Parky at the Pictures (DVD 2/8/2012)

But might the critics have misread the situation and could Putin be the one to have grasped the wrong end of the bargain? Sokurov has proclaimed Faust to be the final part of the `tetralogy of power' that began with Moloch (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2004). These glowering studies of gamblers failing when the odds were stacked highest against them respectively centred on Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Ilych Lenin and the Emperor Hirohito. Obviously, Heinrich Faust is a fictional character who first appeared in a tract written by an anonymous Lutheran in the 16th century. But he fits the quartet's unifying profile, as he is  pathologically miserable and, as Sokurov insists, `unhappy people are dangerous'. Moreover, he could easily stand as a symbol for Vladimir Putin, whose deal with Dmitri Medvedev has enabled him to resume the presidency after a four-year hiatus and who now seeks to eclipse his predecessors in Sokurov's rogues' gallery by overcoming the odds and succeeding in swimming against the tide of history.

Despite being desperate to locate the physical position of the human soul, Faust (Johannes Zeiler) is too hungry to concentrate the dissection of the cadaver procured for him by grave robbers. He orders his assistant, Wagner (Georg Friedrich), to have the gutted remains removed and heads across town to the surgery where his father (Sigurdur Skulasson) treats the poor. An elderly man is being stretched on a rack when a flirtatious woman calls with a possibly frivolous gynaecological complaint in the hope of enjoying an intimate inspection. Dr Faust refuses to lend his son money and chides him for wasting his time on astronomy, alchemy and other unrewarding intellectual spheres.

Undaunted, Faust decides to sell a ring containing a philosopher's stone to moneylender Mauricius Muller (Anton Adasinskiy). However, he refuses the deal, but attempts to interest his world-weary visitor in other arrangements. Frustrated by his failure, Faust returns home and ponders the Gospel According to St John as Wagner attempts to give him a foot bath under the watchful eye of his suspicious housekeeper (Eva-Maria Kurz).

Muller arrives to return the ring that Faust had left in his shop and points out the evangelist's flaw by pointing out that, in the beginning, the deed came before the word. His remark intrigues Faust and he agrees to accompany him on a walk around the town. At the local bathhouse, Faust catches sight of Margarete (Isolda Dychauk) doing her laundry and is instantly smitten. However, the other occupants are more preoccupied with Muller's hideous physique when he strips off to bathe and they mock the fact that his genitalia appear to be at the rear and resemble the tiny stub of a tail.

Faust urges Muller to dress and they hurry away in pursuit of Margarete. As they pass Dr Faust's surgery, he seems to recognise Muller and urges his son to have nothing to do with him. However, they retire to a nearby tavern, where students are celebrating the end of the latest war.  Muller gets into an argument with the innkeeper (Lars Rudolph) about the quality of the wine and stabs the wall with a fork to produce a cascade of free drink. In the ensuing melee, Faust gets into a struggle with Valentin (Florian Brückner) and kills him with Muller's fork. Grateful to escape the scene, Faust returns to his lodgings and tries to refocus on scholastic endeavours.

However, Muller pays him another visit and lures him into the street in time to see Valentin's funeral and discover that Margarete is his sister. Faust follows the cortège and walks alongside the eccentric woman in black ruffles (Hanna Schygulla) who claims to be Muller's wife. At the graveside, Faust persuades Muller to detain Frau Emmerich (Antje Lewald) while he consoles her daughter and Margarete seems taken with Faust's fine words as they stroll through the forest. She is even more impressed when she mistakes him for the priest in the confessional and he reassures her that being unable to love her mother is not a sin.

But her faith is shaken when Valentin's friend Altamayer (Maxim Mehmet) informs her that Faust murdered her brother. As if sensing that his window of opportunity is closing, Faust tells Muller that he wishes he could read Margarete's thoughts and agrees to sell his soul in order to spend one night with her. Signing his name in blood, Faust wakes as if from a dream to remember nothing of his tryst and finds himself being fitted for a breastplate by a stranger clad in full armour. The pair mount horses and ride through a forest to the banks of a river, where Valentin expresses his gratitude for being delivered from the torment of life.

However, Faust feels cheated by Muller (who is, of course, his mysterious companion) and he bombards him with rocks when he slips into a crevice in a rocky landscape pocked with geysers. Suddenly feeling empowered, Faust strikes out across the forbidding terrain towards a future that holds unknown dangers for both himself and others.

From its opening shot descending through a misty cloudscape to a town nestling between a towering crag and the coast, this is a visually striking, thematically elusive and morally troubling work. Drawing on influences as disparate as the Flemish and Dutch masters, the German Expressionists and Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky, Elena Zhukova's sets and Bruno Delbonnel's restless, distorting photography are quite exceptional. Andei Sigle's quietly insistent and near-omnipresent score is equally unsettling, as Sokurov creates an early 19th-century milieu that seems to have retained more medieval superstition than Enlightenment rationality.

The performances are mixed (with the ravishingly lit Dychauk struggling to match the intensity of Zeiler and Adasinskiy) and there are peculiar moments - such as the enigmatic gyrations of the bizarrely attired Schygulla and the homunculus that Wagner fashions in a jar by cross-breeding asparagus, dandelion and a human liver - and this never makes for anything less than demanding (and often gruelling) viewing. But no matter how philosophically and politically ambiguous and impenetrably self-indulgent the action may sometimes seem, this is an audacious `reading of what remains between the lines' of Goethe's tragedy that recasts Faust as an opportunist waiting to be corrupted and willing to face any later consequences for the satiation of his lust and quest for power.

