Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 5/3/2015)

Somewhere in rural Yorkshire, Peggy Parker (who remains unseen throughout) is staging an amateur production of Alan Ayckbourn's 1965 play, Relatively Speaking. Having been cast in a key role, the bibulous Kathryn (Sabine Azéma) chides time-obsessed doctor husband Colin (Hippolyte Girardot) for refusing to take his acting seriously. However, he shocks her by revealing that their neighbour George Riley (who also remains off-screen) has been diagnosed with cancer and has only six months left to live.

Kathryn breaks the news to Riley's wealthy businessman pal, George (Michel Vuillermoz) and his wife, Tamara (Caroline Silhol). The latter is vexed by the fact that her spouse seems incapable of cheating on her with discretion. So, when Jack (also unseen) drops out of the play, she joins Kathryn in suggesting that Riley takes his place so that he can be with his friends during his final days. However, as Riley has announced that he intends taking a last holiday to Tenerife and hopes to invite a companion, Kathryn and Tamara have started fussing over him and tidying his sprawling castle-like residence between rehearsals for the play. Moreover, the news has also re-awoken the interest of Riley's estranged wife, Monica (Sandrine Kiberlain), even though she is now involved with genial gentleman farmer, Simeon (André Dussolier).

As the last night of the play's run approaches, the desperate housewives all harbour hopes of joining Riley on his trip. However, he has fed all three the same promise and they are distraught when they discover that he has absconded with Tamara's 16 year-old daughter, Tilly (Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi). Having been jealous of Riley's decadent lifestyle, while also fearing that they are going to be dumped, Colin, Jack and Simeon are mightily relieved that their pleading has not gone unheeded. But, while Riley is away, he dies while scuba diving and Tilly arrives during the funeral service to place a photograph on his coffin.

Production designer Jacques Saulnier collaborated with Resnais on every film from Last Year At Marienbad (1961) and their swan song is every bit as visually ambitious as its more celebrated predecessor. The bulk of the early action takes place on outside sets that have been consiously conceived to draw attention to their createdness. The flora looks splendidly plastic, while the backdrops are painted on curtains that ripple during the incessant entrances and exits of the characters. Moreover, Resnais commissioned the cartoonist Blutch to produce pen-and-ink establishing views of Riley's pile, as well as the farm, townhouse and country manor inhabited by his friends and their adulterously scheming paramours. Furthermore, he shoots close-ups against a black-and-white crosshatching design that reinforces the artificiality of both the image and the words and emotions of the framed speaker.

Using the pseudonym Alex Reval, Resnais and co-scribes Laurent Herbiet and Jean-Marie Besset deftly blur the lines between conversations and dialogue lifted from the play-within-the film. They also retain English slang and all of the props are site-specific, which enables cinematographer Dominique Bouilleret and editor Hervé de Luze to maintain the playful feel achieved by the excellent ensemble and Resnais's understated direction, which even finds room for a running gag involving a mischievous animatronic mole. It has been said that Azéma (who was widowed when Resnais died three weeks after the film's Berlin premiere) was the weak link in his later works. But she is splendidly skittish here, as she joins Silhol and Kiberlain in daring to entertain a fantasy to enliven her stodgily respectable bourgeois existence.

Yet, there is a danger that Mark Snow's sitcomedic score tilts proceedings in the unwelcome direction of whimsy. Moreover, it's clear that Resnais is much more interested in exploring the possibilities of the stylised mise-en-scène than he is in conducting an in-depth analysis of modern British moral and marital mores or the themes of misogyny and emasculation contained within Ayckbourn's 74th stage work. Thus, given that Riley is no Godot, this absurdist and unashamedly nostalgic boulevard farce remains a picture to be enjoyed rather than dissected for enlightement, as Resnais had already explored the relationship between actors and their director in You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet (2012) and had spent his entire feature career attempting to fathom the mysteries of the mind and heart. We should be grateful, therefore, that he remained so intrigued by his medium for so long and that he managed to complete his last statement in his own inimitable manner, right down to the self-deprecating joke about the dynamic dying young, while `the tiresome, humdrum ones live forever'.

The mettle displayed by Resnais is matched by Richard Glatzer, who employed a text-to-speech app on his iPad to help overcome the effects of the degenerative disease Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis to co-direct Still Alice with Wash Westmoreland, with whom he also collaborated on Quinceañera (aka Echo Park, LA, 2006) and The Last of Robin Hood (2013). Adapted from a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova, this sincere attempt to depict Alzheimer's from the perspective of the sufferer disappearing from their own consciousness rather than from the viewpoint of their helpless friends and family arrives in UK cinemas on the back of Julianne Moore's Oscar triumph. But, while she contributes a performance of rare skill, the discussion of the condition is often so verbose and superficial that this well-meaning drama too frequently feels like a `disease of the week' teleplay, albeit one that eschews easy tears.

