French director Claire Denis celebrates her 72nd birthday this week. But she shows no signs of slowing down or settling for easy options with Let the Sunshine In, which draws inspiration from Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, as Denis and co-scenarist Christine Angot examine the way middle-aged women are viewed in today's society and how they seek to validate their own existence. Closer in tone to Vendredi Soir (2002) and 35 Shots of Rum (2008) than darker outings like The Intruder (2004), White Material (2009) and Bastards (2013), this is the closest Denis will ever get to making a romcom. But there is nothing generic about Denis's approach to the subject matter or about the standout performance of Juliette Binoche.

While making love with married banker Xavier Beauvois, artist Juliette Binoche is stung by his tactless reference to her sexual experiences with another man. She cries on the pillow as he dresses, but still makes plans to meet up with him over the weekend. When he fails to honour his promise, she comes to his luxurious home and threatens to end their affair unless he starts showing her a little more courtesy. From the way he treats a bartender when they go for a drink, however, it's clear that Beauvois is too self-absorbed to consider the feelings of others. Indeed, he casually mentions that Binoche's ex-husband, Laurent Grévill, once had a fling with Josiane Balasko, the gallerist with whom she is about to collaborate. Moreover, while fondling Binoche at the bar, he informs her that he has no intention of leaving his wife for her, as she is too extraordinary to live without.

Frustrated with not knowing where she stands, Binoche returns to her studio and tries to paint. But the gossip about Balasko has unsettled her and she hums and haws her way to raising the issue during their next meeting. She is relieved when Balasko dismisses the rumour with a raucous laugh, but Binoche soon finds another professional relationship edging into disconcerting territory when she discusses a project with actor Nicolas Duvauchelle. He drinks heavily at the theatre bar, while complaining about the nightly grind of his vocation and his determination to leave the wife he feels he has outgrown.

Disturbed by Duvauchelle's revelation that he can become violent, Binoche suggests they go to supper and they seem to open up over a glass or two of wine. However, the barriers go back up as he drives her home and she declares that it would be better if they stopped seeing each other, as their liaison is going nowhere. Reluctant to commit himself, Duvauchelle debates whether to come in for a nightcap. He then decides it would be a waste to open a bottle of champagne and announces he is going to leave. But, having given Binoche a goodnight hug, he kisses her and she is relieved the prattle has finally stopped and they can go to bed.

Bidding him farewell with a glazed look of satisfaction in her eyes, Binoche feels like she has finally met someone worthy of her time. Yet, when they next hook up, Duvauchelle asks if they can resume their platonic friendship and her eyes mist over with disappointment that she has allowed herself to sleep with another loser. She is still feeling dismayed when Beauvois shows up with a big bunch of flowers and the hope that she will show her appreciation in the customary manner. But Binoche is tired of his arrogance and, when he accuses her of throwing him out like a character in a cheap bedroom farce, she pushes him into the street and vows never to see him again.

Wandering the streets, she bumps into fellow artist Philippe Katerine in the fishmonger's. He has recently been left a property by his mother and he encourages Binoche to use it whenever she wants. But, while he puts her under no pressure, the offer of a dinner date makes her wonder whether he has an ulterior motive. Such is her readiness to trust men, however, that Binoche answers a call from Duvauchelle and endures his self-pitying diatribe about regretting the fact that they slept together before they had become firm friends. He wishes they could go back to the way things were before and she suggests a `second before' that still acknowledges that they now have a history. But Duvauchelle prevaricates and Binoche loses patience with him and propses that they stop seeing each other.

While he mooches around on the Métro platform, Binoche tries to strike up a conversation with cabby Walid Afkir and he soothes her with some cool jazz (composed by Stuart Staples for the Julian Siegel Quartet) on Radio France. Her good mood doesn't last long, however, as she gives Beauvois the cold shoulder at a gallery viewing and ignores his calls when he phones her in the middle of the night. She confides in best friend Sandrine Dumas that she only orgasmed with Beauvois while thinking what a heel he is and Dumas suggests she gets back with Grévill, as he had always adored her. Leaning against the washroom door, Binoche admits that she has recently slept with her ex-husband. But she had regretted it, as it reminded her of why they had broken up and how their subsequent civility was preventing them from moving on, Yet she invites him over again, only to ask him to leave when she accuses him of using a move from a porn movie.

Needing to get away, Binoche accepts Katerine's invitation to stay in La Souterraine during the arts festival. However, the chatter spoiling a walk in the countryside provokes her into fulminating against her companions and she barely has a word to say to Balasko and her friends Alex Descas and Bruno Podalydès when she returns to the hotel. Instead, she dances to Etta James's `At Last' with stranger Paul Blain and feels good about being swept off her feet.

Back in Paris, she asks Grévill to return the keys to her apartment. But he refuses because his 10 year-old daughter occasionally stays with her and he chides Binoche for being such a mediocre mother. Podalydès also takes Binoche to task for dating Blain when they have nothing in common other than their physical relationship. She allows his prejudices to seep into her mind and she confronts Blain about why he has not introduced her to his friends. He is hurt by her elitist notions and urges her to abandon the clique that holds her under its sway. But she knows she can't leave her charmed circle and is relieved when Descas takes her hand as they walk along the Seine and suggests that they can become an item if she still wants him when he returns from taking his children on vacation.

Nearby, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi tearfully parts company with GĂ©rard Depardieu in a car parked in a suburban street. He is a fortune teller and Binoche consults him about her romance with Descas, who works in a museum. She also shows him some photos of Duvauchelle and Depardieu suggests that she is more likely to patch things up with her actor than she is to settle down with Descas. However, he also recommends that she keeps herself open to new possibilities, as she might soon be enthralled by a man with unusual gifts who may turn out to be her soulmate.