Adapted from 19 year-old Matthew Lewis's 1796 anti-clerical Gothic masterpiece, The Monk takes director Dominik Moll into territory previously explored by Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière in a script that written in the 1960s but abandoned through a lack of funding before Greek director Ado Kyrou completed the project, with Franco Nero in the title role, in 1972. Spaniard Francisco Lara Polop subsequently took a stab at the material in 1990, with Paul McGann. But the text keeps eluding its reimaginers and, despite the forbidding Catalan locations and some solid performances, Moll and co-scenarist Anne-Louise Trividic struggle to convey the requisite depravity and despair. Moreover, they also omit such renowned sub-strands as the Wandering Jew doomed to roam until the Second Coming of Christ and the Bleeding Nun who perished because of her sensual sins. Indeed, if anything, this is too tasteful a take on a novel renowned for its sensationalist excess.

In 1595, an infant is left on the steps of a monastery in Madrid and he is taken in by the brothers. As the years, pass, Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel) develops a fierce vocation and the intensity of his inspirational preaching soon acquires him a formidable reputation. Antonia (Joséphine Japy) is particularly taken by his words. But local swain Lorenzo (Frédéric Noaille) is equally taken with her when he sees her at church. He is keen to pay court to her, but her mother, Elvire (Catherine Mouchet), disapproves of cross-class relationships, as she was cruelly betrayed by a nobleman in her youth.

Ambrosio's fame also attracts the attention of a debauched merchant (Sergi López), whose relish in confessing his sins intrigues the monk, and Matilda (Déborah François), who disguises herself as a man named Valerio who has to wear a mask and cowl at all times to hide the hideous facial disfigurement caused by the fire that killed his family. Troubled by headaches and an ominous vision of a woman in red, Ambrosio takes pity on the youth and allows him to become his assistant. However, shortly after he informs the strict abbess (Geraldine Chaplin) of the nearby convent that Sister Agnes (Roxane Duran) is with child and plans to elope with her lover, Ambrosio is discovers Matilda's true identity. He intends sending her away, but is bitten by a serpent and, in the course of removing the poison and nursing him, Matilda succeeds in seducing him.

Having succumbed to temptation, Ambrosio discovers that he enjoys the sensation and vows to possess Antonia. Despite being aware that this will hasten her rejection, Matilda (who is really a satanic succubus) offers to help Ambrosio vanquish Antonia and he concludes a pact with the Devil in order to fulfil his lusts. His chance comes when Elvire falls ill and Antonia asks Ambrosio to be her confessor. However, she recovers and catches the monk attempting to rape her daughter. Stricken by a mix of fury and terror, Ambrosio kills Elvire and returns to the monastery to wrestle with his conscience and his lust. But, with the Inquisition closing in and Lorenzo desirous of revenge for the shameful persecution and death of his sister Agnes, his fate appears to be sealed.

As he proved with Harry, He's Here to Help (2000) and Lemming (2005), Moll has a knack of finding evil lurking in the everyday. However, he strangely struggles to exploit the malevolence seething through every page of Lewis's once-scurrilous text. He hardly helps himself by rather quaintly bookending scenes with old-fashioned irises, which suggest that Moll is aware that the material has dated and that religious hypocrisy is no longer the racy subject it once was. But Antxon Gomez's production design is suitably lowering, while cinematographer Patrick Blossier makes atmospheric contrasts between the sepulchral interiors and the scorching wastes of the world beyond the monastery walls.

The ensemble can't be faulted, with François relishing her vampish duplicity and Chaplin catching the pious severity seen in so many portraits of Counter Reformation nuns. Cassel ably switches the focus of his passions from the celestial to the corporeal with a palpable sense of revelation. Moreover, he also nails the awful desire to express remorse and experience forgiveness while still wishing to indulge in the peccadilloes damning his soul. But Moll's narrowed focus saps much of the book's chilling bleakness and fails to make the connection to a largely secular world where the sexual inconstancy of the clergy is old news.

German cinema has been dominated since the fall of the Berlin Wall by three topics: the Third Reich, the Democratic Republic and the Red Army Faction. The results have been varied, but the magnitude of each subject has ensured that the films have been compelling both as works of reconstruction and as insights into the Germanic character.

One of the most cogent documentaries was Andres Veiel's Black Box BRD (2001) and now, a decade later, he returns to the 1960s to chronicle the relationship between Gudrun Ensslin and Bernward Vesper in If Not Us, Who. Coming in the wake of Christopher Roth's Baader (2002), Uli Edel's The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and Shane O'Sullivan's Children of the Revolution (2010) - not to mention Olivier Assayas's magisterial study of international terrorism, Carlos (2010) - this feels slightly like an afterthought. Neither Ensslin nor Vesper was discussed in much detail in any of the aforementioned and they rather feel like peripheral characters in their own biopic, despite the fact that Veiel has based his screenplay on Gerd Koenen's book Vesper, Ensslin, Baader: Prehistory of German Terrorism.

The scene is set in 1949, as the 10 year-old Bernward Vesper (Jonas Haemmerle) watches his father, Will (Thomas Thieme) kill his cat for attacking a nest of nightingales. All-but forgotten after being Hitler's favourite poet, Will still seethes with anti-Semitic fury and informs his heartbroken son that `cats are the Jews of the animal kingdom'. But, instead of being scarred by such brutality and bigotry, Bernward (August Diehl) grows up adoring his father and, in 1961, he is moved to set up a publishing house in Tübingen to reacquaint the public with his genius. He is assisted in the enterprise by Gudrun Ensslin (Lena Lauzemis), who had been raised as the fourth of seven children by moderate liberal parents Helmut and Ilse (Michael Wittenborn and Susanne Lothar), who are more than a little perplexed by her determination to bring about the rehabilitation of a second-rate writer they are happy to see wallowing in obscurity.