Fifty year-old Julianne Moore teaches linguistics at Columbia University. She is married to medical researcher Alec Baldwin and has three grown-up children, Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart and Hunter Parrish. Everything seems fine until Moore forgets the word `lexicon' in the middle of a lecture and, shortly afterwards, becomes disorientated after getting lost while jogging in a familiar part of New York. Reluctantly, she undergoes a series of neurological tests to assess her short-term memory and is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

Moore is warned by doctor Stephen Kunken that the condition is inheritable and she tries to convince the broody Bosworth and husband Shane McRae to use IVF to avoid the possibility of passing on the gene. However, Baldwin is too wrapped up in his own career to offer his wife much support, while Stewart is preoccupied with her bid to become an actress in Los Angeles. So, Moore tries to disguise her ongoing struggle with everyday tasks and bumbles through classes at school. However, the students start complaining about her lapses and she is dismissed by the unsympathetic faculty.

Suddenly cognisant of the future she faces, Moore begins researching care homes and even makes a video message, in which she asks some simple self-defining questions and reminds herself that there is a bottle of pills hidden away to end things before they get out of hand. She secretes the clip on her laptop and tries to make the most of a family holiday at the beach. But her illness is starting to put more of a strain on those around her and she is distressed when Baldwin refuses to take a sabbatical so they can spend more of her remaining lucid time together.

As she feels the grasp on her personality slipping away. Moore realises her loved ones are starting to prepare for life without her and she gives a moving speech to the Alzheimer's Association that is warmly applauded. A few weeks later, she finds the embedded video on her computer. She opens it and has difficulty recognising herself, let alone following her own instructions. But she is interrupted by her carer before she can open the pills and her opportunity for self-willed escape passes. Not long afterwards, Baldwin lands a long-cherished job in Boston and announces his intention to accept it. Consequently, Moore is left in the care of the prodigal Stewart, who feels compelled to do her bit for the mother who helped mould her.

A line from the Elizabeth Bishop poem, `One Art', proves crucial to understanding Julianne Moore's accomplished performance. Following Judi Dench in Iris (2001), Gena Rowlands in The Notebook (2004) and Julie Christie in Away From Her (2006), Moore perfects `the art of losing', as she endures the frustration of seeing everything she has achieved slip through her memory and leave her helpless and alone as her sense of self diminishes with terrifying rapidity and finality. Moore has already played women on the verge to telling effect in Safe (1995), Far From Heaven and The Hours (both 2002), but never before has she conveyed such palpable vulnerability.

Yet, apart from having cinematographer Denis Lenoir reduce the field of view, Glatzer and Westmoreland do little to allow the audience an audiovisual share in Moore's encroaching interiority. Ilan Eshker's score is certainly not up to the task and the co-directors are exceedingly fortunate that their shortcomings are masked by Moore's excellence in sequences like the one in which the woman watching the suicide message bears little physical, let alone psychological similarity to the one on the screen. This acuity justifies the decision to switch the focus away from the family, although Stewart and Bosworth have touching exchanges that compensate for Baldwin's overly boorish display as the husband investing in his future while his wife is striving to hang on to her present. But, for all its tasteful tact and occasional deft humour, this is guilty of too many melodramatic lapses to feel like we are witnessing real life.

Another mother seeks to reconnect before confronting a grim reality in Jimmy Hay and James Gillingham's High Tide, a low-budget drama that makes admirable use of the marvellous scenery around the Gower Peninsula. Fans of Gavin and Stacey will welcome the chance to see Melanie Walters tackle a very different role from the ever-genial Gwen West, while Sam Davies holds his own in returning to the screen for the first time since he played the toddling incarnation of the hero in Peter Hewitt's teen comedy, Thunderpants (2002). As for the debuting duo, they may linger overlong at the climactic barbecue, but they can be forgiven this minor lapse because party sequences are among the most notoriously difficult things to do convincingly on screen, as only rarely does the audience get to enjoy the occasion as much as its well-refreshed participants.

Flashbacks from this outdoor soirée are intercut with during the opening credit sequence with shots of Melanie Walters pottering around her tidy home doing chores. She waits outside a nearby front door for Sam Davies to come out and offers to give him a lift to school. He is far from pleased to see her and is hugely embarrassed when she follows him down a corridor and pleads with him to spend the day with her because they need to talk. Rain spots the windscreen as they drive in awkward silence to the coast, where Walters suggests they go for a walk and catch up.

The weather has brightened by the time they reach the Worm's Head in Rhossili Bay and Walters tries to get Davies to open up about the girl he likes in class. When he clams up, she changes the subject to music and not only reveals that she once had a crush on REM lead singer Michael Stipe, but also once saw Super Furry Animals perform in Welsh. Refusing to be impressed, Davies mentions that his father used to be in a band and Walters agrees that she fell for him because he had a guitar.

Davies falls silent again, as things are clearly difficult at home and he doesn't want to have a row in the middle of nowhere. They go to a cafe for chips and bump into Claire Cage, the mother of Davies's classmate, Charlotte Mulliner. She invites them to a garden barbecue that evening and they agree to come if they can. Over lunch, Walters urges Davies to keep up with his studies and go to college, as jobs are scarce and she may not always be there to help him. He complains that Swansea is a dump and accuses her of being hypocritical by lecturing him when she had done so little with her own life.