This closing encounter is made all the more amusing by the fact that Depardieu and Binoche fell out very publicly in September 2010 when he claimed she was `an absolute nothing'. Interesting, editor Guy Lecorne ensures that they don't share the same frame (as was the case with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann's Heat, 1995). But the slyly seductive manner in which Depardieu plays on Binoche's insecurities and susceptibilities will leave many puzzled by what Denis and Angot want this droll, but desultory anti-romcom to say about women of a certain age and how they seem to need male approval in order to feel complete.

For a successful artist, Binoche barely seems to have time to pick up a brush as she pinballs between the undeserving men sapping her creative energy. She also appears to be an even more part-time mother, while she falls way short of being a Bechdel poster girl by confining her conversation with her female friends to her male entourage. Yet, such is Binoche's screen presence and her effortless ability to inhabit her characters, that she makes this resistible romantic dilettante seem utterly fascinating.

She's ably supported by the loathsome Beauvois, the self-obsessed Duvauchelle, the whining Podalydès and the accommodating Grévill, who remains something of an enigma as the doting father whose failings as a spouse are left tantalisingly tacit. Agnès Godard's camera also rallies to Binoche's cause, as it focuses with discreet intimacy on her shifting expressions during exchanges that often force her to run the gamut of emotions in a single close-up. But, while she muses on identity and desire, Denis opts against delving too deeply into Binoche's mindset or milieu and, consequently, while Bright Sunshine In (as it's called in the on-screen subtitle) compels throughout in its depiction of how people behave at various stages of a relationship, it can't be ranked among the remarkable auteur's best works.

There's a current trend among first-time feature makers to diminish the daunting prospect of stepping into the unknown by expanding a prize-winning short. The latest debutant to take this route is Canadian Kathleen Hepburn, whose Never Steady, Never Still develops a 2015 drama that was inspired by her mother's struggle to cope with Parkinsons's Disease. Filmed on 35mm stock to capture the effect of the changing seasons on the British Columbian landscape, this intimate insight may try to tackle too many pressing social issues with its gay subplot. But it remains a cut above the average affliction saga.

Now in her 50s, Shirley Henderson has had Parkinson's for all but four of her 23-year marriage to Nicholas Campbell. In an opening speech off camera, she recalls her mother telling her that death was a gift from God after her daughter was stillborn. She was dubious and confronts her steadily worsening condition with a similar sense of steely scepticism. She lives on a homestead on the banks of Lake Stuart and muddles along as best she can with the devoted Campbell and their 18 year-old son, Théodore Pellerin. He spends much of his time hanging with best pal Jonathan Whitesell and his father thinks it would toughen him up to take a job in the Alberta oil fields.

While Pellerin acclimatises to his new surroundings and the macho posturing of some of his workmates, Henderson attends her group therapy sessions and asks Campbell to cut off her wedding ring as it's becoming too painful to wear. She is pleased to get the odd phone call from her son, who confides an off-camera anecdote about losing his pet dog four years earlier after it got into a fight with a porcupine. But his world is turned upside down when Campbell suffers a fatal heart attack after returning from a fishing trip and he becomes his mother's primary carer.

Having needed neighbour Lorne Cardinal to haul Campbell's body out of the lake, Henderson wades into the water in her white nightgown a couple of days after the funeral. Pellerin doesn't seem to notice she's gone, even though the kettle keeps whistling on the stove. He does some chores around the place and chats on the phone to Whitesell, who has moved to the city to begin his psychology degree. Pellerin has been having fantasies about his buddy, but he suppresses them, along with the fears that he doesn't belong in an oil well or in his own home.

As autumn turns to winter, Henderson struggles with the button of her jeans and is warned to stop driving after she's stopped by a cop for weaving over the road. Pregnant checkout girl Mary Galloway informs her that the supermarket has a home delivery service, while Cardinal comes over to take Henderson fishing in his boat. They lament that life on the lake is changing and he apologises for ducking the funeral, as he finds it difficult to show his emotions in public.

Riled by site bully Jared Abrahamson, Pellerin starts snorting cocaine in his room and resorts to seeking out prostitute Chilton Crane after he is disciplined for a fight with Abrahamson. Back home, Henderson gets to know Calloway when she braves the snow to bring her shopping and cautions her that giving birth is the easy bit about becoming a mom. Ashamed of himself and confused about his sexuality, Pellerin smashes the windscreen of his car and, shortly afterwards, fetches up at home. Henderson is pleased to see him and asks him to collect her medication in town.

He tries to flirt with Calloway during her break, but, while she doesn't seem interested, she meets him after work and they chat in his car. She reveals that the father of her baby got scared and moved up north, while he admits that he has sometimes thought about making a move on Whitesell. But he touches Calloway instead and she tells him not to be so bashful about sex.

Arriving home in the dark, he finds Henderson trapped in the bath and he carries her to her room. Pellerin apologises for being such a useless son and she wishes she was able to take care of him. The next morning, she struggles out of bed and has problems putting on her boots. But she makes it outside and wishes Campbell a merry Christmas as she sits on the ground and runs her fingers through the snow. Meanwhile, Pellerin wakes up and unpacks his bag, as he has no intention of leaving his mother alone again.

A superb physical performance by the ever-reliable Shirley Henderson proves key to this affecting study of the debilitating effects of a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that remorselessly reduces a patient's motor skills. Despite saying little, Henderson uses little squeaks and sighs to emphasise the exhausting effort required to complete the simplest task. But. such is her authentic excellence, that Théodore Pellerin appears mannered by comparison, as he seeks to combat his social awkwardness and sexual ambiguity by proving himself to be a man in every sense of the word.