Vesper and Ensslin soon become lovers. But their romance and her qualification as a primary school teacher coincide with their growing radicalisation and they become involved in protests against the war in Vietnam and the West German government's failure to address a range of social injustice issues. However, around the time of the Shah of Iran's controversial visit in June 1967, Ensslin meets petty crook-turned-left-wing firebrand Andreas Baader (Alexander Fehling). Abandoning the frequently unfaithful Vesper and their infant son, Felix, she commits herself to the cause of civil disobedience, only to be arrested for the firebombing of two department stores in Frankfurt in April 1968.

Despite the pain of seeing Ensslin kissing Baader in the witness box, Vesper testifies on her behalf during her trial. Having fled while an appeal against their conviction was pending, Ensslin participated in the raid that freed the re-arrested Baader in May 1970 and they embarked upon a reign of terror that was finally ended by her detention in Hamburg in 1972. By this time, Vesper had committed suicide and Ensslin herself would die in mysterious circumstances at Stammheim Prison on the `death night' of 17 October 1977 following the murder of kidnapped industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer in reprisal for the storming of a hijacked Lufthansa aircraft by the West German anti-terrorist squad.

Much of the historical aspect of this near-mythical story is well known. But any hopes that Veiel will provide a psychological insight into the main protagonists are quickly dashed, as he opts for detailed re-enactment rather than considered analysis. Events are contextualised by newsreel clips and apposite pop songs and the acute sense of time and place is reinforced by Christian M. Goldbeck's production design, Bettina Marx's costumes and Judith Kaufmann's steady cinematography. Yet Vesper, Ensslin and Baader remain elusive.

August Diehl captures something of Vesper's dejection and drift into despair, while Fehling conveys the swagger of the rebel suddenly aware of the status conveyed upon him by his cause. But they are both upstaged by Lena Lauzemis, who makes Ensslin's transformation from pastor's daughter to gangster's moll seem eminently plausible. Moreover, she suggests the vulnerability beneath the outer absrasiveness that makes her shifting ideology and attitude to violence seem so shocking. But, even though he struggles to accommodate such figures as Ulrika Meinhof,  Dieter Kunzelmann and Rudi Dutschke, Veiel is better at dealing with the political than the human side of the scenario. Consequently, this feels more like a series of well-researched re-enactments that smack more of activist nostalgia than intellectual detachment.

A tendency to settle for superficial discussion instead of discernible understanding similarly blights Icíar Bollaín's Even the Rain, as it seeks to expose the iniquities of the Bolivian Water War of April 2000.

Arriving in the Bolivian mountains to make a revisionist film about Christopher Columbus, producer Luis Tosar and director Gael García Bernal discover that hundreds of locals have come to the extras audition to make some easy money. Tosar wants to send them packing, but Bernal recognises the imperialist irony of such high-handedness and insists on meeting with each hopeful in turn. At the end of the exhausting process, he selects Juan Carlos Aduviri - who has travelled a long way with his daughter to land a role and had vociferously objected to Tosar's arrogance - to play Hatuey, the Taino chief who led a rebellion against the conquering Spaniards.

Tosar is delighted to have conned the Bolivians into accepting a daily rate of $2. But Aduviri overhears him boasting to a backer about his bargain on the phone and takes him to task for treating the country like a latterday Hispaniola. Aware that a crew is shooting a `making of' documentary, Tosar moderates his language and becomes increasingly impressed with Aduviri when he learns he is also playing a prominent role in the attempts by a ruthless corporation to block all access to free water in order to charge the citizens of Cochabamba for every drop. Indeed, when a young woman is injured during the demonstration, Tosar insists on driving her to hospital.

However, Tosar's sudden transformation (especially when taken together with Bernal's equally abrupt preoccupation with the fate of his feature at the expense of all else) strains the credibility of a Paul Laverty screenplay that frequently exhibits the tendency to political over-emphasis that has undermined so many of his collaborations with Ken Loach. Despite this being her fifth feature, Bollain seems to struggle to make the comparisons between exploitation in the 16th and 21st centuries without tub-thumping. Moreover, she fails to incorporate the docu subplot and rather wastes the earnest performance of Luis Tosar and Juan Carlos Aduviri.

That said, the film-within-the-film moments are exceptional, as is editor Ángel Hernández Zoido's control of riot sequences that include actual footage from the 2000 stand-offs. Cinematographer Alex Catalan; production designer Juan Pedro de Gaspar and composer Alberto Iglesias deserve particular credit for the historical scenes, which see dissolute actor Karra Elejalde essaying Columbus and Raúl Arévalo and Carlos Santos playing missionaries Bartolomé de las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos, who fruitlessly sought to limit the cruelty of the conquistadors, whose burnt the tribal chiefs for their opposition to the enslavement of their people.

Opening with a giant wooden crucifix being helicoptered over the jungle like the statue of Christ at the start of Federico Fellini's La dolce vita (1960), this also bears comparison in places to François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), thanks to its cynical insights into the artistic and moral compromises that have to be made in order to complete a movie on time and under budget. But, while this self-reflexivity is amusingly acute, the awkward characterisation and allegorical contrivance serve only to reinforce the bluntness of the scenario that ends with Tosar intervening to prevent the arrested and badly beaten Aduviri from suffering the same fate as Hatuey.

