan an earful and returns his weapon to the local drug dealer, who is supplying a party the Dedalus siblings are throwing while their father is away. Their cousin, Bob (Théo Fernandez), comes along and Pénélope makes it clear she has a crush on Paul. But he only has eyes for Esther, who has come with her older boyfriend, who leaves in a sulk, Paul walks her home and tells her about his mother's death, losing touch with Zyl when he moved to Lyon and having a minor breakdown. He claims to have no interest in her family. But, on kissing her on the doorstep, he promises to love her with a passion she would never forget.

Despite being beaten up by one of Esther's jealous admirers, Paul goes to Paris in high spirits in the hope of persuading Beninese professor Béhanzin (Ève Doé-Bruce) to accept him as a student. Sleeping in hostels, he writes daily to Esther, who responds with initial enthusiasm. But, by the time Paul comes home to equate the fall of the Berlin Wall with the end of his childhood, she has drifted away from him. He finds her at the local bowling alley and she dumps her date to stay with Paul and they consummate their relationship. To mark the occasion, he shows her his favourite Hubert Robert painting in the local museum and she is so touched that she tells him she loves him.

Forced to sleep on couches to attend classes, Paul calls Esther from payphones in torrential downpours and writes her long letters in smoky cafés. She speaks directly into the camera to give her responses, while an unseen narrator keeps us informed about Paul's struggle to survive in the capital and his growing fixation with his distant muse. Yet, while he remains besotted, Paul also starts an affair with Gilberte (Mélodie Richard), an older student whose boyfriend had offered him a sofa for the night. The half-suspecting cuckold had agreed to help Paul with his Greek, while agreeing that Esther could use their number to chat to her beau.

Eventually, Paul finds a garret near the Eiffel Tower and helps Professor Béhanzin with her shopping in return for tutorials. Back home, Bob is thrown out for cheeking his mother and he confesses to sleeping with Esther when Paul comes home. He goes to pay his respects at Aunt Rose's grave and her ghost urges him to be kinder to his father, who has been in agony since his mother's passing. Paul calls on Esther, but she is feeling morbid and has a panic attack because she claims not to be able to stand his absence. But he entrusts her to the care of Kovalki, as they kiss on the railway platform and she quickly becomes his girlfriend. Paul is devastated when he finds out and argues with his erstwhile friend during a house party. However, Esther realises that she can't live without Paul and ditches Kovalki and asks him to forgive her.

She comes to stay with him in Paris and he teases her about liking her because he doesn't feel threatened by her intellect. But, while she enjoys the intimacy of life in his bedsit, Esther feels the chasm between them and cries when she gets home. Shortly afterwards, she leaves school following a clash with a teacher, but manages to graduate on her own. Paul also passes finals, only to learn that Professor Béhanzin has died and he blackens his face with a burnt cork in distressed tribute.

He embarks upon his PhD, while Esther goes to college in Lille. She writes impassioned letters in which she pines for him and doubts her beauty. Paul tries to reply as quickly as possible to make her feel wanted. But he starts to feel under pressure and comes to find her words cloying. The narrator tells us that they have been an item for two years. However, Paul goes to Dushanbe in Tajikistan for his studies and, in the time they are apart, Esther has 15 lovers to his seven.  She phoned to end things and they had traded insults before she hung up. Over the years that followed, he had sent her some money when she ran out of funds in Paris and a WB Yeats poem that she felt encapsulated why they could never be together.

In an epilogue, Dedalus gets a letter from Kovalki asking for Esther's address. He starts an angry response, in which he accuses Kovalki and Bob of exploiting Esther because they knew she was vulnerable. Dedalus admits that their relationship might have done them both irrevocable harm, but he insists that he loved her for the right reasons. Although he didn't send the reply, Dedalus allows his emotions to get the better of him when he bumps into Kovalki (Eric Ruf) and his wife Victorine (Judith Davis) at a classical concert. They go for a drink and, when Kovaki casually mentions his message, Dedalus berates him for preying on Esther and Victorine is appalled to learn her doctor husband has a dark side. As he walks home, the loose pages of a Greek text are blown on the breeze and Dedalus remembers lying in bed with Esther, as she translated from a Greek primer and she had kissed him when he had informed her that he had a passport twin.