He's not helped by the fact that Hepburn is less assured in depicting the macho milieu of the oil field, while Pellerin's rite of passage always seems like a sideshow to Henderson's ordeal. Yet Hepburn has a firm grasp on the problems facing those residing in Canada's remoter communities and the fact that so many young people are having to move away to find their niche. Indeed, there's more sociological insight in the hesitant front seat conversation between Pellerin and Mary Galloway than there is in the rest of the film combined. But Hepburn is not one to focus full square on an issue, as she prefers to explore it within the context of daily life. Consequently, the audience feels compelled to empathise with Henderson rather than pity her and this refusal to sentimentalise a harrowing situation makes it all the more plausible.

Norm Li's often painterly views of the lakeside landscape and the isolated oil facility are equally effective, as are the contrasts between the vast spaces and Liz Cairns and Sophie Jarvis's cluttered interiors. Ben Fox's score similarly alternates between quiet chords and effusive stringed flourishes, and it's this sense that stoicism must always prevail over histrionics in keeping life on track that roots this acutely sensitive and poetically pragmatic picture in tangible reality.

A quick look at the shorts 96 Ways to Say I Love You (2015) and The Exit (2016) should give you an idea of what to expect from actress-turned-director Daisy Aitkens's feature debut, You, Me and Him. Slick, assured and nowhere near as amusing as they think they are, the entries in this loose trilogy on love and commitment have been produced by Georgia Tennant, the wife of onetime Doctor Who, David Tennant, and the daughter of Sandra Dickinson and onetime Doctor Who Peter Davison, who cameo in a ménage romcom that is far too glib to appeal to mainstream audiences and way too patronising to appeal to the LGBTQ+ constituency that it so gauchely exploits.

Christmas is coming to Stratford-upon-Avon and 39 year-old lawyer Lucy Punch is feeling good about life with her pink-haired artist girlfriend Faye Marsay until she learns that a colleague is leaving to have a baby and she becomes debilitatingly broody. Boss Don Warrington is hardly sympathetic, as he pries into the dynamics of Punch's physical relationship, while Marsay has enough trouble getting up in the morning and finding some clean clothes to be ready for motherhood. So, she is taken aback when Punch proposes marriage out of the blue and then springs the idea of having a child at a family party.

Barely speaking after Marsay and friend Tessie Orange-Turner are arrested for being under the influence of hash brownies on a fairground merry-go-round, the pair attend a party being thrown by recently divorced neighbour, David Tennant. However, when Punch springs the news that she has already started a course of artificial insemination, they have a blazing row and Marsay gets drunk and tumbles into bed with Tennant, while Punch goes home to her plummily affluent parents, Gemma Jones and David Warner, who haven't quite come to terms with the fact that their daughter is a lesbian.

When Marsay comes to beg forgiveness, Punch is overjoyed. But, when they find out on the same day that they are both pregnant, Punch chucks Marsay's clothes out of an upstairs window and throws a peace offering cake into Tennant's bedroom. She relents when Marsay arrives on the doorstep with a pram and has brother Simon Bird draw up an agreement that they will meet each other's parents and inform Tennant that he is going to be a father, but not let him get involved in any way. However, he pleads to play an active part raising his child and, because neither mother-to-be can drive, they reluctantly accept his help.

Having enjoyed spooking squeamish gynaecologist Nina Sosanya, Punch and Marsay take prenatal classes with Australian guru Sally Phillips, who delights in the street cred that helping a lesbian couple brings her. But Punch feels it's unfair that she is having all sorts of inconvenient side effects while Marsay is breezing along without a care in the world. Thus, she resents the fact that Tennant (who is having sympathetic symptoms) comes round to brush her hair while she's having gas attacks in court. She is also appalled when they are thrown out of Phillips's class after she finds them in the washroom examining Tennant's genitals, which have mysteriously turned orange.

Marsay's mother, Sarah Parish, is dismayed that her daughter is expecting and urges her to have an abortion and try again when she is over her lesbian phase. She proves equally forthright when the families meet to go rowing on the Avon and she asks the nonplussed Bird if he is gay. He is affronted, but has to field the same inquiry when Tennant falls into the river while arguing with Punch and he pities him for being wet. Having just discovered she is expecting a boy, Punch has another unfortunate encounter at the supermarket when she gives some chocolate to Ingrid Oliver's kids and has to endure a tirade about how children ruin a woman's body and her life.

Despite Tennant promising to keep his distance, he remains a fixture and Punch is frustrated by the rapport he has developed with Marsay. She asks Bird to speak to him, but they get drunk at a pole-dancing club and Bird confesses that his wife has left him. He is embarrassed, therefore, when Parish finds him standing next to a scantily clad waiter and Punch and Marsay's baby shower, which the former soon comes to find intolerable after Sunetra Sarker mistakes Marsay and Tennant for a couple. However, when she gets into a stand-up argument with Marsay in front of their guests, the latter feels abdominal pain and is rushed to hospital, where Sosanya declares her daughter to be dead in the womb.

As Marsay is finding it hard to come to terms with her loss, Punch goes to stay with her folks. She is slightly put out when Marsay turns up to a garden party with Tennant and Orange-Turner in tow and makes her excuses to swerve posh school pal Rebecca Gethings to watch them cavorting around on a bouncy castle. Marsay leaves her friends to get canoodlingly acquainted and Punch rushes after her to ask when they can resume their relationship. But, while Marsay insists she needs more time, she has already turned the spare room into a nursery and, so, Tennant comes to the country to implore Punch to patch things up with her girl.

No sooner has Punch proposed on one knee outside the front door than she goes into labour and Tennant drives them to the hospital. He crashes out on the chairs outside the delivery room and the action shunts forward a year to a Christmas lunch with Punch's family. Her son is dressed like an elf and Marsay now has a blonde bob because she is training to be a teacher. They remain an item, but have decided that marriage can wait, while they work out how to be mothers.