The versatile and ever-contentious Sion Sono also riffs on the themes of outrage and revenge in Himizu, an adaptation of a manga by Minoru Furuya that underwent significant changes following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the area around the Fukushima nuclear plant on 11 March 2011. Considering the speed with which Sono reacted to the tragedy, this represents a significant creative and logistical feat. Moreover, for the most part, Sono makes sensitive use of the footage captured in the disaster zone and finds enough optimism in an unexpected ending to suggest that, as it had been forced to do before in even more calamitous circumstances, Japan will emerge stronger from the crisis. However, this is a gruelling watch, with Sono's tendency to pitch action at extremes occasionally straining both the boundaries of taste and the audience's ability to endure so much suffering, violence and despair.

Fourteen year-old Shota Sometani had a tough time before his world was turned upside down by Nature. Father Ken Mitsuishi is rarely home and only usually returns to dish out a lash-out brand of drunken discipline and demand cash, while mother Yukiko Watanabe takes solace in any man she can lure into her bed. Sometani wants to run the family boat hire business in peace. But circumstances have dictated otherwise and the area down by the jetty has become a makeshift camp for refugees like pickpocket Yosuke Kubozuka and former company president Tetsu Watanabe, who seems more concerned about Sometani's future than is own parents.

However, Sometani can also be cruel and treats adoring classmate Fumi Nikaido abominably. Yet, with her love of haiku and the ballad poetry of François Villon, she can often outsmart him and he gradually comes to recognise the value of her friendship, especially after yakuza loan shark Denden arrives on the scene insisting that he is now responsible for Mitsuishi's debt of six million yen. But she is powerless to stop Sometani from snapping after his father pushes him too far and he paints his face, grabs a kitchen knife and heads out on to the lawless streets for some vigilante retribution.

As is often the case with Sono movies, the plot moves at such a frantic pace that the cast sometimes seems to be overacting. Moreover, the action frequently veers off without warning or evident purpose, while the overuse of Mozart's `Requiem' and Barber's `Adagio for Strings' eventually becomes irksome. But Sono is such a bold, not to say reckless storyteller than it's impossible not to be carried away by the momentum of the madness. Indeed, many will find themselves gripped while being fully aware that this whole enterprise reeks of opportunism. Yet Sometani and Nikaido are superb and fully deserve the Marcello Mastroianni award they won for best young actors at the Venice Film Festival, while Takashi Matsuzuka's production design, Sohei Tanikawa's digital photography and Akira Fukada's sound design are first rate.

Equally laudable is the vein of dark humour that runs through some of the most sombre moments, with Mitsuishi repeatedly telling Sometani that he wishes he had drowned so he could have claimed the life insurance and Nikaido's parents even building a gallows in their home on the off chance she might use it to kill herself. But, even though doubts linger about the lurches from graphic realism to stylised fantasy in this traumatised setting, what prevents this from crumbling into bad taste are inspired set-pieces such as the opening sequence depicting the landscape decimated by the tsunami, the shootout between Sometani and Denden and a crane shot during a pivotal murder that is nothing short of masterly.

Julien Leclercq also has his moments in The Assault, which recreates the 1994 hijacking of Air France Flight 8969 by four terrorists who planned to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower. However, Leclercq seems uncertain whether to pitch the action based on Roland Môntins and Gilles Cauture's book closer to Menahem Golan's The Delta Force (1986) or Paul Greengrass's United 93 (2006). Thus, while the staging has a degree of vérité realism, the lack of any political context means the focus falls more upon the personal problems of the French heroes than the situation that forced the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) to undertake such a reckless mission.

Indeed, the picture opens with GIGN special forces officer Vincent Elbaz returning from a training mission to wife Marie Guillard and daughter Naturel Le Ruyet, whose fears for his safety in an increasingly dangerous world are to become crucial to the storyline. However, while they prepare for Christmas, Aymen Saïdi and GIA cohorts Chems Dahmani, Mohid Abid and Djanis Bouzyani pose as passport officials at Algiers airport in order to gain access to a French plane carrying 227 passengers and crew.

However, no sooner are they aboard than things begin to go wrong. The stairs leading to the cabin are left in place and it soon becomes clear that the plane does not have enough fuel to reach Orly. Nevertheless, Saidi takes control and orders the pilot to take off and head for French air space. This decision, of course, leads to Elbaz and the unit led by Commandant Grégori Derangère being scrambled and a showdown seems inevitable once the craft lands at Marignane in the outskirts of Marseilles. But foreign ministry underling Mélanie Bernier is so convinced that she has an insight into the terrorist psyche that she tries to persuade her superiors that there is an alternative to violence as a means of ending the siege.

As anyone who recalls this episode will know (and those who have accessed the news footage online have gleaned), the plane was recaptured after 39 hours following a firefight that was witnessed by millions live on television. Leclercq makes adroit use of these circumstances by cross-cutting between Elbaz's courage and the anxiety of his loved ones watching at home. Yet, while the intimate exchange between Saidi and mother Zorah Benali has a certain poignancy, the reactions of Guillard and Le Ruyet merely seem melodramatic and this clash of tones enervates the shootout.

