Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/10/2018)

Professor Jae Yong Lee (Joseph Anthony Foronda) is visiting Eero Saarinen's Miller House in Columbus, Indiana with Yale academic Eleanor (Parker Posey) when he collapses and is rushed to the local hospital. As Lee's son, Jin (John Cho), flies in from Seoul and checks into the Inn at Irwin Gardens, 19 year-old Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) meets her mother Maria (Michelle Forbes) off her shift as a cleaner. Now in her early twenties, Casey is working at the Bartholomew Country Public Library with graduate student Gabriel (Rory Culkin), while trying to decide what to do with her life. She adores the architecture of her hometown and is keen to study the subject, but she is reluctant to leave their home in a rundown neighbourhood, as Maria is a recovering drug addict and Casey feels responsible for her. 

Over supper, Eleanor blames herself for Lee falling ill in her care. But Jin (who is an old flame) reassures her that his father is a stubborn man and he should know, as they have never been close and haven't spoken in the year since he left for Korea to work as a publishing translator. He mooches around the Inn and is wandering in the garden when he meets Casey, who offers him a cigarette. She was due to attend his father's lecture and takes Jin to Saarinen's First Christian Church, as they discuss the fact that Columbus is something of a Mecca for architecture buffs. She smiles at his suggestion that everyone in the town is an expert and regrets that most people couldn't care less about the treasures in the midst. 

Among them is her old high school friend, Emma (Erin Allegretti), who drops in to see her at the library. She has been studying away and urges Casey to get out of town as quickly as she can. Gabriel eavesdrops on their chat and sends Casey on an errand to stop Emma from giving her ideas, as he enjoys his conversations with Casey on such topics as the role that interest plays in maintaining an attention span. Bearing this attachment in mind, Casey applies for a museum job and drops Maria off at her second job at a packaging plant. 

Returning to her car, Casey spots Jin. She chases after him and takes him to one of her favourite buildings in Columbus, Saarinen's Irwin Union Bank. When she goes into a tourist guide spiel about the glass structure's modernist significance, however, Jin stops her and insists she tells him why the place moves her. The sound cuts at this point and we only see Casey pondering her response before she starts using her hands to illustrate her points. 

We are permitted to listen in again when the pair reach James Stewart Polshek's Quinco Mental Health Center, which Jin particularly admires. As he describes his views on its healing powers, however, he admits that he only recently read about the clinic in a book he found in his father's hotel room and she teases him for claiming to be disinterested in architecture when he is actually quite keen. 

At the library, Gabriel asks Casey to spend the evening with him. But she has already agreed to stay home with her mother and is concerned when Maria fails to make dinner. She leaves phone messages that go unanswered and goes to the Inn to ask workmate Vanessa (Shani Salyers Stiles) if she's okay. She claims that Maria's phone is out of charge and that she can't come down in person because they have a supervisor on site. 

So, Casey goes to find Jin to show him the Creekview branch of the First Financial Bank, which she remembers creeping into her consciousness when it took her unawares one night. As they gaze at the building, Casey admits that she has limited her horizons to support her mother, who became dependent upon drugs after a broken love affair and even dabbled with crystal meth. She reveals that architect Deborah Berke has offered to help her secure a place at Newhaven University and that she has often thought about leaving, but she genuinely loves Columbus and doesn't feel that Maria is strong enough to resist temptation without her. 

When Maria comes home in the morning without a word of explanation, Casey is concerned. Meanwhile, Jin takes his father's camera when he visits the 25 limestone pillars of Maryann Thompson's Veterans Memorial and he hooks up with Casey to see Saarinen's North Christian Church. He is surprised that she doesn't have a phone with an Internet connection, as only uses it to make calls and uses her computer to look things up. Inside, they discuss religion and monarchy and the contradictions inherent in their association with Modernism. 