Ending with a freeze frame of Esther staring into the lens with an insolent smile, this marvellously meandering melodrama will leave many viewers wondering whatever happened to this jeune fille fatale. Those familiar with Ma Vie Sexuelle will know that Esther continued to haunt Dedalus in the guise of Emmanuelle Devos. Indeed, it's possible to see some of Devos's pouty expressions and mannerisms in Lou Roy-Lecollinet's eye-catching performance, as she veers between vivacity and vulnerability in tantalisingly testing her limits as both a woman and as a lover. Quentin Dolmaire is nowhere near as charismatic, however, and it's harder to recognise him in Amalric's unfulfilled academic drifter, who prefers to observe life than actively participate in it.

Amusingly, Desplechin and co-scenarist Julie Peyr often seem to be on the outside looking in, as they scramble to keep pace with the antics of the somewhat faceless bright young things in their Arcadian circle. This stance gives the narrative an irresistible spontaneity. But it also sometimes feels as though the writers are making things up on the spur of the moment, either to keep Paul and Esther apart or together or to make Dedalus feel ever more self-reliant, as each person close to him disappears or deceives him. Such messiness undoubtedly approximates life, but it also makes the picture seem excessively convoluted.

The spirits of François Truffaut and Philippe Garrel pervade proceedings, as Desplechin employs modish edtorial grace notes to evoke the youthful exuberance of the nouvelle vague. He is ably abetted by production designer Toma Baqueni, cinematographer Irina Lubtchansky and editor Laurence Briaud, as well as by composers Grégoire Hetzel and Mike Kourtzer, who appear to sample several New Wave motifs. One can only hope they can all reassemble in a few years time, perhaps with Devos back onboard, to complete the triptych.

A handful of Korean-American film-makers have come to the fore in recent times. Among them are Joseph Khan (Torque, 2004 & Detention, 2011), Michael Kang (The Motel, 2005 & West 32nd, 2007), So Yong Kim (In Between Days, 2006; Treeless Mountain, 2008 & For Ellen, 2012) and Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who became the first woman to solo direct a big-budget animated feature with the Oscar-nominated Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) and Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016). Now their ranks are swelled by Justin Chon, who follows the underwhelming slacker comedy, Man Up (2015), with Gook, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots with a quirky study of race relations that owes debts to the early works of Spike Lee and Kevin Smith.

As 29 April 1992 dawns over the Los Angeles neighbourhood of Paramount, Eli (Justin Chon) drives to collect a consignment of knock-off shoes for the store he inherited from his father with his younger brother, Daniel (David So). He is forced to scrap the deal when a vehicle driven by Cesar (Cesar Garcia)  comes cruising along the street and Eli is subjected to a kicking. Undaunted, he heads home to rouse Daniel, who is writing lyrics in his bedroom.

Nearby, 11 year-old Kamilla (Simone Baker) is getting ready to go to school. Sister Regina (Omono Okojie) is half-heartedly watching the news, which is dominated by the imminent verdict in the case against the LAPD officers who subjected Rodney King to a savage assault. Brother Keith (Curtiss Cook, Jr.) reminds Kamilla to stay away from the shoe shop, as there has been bad blood between the families since their mother perished alongside Eli and Daniel's father in a robbery.

Skateboarding along, Kamilla drops into the liquor store owned by Mr Kim (Sang Chon). She pays for a drink and a packet of cigarettes (with money stolen from her sister) and tells Kim that some black kids are tagging his paintwork. When he rushes out, Kamilla helps herself to some Twinkies and Daniel and Eli have to defend her when the furious Kim comes to confront her. Eli tells her to go to school, as they can't afford any more trouble. But Daniel finds her chores to do when she protests that classes have been cancelled because of the Rodney King thing.