As they stroll in the dunes, Walters laments that they hardly know each other any longer and Davies blames her for always nagging him and his father. She asks him not to judge her, but Davies insists that he can understand why his father spends his nights in the pub with his mates because she makes his life such a misery. On reaching the beach, Walters shows her son the bruises on her body and reassures him that the violence is not his fault. He asks why she has never run away and she admits to thinking about it, but needed to stay to protect him.

They hardly speak over a cup of tea and meet up with Cage again when they get a flat tyre and Davies has to change the wheel. She renews her invitation and they decide to accept, as neither wants to head home and they have nowhere else to go. Cage and Mulliner give them an effusive welcome and, while Davies helps the latter serve drinks, Walters finds a seat in a secluded spot and listens to the band, Sam Green and the Midnight Heist. Cage makes a speech to the delight of her guests and Mulliner flirts with Davies, who feels guilty at leaving his mother alone. She chats with a few strangers and goes along with Cage's suggestion that they should stay late, have a few beers and take a taxi home.

Leaving the tipsy Mulliner crashed on the bed, Davies goes in search of Walters. She tells him she has arranged for them to stay with a friend and they wander down to the beach to await their cab. Dawn begins to break over the horizon, as Walters promises Davies that she is no longer afraid and he dozes off on the sand. She wanders to the tideline and walks into the water. The scene cuts to a roving shot around a cosy bedroom that comes to rest on a lifeless corpse draped across the duvet. Looking into the distance, Walters takes a deep breath and calls the emergency services.

Alert viewers will have long since realised that Walters would not have gone to such lengths to have a heart-to-heart with her teenage son unless something drastic had already occurred or was about to happen. But the shattering shock of the denouement still comes as a surprise and Hay and Gillingham deserve considerable credit for keeping their cards so close to their chests. That said, they never adequately explain the family living arrangements. If they all live together, why does Walters collect Davies from a different house on a school morning and why does she know so little about his musical taste and how his exam revision is going? Moreover, how could Davies have spent so much time under the same roof as his parents and not been aware that his short-fused father was anything but a paragon of virtue? Granted, the emphasis is less on domestic abuse than on how children see their folks, but these small details grate more than they should.

On the plus side, Walters and Davies play off each other very well and stand head and shoulders above the patchy supporting cast. Chris Lang's photography is also impressive, while Matt Harding's score provides a thoughtful counterpoint to the conversations and seascapes. But, while this would make a decent double bill with Harry Macqueen's Hinterland, Hay and Gillingham have to hone their writing and pacing skills and, perhaps most importantly, they need to steer well clear of party scenes.

Iranian-American twentysomething Desiree Akhavan also has trouble breaking some unwelcome news to loved ones in her debut as writer-director, Appropriate Behaviour. Many critics have rightly compared this to Lena Dunham's Tiny Furniture (2010) and it will surprise few to learn that Akhavan has been invited to join the cast of Dunahm's cult sitcom, Girls. Fizzing with deadpan wisecracks and studded with random flashbacks, this is a hugely confident picture that juggles clichés and taboos with reckless glee. But, for all its cynical exuberance, this is a touch too scattershot for its own good and, one suspects, Akhavan will do much better next time after learning her craft at spiritual sister's knee.

Having broken up acrimoniously with girlfriend Rebecca Henderson. Desiree Akhavan is forced to find new accomodation in Brooklyn and, because she has just quit her job as a journalist, she seeks the assistance of comfortably off parents Anh Duong and Hooman Majd. However, she has never summoned the courage to tell them or judgemental urologist brother Arian Moayed that she is bisexual. Akhavan's straight friend Halley Feiffer urges her to come out of the closet, but she is quite happy to play the field and even has a one-night stand with a man she meets on the OK Cupid site. Moreover, she tries to chat up Aimee Mullins, the gay rights lawyer who runs her lesbian discussion group, and even accepts an invitation for a threesome from strangers Chris Baker and Robyn Rikoon, whom she meets in a bar.

The ménage ends badly when Baker gets jealous and asks Akhavan to leave, but she has more luck when Feiffer's stoner friend Scott Adsit offers her a job teaching film-making to a kindergarten class of five year-old boys. She quite enjoys getting the kids to work on a shot-for-shot pastiche of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). However, she is dismayed to discover that the woman in charge of the girls, Rosalie Lowe, is now dating Henderson and she goes into a nostalgic funk after encountering them at a party. Feiffer tries to cheer Akhavan up by taking her shopping for lingerie, only for the assistant to criticise her for not wearing a bra. Moreover, she keeps thinking back over the year she spent with Henderson and wondering whether the good times actually outweighed the bad. She recalls, for instance, the time they attempted S&M role play, when Henderson pretended to be a tax inspector and merely offered to help Akhavan's naughty girl fill out her annual return.

At the end of term, the two classes show their films and the girls produce an exquisite piece of monochrome minimalism that standa in start contrast to short made by Akhavan and the boys. However, Adsit is delighted with The Tale of the Fart and tells Akhavan that she has talent, as well as attitude. As New Year comes around again, Akhavan attends a family Nowruz gathering and tells her mother and brother about her sexual orientation. But neither is surprised.