Continuing their tour, they take in Stanley Saitowitz's observation tower in Mill Race Park before sitting on a bench by the round lake and walking across the enclosed bridge. Casey asks Jin why he's not at the hospital with his father and he reminds her that they're not in a movie and that nothing dramatic is going to happen to bring him out of his coma. She is taken aback when he admits that he would rather his father died now than recover sufficiently to return to Seoul, where he would feel obliged to care for him. Sensing her dismay, Jin urges Casey to take up Berke's offer and make something of herself. But she regards caring for Maria as a noble calling and chides him for knowing nothing about filial duty. Stung, Jin wanders off alone and Casey feels disappointed in him. 

They hang out with Gabriel and Eleanor during the montage that follows. But the latter suspects that Jin has a crush on Casey and recalls how cute he was when they dated. He kisses her, but she sends him back to his own room, as their moment passed years ago. As he wanders along the corridor, he finds Casey waiting for him and they go for a drive. She detours to the Republic Newspaper Building, where Maria is supposed to be cleaning, and Casey can see through the large windows that Vanessa is there alone. When she tries to leave a message, she is appalled when Vanessa calls Maria to warn her and then fibs to Casey that her mother is somewhere else in the building when she calls back. 

Frustrated by Maria's deception and fearful of what she might be doing, Casey invites Jin to a friend's party. However, he doesn't want to go and she parks in front of her alma mater, Southside Elementary School, and dances frantically to the car radio in the headlights. She doesn't explain her distress and laughs when Jin comments on the brutal functionality of the building. 

Casey crashes in his room and they are disturbed by Eleanor with news that Jin's father has had a setback. While they rush to the hospital, Casey heads home and is put out when Maria demands to know where she's been all night. Returning to the Quinco with Eleanor, Jin asks how long he has to stay and she hugs him with the insistence that he remains to the end so that his father doesn't die alone. He sits on the steps of Charles Franklin Sparrell's City Hall and eats cookies with Casey. She has decided to leave Columbus and he thinks she is making the right decision. 

As they say goodbye, Gabriel tells Casey that he doesn't smoke and had only taken fag breaks to spend time with her. She also has a poignant moment during her last night with Maria, who says she will miss Casey's cooking (with its understated aftertaste) and apologises for her past mistakes in promising not to repeat them. Jin has also made a decision and has taken an apartment to cut down on the costs of staying near his father. He reads at his bedside and tells Eleanor that he will stay for as long as it takes. 

Eleanor has offered to drive Casey to Yale and advise on her studies and she waits in the car, as Casey and Jin make their farewells. He convinces her that Maria is happy she is spreading her wings and she reminds him to stay in touch with news about his father. As they drive away, the camera revisits some of the landmarks before Kogonada closes on a shot of the Second Street Bridge, whose red and white colouring recalls that of the chimney stacks in Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon (1962).

Impeccably composed and paced, this is a delightfully delicate and deceptively deep exercise in reclaiming the birthplace of US Vice-President Mike Pence, In tandem with cinematographer Elisha Christian, the mono-monikered debutant (whose pseudonym seemingly pays homage to Ozu's regular screenwriter, Kogo Noda) not only captures the glorious architecture of Columbus, but also its ambience as both a civic museum and as home to the thousands who, when it comes to buildings, don't know their base from their apex. Indeed, this is a film that should resonate with Oxford audiences, as the colleges mirror the Indiana burg's modernist masterpieces. 

There's a hint of Bill Murray's byplay with Scarlett Johansson's in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) in the way John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson interact. But there's nothing coy or calculated about their relationship, as Cho comes to recognise the need to forgive his father in order to move on with his life and Richardson realises that she has been using her mother's dependency to hide her own timidity. What is particularly touching, however, is the way in which Cho comes to appreciate through the eyes of a stranger the magic of a subject that his father had not been able to convey, in spite of his own lifelong passion. 