Thierry Pouget's frantic handheld imagery captures something of the mayhem, although the desaturation of the colour scheme reinforces the stylisation of the enterprise rather than enhancing its authenticity. Similarly, the contrasts between Guillard's fretting housewife and Bernier's patronised careerist feel somewhat forced. But Leclercq (who had previously revealed a knack for abrasive set-pieces in his 2007 sci-fi debut, Chrysalis) impresses with the 20-minute finale and makes slick use of archive material to pitch the viewer into the heart of the terrifying crossfire  It's a shame that the presentation of patriotism and fundamentalism in the screenplay co-written with Simon Moutairou is so regressive. But accusations in some quarters that this is a jingoistic taunt that France handled its aero-assault crisis better than the Americans did 9/11 seem misplaced.

A desperate ploy is also central to Florin Serban's first feature, If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle. Adapted from a play by Andreea Valean, this may not be in the front rank of Romanian New Wave pictures. But it has a seething authenticity to ensure it remains compelling even as it departs at full pelt from credibility. Ably exploiting Marius Panduru's handheld camera and Ana Ioneci's grim interiors to reinforce the crushing sense of oppressive despair, this may be indifferently plotted and paced, but it exudes raw power.

George Pistereanu bristles with macho insecurity as the 18 year-old reformatory inmate a fortnight away from release after a four-year stint for unspecified crimes. Despite his posturing, he lacks the menace or the muscle to do anything but keep his head down and do his time as quietly as possible. Moreover, he is constantly on his best behaviour around Ada Condeescu, a young social worker who has been detailed to guide him through the options for making the most of his release.

But the countdown to freedom is disrupted when Pistereanu receives a visit from younger brother Marian Bratu, who informs him that their estranged mother, Clara Voda, has returned from working away and wants to take Bratu with her when she returns to Italy. As their father is too sick to care for them, this makes sense. But Pistereanu blames Voda and her peripatetic lifestyle for the bulk of his problems and he is so enraged when he sees Bratu get into her car that he gets too close to the perimeter fence and is warned by warden Mihai Constantin that further infractions will see two years added to his sentence.

Having calmed down, Pistereanu asks Constantin for a day release so he can try and sort things out. However, he is refused and has to plead with fellow inmate Alexandru Mititelu to borrow his stashed mobile phone so he can talk to Voda. She agrees to come to the centre the next day and Pistereanu is able to return to his favourite pastime of trying to detect a flicker of interest in Condeescu's demeanour. But the meeting with Voda goes badly and Pistereanu feels he is left with little choice but to take Condeescu hostage in the hope of forcing his mother to change her mind.

Such desperate measures can only have one outcome and Serban deserves credit for delaying the inevitable by having Pistereanu request a café date with Condeescu as part of his negotiated settlement. But this is a rather mundane ending to a film that capably disguises its stage origins. Co-scripting with Valean, producer Catalin Mitulescu imparts wisdom gained from directing his own new wave debut, The Way I Spent the End of the World (2006). Yet, while If I Want to Whistle certainly packs a `noul val' punch, it has its own personality, as Serban breaks with prison picture tradition by exploring the promise of liberty and how it is prized by those close to grasping it.

He perhaps spends too long focussing on the back of Pistereanu's and somewhat resorts to melodramatic type by having him blow his chance. But Serban coaxes a fine performance out of his debuting star and ably handles an inexperienced cast, several of whom, like Mititelu, were actual prisoners brought to the set under close guard and invited to draw on their own experiences while improvising their scenes. The result may not be as compelling as Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2010), but it more than merits the comparisons that have been made with Alan Clarke's Scum (1979) and Made in Britain (1982).

The vogue for Scandinavian thrillers seemed to come from nowhere, but cinema has been quick to cash in on the success of bestsellers that have now been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. Although he may not be as popular as Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbø has a growing following, thanks to the Harry Hole and Doktor Proktor novels. But it's the stand-alone Headhunters that has been adapted with a satisfying mix of dark wit and brutal suspense by Norwegian director Morten Tyldum and his screenwriters Ulf Ryberg and Lars Gudmestad, who were respectively responsible for Daniel Alfredson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2009) and Arild Andresen's charming kidpic, The Liverpool Goalie.

Diminutive corporate headhunter Aksel Hennie has a complex about his height and feels the need to keep impressing statuesque wife Synnøve Macody Lund with lavish gifts. However, this expensive strategy is placing a strain on his resources. Thus, he senses an opportunity when she opens a new art gallery in Oslo and he meets Dane Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a former mercenary whose expertise in tracking systems would make him perfect for a top post in a prestigious electronics company. However, it's not the possibility of landing a lucrative recruitment contract that intrigues Hennie. He has discovered that Coster-Waldau owns a Rubens painting that has been missing since the Second World War and joins forces with home security operative Eivind Sander to steal it.

However, Hennie fails to heed one of the cardinal rules of theft that the target that can set you up for life is just as likely to be the one that will get you caught. Blinded by his own egotism and the fury of discovering that Coster-Waldau has been having an affair with Lund (in spite of the fact that he has a mistress of his own in Julie R. Ølgaard), Hennie realises too late that he has been set up and it takes a breakneck cross-country chase that requires him to kill his partner, dive into a cesspit to avoid a ravenous pitbull, evade the police for a murder he did not commit and survive a car crash and a knife attack before he can finally triumph in the full glare of the media spotlight.

There are times when the action risks becoming ridiculous. Moreover, it lacks the subtlety that the odd MacGuffin or red herring might have provided. But Tyldum commits so completely to making this a rollicking rollercoaster ride that it's nigh on impossible to avoid being swept away by its casual attitude to nudity and violence and it's almost gleeful disregard for plausibility.