Inspired by Akhavan's split from her first serious girlfriend, this is very much a film sprinkled with autobiographical detail, in the same vein as The Slope, the lesbian web series she created with Ingrid Jungermann. But, for all the self-deprecation, one never gets the impression that this is wholly confessional. Moreover, while her screen presence is highly distinctive, there is too little of her personality in either her storytelling or direction, which are disappointingly conventional. The flashbacks may be achronological and unsignposted, but this hardly constitutes an assault on linearity, while too many secondary characters are mere ciphers who exist to make a socio-cultural point or facilitate a throwaway gag.

The scene in the bookstore reminds us that Woody Allen's original title for Annie Hall (1977) was Anhedonia and this might have been a suitable name for Akhavan's picture, as her world-weary reluctance to take pleasure in anything or trust anyone eventually becomes wearisome. Indeed, she can be an exasperating narcissist who is hard to warm to, especially as her contempt for her neighbours in either the swanky Park Slope or the more offbeat Bashwick neighbourhoods occasionally comes close to misanthropy rather than equal opportunities satire. What's more too few of the jibes are particularly eloquent or insightful and Akhavan will have to sharpen her pen and raise her aim before she tries again. Yet, despite her problem shifting through the emotional gears, this remains an entertaining, if one-dimensional view of a side of New York and its hipster and migrant communities that are rarely seen outside indie festival offerings.

Another young woman struggles to find her niche in Gregg Araki's adaptation of Laura Kasischke's cult novel, White Bird in a Blizzard. Given that Araki established his reputation as the enfant terrible of New Queer Cinema with the so-called `Teen Apocalypse Trilogy' of Totally F*cked Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1996) and Nowhere (1997), one might have considered him to be the perfect director for a teasing concoction containing domestic dysfunction, sexual awakening and a possible murder mystery. But, while he creates a splendidly kitschy version of the late 1980s, Araki never seems to be in total control of either his material or his leads, with the consequence that this flashbacking saga flits divertingly without coming to rest long enough to allow the audience to engage with the characters or empathise with their problems.

Having shed her puppy fat, 17 year-old Shailene Woodley is beginning to blossom just as mother Eva Green is starting to feel her age. Even though she has dinner on the table every evening, she has no interest in husband Christopher Meloni and has clearly set her sights on the new boy next door, Shiloh Fernandez. However, Woodley has told best pals Mark Indelicato and Gabourey Sidibe that she has decided to lose her virginity with the handsome, but doltish Fernandez and is merely waiting for the right time to broach the subject.

However, shortly after Woodley arrives home to find her mother in a state of some distress, Green disappears and cop Thomas Jane suspects that Meloni is responsible. Such is Woodley's calm response to the situation that she is sent to psychiatrist Angela Bassett. But Woodley is more interested in seducing Jane than revealing her innermost thoughts and, although she frequently thinks about Green, she seems not to notice the significance of a memory involving Green pulling back her bedding to expose her youthful and burgeoningly beautiful nakeness and the dream in which Woodley sees Green nude under a blanket of freshly fallen snow.

The scene shifts from 1988 to 1991 and Woodley returns home from college for a short break. She is unfazed to learn that Meloni is dating a co-worker. But she dismisses Jane's theory that her father murdered his wife after catching her in flagrante with another man. Sidibe and Indelicato are similarly convinced that Meloni has something to hide. But Woodley believes that Green was sleeping with Fernandez and confronts him, only to be informed that Meloni knows more than he is letting on.

Venturing into the basement, Woodley begins rummaging in the chest freezer for evidence that Meloni had tried to dispose of Green. He inquires what she is doing and gets emotional when she asks if he knows anything about her mother's fate. Taking his word, Woodley flies back to college with tears in her eyes. But, shortly afterwards, Meloni gets drunk in a bar and confesses to killing Green. As he hangs himself in his cell, we learn that he moved the corpse the night before Woodley searched the freezer and a final flashback shows Green discovering Meloni in bed with Fernandez and laughing with such cruel mockery that he had strangled her to shut her up.

This climactic revelation departs from the novel, but adds little to a story that never quite captures the imagination, in spite of a bold performance by Woodley, who first came to attention in the long-running tele-drama The Secret Life of an American Teenager (2008-13). Araki might have done more to emphasise the psychological impact that her physical transformation has wrought. But, whether vamping Jane or trying to fathom her mother's problems in stylised reveries, Woodley tempers her insecurity with a hesitant confidence that contrasts with Green's erratic display of full-on eccentricity, which keeps threatening to upset an already precariously balanced picture.

Araki and cinematographer Sandra Valde-Hansen make knowing use of Todd Fjelsted's gaudily coloured sets. Yet, despite the authenticity of the décor, fashions, props and soundtrack selections, the moral tone of the action feels more akin to the 1950s and this dichotomy undermines the plausibility of an already unlikely tale that is hardly helped by the often crass dialogue, the sketchiness of the characterisation and the fact that Green is such a loose cannon that her absence comes as more of a relief than a tragedy.