Although Kogonada adopts a cerebral approach in musing upon issues like female ambition, parental responsibility, culture, environment and the clash between tradition and progress, this is very much a human story, with the discreet devotion of Parker Posey and the drolly articulate Rory Culkin reinforcing the quotidian feel. Even Michelle Forbes makes the most of her limited screen time to offer glimpses into the past Richardson has endured and the future that may well envelope her unless she makes her move. Moreover, she also proves crucial to Kogonada's discussion of class, as she is one of the drones who has to toil inside the works of art that have made Columbus famous.

The dialogue is a little precious in places and Hammock's electro score can be a touch emphatic. But Cho and Richardson (who is splendidly unaware in her shapeless clothes) blend the emotional and the intellectual to such subtle effect that this masterly debut avoids the sterility that Michelangelo Antonioni detected in urban living to temper the cynicism of Kubrick and Godard with the low-key humanism of Ozu and Kore-eda.

Inspired by a conversation overheard on a Cologne subway train, Ali Soozandeh's debut feature, Tehran Taboo, provides a disconcerting, if not always subtle insight into the hypocrisy and repression endured by so many women in Iran. Having worked with Ali Samadi Ahadi on The Green Wave (2010), a hybrid live-action/animated documentary about the 2010 Revolution, Soozandeh opts to use the same blend of rotoscoped and motion-captured characters and computer-generated backdrops to recreate the Islamic Republic's capital city. But, while this will inevitably be compared to Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis (2007), it's a much bolder exposé that sometimes suffers from Soozandeh's tendency to melodramatise and over-emphasise his message.

With her drug addict husband serving a lengthy prison sentence, Pari (Elmira Rafizadeh) has little option than to work as a prostitute to support her mute five year-old son, Elias (Bilal Yasar). However, while attempting to pleasure a punter (Farhad Abadinejad) as he drives through the snowy streets of Tehran, Pari is forced to drag Elias off the backseat when her client collides with the vehicle in front after spotting his daughter holding hands with her boyfriend on the pavement. She returns to her sparsely furnished flat and lets the boy sleep on the only bed. 

When Pari visits her husband in jail, he refuses to sign the documents that will allow her to file for divorce and she slams the door in indignation when Judge Adel (Hasan Ali Mete) agrees to bend the rules if she becomes his mistress. Having no choice, however, she agrees to his terms and he instals her in an apartment in a tower block in a bustling part of the city. As Pari dreams of turning the place into a home, Elias surveys their neighbours from the balcony. One of them, Babak (Arash Marandi), is a struggling musician who plays the accordion at an underground nightclub to a crowd that would rather be dancing to the DJ. Popping a pill, Babak wanders on to the floor and picks up Donya (Negar Mona Alizadeh), who has sex with him in the bathroom after swallowing a pill and smoking a joint.

The next day, while Babak is giving a piano lesson to a spoilt brat who cannot play, he gets a phone call from Donya asking him to meet her in the nearby park. She claims she is getting married in a couple of weeks and needs him to pay for an operation to repair her hymen so that her husband won't realise she's not a virgin. Anxiously watching a courting couple being harassed by the Morality Police, Babak calls his friend Amir (Morteza Tavakoli) for advice. He always has a different girl at his flat and mocks Babak for getting into a mess. But, when they visit the clinic, they discover that the procedure is not only expensive, but that it requires parental consent. 

As they leave, the camera swings past the door of the gynaecologist treating the pregnant Sara (Zahra Amir Ebrahimi). Her in-laws (Siir Eloglu and Klaus Ofczarek) are delighted with the news, but husband Mohsen (Alireza Bayram) is less effusive. He helps Pari carry a box up to her apartment, where she is too preoccupied with messages on her phone to notice Elias drop a water bomb made from one of his mother's strawberry condoms. Looking out of the window, Elias sees Babak recording ambient sound to mix into his latest composition. But he is disturbed by a call from Amir, who has found someone who can provide them with a fake Chinese hymen. 

Amir is cross when Babak invites Donya to join them and she scurries out of the market when she spots her fiancé (Gernot Polak). Babak is unnerved by his hulking size and is perplexed when Amir returns to reveal that the Chinese option is a non-starter. Instead, they call on a shady backstreet medic (Mohammad Reza Khajevand), who promises discretion if not cleanliness. Babak's frustration is matched by Sara's when she successfully applies for a job, only to learn that her husband has to sign a consent form and return it in person. 