Business is brisk, although nobody seems to be buying anything and Daniel manages to insult the only customer at the till. Frustrated, Eli takes Kamilla to lunch. He is dismayed to find that the Hispanic gang has daubed racist remarks all over his car and he and Kamilla have fun pretending to be in a disaster movie when they drive through the car wash. Unfortunately, the graffiti remains and Keith spots his sister in the passenger seat when they drive past his corner. But Kamilla insists she isn't afraid of her brother and enjoys hanging out with Eli and Daniel as they don't make any demands on her.

When they get back to the shop, Eli gives Kamilla a free pair of Air Jordan trainers and joins Daniel in a goofy dance routine to `Maneater' by Darryl Hall and John Oates. Yet, when Daniel flirts with some black customers and offers them generous discount, Eli loses his temper and throws shoes at him while ranting about how useless he is. Daniel wipes away tears, as Eli smokes in his car and calms himself down by looking at pictures of his parents. However, his mood scarcely improves when  Regina pages him to bring Kamilla home and he discovers that his car won't start.

Daniel has an appointment at a recording studio in a rough part of town and runs into Keith and his pals. They have just heard that the King cops have been acquitted and they take out their frustration on Daniel. However, they leave him cowering in an alley when Keith gets a message informing him that there is stuff going free in the looting that has started in the South Central neighbourhood. Back at the shop, Eli has a rush of customers and needs to break a $50 bill. He sends Kamilla to ask Kim for change, but he pulls a gun on her and Eli storms over the road to have a blazing argument with the older man before stealing some hooch and sweets from the shelves. Fuming on the pavement, Kim watches as Kamilla dances and Eli does handbrake turns around her in front of his store.

Sitting on a bench outside the shop, Eli swigs down the purloined booze before giving Kamilla a skateboard lesson. A couple of pals cycle past on their chopper bikes to ask Eli if he fancies coming looting and he tells them not to put bad ideas into Kamilla's head. As they watch the smoke swirling into the dusk sky from South Central, Eli gives Kamilla a snapshot of her mother at the store and she tucks it in her pocket. She sings and sways, as the violence gets out of hand a few streets away and Daniel finds himself in the middle of it when the recording studio boss makes him pay for his session by helping him carry contraband to his car. However, he doesn't get far before he is dragged out of the car and beaten by a gang of angry African-Americans.

Watching events unfold on TV, Kamilla asks Eli if he thinks the mayhem will reach their area. He is reassuring her that there is nothing here worth stealing when Regina comes looking for her sister. They have an awkward conversation while Kamilla gathers her stuff and she hands Eli the flower she has been wearing in her hair as a parting gift. As they drive home, they nearly hit a speeding van being driven by Mr Kim, who has given Daniel a lift to spare him further beatings. He explains that he did his national service in South Korea with Daniel's father and they had remained good friends.

Kamilla sits on the sofa with Keith and he beams when she gives him the cigarettes. They watch the news coverage of the riots before she asks her brother to tell her something about their mom. Softening from his street tough persona, Keith recalls how nice she was, even though she could give him a wallop if he stepped out of line. He then notices the Air Jordan box in Kamilla's bag and loses his temper when he sees the snapshot. Regina tries to intervene, as he berates his sister for daring to refer to the Koreans who got their mother killed as `family'. Following Kamilla into her room, he demands to know if Eli has any more sneakers in the storeroom and calls his pals to organise a raid.

Meanwhile, Eli is trying to fix his car with his Hispanic buddy, Jesus (Ben Munoz). He discovers he has run out of petrol and is cursing his luck when he gets a call from Regina to go home, as it won't be safe at the shop tonight. Kim drops Daniel off and Eli rages at him for swanning off without telling him where he was going. Daniel locks himself in the car and Kim urges Eli to sit down, as he describes what happened on the day his father and Kamilla's mother were killed. He sighs that few migrants succeed in realising their dream of giving their children a better life, as not belonging is a difficult problem to overcome.