John Andreas Andersen's vibrant cinematography and Vidar Flataukan's spry editing are vital to papering over the cracks in the scenario. But what is so amusing here is that while Cary Grant emerged from Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1955) and North By Northwest (1959) without a hair out of place, Hennie barely makes it to the denouement alive, as is relentlessly pursued and pummelled by just about every other character in the picture. Hennie somehow makes us care about a thoroughly despicable anti-hero, while Coster-Waldau revels in playing the baddie who seems superior to his pipsqueak adversary in every regard. But, while he might have endured torture at the hands of pitiless Bolivians, he proves no match for a little man with a king-sized chip on his shoulder.

Aki Kaurismäki has been one of the most consistently fascinating film-makers of the last 30 years. Renowned for their deadpan humour and stylised realism, his features have always sided with the underdog and presented an image of Finnish life that both teasingly reinforces stereotypes and suggests an unsuspected soulfulness. His laconic dramatic tone owes much to the work of little-known compatriot Teuvo Tulio, whose 1930s tales of corrupted country folk and 1940s fallen women sagas have recently been rediscovered. However, the influence of golden age French cinema has also been strong and the Finn's latest offering, Le Havre, will delight anyone with a soft spot for the Poetic Realist masterpieces of Marcel Carné and René Clair, as well as the grittier humanism of Kaurismäki's great heroes, Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson.

Training shoes are making it harder for Normandy shoeshiner André Wilms and his pal Quoc-dung Nguyen to make a living. However, they are always in their spots at Le Havre station, just in case someone's patent leather footwear needs sprucing up, and view life with such sang froid that they merely shrug even when one of Wilms's clients is gunned down in front of them.

Little does Wilms know, but death is also coming closer to home, as devoted wife Kati Outinen has just discovered that the condition that periodically sees her hospitalised is incurable. However, she is so intent on making her husband happy that she refuses to allow doctors to tell him the truth and places her faith in a miracle. But, as is always possible in Kaurismäki's off-kilter universe, something portentous is about to occur along the waterfront, as a security guard hears a baby crying inside a sealed container that had been bound from West Africa to Britain, but had been left unattended in France after being misdirected because of a computer error.

Realising those trapped inside are illegal immigrants, the police arrive in numbers for the grand opening. But tweenager Blondin Miguel manages to slip past them and pleads with Wilms to protect him. Aware of the unrest blighting detention centres like Le Jungle, Wilms takes advantage of Outinen's latest absence to smuggle the boy home under the nose of inspector Jean-Pierre Darrousin, a lugubrious fellow who is keen to improve the image of the force and adopts an awkward softly-softly approach. But, while he seeks to persuade local rocker Roberto Piazza (aka Little Bob) to play a benefit gig to raise the funds to allow Miguel to join his mother in London, sneaky neighbour Jean-Pierre Léaud prepares to shop him to the cops.

With Wouter Zoon's production design evoking the atmospheric studio sets of Alexandre Trauner and Lazare Meerson and Timo Salminen's cinematography recalling the lustrous monochrome achieved by such masters of moody lighting as Eugen Schüfftan, Boris Kaufman and Christian Matras, this is a cinéaste's delight that will doubtless arouse fond memories of army deserter Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan fighting capricious fate in the La Havre of Marcel Carné's Le Quai des Brumes (1938). But, while bitter reality does intrude in the form of the footage of rioting migrants, this is very much a celebration of community in the spirit of Jean Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange (1936).

Returning to France for the first time since La Vie de Bohème (1991) - which also starred Wilms (who slyly refers to his former bohemian existence in a typically droll throwaway remark) - Kaurismäki enlists the revered clown Pierre Etaix to cameo as the doctor who announces a revelation that is so gleefully unlikely it feels as though it has been plucked out of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955). He is also well served by Evelyne Didi as the good-hearted baker, Elina Salo as the owner of the bar whose jukebox seems to be stuffed with Gallic classics, and Laika (the fifth member of the canine line to have graced the screen), as Wilms's doggedly faithful pet). But this represents the epitome of ensemble excellence, with newcomers like Darrousin and Léaud perfectly catching the offbeat melancholy of a world in which the villain is the only character to own a mobile phone.

Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino has also developed a reputation for wry wit. But he struggles to combine polished visuals with chic escapism in his English-language debut, This Must Be the Place, as he follows in the footsteps of Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders in using the road movie format and the ever-changing landscape to pass acerbic comment on the American Dream. Having already drawn a mixed critical response because of its Holocaust subplot, this may not be as quirkily mesmerising as the pictures with which Sorrentino made his name - The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006) or Il Divo (2008). But, by riffing on Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970), Wenders's Paris, Texas (1984) and David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999), as well as by packing the soundtrack with superb songs by David Byrne and Will Oldham, Sorrentino not only succeeds in revitalising the outsider aspect of the genre, but also demonstrates that issues of historical and contemporary significance are not solely the preserve of the politically committed and the intellectually haughty.

Bearing the physical and psychological scars of the unbridled hedonism he enjoyed at the height of his 1980s fame, ageing rocker Sean Penn struggles to get around and make sense of seemingly simple concepts. Pottering about the Dublin mansion he shares with eminently sensible fire-fighter wife Frances McDormand, he continues to sport the shock of black hair, kohl and rouge of his youth. But, ever since a couple of fans committed suicide because of the glum content of his lyrics, his contact with the outside world has been limited to fellow mavericks like teenage fan Eva Hewson (who just happens to be Bono's daughter), who is struggling to cope with mother Olwen Fouéré's morose response to the sudden disappearance of her son.

