Surprisingly few films have been made about the Great War over the last four years. Since Ermanno Olmi produced Greenery Will Bloom Again about the Asiago plateau campaign, Austrian Ernst Gossner has visited the Alpine theatre in The Silent Mountain (both 2014), Dmitri Meskhiev has commemorated the 1st Russian Women's Battalion of Death in Battalion, Paolo Cevoli has recreated the Battle of Caporetto in Private (both 2015) and the César-winning Albert Dupontel has explored the last days before the Armistice in See You Up There (2017). In Britain, James Kent has adapted Vera Brittain's memoir in Testament of Youth (2014) and Saul Dibb has remade RC Sheriff's classic stage study of trench life, Journey's End (2017). New Zealander Peter Jackson has also raided the Imperial War Museum archives for a hand-colourised 3-D documentary that will premiere at the London Film Festival, but Hollywood has yet to contribute anything to the centenary remembrance.

While the majority of features about the 1914-18 conflict have focused on the Western Front, a handful have examined the impact of the `War to End All Wars' on women. Now, Bertrand Tavernier's Life and Nothing But (1989), Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004) and François Ozon's Frantz (2016) are joined by Xavier Beauvois's The Guardians, a grindingly authentic adaptation of a 1924 Ernest Pérochon novel that centres on the female members of a Limousin family striving to maintain their farm while the menfolk are in uniform. 

As gas hangs on the air over corpses lying in the 1915 mud, formidable matriarch Hortense Sandrail (Nathalie Baye) and her daughter, Solange (Laura Smet), are ploughing a field at Paridier Farm under the watchful eye of the grey-bearded Henri (Gilbert Bonneau). The following year, Hortense's son, Constant (Nicolas Giraud), comes home on leave and shows his medal at the kitchen table. He calmly reveals that the victory was a backs to the wall affair and the country might have been doomed if they had failed. But he is greeted as a conquering hero at the school where he used to teach, as his replacement (Anne-Cécile Le Quere) has taught the children to recite a poem about the atrocities committed by the Boche. 

Constant urges his mother to modernise while Solange's husband, Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin), is away and he approves her plan to buy a combine harvester and share it with some of her neighbours to secure a government grant. He mentions that warfare is also becoming more mechanised, but says little about his experiences. Indeed, he finds himself consoling Solange when she reveals that she can't have children. But his visit is soon over and he wanders into the morning mist along the road abutting the farm, prompting Hortense to write to her other son, Georges (Cyril Descours), so he knows she is thinking about him. 

Needing help with the harvest, Hortense applies to Edgar (Xavier Maly) and he arranges for 20 year-old orphan Francine Riant (Iris Bry) to move to the farm. She puts a crucifix on the wall over her bed and helps with the chores, while also learning from Henri how to make miget out of stale bread and wine. He takes a shine to her, but Solange and Marguerite (Mathilde Viseux) - who is Clovis's daughter from his first marriage - barely say a word to her, even though she works hard cutting corn for the other workers to bundle up and stack in the field. A slow tracking shot captures the back-breaking nature of the toil before everyone tucks into a simple, but well-appreciated lunch. 

Clovis returns and confides that the war is a monumental folly because they fight over the same patch of ground for days on end. Moreover, the Germans are not monsters, but ordinary blokes like themselves. Hortense worries when she sees him drinking so much, but Henri assures her that this is normal for the front, as the officers make the men booze to give them courage. Keen to do his bit in the fields, Clovis joins the harvesters and tentatively renews his intimacy with Solange. But he soon returns to his regiment, as the locals listen to the roll call of the dead in the parish church. 

Shortly after Solange informs Francine that she wishes to retain her for another year, Georges comes home on leave. He is amused that Clovis keeps sending instructions back from the trenches, as he knows his mother is quite capable of running the farm on her own. Hearing Francine sing, Georges takes her into the forest to chop firewood and promises to show her where he keeps his hidden treasure. He asks her to write to him and she is pleased that someone is thinking about her. Having developed a crush on Georges, she is relieved when Hortense promises to keep her on after the war ends and, as the snow settles, she starts to feel part of the family after being shown how to use the patterned wooden butter moulds. 