Although the tone and setting could not be more starkly contrasting, a death proves equally pivotal to Zeresenay Berhane Mehari's Difret. Executive produced by Angelina Jolie, this fact-based drama exposes the iniquities of the ancient practice of `telefa', a form of marriage through abduction that is dismayingly common in the remote areas of Ethiopia. As only the fourth feature to be filmed in this country on 35mm, Mehari's debut represents something of a landmark production. But, for all its laudable intentions, it lacks the finesse to give its important message sufficient dramatic potentcy.

Walking from school to her family farm, Tizita Hagere is abducted by seven men on horseback dispatched by Girma Teshome, an older man who has decided to force the 14 year-old into marriage. Having endured a brutal rape, however, she manages to escape and shoots Teshome with a stolen rifle. Embarrassed by the incident, police chief Moges Yohannes and assistant district attorney Brook Sheferaw plot a quick trial that will result in the killer being executed and buried with her victim. But lawyer Meron Getnet hears about the incident on the radio and arrives from Addis Ababa to defend Hagere on behalf of the Andinet Women Lawyers Association.

Securing bail, Getnet exploits the decision of the elders to exile Hagere and finds her a safe haven in an orphanage. However, the teenager is so unaccustomed to life outside her family home that every new sight and sound terrifies her. Meanwhile, Getnet seeks to persuade some of the villagers to give evidence on her client's behalf, but they are either scared of Yohannes or see nothing wrong with `telefa', which has been a local custom for centuries. Indeed, Hagere's sister had been similarly coerced into marriage and, despite the pair being threatened by misogynist vigilantes, Getnet decides that her only option is to risk her career by challenging the Minister of Justice in the hope of securing a ruling that will change the law pertaining to women who kill in self-defence.

`Difret' means both `courage' and `daring' in the Amharic language and Getnet and Hagere demonstrate plenty of both as they prepare for their day in court. However, the word can also translate as `rape' and, despite the fact that she draws on a celebrated 1996 case for her storyline, Mehari never manages to convey the brutality of the tradition and the awful consequences for its victims. As a result, this never quite absorbs or appals as much as it should and Mehari might have been better advised to have made a social justice documentary profiling Meaza Ashenafi, the founder of the Andinet Women Lawyers Association, rather than have her played in such a larger-than-life manner by the ebullient Getnet.

More damagingly, thr USC-trained Mehari frequently employs a heavy directorial hand and bafflingly, on a couple of occasions, cuts away from tense sequences before they can reach their conclusion. She also opts too often for long-winded speeches that explain procedures rather than dramatising them,while a case involving a woman battered by her alcoholic husband is dropped almost as soon as it is mentioned. Similarly, the threatened attack by some vigilantes seems avoided with infeasible ease. Nevertheless, Hagere is touchingly vulnerable as she adapts to city life, while Getnet fizzes with indignant tenacity. Indeed, the experienced film and television actress completely overshadows their clumsy caricatured and rather poorly played adversaries. But cinematographer Monika Lenczewska evocatively contrasts the town and country locales, while David Schommer and David Eggar's score neatly amalgamates indigenous and imported styles.

Meaza Ashenafi feels like the kind of human rights champion who would appeal to British documentarist Kim Longinotto, who has forged an enviable reputation chronicling the disenfranchisement of women across the developing world. Her focus in Dreamcatcher, however, falls on Brenda Myers-Powell, the founder with Stephanie Daniels-Wilson of a non-profit organisation based in the rougher neighbourhoods of Chicago's rundown South Side that is dedicated to weaning women off prostitution and drugs. Apparently, Longinotto had to be coaxed into taking on the project after producers Lisa Stevens and Teddy Leifer met Myers-Powell while making their own actuality, Crack House USA (2010). But, operating her own camera and collaborating once more with editor Ollie Huddleston, Longinotto imposes her own Direct Cinema stamp on a study that deserves to stand aside such notable achievements as Divorce Iranian Style (1998), The Day I Will Never Forget (2002), Sisters in Law (2005), Rough Aunties (2008) and Pink Saris (2010).

Brenda Myers-Powell is a remarkable woman. In 1973, aged 15 and with two children to support, she started working as a prostitute and continued to walk the streets until April 1997, when she quit shortly before her 40th birthday. During the course of that quarter century, Myers-Powell knew poverty, violence, addiction and degradation. But her troubles had started at the age of four when she was raped for the first time and she continued to suffer abuse at the hands of members of her own family for the next decade. However, in 2008, she teamed with Daniels-Wilson to set up the Dreamcatcher Foundation, which she hoped would complement her work with the prostitution intervention unit based at the Cook County Sheriff's Department.

When not conducting seminars at the local prison or visiting schools to alert teenagers to the dangers of being lured into prostitution by promises of easy money, Myers-Powell is trawling the night-time streets offering working girls hot drinks, condoms and a sympathetic ear to their problems. Invariably sporting big hair wigs and never at a loss for words, she cuts an imposing figure. Yet, she is also a tactful listener and 15 year-old Temeka (who has been turning tricks for three years and is afraid to confront her mother) and the older and heavily pregnant Marie (who has always been too proud to accept charity) are show benefiting from her kindness and practicality. A tougher nut to crack, however, is her own sister-in-law, Melody, who refuses to admit she has a problem with either sex or drugs, even though Myers-Powell is raising her son Jeremy as her own, with her supportive husband, Keith.