As they chat, Kamilla sneaks out of the house with Keith's gun in her bag. She runs on to the concourse as the brothers are listening to Daniel's demo tape on the car stereo. He is peeved that the sound of the studio dog barking can be heard on the recording and only cracks a smile when Eli asks what a fat ugly dude like him knows about R&B and love songs. Kamilla warns them that Keith is on the warpath. But Daniel refuses to help move the sneakers, as he is tired of the shop and Eli telling him what to do. They fight and Kamilla pleads with them to stay calm before leaving for the nearby diner with Daniel.

Eli packs the trainers into two large cardboard boxes and is locking the gate when Cesar drives past. He pulls a gun on Eli and steals the boxes and he shuffles over to the diner to join Daniel and Kamilla. As they are leaving, they spot Jesus, who informs them that he has hidden the Air Jordans on the roof and left a can of petrol so Eli can start the car. They rush back to the shop to rescue their precious stock, as Cesar and his homies discover they have stolen nothing but women's high heels.

Just as Eli starts throwing bin bags of trainers off the roof, however, Keith and his pals roll around the corner. He fires his gun into the air and demands the shoes. High above them, Eli decides it's not worth playing the hero and starts throwing the sneakers into the car park one at a time. His buddies are delighted with their haul. But Keith is livid that Eli has made a fool of him and orders them to turn the car around. Up on the roof, Eli has decided to sell up and make a fresh start somewhere else. However, Kamilla feels betrayed because she has placed all her trust in him and she climbs down the ladder, as he brother's vehicle returns. He rages at Eli and Daniel for ruining his life and his cohorts start lobbing rocks through the windows. They are about to light a Molotov cocktail when Kamilla rushes out with her brother's gun, which goes off when she trips.

Realising his sister has been shot, Keith pleads with Eli to get her to the nearest hospital and he cradles her in the backseat as they drive. They find a doctor who wheels Kamilla away on a gurney and Keith turns his fury on to Eli before trying to punch himself for causing this calamity. Eli calms him down and they sit slumped in the corridor waiting for news. It's not good and Eli sobs as he drives back to the shop. He shakes his head when Daniel wanders out to greet him and they light one of the Molotovs and watch the family legacy go up in flames, as the picture ends with the opening shot of Kamilla's ghost dancing in front of the blazing building.

Photographed by Ante Cheng in a glassy monochrome that reinforces the stark nature of the narrative, this is a bold, if flawed attempt to use the King riots as a way of highlighting how few lessons have been learned over the last quarter century. For all the tensions between the Korean, Hispanic and black characters, however, the most telling moment comes when Keith and Kamilla are sitting alone together and she wonders whether their mother is looking down on them and he snorts that nobody is keeping an eye on their kind. As retorts to Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric go, this one is short, simple and to the point.

Yet Chon reins in the fury that had fuelled Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), even as he departs from the slacker banter of Kevin Smith's Clerks (1994) during the disappointingly melodramatic denouement. Moreover, he allows a little generational pathos to seep into proceedings during the heart-to-heart between Eli and Mr Kim, who is played with soft-centred bolshiness by the director's debuting father, Sang Chon, whose store was looted during the 1992 disturbances.

David So and Curtiss Cook, Jr. show well as Eli and Kamilla's siblings. But the acting honours go to the tweenage Simone Baker, who shifts between foul-mouthed sass and misfitting vulnerability without once seeming winsome. Her demise is a misjudgement, however, as is some of the more unnecessarily energetic camerawork. But this is as stark as its title suggests, although it also has its moments of disarming poetry.

Following on from last month's revival of The Touch (1971), the BFI has opted for another lesser-known offering as part of its ongoing celebration of the Ingmar Bergman centenary. Made for Swedish television to mark the 50th anniversary of the national radio service, The Magic Flute (1975) is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of filmed opera. Yet, despite being released on disc as part of the Criterion Collection,  it has rarely been seen on the big screen.