As 1917 dawns, Solange receives news that Clovis has been captured and sent to a POW camp at Mannheim. Hortense takes down the atlas to show her whereabouts in Germany her husband is being held and reassures her that he is now safe. However, Constant is still in the firing line and Hortense collapses when Henri tells her that he has been killed. She remains stoic beneath a black veil during the memorial service, but it pains her that she is unable to bury her son because his body cannot be found. Francine does her best to console Hortense, Solange and Marguerite and she smiles coyly when Edgar suggests that she will make someone a good wife, when she is presented with her diploma and the bursary that the state awards her on her 21st birthday. 

In a bid to cheer up Marguerite, Francine buys her a butterfly broach. But Marguerite (who had hoped to marry Georges on his return) has found their letters and realised that he has fallen for Francine and she orders her out of the room. Hortense knows nothing of this tension, however, as she watches Francine operate the new harvester and hopes that they have turned the corner and won't have to sell any more livestock to make ends meet. They also attract new customers when the United States joins the war and Doughboys come from the nearby camp to buy vegetables. Solange is happy to chat with them. But the returning Georges is furious that they are having a glorified camping holiday while Constant is rotting in the mud and he is enduring nightmares in which he single-handedly fights off a German unit, only for the last man he kills to have his face when his gas mask falls off. 

Francine reminds Georges that the Americans are young boys far from home and he calms down. He invites her to see his treasure in the woods and they ride in his horse buggy to the lichen-covered dolmen that he finds so enchanting. The camera follows their hands, as they brush against the soft surface and Francine allows George to seduce her. She smiles at the thought of their intimacy when she returns to her room. But Marguerite calls Georges a hypocrite when he collects her from the railway station, as she had always thought that they would be sweethearts. 

Henri sells the Doughboys some of his hooch and they come to help with the threshing. Hortense is concerned that Solange is far too interested in the handsome John (Yann Bean) and spots her getting dressed after a tryst by the wood pile. Suzanne (Laurence Havard) warns Hortense that the neighbours are getting jealous of the business she does with the camp and hints that they believe the Americans patronise them because Solange is so free with her favours. 

Hortense also notices the looks exchanged by Georges and Francine, as they work in the courtyard, and feel sorry for Marguerite. On the night before he leaves, Georges makes love with Francine in her bed, but omits to mention of her by name when he makes his farewells after supper. Thus, when he sees Francine resisting John's unwelcome advances as his mother is driving him to the station, Georges asks her to fire Francine and she tuts that she has the loose morals of her late mother. 

Yet she finds it hard to sack Francine, as she is well aware that she has worked hard and done nothing to have her integrity questioned. She is wounded when Francine calls her heartless and feels a pang of remorse when Solange reprimands her for sacrificing Francine and for believing that she had slept with John, when she had merely fooled around before remembering her duty to Clovis. 

Refusing her severance pay, Francine goes to work for La Monette (Marie-Julie Maille), a charbonnier who needs help with a new batch of charcoal and with caring for her young daughter, Jeanne (Madeleine Beauvois). She quickly realises that Francine is pregnant, but is happy for her to stay, as Jeanne enjoys being read bedtime stories. As winter sets in, Georges writes to Hortense to describe the conditions in the trenches and admit that he is resigned to dying before peace can be declared. 

Unable to understand why Georges returns her letters unopened, Francine accepts La Monette's reassurance that fatherhood will soften his heart. But, when La Monette is widowed at the start of 1918, Francine becomes concerned that Georges will never know that he has a child. Edgar suggests that she writes to Hortense in the hope that she will pass the news to Georges. However, she throws the missive on the fire and suppresses a bitter sob at the way things have turned out. 

Shortly after Solange takes receipt of a new tractor, Georges returns and Hortense takes Marguerite with her to meet him at the station. He has been wounded in the leg, but he has survived and Hortense hopes that he can settle down with his new bride. However, when she sees Francine leaving the church after her baby has been baptised, Hortense feels faint at the realisation that she might never get to know her grandchild. 