Even reformed pimp Homer King is welcomed with open arms and he attends seminars designed to teach young women how to avoid falling into the traps he knows all too well how to set The majority of those attending these sessions have harrowing tales of mistreatment to relate and Myers-Powell provides the kind of nurturing atmosphere that many of them have never previously experienced and which gives them the confidence to share their woes with others who would never judge them, as they have been down the same road themselves. At Paul Robeson High School, girls discuss with humbling equanimity being raped while still children by family members or friends. One even details how she allowed herself to be abused by her mother's partner at the age of eight in order to protect her four year-old sister. No wonder there is such conviction in the workshop's climactic rendition of Mary J. Blige's empowerment anthem, `Just Fine'.

It says much for Longinotto's discretion, as well as the respect that Myers-Powell commands, that the girls trust them both sufficiently to disclose such intimate and often deeply distressing incidents on camera. But such scenes also testify to the confidence that Myers-Powell has in the tough love offered by the Dreamcatcher programme in the absence of any alternative arrangements being made by the city authorities, whose answer to the issue is to jail as many prostitutes as possible rather than prosecuting the men who pay for their services or finding a workable solution to the problem. Yet, for all her efforts and inspired oratory, Myers-Powell knows that little will change until the United States starts to address the deep-rooted socio-political iniquities that keep forcing women with seemingly no other option to sell both their bodies and their souls in order to survive.

Another British director, Gerard Johnson ventures into an equally dispiriting urban jungle in Hyena, a gutsy, but highly derivative policier that has to be considered something of a retrograde step after he made such a fine impression with his 2009 debut, Tony. The corrupt cop is a familiar figure in films from around the world and crime aficionados will enjoy spotting the references pilfered from everything from The Sweeney to the works of Michael Mann, Johnnie To, Gaspar Noé, Ben Wheatley and Nicolas Winding Refn, among many others. However, as in Johnson's previous picture, he succeeds in capturing the look and feel of his seedy locales and, once again, draws an impressive performance out of his cousin Peter Ferdinando, who may currently be the best-kept secret in British cinema.

Despite heading the Metropolitan Polices narcotics task force, plain clothes detective Peter Ferdinando has a cocaine problem and is in cahoots with the son of a Turkish drugs baron operating on his part of West London. He is doubly concerned, therefore, when his contact is murdered, as he has invested £100,000 in a scheme to open a new smuggling route across Europe. However, rather than pursue the killers through official channels, Ferdinando joins forces with vicious Albanian brothers Orli Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi, who have ambitions to establish their own London empire.

Back at headquarters, Ferdinando receives a visit from anti-corruption investigator Richard Dormer. But he is more concerned about the Albanians and forges an unholy alliance with former partner Stephen Graham to eliminate them (while still collaborating with them to protect his illicit interests). When they meet up, however, Ferdinando realises that Graham is secretly recording the conversation and he is pitilessly hacked during the ensuing melee.

Moreover, Dormer has moved against Ferdinando's task force associates Neil Maskell, Tony Pitts and Gordon Brown. But, even though he knows that Dormer is trying to frame him, Ferdinando has other things on his mind, as he has taken charge of Elisa Lasowski, a trafficked girl who is on the run from the Albanians for providing Ferdinando with inside information. He billets her with girlfriend MyAnna Buring and goes to confront Dormer, who delights in revealing that Maskell has betrayed him. Recklessly, Ferdinando murders Dormer and goes to check on Buring and Lasowski. However, he discovers that they have been abducted by Shuka and Kelmendi and the picture ends with Ferdinando steeling himself in a car outside their hideaway, as he knows he has underestimated the interlopers and that the chances of coming out alive are very slim indeed.

Laced with black humour, gritty urban realism and casual violence and played with seething gravitas by a fine ensemble, this is vastly superior to the majority of the BritCrime offerings that litter the weekly listings. But, while Ferdinando makes a charming rogue hamstrung by his last sliver of decency and Johnson ably demonstrates that the coppers under his command are nothing more than thugs with badges, this does little more than take generic clichés and caricatures and slap them down on the mean streets of Notting Hill. Moreover, Johnson's screenplay begins to strain credulity as Ferdinando increasingly spirals out of his depth.

Yet, this is full of small pleasures, among them the wisecracking bigotry of Maskell, Pitts and Brown and the Neanderthal thuggery of Shuka and Gjevat Kelmendi. The throbbing electronic score by the director's brother Matt (once of The The) colludes neatly with Ian Davies's twitchily propulsive editing, while the gnawing sense of melancholic pessimism that is reinforced by cinematographer Benjamin Kracun's vivid widescreen views of the capital and Marie Lanna's cramped interiors, which give the impression of the walls closing in on the trapped and forever perspiring Ferdinando, whose fate seems sealed from the moment he presides over a brutal nightclub raid in the pulsating opening scene.