Closing in a tearing hurry after the tragic twist fails to have its desired emotional impact, this glorified sitcom leaves the audience to contemplate just how happy Punch and Marsay's ending really is. But this bittersweet gambit feels as forced as the references to Tennant's Mannism website and the recurring quotes from Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women. Clearly Aitkens intends popping Tennant's misogynist balloon and hopes she is doing her bit to counter the homophobic prejudice that Parish exhibits so brazenly at every opportunity. But Punch and Marsay's lesbianism always feels like a plot device, whose contrivance is exacerbated by the ruinous lack of chemistry between the stars.

Punch is a fine comic performer, but this awkwardly fitting role rarely plays to her strengths and she is often reduced to stooging for Marsay's Yorkshire kook and Tennant's Scottish chauvinist. She also has to cope with having to hold her own against the innumerable guest stars who pop up with distracting regularity throughout a storyline that often feels like an aggregation of discarded sketches. The production values are solid enough and Aitkens makes decent use of the lovely setting. But, even though Aitkens wisely changed the title from Fish Without Bicycles, this always feels like a well-intentioned bid to show lesbians in a normative light rather than an insider's comic cri de coeur.

Having collaborated on over 50 plays with the Joinedupwriters theatre company and produced over 100 more for the audio drama outfit, Tin Can Podcast, Mark A.C. Brown has certainly been busy over the last 15 years. In addition to scripting Robbie Moffat's stand-up feature, Heckle (2013), he has also directed a couple of shorts, A Political Life (2011) and Corinthian (2014), the latter of which he made in tandem with Frederic Fournier, who co-produces and edits Brown's feature bow, Guardians.

Fresh from having his marriage proposal refused by Victoria Johnston, Matt Prendergast signs up to house sit a 200 year-old property in Limehouse. During a whistlestop tour by garrulous estate agent Mike Shephard, Prendergast meets fellow `guardian' David Whitney, who is watching an old Bette Davis film on the television while sipping booze in his dressing-gown. Turning down an invitation to check out the local hostelry, Prendergast retires to his room, where he promptly gets Johnston's spurned engagement ring stuck on his finger.

Caught in the act of stealing three olives and a dash of red wine to supplement his meagre repast, Prendergast finds himself beholden to Whitney again when his lights go out and he gets his foot stuck in the basement floorboards in searching for the fusebox. While strolling to the pub, Whitney tells his new housemate about the curse placed on the family that had once owned their abode by a gang of Chinese opium traders in the early 1800s. He also pries into Prendergast's love life and spins a yarn about his own father being a raffishly irresponsible peer who had gambled away the family fortune before being jailed for murdering a maid.

Returning home, Prendergast crashes on the sofa. But, while he dozes, a shadow passes by the window and sinister figures prowl around the garden before he is awoken by the doorbell. Much to his surprise, he finds Arin Alldridge in an Ali Baba costume brandishing a toy sword at Fiona McGee, who dressed as a beheading victim. Whitney returns in time to rescue the situation by explaining to the callers that the kinky gathering organised by Shephard has been moved to another location. Aghast that the house he is sitting has been turned into a den of iniquity, Prendergast berates Whitney on the stairs and he becomes even more disgruntled the following morning when Whitney blunders in to use the toilet while he is showering.

Forced to sit tight because Shephard has no other properties available, Prendergast conks out on the sofa and has a nightmare in which Johnston turns into a leering Whitney. As he prepares to leave the house, however, he is waylaid by Hattie Hayridge collecting for a charity to save the urban fox. Somewhat surprisingly, Prendergast is enthused by the project and is considering making additional donations to name and pet his own fox when Whitney accuses Hayridge of fleecing the former occupant and chasing her away.

Prendergast is about to protest when he spots somebody in the back garden. The housemates scurry downstairs to lock the front door, but Whitney spots a pair of eyes peering through the letterbox and sends Prendergast to secure the rear. As they are brewing coffee for an all-night vigil, however, they are jumped on by Chris Spyrides and his henchmen Eddie Arnold and Tim Barrow, who reveal that they have come in search of the buried gold that Whitney had been crowing about in the pub. When he confesses to being a compulsive liar, the tethered Prendergast suggests that the interlopers take some of the antiques to make up for their disappointment. But they spot the ring on his finger instead and are about to use a cleaver to steal it when Shephard turns up as a Bhangra musician.

Recognising the workmen who had been repairing the basement, Shephard does a dance in the hope of throwing them off their guard. But it's the sudden appearance of Johnston and her dog Cinammon that allows Prendergast and Whitney to make a run for it and they hole up in the downstairs loo with Johnston, while Spyrides ties up Shephard and prepares to torture him for information. While he admits that the hole in the basement floor is for a sordid womb experience, Johnston tells Prendergast that she broke up with him because she had a pregnancy scare and realised that he isn't the kind of man she wanted to be a father to her child.

However, while she wants to stay broken up from him, Johnston does want to help extricate him from his predicament and she hatches a plan to remove the ring from Prendergast's finger and confound the crooks so they can make their escape. A few days later, Shephard meets up with Prendergast and Whitney on the waterfront. He hands the former ÂŁ5000 in hush money and the latter his next assignment in Scotland, which he celebrates by producing a set of bagpipes and beginning to play.

Made for the princely sum of ÂŁ7000, this is a raucous romp that errs more on the side of BBC Three than BritCrime. Clearly influenced by the early films of Ben Wheatley and Martin McDonagh, Brown directs with a decent sense of pace and place, while his dialogue has a zing that is matched by the slickness of the storytelling.

There are sluggish moments after Spyrides and his oppos bust in, with Johnston's intervention being as clumsily contrived as her WC confession feels unnecessarily digressive. But Brown does enough to suggest he has promise, while Prendergast and Whitney make spirited sparring partners, even though they are upstaged by the scene-stealing Shephard, whose introductory tour of the house is delivered with bristling brio that is frustratingly absent from the final third.