Clovis returns some time in 1919 and hugs Solange when she shows him the tractor and the combine harvester. However, a dispute arises with Georges over who is to farm Constant's land and Marguerite sides with her father. Solange storms out in frustration because they are bickering when Constant's body remains undiscovered in some distant field. But Hortense is just glad to have them home and would rather they were at each other's throats than in mortal danger. As the film ends in 1920, Francine is singing with a small band at a dance in the village. The lyrics speak of the folly of love and commitment and she smiles as the couple waltz around the floor. But has she noticed Georges gazing up at her with a look of longing?

In 2010, Beauvois explored the impact of warfare on an enclosed community in Of Gods and Men, which focused on a monastic order under threat during the 1996 Algerian Civil War. The farm at Le Paridier may be less hermitic, but the lifestyle is equally austere and its continued existence is similarly jeopardised by the vicissitudes of war. Indeed, Beauvois and co-writers Frédérique Moreau and Marie-Julie Maille (who also edited the picture) pay as much attention to the seasonal cycle as they do the fears and feelings of their characters or the story's social, feminist and provincialist subtexts. Consequently, more time is devoted to Hortense toiling than emoting and, even then, she is frequently shown in long shot, as a diminutive figure on a flat expanse. 

Clearly, Beauvois and cinematographer Caroline Champetier studied the paintings of Jean-François Millet and the rustic realist Barbizon School, as well as such films as Georges Rouquier's Farrebique (1946), René Allio's I, Pierre Rivière (1976) and Ermanno Olmi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978). But production designer Yann Megard also deserves credit for finding such a wonderfully evocative farm setting, while Anaïs Romand's costumes are as faultless as Michel Legrand's sparingly used flute score, which reinforces the narrative's measured pacing. 

The performances are also impeccable. Reuniting with Beauvois after Le Petit Lieutenant (2004), Nathalie Baye reminds us why she is considered one of French cinema's finest actresses and there is added poignancy to her scenes with Laura Smet, as this is the first time she has appeared with her daughter by rock legend Johnny Hallyday. However, the debuting Iris Bry also makes a deep impression as Francine, with her freckled poise, steady gaze and auburn hair often giving her the look of a young Isabelle Huppert. she also sings beautifully and can count herself highly unlucky to have lost the César for Most Promising Actress to Camélia Jordana in Yvan Attal's Le Brio. 

There is one misstep, however, as the depiction of Georges's nightmare is too slight and stylised to do justice to the horrors of trench warfare with which most viewers will be well acquainted. Besides, Beauvois has already made his point about the senseless brutality of the conflict with the opening shot of the bodies bestrewing the battlefield. But the rest of the action is staged with an integrity and discretion that gives small moments like Francine taking Jeanne for a walk so La Monette can grieve alone the simple ring of truth that echoes throughout this quietly devastating drama.

A child loses its mother in Carla Simón's Summer 1993. The winner of the prize for Best First Feature at the Berlin Film Festival, this autobiographical drama features a memorable performance by young Laia Artigas that ranks alongside Ana Torrent's career-defining work in Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) and Carlos Saura's Cria Cuervos (1976). But Simón's delicate evocation of time and place and touching respect for the resilience of her younger self are equally impressive and suggest that this London Film School alumna is a talent to watch. 

Watching the fireworks in the Barcelona street below the apartment where she has been living with her mother, Neus, six year-old Frida (Laia Artigas) doesn't seem to understand the bustle, as neighbour Lola (Montse Sanz) and Aunt Angela (Berta Pipó) help her Uncle Esteve (David Verdaguer) and Aunt Marga (Bruna Cusí) pack her belongings. Her grandparents (Isabel Rocatti and Fermí Reixach) fuss over her, as they struggle to contain their emotions following their daughter's death from AIDS-related pneumonia. But, as she clutches her doll in the backseat of the car, Frida still seems unaware that she is moving to the country for good to live with her four year-old cousin, Anna (Paula Robles). 

Waking the next morning to find a large grey cat named Feldespata on Anna's bed, Frida wanders into the bright sunlight to see her cousin picking plums with her mother. Marga chides Esteve when he tells Frida that she doesn't have to drink all of her milk and she smiles when he downs half the glass for her. Having helped Gabriel (Quimet Pla) box up some eggs from the chickens that make her nervous, Frida finds a statue of the Virgin Mary in a little woodland alcove. She also enjoys a free slice of ham in the butcher's, as the locals talk in code about her mother's demise. 