We end this week with the annual package of BAFTA-nominated shorts, which allows audiences the opportunity to gauge the talents of some of this country's up-and-coming film-makers. It has to be said, this is not a vintage crop, with the animated and live-action choices being of decidedly variable quality. However, this remains a fine initiative on the part of the Independent Cinema Office and one hopes it long continues, as short films are so rarely showcased outside the festival circuit and the future of cinema depends upon those currently producing what used to be called one- and two-reelers.

Twenty-six year-old Daisy Jordan took the BAFTA with her animated short, The Bigger Picture, which may be some consolation for missing out on the Academy Award. The story was inspired by the passing of her grandmother, Eileen, who had always encouraged her to work on her art and follow her dreams. The screen Eileen (Anne Cunningham) is suffering from the final stages of Parkinson's Disease and is heavily reliant on her son, Nick (Christopher Nightingale), to take care of her. He adores her, but sometimes feels frustrated that his brother Richard (Alisdair Simpson) does little to help and is welcomed with gushing enthusiasm whenever he deigns to show up.

Jordan uses everyday items like teapots and vacuum cleaners to convey the emotions welling up in Nick and she freely admits that she based the anger, guilt, envy and regret on the reactions of Eileen's three children to her own slow decline. The realisation in both Nick and Richard that the loss of their mother is a reminder of their own immortality will not be lost on audiences. But they will be more impressed by Jordan's unconventional technique, which utilises larger-than-life figures fitted with three-dimensional arms that enable them to interact with prop despite being painted on to the backdrop. In all, the picture took Jabobs and co-animator Christopher Wilder a year to complete and there is no doubting their patience and craftsmanship or the insight and sincerity of the film.

Ainslie Henderson and Will Anderson also adopt an interesting approach in Monkey Love Experiments, a monochrome vignette photographed in the 4:3 aspect ratio that was common in the silent era and which combines stop-motion, live-action and 3-D animation to tell the tale of a monkey named Gandhi, who shares his laboratory cage with a cat scratcher fitted with a simian head. Inspired by the 1969 moon landing and the experiments being conducted around the same period by Harry Harlow, action explores the emotions Gandhi feels towards his companion, as he watches television footage of the Apollo 11 mission and convinces himself that he is also going into space.

If this meticulous piece is all about controlled environments and freedom of thought,Marcus Armitage's My Dad is a riot of flowing colours and jagging shapes that reveals the poisonous influence that a father has on his adoring son. Making inspired use of newspaper cuttings, hand-drawn figures and oil pastels, Armitage achieves a sense of perpetual motion within the frame that recalls the experimental animations that Len Lye and Norman McLaren made for the GPO Film Unit in the 1930s. Indeed, in the spirit of the avant-garde, he even tore the odd frame to convey the damage that the father does by inculcating his impressionable boy with his pernicious racism. Visually abrasive and aurally disturbing, this Royal College of Art graduation film makes for challenging viewing and reinforces the impression that the animators made a stronger showing at BAFTA 2015 than their live-action counterparts.

At least the voters got the winner right in the Best Short Film category (which is more than can be said for their Oscar brethren), as Michael Lennox's Boogaloo and Graham is head and shoulders above its competitors. Set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, the story takes place against a backdrop of army patrols and explores the possibilities of enjoying a normal childhood in a war zone. Brothers Aaron Lynch and Riley Hamilton live with parents Martin McCann and Charlene McKenna and are too young to understand the grim realities of their East Belfast existence. But, when McCann brings home a couple of chicks from the farm where he works, Hamilton and Lynch become besotted with the wonderfully named Boogaloo and Graham and not only fuss over them every waking moment, but also take them for walks through the nearby streets.

McKenna is far from enamoured of the coop in the corner of her backyard and watches her boys coddle their pets with a weary shake of the head, as times are hard and she would rather put the birds in a pot than on a pedestal. But, just as she discovers she is pregnant and orders McCann to get rid of the health risks clucking under her feet, he finds an egg in the straw and persuades her that the chicken will save them a tidy sum each week. However, the happy ending (which contains a sly twist) doesn't come without its darker moments, as Hamilton and Lynch are so frightened of losing Boogaloo and Graham that they run away into the night, just as the soldiers are out looking for a suspect.

Filmed over four days for just £20,000, this is a little gem that owes as much to Ronan Blaney's witty (but politically astute) script as Lennox's brisk direction. But the undoubted stars are Lynch (13) and Hamilton (9), who chatter like real siblings with the practised naturalism of a pair of Ken Loach veterans. However, credit must also go to cinematographer Mark Garrett for the atmospheric switch from quotidian social realism to the stylised expressionist lighting of the nocturnal brush with danger.

The galline theme continues in Aleem Khan's Three Brothers, which initially seems to be something of a departure from his 2009 short, Diana, which focused on a pre-operative Indian transsexual on the day after the Princess of Wales was killed. However, grief is also the overriding emotion in this poignant saga, in which teenager Zain Muhammad Zafar finds himself looking after younger siblings Yousuf Hussain and Muhammad Mujahid-Ali Shahzad after their mother dies and father Kulvinder Ghir returns to Pakistan. He has his hands full, however, as the pair are forever getting into mischief and Zafar is keen to keep teacher Kate Russell-Smith from prying too deeply into the family's affairs.