The reputation of French photographer Robert Doisneau has long rested on a single picture. He was working for Life magazine when he created `Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville' in the summer of 1950 and it came to epitomise the romance of Paris. But Clémentine Deroudille is keen to show that there was much more to her grandfather's art than this one iconic image and the Dochouse presentation, Robert Doisneau: Through the Lens, provides a fascinating introduction to a man who fully lived up to the epithet given in the film's French subtitle, the `Rebel of the Marvellous'.

Over home movie clips of Robert Doisneau at work and play, he reveals that he disliked the cold, scientific approach to photography and preferred to linger on the fringes of a crowd in order to capture the figures in the background that others overlooked. But Deroudille sweeps us back to the first photograph taken of the infant Robert Gaston Sylvain Doisneau, who was raised in Gentilly in the southern suburbs of Paris. When his father Gaston went to fight in the trenches, Doisneau and his ailing mother, Sylvie, were sent to live in the castle of Mialeret in Correze. However, she failed to recover her health and died of tuberculosis in 1919, when Doisneau was seven years old, and he retreated into the world of his imagination when his father remarried and his stepmother lavished her attention on her own son, Lucien.

At 13, Doisneau enrolled in the school at Estienne to train as an engraver and lithographer. However, he realised he was learning a dying trade and it was only when Lucien loaned him a camera that he found his métier. He managed to sell a series of pictures taken in nearby flea market to the local paper, but he found little time for photography after he was stationed in the Vosges for his compulsory military service. The experience confirmed Doisneau's pacifism, while his five-year stint as an official photographer at the Renault car plant reinforced his dislike of dehumanising regimentation and convinced him of his need to freelance, as he was unable to take pictures during the 1936 strike.

During this period, Doisneau had experimented with a colour process and he continued to strike out alone shortly after marrying Pierrette Chaumaison when he rented a studio in Place Jules Ferry in Montrouge. Here they raised daughters Annette and Francine (Deroudille's mother and aunt), who remain in situ keeping the Doisneau legacy alive by preserving the prints and 350,000 negatives he left behind. Annette shows us the bath where her father used to develop his pictures and she recalls how they were limited to bathing at weekends because he was always so busy. She likes the fact that Doisneau worked from home and involved them in the process, as it strengthened the family bonds.

Detesting the war, he took few photographs during the Nazi Occupation, although an image of a white horse lying down in the street seems an apt symbol for the times. He resumed his career in earnest after the Liberation and admitted that he struck lucky in being asked to snap some Resistance fighters in MĂ©nilmontnt, as he didn't have enough film to last the day and had to be cajoled into posing the group. Yet it captured the moment perfectly and turned out to be one of Doisneau's favourite pictures.

Among the family's closest friends at this time was Paul Barabé (aka Baba), the concierge who had burned a list of the Communists in Montrouge and saved dozens of people from the Gestapo. Doisneau taught him how to develop pictures and make contact sheets and his loud singing while he worked provided the soundtrack to Annette and Francine's 1950s childhood. Like Baba, they appeared in numerous pictures taken for advertising campaigns and Deroudille invites several other amateur models to return to the atelier for a special slide show.

Refusing to take himself seriously, Doisneau adopted an artisanal approach to his work and, over a sequence of snaps of a female accordionist playing in a bistro, he describes the trepidation he felt while waiting to click his camera, in case he missed the fleeting moment that had caught his imagination. Old TV footage shows him lining up a shot of a shop front, as he explains how he often finds an evocative location and then waits for people to pass through the scene so that he can capture life on the hoof.

In 1946, Doisneau joined the Rapho press agency and he remained attached to it for the rest of his life. In addition to placing pictures, Raymond Grosset used to send shutterbugs like Willy Ronis, Janine Niepce, Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, Édouard Boubat and Sabine Weiss on assignments. Earning the nickname `the Humanist Photographers', they became known for images of everyday life rather than for glamorous or sensationalist subjects. Weiss recalls them working together on spreads for Vogue and we see an old interview of them reminiscing about photographing society balls and Doisneau feeling that he was betraying his class by consorting with the rich, the famous and the beautiful.

While he appreciated the beautiful women he posed, Doisneau preferred to indulge his curiosity and his rebellious streak by working on the streets. Following a montage of magazine covers that includes portraits of Pablo Picasso and Michèle Morgan, Among his commissions was a Life article on love in Paris. As people didn't kiss in public in 1950, he persuaded two students at the Simon drama school to pose for him. He took them to the Madeleine, the Place de la Concorde and Chatelet before posing them outside the Hôtel de Ville.

When the picture appeared alongside others on 12 June 1950, it barely caused a ripple and was filed away. But, when it was used for a poster in the 1980s, it was lauded for capturing a timeless image of Paris and began cropping up everywhere. However, Doisneau favoured creating his own subjective vision of reality rather than snapping spontaneously and was amused when he received letters from people claiming to have been one of the kissers. Among the correspondents was Philippe Delerm, whose novel, Les Amoureux de Hôtel de Ville, centred around a hero who believes that his parents were the happy couple. Delerm admires the fact that Doisneau eschewed picture-book clichés in presenting Paris as it was for many of its poorer residents.

Writer Blaise Cendrars was among the first to recognise that Doisneau was recording a disappearing Paris more defiance than nostalgia. They had met when Doisneau was sent to profile the modernist pioneer in Aix en Provence and he persuaded the photographer to collaborate on a book. Sadly, La Banlieue de Paris was coolly received, but Doisneau was proud that it captured the scene of his childhood with simple fidelity. Poet and screenwriter Jacques Prévert was hugely impressed and became a regular companion on Doisneau's peregrinations. A delightful sequence with Prévert as a knowing model follows, as Doisneau recalls how they liked to surprise each other by arranging meetings in previously unknown corners of the capital.