Back home, Frida unpacks her dolls and warns Anna not to touch them. The power fails during a storm and Frida is worried that the lantern will cause a fire. As she's troubled by eczema, Marga takes her to the doctor and Frida is frustrated at being made to undergo another series of tests after the medics in Barcelona had promised they would stop. So, she puts on lots of make-up and reclines on the sun lounger to play `mother and daughter' with Anna. She claims that she is too exhausted to play and uses lots of grown-up phrases that she obviously picked up from Neus, as she orders Anna to bring her make-believe portions of chips and olives. Later that night, she also sneaks a packet of cigarettes out of Marga's bag and asks the statue to pass them on to her mother, as grandmother Maria has told her that Neus is looking down on her from Heaven. 

Amused that Frida comes back with a cabbage when she sends her to the vegetable patch for a lettuce, Marga takes the girls to see a gigantes y cabezudos display in the village. She snaps at her friend Cesca (Paula Blanco) when Frida cuts her knee while playing tick and Cesca rushes over to prevent her daughter Irene (Etna Campillo) from touching her. Nevertheless, Marga wears a rubber glove to clean the wound, although she has no qualms about Anna and Frida sharing a bath and the latter watches with a degree of envy as Esteve dries Anna's hair. 

One weekend, his parents show up unannounced and Frida is delighted to see them. She is even more excited when Lola and Angela arrive and they sing a song while passing knotted napkins around the table. Marga is unimpressed and hisses that her mother-in-law had promised to let Frida settle before paying a visit. Sensing something is wrong, Frida asks why they are discussing a legal letter. But Lola takes her away to tell her a story about Atlantis and Frida boasts that she can hold her breath under water. After everyone has gone, Esteve puts on some music and Anna and Frida dance around on his feet. But Marga is in no mood for frivolity and, when Anna insists she has forgotten how to tie her shoelaces, she accuses Frida of being a bad example. 

Having taken a blouse to the statue and wiped away what she takes to be tears from its cheek, Frida gazes into the clouds, as though trying to work out where her mother might be watching from. She feels like being alone and, when Anna pesters her about playing, Frida takes her into the woods and leaves her sitting on a tree stump. When Marga becomes concerned about her daughter's whereabouts, Frida pretends not to know where she is - until she gets nervous and stands beside a stream in the woods hoping  Anna hasn't fallen in. In fact, she has broken her arm and is rather pleased with her plaster cast and sling. But Frida overhears Marga complaining to Esteve that the child has her mother's morals and she gets into further trouble when she picks some flowers from Gabriel's garden. Frida tries to show Marga some sympathy when she has period pains, but she is worried that her new mother is going to die on her and persuades Anna to pretend that she's scared in the night so that they can both climb into bed with her parents. 

However, the mood lightens when Frida's test results reveal that she is healthy apart from a cat allergy. Esteve tells Anna that Feldespata has gone on an adventure and she readily accepts the news. But, a few days later, he bawls at Frida after Anna slips while paddling in a deep pool and she feels left out when the rest of the family dance together during a fiesta. Thus, when her grandparents pay their next visit, Frida has a tantrum over the colour of a new nightdress and tells Lola that her aunt and uncle treat her like a maid. Moreover, she plants herself on the backseat of the car and has to be dragged out because she is about to start school and there isn't time for her to spend a few days in Barcelona. 

That night, Frida stuffs her dolls into a knapsack and heads into the kitchen for some fruit for the journey. Always awake at the slightest noise, Anna asks why she's leaving and insists she loves her when Frida declares that everyone hates her. Giving Anna a doll in gratitude, Frida strides out for the main road. However, she is frightened by a passing car and returns to inform the searching Esteve and Marga that she will go when it's light. Relieved that her niece is all right, Marga sleeps beside her and when they attend another gigantes y cabezudos procession, Frida beams with delight as she waves a Catalan flag while leading the figures into the square. 