Defying her mother-in-law, Sara feeds the stray black cat that mooches around the building. She also agrees to look after Elias while Pari is working. although she informs her that she's a nurse at the local hospital rather than telling her the truth. Spending the evening with Sara after being refused a place at the nearby school for insulting the headmistress, Elias watches Mohsen working on one of the kites he flies from the balcony. He also eavesdrops as Mohsen refuses to allow Sara to work in case she has another miscarriage and watches as he hides some sweets while his diabetic father takes a nap. 

In gratitude for Sara babysitting, Pari insists on taking her to dinner at a restaurant. She is impressed that she has a literature degree and wants to teach to make a contribution to society rather than sit at home. However, when Pari offers to read her coffee grounds to predict the sex of the baby, the lights go out and Sara has a feeling of foreboding. Meanwhile, Babak is refused a bank loan by Mohsen and has an application to release an album of his music rejected because his sound is insufficiently Islamic. He tries to persuade the owner of a small studio (Morteza Latif) to record a few tracks. But, while he is reluctant to take a risk with Babak's unconventional style, he does offer him a job helping record the jingles and adverts that play on the local radio station. 

Babak meets Elias when Pari services a client in Amir's building and he uses the number of his wristband to call his mother. She is relieved to find the boy and accepts a lift home in Babak's car. He reveals that he is going to DJ a wedding because he needs the money to pay for an operation and Pari thinks he must be a good friend. However, while driving north, Babak gets caught at a checkpoint with a boot full of pornographic magazines and he is detained for several hours, even after he bribes the duty cop. Meanwhile, Elias helps Sara's father-in-law eat some chocolate and Pari has to feign being a nurse in order to give him an insulin shot because Sara and Mohsen are out. 

Elias plays football in the judge's garden when Pari calls to entertain him. He likes being throttled during sex and turns rough when Pari pulls too hard on his throat. She asks him about the younger woman she saw him canoodling in the backseat of his car, but he tells her to mind her own business and be patient about her divorce. Feeling low, Pari goes home and gets tipsy on a bottle of wine and persuades Sara to have a glass when she comes to collect Elias. They make a prank call to Yusuf (Thomas Nash), the nephew of the building janitor Ahmad (Payam Madjlessi), and send him on a wild goose chase for a sexual assignation near the mosque. 

Meanwhile, Babak is feeling nervous after being threatened by Donya's fiancé, while she gets some photographs taken for documents that suggest she may not be getting married after all. Sara is also concerned that the Morality Police will trace the call made from her phone, as her mother-in-law has told her that the janitor's nephew was badly shaken by the incident and wants the woman concerned arrested. Elias is frightened that his mother will be jailed, but Sara assures him that everything will be okay. While they are out, Pari agrees to see a friend of a trusted client and she is shocked when he turns out to be Mohsen. He pleads with her to say nothing to Sara and promises to repay the debt in any way he can. 

Realising that Mohsen can help Babak with a loan, she accompanies him to the bank, where Mohsen gives them the address of a forger who can supply Babak with a property document to bolster his application. However, Saleh (Farhad Payar) recognises Sara when she drops Pari and Elias at his workshop and he almost turns Babak and Donya down because he thinks they have also come for a counterfeit abortion form. He tells Babak that he should get a passport while he's here because Iran has gone to pot and that anyone who could leave should. Witnessing a public execution on his way home, Babak realises that he may well be right.

Much to Elias's dismay, Sara's mother-in-law captures the black cat (which has recently given birth to kittens) and Ahmad bashes it to death against the side of a dumpster while cursing the fact that his unmarried daughter is pregnant. He knows that Sara made the call to his nephew and he asks Mohsen to arrange a loan to help with his daughter's medical expenses or he will pass the number on to the Morality Police. Furious at his wife's recklessness, Mohsen accuses her of sleeping with the neighbourhood tradesmen and she snaps and says she has been with them all and had two abortions. Turning his back on her, Mohsen orders her to leave and the watching Elias feels deeply sorry for Sara because she has always been so kind to him. 