Everything changes, however, when Penn receives news that the father he hasn't seen in three decades is gravely ill and he takes the boat back to New York (he refuses to fly) to see him. Unfortunately, he only arrives in time to attend the funeral, where he learns from cousin Liron Levo that his father had been obsessed with tracking down Heinz Lieven, the camp guard who had humiliated him during his incarceration in Auschwitz. Having read his father's diary, Penn contacts Nazi hunter Judd Hirsch to help him locate Lieven and bring him to justice. But Hirsch takes himself and his quest too seriously to share his expertise with a washed-up pop star.

Despondent, but endearingly dogged, Penn goes to see old mucker David Byrne in concert (where he performs the eponymous Talking Heads song in set-piece that exceeds anything seen in 1994's Stop Making Sense or 2010's Rise, Ride, Roar) and, following their backstage chat, Penn decides to strike out on his own. Hiring a black pick-up truck, he hits the road for a trip that will take him to Utah, Michigan, New Mexico and a surprising discovery.

He makes first for Lieven's estranged wife, Joyce Van Patten, and poses as one of her former history students to gain access. On learning little, he sets his sights on the couple's daughter, Kerry Condon, a kindly war widow who is too busy with daily survival to address anything more meaningful. En route, Penn also makes the acquaintance of the occasional oddball, including Harry Dean Stanton, who claims to have invented the wheeled suitcase. But, with the unexpected help of Hirsch, he finally finds his father's nemesis and devises a punishment commensurate with the crime that had been rankling for seven decades.

As in all good road movies, the changing scenery works its magic on the conflicted anti-hero and Penn not only comes to appreciate the full awfulness of the Shoah, but also to realise that the time has come to forget his past celebrity and accept his new reality. Looking like Robert Smith of The Cure, but often acting like a high-pitched Ozzy Osbourne, Penn drifts through his odyssey like a sleepwalker slowly regaining consciousness. But, while he may appear spaced out, he comes up with some surprisingly acute observations and his direct line of questioning often disconcerts those adopting an unmerited sense of superiority to this odd-looking man-child.

However, while Sorrentino and co-scenarist Umberto Contarello keep the quips coming, they  let the storyline get off to a sluggish start in Ireland and frequently allow it meander Stateside. Moreover, too much reliance is placed upon Luca Bigazzi's magnificent vistas to disguise the fact that few of Penn's encounters have any real substance. Yet, even though the return to Dublin is resoundingly anti-climactic, this is still a likeable and engaging treatise on the minor moments that take on unanticipated significance and irrevocably change lives. Sorrentino's willingness to take diegetic and stylistic chances may not always pay off, but he has the courage to follow his instincts and this is far superior to such stranger in a strange land outings as Emir Kusturica's Arizona Dream (1993) or Bruno Dumont's Twentynine Palms (2003).

An enigmatic stranger also proves key to Reha Erdem's Kosmos. Few got to see My Only Sunshine (2009), the Turkish auteur's follow-up to the arthouse hit, Times and Winds (2006). But this magic realist drama has more in common with the former's poetic and provocative, but overly elliptical and enigmatic study of a free-spirited teenager than with the latter's more acclaimed Taviani-like memoir of growing up in a remote rural village.

Opening on a vast snowscape, the action centres on Sermet Yesil, as he flees unseen pursuers and earns the undying gratitude of teenager Türkü Turan by not only fetching her younger brother out of a raging river, but also resurrecting him with a firm embrace. News quickly spreads of the newcomer's miraculous powers and Turan's indebted father, Hakan Altuntas, is so impressed by his earnest utterances that he finds him somewhere to stay and a job at the local café.

However, even though he cures ageing tailor Sencer Sagdiç's asthma, Yesil is easily distracted and when he's not stealing sugar, he goes wandering among the ruined buildings of the border town of Kars that are being used for a military exercise that provides an incessantly thunderous backdrop to the proceedings. He also strikes up an unconventional friendship with Turan that involves them howling like birds whenever they meet and occasionally soaring up to the ceiling of his meagre squat.

His liaisons with newly arrived schoolteacher Sabahat Doganyilmaz and the disabled Korel Kubilay (for whom he purloins withheld medical supplies when not licking her paralysed leg) are no less bizarre. But his decision to help timid Murat Deniz escape from the three older brothers who have accused him of murdering their father in order to inherit his estate and to restore a mute boy's power of speech tragically backfire when Deniz is arrested on a train out of town and the child suddenly dies and Yesil is no longer regarded as a healer, but a demon.

With subplots involving a campaign to amend Ankara's trade policy with the neighbouring Armenia and the crash-landing of a communications satellite adding a little political spice to the discussion of Islam's role in a secular state, this makes few concessions to non-Turkish viewers. But even though Erdem often opts for impenetrability, Florent Herry's agile camerawork is as impressive as Hervé Guyader and Utku Insel's sound design, while Yesil's holy fool is as fascinating as he's frustrating.

The sense of outsiderness is altogether cosier in North Sea Texas. Having earned a cult reputation directing gay-themed shorts, Bavo Defurne makes an assured feature bow with this charming adaptation of André Sollie's novella This Will Never Go Away. Set on the Belgian coast several decades ago, this appears to be just another adolescent boy's first love story. But such is Defurne's affinity for both time and place and his insight into family dynamics that this becomes a poignant study of fitting in and breaking out. 