While preparing her books for school, Frida asks Marga how her other mummy died and she explains that she succumbed to a virus that was too new for the doctors to know how to help her. Maintaining a serious face as she listens, Frida nods and starts decorating the cover of her exercise book. As they get ready for bed that night, Frida begins to bounce on the mattress and Anna needs little invitation to join in. Esteve feigns outrage and knocks them on their backs. Marga urges them to be careful, as Frida and Anna clamber over Esteve and he blows raspberries on them. Suddenly, Frida goes quiet and turns to the wall. She bursts into tears and Esteve, Marga and Anna console her as she sobs away the pain of her loss and the relief that she is safe and part of the family. 

With almost every shot centring on Frida or showing events from her perspective, a good deal is asked of Laia Artigas and she responds with an intelligence and restraint that makes Carla Simón's rite of passage all the more effective and affecting. She is deftly supported by Bruna Cusí and David Verdaguer, as the adoptive parents striving to make a home for a niece they will only have met sporadically since moving to the country. But it's Artigas's rapport with the adorably trusting Paula Robles that dominates the action, as she seeks to impose her seniority in a bid to wrest back some sort of control. 

Keeping Santiago Racaj's camera at a discreet distance, Simón allows the girls to chatter and play with a naturalism that makes the moments when Artigas places Robles in jeopardy all the more distressing. Her attempts to play on the emotions of her deeply religious grandmother also prove revealing, as does her calculating effort to convince Montse Sanz that she is being treated like Cinderella by her wicked aunt and uncle. But, as so much of the story is based on her own experiences (even the setting is the same), Simón appreciates the emotional rationale behind the child's behaviour and commends the strength she displays in coming to terms with such seismic shifts at such a young age. 

Working with production designer Mónica Bernuy, Simón cleverly uses the contrast between the bijou Barcelona apartment and the sprawling country villa to emphasise the daunting task to acclimatise facing Artigas. This is not made any easier by her unnerving encounter with the chickens, the gossiping of villagers whose views on AIDS are far from enlightened or the failure of the Marian statue to pass the blouse to her mother. But, taking her cues from Víctor Erice and Maurice Pialat, Simón tempers this loss of innocence with a celebration of the simple pleasures that help Artigas settle into her new surroundings and accept that she's finally in the right place with people who genuinely care.

Despite dotting the action with quotations from the New World translation of the Holy Scriptures and actual sermons and magazine articles, British first-timer Daniel Kokotajlo felt compelled to include the phrase, `not endorsed by the governing body of Jehovah's Witnesses', at the conclusion of Apostasy, which draws on his own experiences in following Hans-Christian Schmid's Requiem (2006), Dietrich Brüggemann's Stations of the Cross (2014) and Marco Daniel's Worldly Girl (2016) in exploring the plight of young women caught up in religious extremism.  

Having received a life-saving blood transfusion when she was born, 18 year-old Molly Wright has always felt a certain stigma, as single mother Siobhan Finneran is a devout Jehovah's Witness. Indeed, when doctor Poppy Jhakra offers to give the anaemic Wright a secret transfusion, Finneran comes to the surgery and lays down the law. She also bolsters the anxious Wright's confidence by showing her a book containing stories about brave children who died after putting their faith in the tenets of their faith rather than medicine. 

Wright and older sister Sacha Parkinson have been learning Urdu with Wasim Jakir to take the good news to the Asian residents of their part of Oldham. She distributes leaflets in the shopping centre and has a gardening job with cousins Jessica Baglow and Christian Foster and teases him when he claims to have a demon in his attic. However, when Parkinson introduces her to college mates Bronwyn James and Aqib Khan, Wright is confused by her sister's embarrassment when she ticks off James for wearing a cross around her neck when Witnesses believe that Christ was crucified on an upright stake. 

Finneran also disapproves of Parkinson putting college before her religion and warns her that God won't be impressed if she's preoccupied with her studies when the Armageddon comes to return Earth to its Edenic state. She is thrown for a loop, however, when Parkinson announces she's pregnant by a non-brother who has no interest in coming to the Kingdom Temple. When she reports the matter to elders James Quinn and James Foster, they disfellowship Parkinson and she moves out after they recommend that Finneran and Wright have minimum contact with her. 