He becomes distracted, however, when an urban fox gets into the chicken coop in the back garden and kills several birds. Feeling responsible for this brood, too, he places the three unhatched eggs in an incubator in his room and is crushed when one of the chicks perishes prematurely. The burden is lifted when Ghir comes home. But, even though he can go back to being a kid again, he knows things will never quite be the same.

Taking inspiration from the bereavement of his own cousins, Khan based the poultry side of the story on an incident involving his own brother. But, while the performances of the young cast are splendid, the loudest ring of authenticity comes from Paulina Rzeszowska's production design, as the small details within the mise-en-scène reinforce the mournful situation in which the defenceless siblings find themselves without any sense of certainty.

While these chick flicks are admirably self-contained, Rachel Tunnard's Emotional Fusebox and Nick Rowland's Slap feel like extracts from larger works. Indeed, the former could be described as a sneak preview of the forthcoming feature, How to Live Yours, as it feels as though Tunnard has stumbled across lives being lived. But, for all its quirkiness, the action feels too much like an episode rather than an anecdote, as it centres on the efforts of mother Lorraine Ashbourne to coax twentysomething daughter Jodie Whittaker out of the shed at the bottom of the garden, where she makes little films featuring characters drawn on her thumbs. Grandmother Marcia Warren and best friend Rachael Deering are more prepared to cut her some slack, as they know Whittaker is struggling to come to terms with the death of her twin brother. However, when Edward Hogg calls round, Ashbourne forces Whittaker to take him a cup of tea and chat, while Warren sets about repairing his car.

Tunnard has already proved herself to be a more than capable editor on such acclaimed British pictures as Nick Whitfield's Skeletons (2010) and Scott Graham's Shell (2012) and there is something delightfully left-field about her thumb people and their voyage into space in a tin foil and cardboard rocket. But we shall have to reserve judgement until we see the full-length version, as this is essentially a glorified trailer. And Slap makes a similar impression, although it feels more like a half-developed storyline from a soap opera.

At its core is Joe Cole, a young Londoner whose father, Stephen Bent, has ambitions for him to become a boxer. But, while he puts in the hours in the gym, Cole would rather be home experimenting with make-up and women's clothing. Naturally, he hides his alter ego from girlfriend Skye Lourie and best mate Elliott Tittensor. However, when the latter is beaten up by some thugs outside Cole's house, he has no option but to run to his rescue in a tight skirt and full slap.

Much to his surprise, Tittensor accepts his transvestism and even gives Cole the confidence to reveal his real self in public. However, when he dresses to impress at a party, Lourie is appalled and he ends up striding out defiantly into the night after an angry showdown with Tittensor in the gents. Yet, while the message about being true to yourself regardless of the risks is well worth making, this treatise on modern masculinity always feels slightly forced. The need for Cole to be a boxer with a bulldog father and a sassy trophy girlfriend compromises the realism of the scenario. Nevertheless, the performances are bullish and Sverre Sørdal's photography recaptures the gritty texture familiar from British domestic sagas of the 1970s.

Taking its title from the boundary 100km above sea level that divides the Earth's atmosphere from outer space, Oscar Sharp's The Kármán Line is easily the most ambitious of the live-action offerings, as it requires a degree of trick photography to sustain the illusion that a suburban housewife is drifting inexorably upwards towards her doom. However, it also requires a suspension of disbelief on the audience's part that will have to be hard won, as this surreal fable resolutely refuses to disclose why Olivia Colman is suddenly elevated into a state of suspended animation that takes her incrementally further away from husband Shaun Dooley and teenage daughter, Chelsea Corfield. At first, her defiance of gravity seems a minor inconvenience, as Dooley and Corfield have to use stepladders to bring Colman food and drink. But once they have to cut a hole in the roof for her to float through and hover above the skyline, they realise that the lack of a cure can only lead to one thing once the provisions in Colmans backpack run out.

To their credit, the cast commit entirely to the premise and there is genuine poignancy in the sequences in which Colman and Dooley make love for the last time and she drops the mobile phone with which she has been keeping in touch since drifting out of sight above the clouds. It certainly helps for a student at the National Film and Television School to be able to call on an actor of Colman's calibre and a cinematographer with Robbie Ryan's track record for conveying everyday life with unfussy authenticity. But screenwriter Dawn King rushes into the surreal happenstance without sufficiently establishing the character dynamics. Consequently, there is no real sense of how deeply the calamity of a wife and mother inexplicably undergoing ascension impacts upon the individual family members.

It doesn't matter that doctors David Cann and Julia Watson have no solution to the problem or that no attempt is made to show the effect that Colman's plight is having on her neighbours (is this such a common occurrence that it is not commented upon or does traditional British reserve mean that such a freakish condition is simply not deemed unnewsworthy?). But the psychological superficiality of what is clearly a tragic eventuality leaves this looking more like a quaint curio than a grim sci-fi allegory.