Another writer friend was Robert Giraud, who was his nocturnal accomplice on trips to the bistros and bars of Mouffetard. They collaborated on a book of tattoos and another on the market at Les Halles, which became one of Doisneau's favourite haunts before it was demolished in the 1960s. He also teamed with Daniel Pennac on La Vie de famille and Les grandes vacances in the 1980s and had to wait 36 years to find a publisher for Ballade pour violoncelle et chambre noire, which he produced with actor-cum-cellist Maurice Baquet. Actor François Morel praises the shifts between melancholy and hilarity in this droll odyssey and tells a story about Doisneau helping a shepherd whose flock had been hit by a truck rather than taking photographs of his misfortune.

Actress Sabine Azèma was another close confidante and frequent model and she recalls how she was introduced to Doisneau by Bertrand Tavernier while they were making A Sunday in the Country (1984) and he showed her the beauty at the side of the road as they travelled by car to the set. He had recently started using colour film and focusing on buildings and landscapes rather than people. This coincided with him being feted by the intelligentsia and his embarrassment is evident during a chat show interview with Bernard Pivot, in which he joked that he liked to work close to home because he could understand the language.

A rare foreign sojourn took him to the Soviet Union for La Vie Ouvrière in 1967, but the pictures were never published. They are shown here alongside colour images taken during a visit to Palm Springs the following year. Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière is surprised that Doisneau did a book in such an atypical place and managed to capture the gentile elegance of an America that was slowly fading away during the Swinging Sixties. Carrière also remembers Doisneau teaching him the valuable lesson that young eyes see details, while older ones notice context.

Following a colour montage proving this point, Deroudille takes up the story in the 1980s, as her grandmother falls ill and Doisneau begins refusing any assignments that would prevent him lunching and dining with Pierette in her nursing home. Around this time, he started working for Edmonde Charles Roux on Femme magazine. Editor Annick Geille recalls how Doisneau needed money and was happy to accept commissions and his name enabled them to land interviews with the likes of François Mitterand, Françoise Sagan, Roman Polanski, Isabelle Huppert, Mickey Rourke and Juliette Binoche.

While Doisneau remained at home, his pictures were exhibited around the world and Quentin Bajac from the Museum of Modern Art reveals that he was seen in New York as early as 1948. Edward Steichen brought him to MOMA in 1950 for a showcase that also included work by Ronis, Izis, BrassaĂŻ and Henri Cartier-Bresson, while he was accorded a solo show in Chicago in 1954. Gallerist Lee Witkin also became a regular collaborator and prompted Doisneau into selling some of his pictures on the booming 1970s art market. Agent Monah Gettner put together a portfolio and shows some of the 15 pictures contained therein.

Much to his surprise, Doisneau became a cult figure in Japan, where Yoshitomo Kajikawa compiled portfolios that have become collectors' items. Agent Masako Sato reveals some of the more bizarre merchandising requests she has received, while writer Toshiyuki Horie offers his assessment of Doisneau's style in recalling their brief association during a study period in Paris in 1990. Deroudille suggests that her grandfather would have been amused by the fact he is now seen as a source of happiness and she is proud that he continues to inspire long after his death on 1 April 1994. But his greatest contribution is the record he left of a Paris that, like the people who were once its heartbeat, has gone forever.

What strikes one immediately about this affectionate portrait is the care with which Deroudille seeks to protect her grandfather's reputation. However, it seems perverse to have ignored the court case brought in 1993 by retired printers Jean-Louis and Denise Lavergne, who demanded 100,000 francs in compensation for Doisneau breaching their right to privacy by taking the picture without their knowledge. During the course of the hearing, they asserted that they had recognised themselves when `The Kiss' was used on the cover of the Télérama magazine in 1988 and that Doisneau had agreed to mention them in a film about his work. However, he later revealed that the real lovers were Jacques Carteaud and Françoise Delbart, who had been dating when he spotted them at the Cours Simon drama school.

Unfortunately, Delbart (who was then known by her married name, Bornet) also felt entitled to 20,000 and a percentage of future sales after deciding that the 500 francs she had been paid in 1950 were insufficient recompense. Carteaud, who had quit acting to open a vineyard, had nothing to do with the brouhaha and Deroudille clearly feels it isn't worth revisiting. But, by all accounts, Doisneau was much saddened by the episode and a discussion of its legal, moral and artistic ramifications would have been considerably more valuable than the turgid passage Deroudille inserts on the exhibitions in America and Japan.

It might also have been useful to have included some objective critical analysis of Doisneau's achievement. But the personal approach works well enough, with Deroudille making solid use of the archive material, which includes home movies filmed by sons-in-law Jean Albert Deroudille and Pierre Henri Arnstam. A neat addition are the Emmanuel Guibert ink drawings accompanying the chapter headings, while Erik Slabiak's score has a pleasing jauntiness. But the undisputed highlight are Doisneau's majestic pictures, which have lost none of their authenticity, potency and humanity.

Having fallen foul of both his boss and his partner in charting their respective efforts to make it in the music business in How to Lose Jobs & Alienate Girlfriends (2014), London-based Australian film-maker Thomas Meadmore has already shown himself willing to ruffle feathers for his art. He's in less combative mood in The Outsider. Yet, while he proves a less conspicuous presence in this profile of bankrupted Taiwanese shipping magnate Nobu Su. Meadmore pulls few punches in both charting his extraordinary career and assessing the conspiracy theories on which his notoriety now rests.