Having been entranced as a 12 year-old by the fantasia composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Emanuel Schikaneder, Bergman was determined to shoot in Stockholm's Drottningholm Palace Theatre in order to recreate the sense of occasion and intimacy that the first audience would have experienced in Vienna's Theater auf der Wieden in 1791. However, the Drottningholm management insisted that the theatre couldn't accommodate a film crew. So, Bergman recreated the entire auditorium in a studio at the Swedish Film Institute, with the assistance of production designer, Henny Noremark.

He also had a hands-on role in the recording of the soundtrack in a disused circus building. A gifted musician who had once suggested that he might have become a conductor if he hadn't discovered cinema, Bergman hired Eric Ericson and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra to ensure that Swedish television's first stereophonic production would not only sound lustrous, but would also have a spatial dimensionality that would place the viewer at the very heart of the action. This meant putting the cast through numerous retakes to ensure that their performances were as precise as their lip-synching to the playback. Furthermore, Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist had problems adapting to TV's boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio. But the end result is unquestionably joyous, even though it sometimes strains to be as accessible and cinematic as Bergman had hoped.

The overture segment is a case in point, as the camera fixes on the face of young Helene Friberg, as she looks around the theatre in wide-eyed anticipation. But Bergman is not content with capturing her childlike wonder and begins cross-cutting between close-ups of the other audience members, whose ages and ethnicities have been consciously chosen to reinforce Bergman's contention that opera is for everyone. 

Eventually, Act One begins with Prince Tamino (Josef Köstlinger) being chased by a dragon. He pleads with the gods for deliverance and three servants of the Queen of the Night (Britt-Marie Aruhn, Kirsten Vaupel and Birgitta Smiding) appear to vanquish the beast. Each woman is smitten with Tamino and tries to persuade the others to leave her alone with him while he sleeps. However, he wakes alone and jumps to the conclusion that he owes his life to Papageno the bird catcher (Håkan Hagegård). A lonely man who commands little respect, Papageno takes the credit, only for the three maidens to return and muzzle him to prevent him telling more lies.

Seeing Tamino awake, the attendants show him a locket containing a portrait of Princess Pamina (Irma Urrila) and he immediately falls in love with her. They also inform him that she has been abducted by the evil sorcerer, Sarastro (Ulrik Cold), and his band of slaves, led by Monostatos (Ragnar Ulfung). The Queen of the Night (Birgit Nordin) arrives to offer Tamino her daughter's hand in marriage if he can rescue her. He is also presented with a magic flute that has the power to turn sorrow into joy, while Papageno is entrusted with a set of enchanted bells that will help protect them.

As the new friends set off under the guidance of three sprites (Urban Malmberg, Ansgar Krook and Erland von Heijne), Pamina laments her fate in Sarastro's palace. However, Papageno succeeds in tracking her down and reassures her that help is on its way. She recognises his loneliness and they duet about the sweet agonies of love. Meanwhile, Tamino has reached the palace and been told by a holy man (Erik Saedén) that Sarastro is much misunderstood and that the Queen of the Night is not to be trusted.

Tamino plays his flute and all the animals of the forest come to listen to him. He pauses when he hears Papageno's panpipes, but he is forced to stop playing when Monostatos and his cohorts swoop to recapture them. Papageno plays his magic bells and the slaves are so intoxicated by the sound that they dance themselves off the stage. However, Sarastro is made of sterner stuff and he demands to know why Pamina keeps trying to escape. She insists that Monostatos has tried to molest her, but Sarastro suggests that it would be folly to leave his court, as the Queen of the Night is more interested in exercising her own power than in seeking her daughter's happiness.

At that moment, Monostatos enters with the captured Tamino. He demands a reward from Sarastro, only to be punished for his lustful attitude towards Pamina. The sorcerer is taken aback when Tamino and Pamina embrace and warns the prince that he will have to complete a series of tasks to prove himself worthy of her love. Two priests from the temple (Gösta Prüzelius and Ulf Johanson) tell the pair that they can become like gods if they display sufficient virtue.