By contrast, they encourage newly arrived elder Robert Emms to court Wright, even though he only has a window-cleaning round to keep him going until he rises to a paid position within the community. Finneran chaperones a dinner date and they kiss chastely on the balcony of his flat. She tells him about her transfusion and they clasp hands when he reassures her that he knows people on the medical liaison committee if the need ever arises. This comes sooner rather than later, as Wright feels faint at a party thrown by aunt Clare McLinn and Finneran emerges from the hospital in something of a daze. She continues with her job without telling her boss that her daughter has died and she remains confident that Wright is being cared for by Jehovah when Parkinson comes to the memorial service and sobs because her last words to her sister had been angry ones after she had come to the house to try and patch things up after splitting from the Muslim Khan. 

Finneran sheds tears herself watching a video about how Witnesses should grieve. But she betrays no emotion when her boss mentions seeing an article about Wright's death in the local paper or when she visits their favourite nail bar. She takes solace from Parkinson's tentative return to meetings at the Kingdom Hall abutting a busy flyover. But, even though Emms and Quinn work with her, they advise Finneran to restrict contact until Parkinson is reinstated. Indeed, Emms gently reprimands her when she calls at her daughter's flat and insists on spring cleaning it. 

Yet, while she tries to go along with the demands of the elders to restore her relationship with her mother, Parkinson loses her temper during an assessment meeting and she informs Quinn that he is not a policeman with jurisdiction over her life. Storming out, she tells Finneran that they can meet in secret if she wants, but she is no longer prepared to remain within a religion in which she feels she is constantly being punished for trying to live a normal life. Finneran herself has a moment of doubt during a sermon that Emms preaches about contact with the disfellowshipped. But, while she rushes out of the hall and tries to take sanctuary in the washroom, a speaker relays the words and she is forced to decide whether she has let her daughters down or done the right thing by remaining true to her religion. 

Keen to see her granddaughter, Finneran drops in on Parkinson. She cradles the child and asks if she can take her to meetings. But, having read up about criticisms of Jehovah's Witnesses online, Parkinson has no intention of allowing her to be sucked into what she feels to be a flawed faith and scoffs when Finneran asks whether she wants to be reunited with Wright under the New System. In a moment of desperation, Finneran grabs the baby and tries to bundle her into the backseat of her car. But Parkinson stops her and the film ends with Finneran standing in a shopping precinct with a handful of leaflets and nobody paying her the slightest notice. 

Making for intriguing comparisons with Conor Ibrahim's Freesia (2017) in its depiction of the workings of a patriarchal religious community, this is a laudably balanced insight into a religion that Daniel Kokotajlo has himself abandoned. He might invite viewers to question the relationship between the young female members of the Kingdom Hall and the panel of self-appointed men lording it over them, but he avoids demonising Quinn and Emms in the same way that he resists judging Finneran for her choices as a Witness and as a mother. Consequently, this avoids many of the traps that so the bulk of secular pictures fall into when attempting to expose the perceived calumnies of organised religion.  

That's not to say that Kokotajlo remains entirely neutral or wholly succeeds in eschewing melodrama in juxtaposing individual faith and institutional obligation. But he is to be commended for his lack of preachiness and sensationalism, even when Wright and Finneran pray to Jehovah for guidance during conversations with strangers and their co-religionists alike. This sense that they live their faith adds to the potency of their domestic situation, as they are forever trying to reconcile their beliefs and their human nature. Caught in a moral quandary (having seemingly already lost her husband because of her piety), Finneran proves particularly persuasive in this regard, although Wright and Parkinson also give considered performances, as do Emms and Quinn. 

Abetted by production designer John Ellis, cinematographer Adam Scarth and editor Napoleon Stratogiannakis, Kokotajlo conveys the limited horizons of the family's orbit and suggests a sense of embattlement, even though he opts not to delve in any depth into the scepticism expressed by Parkinson's college pals and Finneran's boss. He often isolates the women in town centre contexts and shows the world speeding past the Kingdom Hall in a telling long shot that contrasts with the taut Academy ratio close-ups used to register emotions during exchanges in which Finneran, Wright and Parkinson try to make sense of the fissures that are suddenly pulling them apart. It will be fascinating, therefore, to see what Kokotajlo does with less evidently personal subject matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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