In the early years of this century, the growing demand for construction materials meant that China was spending $280,000 each day on import rates. Ship owners made a fortune and Nobu Su was at the top of the heap. However, as the various voiceovers chipping into the introductory segment aver, when the market crashed, he took a huge hit and he accused the Royal Bank of Scotland of swindling him out of billions. As Guardian journalist Seth Freedman explains, RBS was expanding rapidly during this period even though it lacked the cash in its coffers to cover its face. Thus, when Nobu was ruined, he decided to take on the bank, even if it meant alienating himself from his family.

The only son among the six children born to the scion of one of Taiwan's oldest shipping families, Nobu became fascinated by cargoes and commodities while riding a banana boat to Japan. A series of stylised animations is intercut with old photographs to show how this juvenile passion became an adult obsession. But David Osler, the financial editor at Lloyd's List, somewhat bursts the bubble by de-romanticising the shipping business by claiming it's nothing more than loading goods at one end of a route and taking them off at the other.

Despite the global significance of shipping, however, it comes under surprisingly little scrutiny, although Michelle Wiese Blockman, markets editor at Lloyd's List, insists that it is a gentlemanly enterprise that is largely controlled by an enclosed cabal. Nobu suggests, however, that there are too few students of the business of his calibre to ensure that it runs legally and profitably. As he sails around the harbour in Singapore, he also claims that too few rivals displayed his ingenuity and adviser Sabruto Banerji lauds him for developing a hybrid ship that helped transform the industry.

While Nobu takes a tour of inspection aboard a cargo monster, his lawyers find an ex-RBS employee willing to testify on oath that he was defrauded by the bank. However, as Nobu watches a video link, it becomes clear that he has nothing valuable to offer and he notes that RBS shrewdly ditched the hierarchy in situ during the 2008 financial crisis and replaced them with underlings who know nothing about what actually happened with regard to his account.

Osler states that Nobu could also be regarded as a man of mystery, as he came from nowhere to become a shipping bigwig. He fills in a few gaps by revealing that he spent time establishing a cement business and in refining a shipping refit strategy that he called the `Turtle on Turtle' approach. But he took over the family firm when his father died and bought a new fleet of Panamax ships to cash in on the Chinese boom that followed its entry into the free market. As journalist Sam Chambers and shipping specialist Michael Guy note, he was in the right place with the right methodology and landed 15% of China's iron ore trade.

He also moved into Freight Forward Agreements that gave him the chance to speculate on future shipping rates. It was a risky business, but there was big money to be made for the shrewder observers of the scene. Guy and Chamber dispute whether such trading is a form of gambling, while Nobu's New York lawyer, Mark Rifkin, confirms that it involved high stakes. In order to operate more effectively, Nobu followed the lead of his Greek shipping friends in opening an account with RBS in 2007. He also bought a plane and seemed to be omnipresent in the world's leading financial centres.

Maritime investment banker Rolf Wikborg claims Nobu was a pioneer and his ability to read the market and take a hands-on approach meant that he could pip competitors to the big deals. Thus, even though others followed his lead and made killings of their own, he remained an outsider. But Guy, Osler and Weiese Blockman concur that he was the leader of the pack and recouped anything between one and five billion dollars. However, while he enjoyed the trappings of his wealth (including membership of some exclusive golf clubs), he also began to take risks and Chambers opines that he began to feel he could do no wrong.

At one point, Nobu's Today Makes Tomorrow company spent around seven billion in ordering 30 new vessels from the Hyundai Shipyard in South Korea, which were built to his design to carry oil and iron ore. Oil and gas expert Alan Hooper commends his chutzpah, but Osler reveals that Nobu was beginning to take positions on deals he was directly able to influence. Freedman, Guy and Wiese Blockman disagree about the extent to which he could control the market, while Nobu denies doing anything underhand. However, Osler agrees that the pugnacious street kid with the flashy clothes and the disregard for industry tradition put up the backs of his Greek and Norwegian rivals, who closed ranks against him and hung him out to dry when the credit crunch bit and shipping rates plummeted in six weeks from $280,000 to $2000 per day.

Nobu found himself exposed and the shipping fraternity exacted its revenge by refusing to bail him out. Guy compares him to a rusty old ship floating in uncertain waters and has no doubt that those who had found his flamboyant methods distasteful sought to teach him a lesson. As Freedman explains, RBS also hit Nobu hard with a series of margin calls that called on him to increase his deposits to cover any potential losses on his FFA holdings. In order to ease the pressure, he cut a deal with Greek tycoon Polys Haji-Ioannou to buy some of his FFAs and make a quick profit before Nobu bought them back after an agreed period.

However, as Michelle Solomon (who was Nobu's lawyer between 2013-16) explains, the market didn't improve and he was unable to buy them back. As the losses hit $98 million, Haji-Ioannou sued Nobu and RBS kept imposing new margin calls. Convinced that RBS was in cahoots with its Greek customers, Nobu called foul. But Osler has little sympathy with his assertion as he doesn't seem to have the proof to back it up.

In January 2010, the first 17 ships ordered from Hyundai were ready to launch. Youngest daughter Eli helped out at the ceremony and Nobu was extremely proud. But he needed help to fund the completion of the other 13 vessels and turned to Taiwan's biggest financial institution, Megabank. A few months later, however, the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred and Nobu converted his ship, A Whale, to skim the oil off the surface. Despite BP and the US government branding him a publicity seeking maverick, he sailed into the Gulf in June and started skimming, even though his crew was concerned that it was a perilous process. Unfortunately, he was ordered by the coastguard to offload the oily water he had collected and Nobu and Banerji are convinced they were conspiring with the oil majors to prevent him removing evidence of their culpability from the scene.