Following a quick peak behind the scenes to show how the cast spends the interval, Act Two opens with Sarastro and the council of priests invoking the spirits of Isis and Osiris to protect Tamino and Pamina during their ordeals. Two of the priests warn Tamino and Papageno that they are about to be tempted by the Queen of the Night's maidservants and they are urged to remain silent during their onslaught. Papageno cannot hold his tongue and Tamino has to reprimand him. But they succeed in resisting the siren song and await their next test.

Meanwhile, Monostatos finds Pamina sleeping in the garden. He sits beside her and runs his hands over the body. But, as he is about to kiss her, the Queen of the Night appears and wakes Pamina in order to explain that Sarastro is her father and she gives her a dagger to kill him. Terrified by the way in which her mother's face ages during her aria, Pamina is faced with the dreadful prospect of being disowned if she fails. However, Sarastro enters to reassure her that he does not blame her mother for her plotting and promises that cruelty and revenge have no place in his domain.

The priests lead Tamino and Papageno into a crypt and remind them of their obligation to remain silent. However, the bird catcher is thirsty and his complaints reach the ears of Papagena (Elisabeth Erikson), who dons the guise of an old crone in order to flirt with him. He plays his bells and sings for her and she removes her wig and false teeth to reveal herself in all her beauty and he is besotted. Left along, Tamino plays the flute and is overjoyed to see Pamina listening to him. But he remembers his oath of silence and turns away from her. She sings a lament at losing his love and he is crushed, as she wanders away in distress.

As snow starts to fall and the three sprites fly over the garden in a hot air balloon, Pamina contemplates suicide against the railings of a wrought iron fence. She is prevented from doing so by the cherubs, who reassure her of Tamino's love and she flies away with them. While they are enjoying a snowball fight in the woods, however, the boys notice Papageno trying to summon Papagena with his pipes. When she fails to come, he throws a noose over the branch of a tree and prepares to hang himself. But the sprites pelt him with snow and advise him to play his magic bells. They start to chime by themselves and he is delighted when Papagena appears and they sing their famous stuttering duet, as they remove their winter weeds and usher in the spring.

Back in the depths of the palace, the priests commend Tamino on his fortitude. A pair of sentries with flaming plumed helmets (Hans Johansson and Jerker Arvidson) escort him to a wall to recite the promises that Isis and Osiris make to those who overcome their fear of death. He claims he is ready to face any ordeal and is joined by Pamina, who presents him with his flute. Together they pass unharmed through chambers of fire and water and the priests welcome them into the temple. As they are about to celebrate, however, Monostatos strides in to demand that the Queen of the Night keeps her promise to betroth him to Pamina. But, as she rallies her forces to lay waste to the palace, Sarastro draws his sword to challenge her and her attack is repelled. He declares that the light has triumphed over darkness to hail a new age of wisdom and kinship and the curtain falls on Tamino and Pamina embracing and Papageno and Papagena dancing with their brood of children.

At times dazzling, at others self-indulgent, this rather begs the old gag about something not needing fixing `if it ain't baroque'. The 16mm visuals are simply gorgeous, with Nykvist's use of lighting being particularly beguiling, especially during the scenes featuring the Queen of the Night, when he seems to drain the frame of colour. Henny Noremark's sets and bits of mechanical stagecraft are also exceptional, while the costumes he designed with Karin Erskine thoroughly merited their Oscar nomination. Singing a libretto translated into Swedish by poet Alf Henrikson, the leads are also memorable, with Håkan Hagegård twinkling as Papageno, Josef Köstlinger and Irma Urrila mining the depths of despair and passion as Tamino and Pamina, and Birgit Nordin seething with vengeful rage as the latter's black-clad mother. Mercifully, Bergman opted not to overdo the blackface for Ragnar Utlfung's Monostatos. But this is one of the details that dates the production.