The next day, Babak has a photograph taken for his fake passport and Sara buys some drugs from a street dealer. Pari accompanies Donya to the clinic and they are puzzled why Babak has failed to show with the money. When they go to his flat, they discover he has cleared out and Pari watches a plane taking off from the nearby airport as Donya reveals that her fiancé is really a trafficker who sells Iranian virgins to clients in Dubai. Pari gives her some money to return to her family in the provinces and reassures her that things will work out. 

Upstairs, Mohsen's mother tells Elias that her husband is in hospital after having his gangrenous big toe amputated. She asks if he has seen Sara and he climbs on to the roof, where she is high on drugs and wondering which dress to wear. Elias wonders why she is behaving so oddly and agrees to film her on her phone, as she dons a pair of red wings fashioned from one of Mohsen's kites and informs the boy that she is an angel. Asking him to show the film to everyone she knows, Sara tells Elias to go home. As she jumps to her death, Elias finds a grey kitten cowering in a corner and he smuggles it into his room, as Pari tells him to sleep well because the judge has arranged for him to start school the following morning.

As the screen fades to black, it's impossible to avoid an overwhelming sense of sadness for the plight of the women depicted in this bold and well-meaning film. Yet, while it has the emotive pull of a Douglas Sirk or Rainer Werner Fassbinder picture (complete with its surfeit of reflective surfaces), this often has little of the nuance that could have prevented it from lapsing into melodrama. A few too many coincidences link the characters, while there isn't a single decent adult male on view, as even Babak proves to be watching his own back rather than trying to help Donya, whom he had seduced while she was under the influence of the substances that he had forced on her. By contrast, there are a couple of unsympathetic female characters, including Sara's mother-in-law and the headmistress. But even the cat trying to protect her young is ill-treated and one is left to wonder whether her kitten will be safe with a silent witness to all this misery. 

Despite having lived in Germany since leaving Iran in his mid-20s in 1985, Soozandeh appears well informed about the current problems afflicting his homeland and his street scenes teem with beggars of both sexes, as well as road sweepers who keep a furtive eye on unsuspecting by-passers. This sense of the citizenry being under surveillance is reinforced by the fact that several characters visit a photographer to have portrait shots taken against largely sombre backgrounds. But there are countless ways in which the rules imposed by the theocratic regime can be circumvented, while a greased palm can always make minor problems disappear. Such unflinching depiction of the hypocrisy of the patriarchal hierarchy is very much to Soozandeh's credit. But his denunciation would feel more trenchant if his storytelling was less  schematic. 

Produced on a modest budget, the visuals also seem a blatant in places, even though they took 13 months to composite. But Soozandeh and his 40-strong post-production team make inspired use of colour to heighten the stylised realism of ace cinematographer Martin Gschlacht's live-action work. Consequently, this looks and sounds superb, as Ali N. Askin's stridently atmospheric score reflects the conflicts between tradition and modernity that recur throughout the picture. Even though the digitisation masks them to a degree and some have their dialogue spoken by other performers, the cast also responds admirably to the challenge of acting against green screens, with Elmira Rafizadeh and Zahra Amir Ebrahimi being particularly expressive, alongside the watchful and accidentally complicit Bilal Yasar.

Showing in London under the Dochouse banner, Sahra Mani's A Thousand Girls Like Me makes for a sobering companion piece to Tehran Taboo. Having grown up as an Afghan refugee in Iran, Mani knows what it's like to be denied basic rights and only began to explore her potential after she relocated the UK at the age of 23. Since graduating from the London University of the Arts, she has been acclaimed for Kaloo School (2013) and Beyond the Burqa (2014), which reflected the fascination with documentary cinema that she inherited from her father. But a very different father-daughter relationship comes under scrutiny in this harrowing profile of Khatera Golzad.