While floozy mother Eva Van der Gucht plays the accordion at a nearby bar, 10 year-old Ben Van den Heuvel dresses up in the costumes she used to wear as a beauty queen and even flounces around in her tiara. With Van der Gucht invariably preoccupied with sulky lover Luk Wyns or her latest passing fancy at the bar, Van den Heuvel spend lots of time with neighbour Katelijne Damen and her children Nathan  Naenen and Noor Ben Taouet. As Naenen is nearly a teenager, Van den Heuvel hero worships him and, as the story moves on five years, this develops an overpowering adoration that means 15 year-old Jelle Florizoone will do almost anything that 17 year-old Mathias Vergels tells him.

Although he has grown into something of a rebel and now has his own motorbike, Vergels is somewhat smitten with Florizoone himself and they often sneak away to the garage for mutual masturbation sessions that provides the younger lad with a unique souvenir to store in the box of keepsakes he keeps hidden in his closet. However, shortly after they have an idyllic night together on a camping trip, Vergels gets a job in Dunkirk and starts a romance with French girl Ella-June Henrard. Florizoone is heartbroken and, on seeing them making out together, he lets down the tyres on Vergels's bike.

Ignoring the consolation offered by his beloved's now voluptuous sister (Nina Marie Kortekaas), Florizoone turns his attention instead to lodger Thomas Coumans, who works in the carnival and cuts such a rippling dash that both mother and son drool over him. But it's Van der Gucht who wins out, as the pair run away together, leaving Florizoone to burn his treasure chest on the beach. However, even though the long-suffering Damen finally dies, all is not as lost as Florizoone first fears, as Vergels returns home for the funeral.

Trainee ballet dancer Jelle Floorizoone makes a hugely impressive debut as the loner who always seems to be looking in the wrong place during his search for love. Vergels and Kortekaas also catch the eye, while Van der Gucht and Coumans respectively exhibit a blowsiness and a unself-consciousness that suggests where adolescent passion ultimately leads. But, as in his shorts, Defurne proves as strong in capturing atmosphere as emotion and he allows Anton Mertens's camera to linger on torsos and seascapes with a similar sensuality, while also evoking the mood of a lost golden age that is most likely the late 1960s and early 70s.

Although the story drifts slightly, the insights into youthful yearning are both delicate and unflinching. But what is most moving is the contrast between teenage dreams and adult reality and the difficulty mothers face in letting go of their children while also trying to lead lives that don't always meet with the approval of their offspring.

Finally, having previously impressed with Happy Man (2000), Stranger (2004) and the excellent 33 Scenes From Life (2008),  Malgoska Szumowska comes unstuck with Elles. Wasting courageous performances by two fine young actresses and failing to make the most of Juliette Binoche's unique screen presence, this naive insight into the ways in which women sell themselves out to men feels so detached from the sordid realities of prostitution that it is often hard to remember that this major miscalculation has been directed by a woman.

When not writing think pieces for Elle magazine, Juliette Binoche is acting as dutiful wife to businessman Louis-Do de Lencquesaing and stressing out as the mother of dope-smoking truant François Civil and game-obsessed tweenager Pablo Beugnet. Having packed them off after another family breakfast of grunts and shrugs, Binoche begins preparing coq au vin for supper that evening with De Lencquesaing's visiting boss. But, in between battles with electrical appliances (including a fridge whose door has a mind of its own), she thinks back on the interviews she recently conducted with two young women who see prostitution as a quick and effective way of financing their studies.

Anaïs Demoustier grew up in the projects outside Paris and has no qualms about sleeping with men if it gets her away from a background she detested and enables her to live in a nice apartment and develop a cosy relationship with an unsuspecting boyfriend. Pole Joanna Kulig appears equally phlegmatic, as she endures the odd kinky encounter to fund the party lifestyle that Binoche shares with some relish after a vodka binge. Indeed, both girls seem to enjoy sex with complete strangers a lot more than Binoche does with De Lencquesaing, who is too focused on work to relax when his wife attempts to seduce him.

All of this might have seemed rather racy when Catherine Deneuve was slipping away from an idyllic bourgeois existence to work in an upmarket establishment in Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967) or Delphine Seyrig was breaking off from her domestic chores to attend to her gentlemen callers in Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). But Szumowska and co-scenarist Tine Byrckel draw no more insightful conclusions in this surprisingly conservative dissertation on sexual politics.

There are disconcerting moments, none more so than the juxtaposition of scenes showing Binoche pleasuring herself and Demoustier being raped with a champagne bottle. But the other trysts are presented with an explicit, but glossy romanticism that is so devoid of risk or consequence that they come perilously close to resembling the pornography Binoche is so appalled to discover De Lencquesaing and Beugnet watch so frequently. Moreover, the notion that chic wives and mothers have it every bit as tough as empowered sex workers is dismayingly trite and one might have hoped that a film-maker of Szumowska's evident intelligence and accomplishment might have had something fresher and more trenchant to say about a subject as old as the profession itself.

The performances are admirably committed, with Binoche eschewing her stellar veneer to seem genuinely astonished at the physical and emotional discoveries she makes as a result of her meetings with Demoustier and Kulig, who accept challenges that are seemingly becoming increasingly mundane in French films with commendable sang froid. But the use of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is portentously used on a score that's as intrusive as Michal Englert's camera, whose proximity to the faces of the lead trio clumsily attempts to make the audience complicit as voyeurs in the exploitation of these three in particular and all women in general.