Hooper declares that Nobu was not as successful as he claimed, but still compliments the idea, while Freedman asserts that the operation made Nobu a new set of enemies. But fresh problems were also amassing on the horizon, as the global downturn meant that Nobu was awaiting delivery of 13 ships that were too big for the revised trading demand. As Chambers explains, vessels that had been making big bucks on a daily basis were now losing money and people began clamouring for their debts to be repaid. When he failed to satisfy his creditors, they began impounding his ships and Chambers denounces Nobu for betraying several of his crews. In the case of Iron Monger 3, Banerji lambastes RBS for not releasing funds so Nobu could pay for fuel before the craft fell into such serious disrepair that he had no choice but to abandon it. However, Chambers and Osler criticise him for not flying the crew members home and making up their back pay. But Nobu insists that he met his obligations and blames RBS for making him look bad.

Now seriously up against the wall, Nobu defaulted on his Megabank loan in July 2014 and Hyundai decided to sell the remaining unfinished ships for parts. Struggling to sleep, ageing visibly and powerless to arrest his decline, Nobu contemplated suicide after his wife left him. But, after Bob Diamond of Barclays was summoned to Parliament to answer charges that the Libor interest rate had been rigged, Nobu became convinced that his RBS account had also been tampered with. Guy, Chambers and Wiese Blockman agree that he became obsessed with `Nobugate' and in proving that he was the victim of a planned scheme to create a financial crisis.

In 2007, RBS called in some margin calls after Nobu's iron ore speculation misfired. They appointed Gerard Joynson to handle his affairs and he demanded $85 million to settle up. Unable to come up with the cash, Nobu gave them the sum in Vantage shares. But, shortly before Lehmann Brothers and AIG went into meltdown on Wall Street, he noticed that a reference to $8.5 billion in Vantage shares on one of his statements had been mysteriously removed. A few weeks later, RBS issued a second margin call and Nobu gave them Iron Monger 3 and 5. But, while they were valued at $36 million, they briefly appeared as $36 billion on one of his statements and Nobu drew the conclusion that the bank had used his account to make their own balance sheets look better as the credit crisis was breaking so that they qualified for government bail out funding.

Osler remains unimpressed, while Chambers suggests that Nobu's reputation has been so besmirched that it would be difficult for him to win his case. But Freedman began examining the correspondence between Nobu and RBS and uncovers an e-mail exchange between Joynson and a female underling in which he dismisses the abnormalities on Nobu's statements and claims that he will manufacture a default issue to avoid returning either the shares or the cash. Freedman considers this to be a smoking gun and a former RBS employee comes forward in 2014 offering to corroborate the evidence. He claims that RBS cut and pasted figures on to Nobu's statements and falsified margin call calculations. Speaking over the phone with his voice distorted, he also avers that RBS was guilty of `front-running' in relation to Nobu's transactions. However, he suggests it was less likely that RBS used his funds to cover their own shortfalls during the crisis, as client money segregation rules were too strict to be easily bypassed.

As the bank is 73% in public ownership, the anonymous caller insists that it's in the public interest to expose that Nobu was ripped off to the tune of $150-200 million. Yet, despite this testimony and the discovery of the Joynson e-mail, the High Court ruled that Nobu had run out of time to bring his case. Undaunted, he vows to fight on and build bridges with his estranged family. He turns up at daughter Ailee's graduation from Brown University and delivers her a message through Eli's selfie stick before coaxing into posing with him after the ceremony. She jokes that his suit makes him look like a magician, which is apt because he is good at disappearing. But it's evident from the pair's voiceovers that they feel betrayed by Nobu putting business before family after teaching them the opposite as kids.

In August 2016, news breaks that Megabank has been implicated in money laundering and Nobu began looking into its dealings with him. He was particularly interested in a loan extension on a ship named A Ladybug and lawyer Kevin Lin discovers how an e-mail demanding repayment  within a matter of hours cost Nobu 16 ships by default. When he follows the debt, Lin learns that it was purchased by OCM, a little-known company that closed as soon as the debt was sold on for a profit. Business law adviser Yuso Tobisaka thinks that this bizarre transaction was cooked up to allow Megabank to launder the cash and Nobu believes this entitles him to the return of his ships.

Having sent the exclusive to Taiwan's biggest newspapers, Nobu goes on the offensive in June 2017. However, after Formosa TV carries the story, it receives threats that it will be sued by Megabank if it repeats the accusation and it reneges on a promise to repeat the show the next day. When Nobu is frustrated, Tobisaka reminds him that the news agenda moves on and that he needs to be more realistic. He dozes off in his chair and, minutes later, FTV repeated the show.

It has since denied receiving threats from Megabank, but Nobu's law suit is ongoing. He has also succeeded in regaining ownership of one ship and is delighted to be back in the game. Although Chambers remains convinced that Nobu lost control and simply sought to use RBS as a scapegoat for his own failure, Guy is sure he was punished from growing from a mouse to an elephant within the highly conservative shipping enclave. Wiese Blockman also admits to admiring his tenacity, while even Osler is prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the story is far from over.

Despite being more conventional than its predecessor, this represents a marked improvement, as Meadmore trusts in the story and eschews the gimmicks that often distracted from the subject matter. Echoes of Steve James's Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016) can be heard throughout, as Chinatown banker Thomas Sung also struggled to maintain his relationships with his daughters during his post-Fannie Mae battle to protect the reputation of his savings bank. However, the loquacious Nobu Su is much larger than life and Meadmore has assembled a number of cynical journalists who are unwilling to accept his hard-luck story at face value.

The self-professed `street kid' who likes people to think he's mad because it means they will underestimate is not an easy character to read. Moreover, Meadmore gives him plenty of rope in depicting his fondness for luxury and exposing his evasiveness during their exchange over his treatment of the Iron Monger 3 crew. But, while he wisely avoids depicting Nobu as a George Baileyesque underdog, Meadmore also has little truck with the cliques and institutions that sought to crush him. Consequently, as the plot thickens (and occasionally meanders and ties itself up in knots), it isn't always possible to know who to believe and where the line between legal and shady practice falls.