An opening caption reveals that a law implemented in Afghanistan in 2009 to prosecute cases of abuse has rarely been used because the victims are afraid that they will be prosecuted for `moral crimes'. In the autumn of 2014, however, Khatera Golzad from Kabul decided to speak out. She had been abused by her father, Halim, for several years and had been forced to have a number of abortions after giving birth to her daughter, Zainab. Fourteen mullahs had advised Khatera to keep quiet about her plight before a fifteenth suggested taking her story to the media. 

Sitting in a black burqa, Khatera denounced her father on television and she was inundated with messages of support and condemnation. Having suffered beatings from Halim, mother Zahra took her daughter's part and she reveals that she had also tried to bring the abuse to the attention of the local mullah, who had reminded her of her wifely duty. When Halim was arrested, the police performed a DNA test to prove paternity and the judge prevented Khatera from aborting the child she was carrying, as it counted as evidence. Yet, even though the police established that Halim was the father of Zainab, nothing was done to bring him to justice. 

After three months, a pre-trial hearing is arranged and Khatera emerges with tears in her eyes because they judge accuses her of lying. Mani contacts legal adviser Mahfuza Folad, who informs Khatera that she will be prosecuted for illicit sex unless she can provide evidence of rape and can find witnesses to testify that she actively sought to protect herself by reporting the assaults. However, things are tense at home, as Khatera's two brothers have been forced to work away because of the scandal and they blame her for bringing shame upon the family. Even Zahra feels the strain, as there is so little money coming in that Khatera has decided to give the newborn up for adoption. 

Almost as soon as she gets home after giving birth, Khatera calls the woman who has agreed to buy the boy. But, as she leaves her mother to feed the infant from a spoon while she sleeps, Khatera begins to have second thoughts. So, after five days, she phones the adoptive parents and asks them to return the child and her lawyer uses the excuse that he is germane to a court case to persuade the couple to back off. Zainab is delighted with her brother and insists on holding Mohammed while he sleeps and Khatera smiles for the camera, as she declares her intention to raise them with pride as her children regardless of the sordid nature of their conception. 

Soon afterwards, someone attempts to break into the house and Khatera is convinced that her uncles (whom she compares to a pack of wild dogs) are out to get her. When one of them goes to a police station to claim that his niece has a boyfriend and is lying about Halim, he flees rather than give a signed statement. But the threat is enough for Khatera to move out and she has an argument with her neighbours about disputed property. 

Despite finding a safe refuge, however, Khatera is pressurised by her brothers to stop making the documentary, as they are afraid the footage will end up online and further scuff their reputations. Mani agrees to withdraw and await a call from Khatera and laments in voiceover that every woman in Afghanistan has a hundred owners, as every male relatives, friends and neighbours believe they have the right to make binding decisions on their behalf. 

Mani returned to Kabul in the summer of 2015 in time to hear confirmation that Halim is Mohammed's father. A trial date is set and Khatera alerts the media so that the case receives maximum publicity. She speaks to them in a burqa outside the courthouse after Halim is found guilty and Mani films the traffic bustling around the city, as we hear callers on radio phone-ins demanding the severest punishment for a man who has broken Islamic law. Suddenly, MPs are discussing the case and neighbours start claiming that they tried to help Khatera, but Halim always managed to evade capture. 

Yet, shortly after the verdict is returned, the neighbours discover Khatera's identity and she is forced to move out. No sooner has she found new accommodation, however, than her father threatens from prison to send someone to blow up Khatera and her children. Zahra confides that they have had to move five times and that each relocation costs them money they can't spare. The upheaval has a negative effect on Zainab, who acts up frequently and knows she can upset Khatera by called her `sister' instead of `mommy'. But, in her calmer moments, she is happy to have her fingernails painted pink and discuss the prospect of marrying her brother when she is older. 