At times, Bergman's staging seems to be channelling Fritz Lang's Die Niebelungen (1924). But there's also a whiff of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946) during the passage through the chambers of fire and water, as faceless torsos gyrate in agony in the flames and arms reach up from the depths. However, Bergman often appears to be in playful mood, as he places key lyrics within the mise-en-scène and positions faces within the frame to evoke films as different as Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal (1957), The Virgin Spring (1960), The Silence (1963), Persona (1966), Hour of the Wolf (1968) and Cries and Whispers (1972). Indeed, one can imagine Lasse Hallström furiously scribbling down notes for future ABBA videos.

Yet, there's a curious lack of smoothness about Siv Lundgren's editing, while the frequent cutaways to Helene Friberg to remind us of the preposterous narrative's fairytale nature eventually become irksome. The interval antics are also a bit hit-and-miss, with Ulric Cold perusing the score of Richard Wagner's Parsifal, while one of the slave boys reads a comic. Elsewhere, the three nocturnal harbingers have a crafty cigarette beneath a No Smoking sign, while Urrila beats Köstlinger at chess. Such forced jollity finds echo in the cornball moment in which the locket image of Pamina comes to life in Tamino's hand. But these are essentially quibbles, as few have since found more engaging in ways in which to cinematicise opera, including Kenneth Branagh, whose 2006 version of Mozart's masterpiece boasted a scenario by Stephen Fry.

The pioneer of Single Shot Cinema, Leonard Retel Helmrich is best known for the trilogy comprising Eye of the Day (2001), Shape of the Moon (2004) and Position Among the Stars (2010), which charted the precarious progress of the Sjamsuddin family from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. He returns to Dochouse this week with The Long Season, which almost cost him his life, as he lapsed into a coma after going nine minutes without oxygen after suffering a severe heart attack. While he recovered in the Netherlands, producer Pieter van Huystee and camera woman Ramia Suleiman completed this 18-month study of daily life in a Lebanese refugee camp in accordance with Helmrich's intentions.

Situated across the Syrian border with Lebanon in the Bekaa Valley, Camp Khiara lies close to the town of Majdal Anjar and offers sanctuary to 1.2 million refugees. The majority fled the city of Raqqa after it was captured by Isis and the prospect of their return seems slight. Consequently, they have attempted to resume what passes for normal activity amidst the tents and shacks they now call home.

Helmrich and Suleiman (who is a Syrian artist and sculptor) focus their attention on the family of the ageing Abu Hussein, who has enough to worry about on the domestic front without dwelling on religion or politics. While his pregnant first wife, Yisra, resents the arrival of his new spouse, Zahra, his son Maher is keen to find a bride and fly the nest. However, he is considered immature and is kept short of funds to prevent him from doing anything foolish. Paternal pressure is also being applied to Maria, a teacher who has found a niche in the camp and is reluctant to comply with her father's demand to return to Raqqa to marry, especially as she feels as though traumatised children like the unpredictable Wahid need her more.

While these dramas play out, Helmrich and Suleiman capture the sights and sounds of everyday existence. Meals are cooked by the womenfolk, while men scramble for the wood, bricks and plastic sheets that could make their dwellings a bit more bearable. When not in class, children play with balls and tyres, while the more ingenious attempt to build a toy truck out of scrap. Chickens peck in the dust, oblivious to the desperate news filtering across the frontier.

The discreet watchfulness of the camerawork allows the film-makers to pick up the tiny, but telling details that reveal the strain of living in rented tents and on meagre food rations. On occasion, the relentlessness of the gaze can feel intrusive and there is something disconcerting about the sequence in which a tearful girl is pursued, even though she clearly wants a little privacy. But there is something ghoulishly compelling about Zahra's struggle to come to terms with what she has witnessed (such as women being beheaded because of their hairstyles) and what she has to endure after Abu Hussein opts to sneak back into Syria rather than adjudicate the squabbles between his wives.