Eventually, Khatera's application for passports is accepted and she cries when she learns that she has been granted visas for herself and her children. Her mother tells her to be happy and helps her pack before seeing her off at the airport. Khatera can't wait to leave her homeland, but she knows that she is leaving behind thousands of girls in the same situation. As she looks down on the rugged, snow-capped mountains from the plane, she cuddles her kids and looks forward to a better tomorrow. 

Accompanied by insert photographs, closing captions inform us that Khatera is living with her fiancé in France and is making progress learning the language. Her mother has remained in Kabul with her sons, while her father continues to languish in prison as he waits for his sentence to be handed down. As is often the case with films of this kind, one is left hoping that Mani will be able to provide periodic updates on Khatera's fate. But, one suspects she will fiercely guard the anonymity she has will now enjoy in her new home and will not want to give any clues that might prove useful to her thuggish uncles. 

In interviews, Mani has mentioned the influence of Brit Kim Longinotto and Pakistani Sahrmeen Obaid on her work. However, this compelling study has much in common with Smriti Mundhra and Sarita Khurana's A Suitable Girl (2017), about an Indian woman's bid to find a suitable husband. The misogyny is much more brutal in this instance, of course, but the attitudes towards women and the way in which the material is shaped are very similar. Wielding her own camera, Mani captures the chaotic vibrancy and dispiriting poverty of Kabul and her footage of the bustling thoroughfares is capably intercut with the more intimate moments with the Golzads by editor Giles Gardner.

Although Britain has one of the highest rates of stillbirths in the developed world, the topic is rarely discussed. Filmed over two years at University College Hospital in London and Addenbrokes in Cambridge, Katie Rice's Child of Mine seeks to bring the issue to wider attention by following three couples, as they strive cope with the pain of loss and the prospect that their hopes of parenthood might be over. Narrated by Amanda Holden, who experienced stillbirth herself in 2011, this poignant documentary is being shown in the UK with the support of the Baby Loss Alliance, an amalgam of over 70 charities associated with stillbirth and miscarriage.

One in 200 babies in the UK is stillborn. Fiona and Niall describe what happened to their daughter, Matilda, and how they hope that they are more fortunate now that Fiona is pregnant again. She cries, as she reads a poem called `The Snowdrop' and we see photographs of Niall and the grandparents cradling Matilda. They are being cared for by Dr Melissa Whitten of UCHL, while also being counselled by psychotherapist Claudia De Campos, who encourages them to express concerns about the future and regrets about the past. 

Meanwhile, Vicky and Bruce have been told that their daughter Ruby's heartbeat has stopped at the Rosie maternity unit at Addenbrookes. They had come in for a checkup after noticing that the baby had started to move less in the womb and now Vicky has to face the prospect of being induced to give birth naturally to a child she won't be able to take home. The couple seem calm, as they speak to the camera, but they are clearly stunned by the speed with which things went wrong and the fact that this occurrence is so common in a country with such sophisticated healthcare. 

As Whitten explains, very few hospitals have such dedicated antenatal units and Professor Gordon Smith from the Rosie explains how important it is to provide such care, as statistics show that premature babies often have short-term health problems after birth and longer term struggles at school. His unit also has a couple of specialist bereavement nurses and Janet Latimer helps Vicky and Bruce come to terms with their loss, after we see them go through the agony of Ruby's birth. A big bearded bloke in a British Lions rugby shirt, Bruce is too distressed to cut the umbilical cord, but Vicky is keen to hold her child and confides that she felt a huge surge of love for her and will always consider Ruby her first born. 

Latimer is shown making a memory box for Vicky and Bruce and we see them posing for a photographer from Remember My Baby, which specialises in images of for memorial booklets. As Holden reveals, however, two in five UK hospitals has no dedicated bereavement staff and, consequently, parents are left to cope on their own. 

Australians Kezia and Chris underwent IVF and were delighted to discover that they are expecting twins. One is slightly smaller than its sibling and they are hoping that it will gain strength and catch up. But they get bad news during a scan and, even though they had been told to expect such an eventuality, they are naturally distraught when they learn the truth. Professor Smith reveals that problems with the placenta are often at the root of stillbirths and this becomes an issue for Fiona, when she's told about a blood flow issue with her umbilical cord and she is advised to have twice-weekly scans so that Whitten can monitor the situation. 

Meanwhile, Vicky and Bruce speak with great emotion at Ruby's funeral.  Vicky claims that Britain is negligent when it comes to stillbirth, as something would be done if one in 200 two year-olds died. Sadly, the process of grieving has pushed the couple (who had been best friends for over a decade before hooking up) apart and Vicky is attending therapy sessions alone with Karen Burgess from Petals. Bruce admits that he couldn't be around Vicky because he was so hurt and confused, while she decided that she would rather mourn her daughter than fight for the relationship. Burgess says couples need to find a new normal because everything has changed and everyone reacts to the trauma in a different way. 

Chris echoes this when he describes how he and Kezia have been dealing with their loss and the prospect of becoming parents to one instead of two children. But Niall is right beside Fiona when Whitten suggests that she comes in for an induced birth and she cries on his shoulder as she wishes that things could be normal, as she has been in this position before. However, Chris is also hugely supportive when Kezia gives birth to Joshua and they get to spend time with him and his stillborn sister, Grace. 

Bruce joins Vicky at her next Petals session and tries to explain the feelings that caused him to say things he now regrets and need to escape from the pain that was crushing him. Burgess states that the NHS should be funding this kind of counselling, as so many couples have different reactions to their loss and it takes experts to guide them through the crisis. 

A year to the day since losing Matilda, Fiona undergoes a caesarian section and gives birth to another girl. Back on the ward, she feels the child grip her finger as she dozes on her chest. Smith calls for the UK to adopt the French practice of late-term scans to ensure that placenta issues are detected and decisions can be made about delivery strategies. When Vicky and Bruce are given the results of Ruby's post mortem, they discover that blood flow was the problem and the doctor reassures them that using aspirin next time will decrease the chances of a recurrence, while they will know what to monitor if Vicky becomes pregnant again. 

As Kezia and Chris join with their parents to say goodbye to Grace, with Kezia holding Joshua in her arms, Vicky and Bruce decide to scatter Ruby's ashes on a hill overlooking the Rosie. They are feeling closer again and can smile when the ashes blow back at them and Bruce jokes that Ruby's being naughty. While Fiona and Niall dote on their little one (whose name isn't given), we see Kezia and Chris light a floating lantern in Grace's memory and they vow to enjoy Joshua while never forgetting her. 

Professor Smith and Karen Burgess concur in the closing remarks that talking about stillbirth is a good way to start tackling it. One can but hope that this sincere and often harrowing film does its bit, especially after it's shown on Channel Four. Following on from Jimmy Edmonds and Jane Harris's A Love That Never Dies (which also explored parental grief), this feels more focused and more intimate. Enormous credit should be given to the couples for allowing Rice to record them at such momentous moments in their lives, while the discretion of the crew is also to be commended.

Readers of this column will be familiar with the complaint that documentary film-making has become calcified, as too many exponents have come to rely on a blend of archive material and talking heads. Occasionally, however, somebody takes a risk and attempts something new and Josh Appignanesi's Female Human Animal is all the more remarkable considering the conventionality of his two fictional features, Song of Songs (2006) and The Infidel (2010), which respectively focused on a pair of Jewish siblings and a Muslim who discovers he is actually a Jew. Profiling the artist Leonora Carrington through the eyes of the woman curating an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, this contains faint echoes of Norman Sherry's BBC film about following in the footsteps of Graham Greene. But it's much more innovative and intellectually demanding. 

Waking from a nightmare to find her grey cat, Ludwig, staring expectantly from between her knees, Mexican novelist Chloe Aridjis takes a cab to give a talk at the London Review Bookshop, in which she reveals that she got to know Leonora Carrington through a family doctor and regularly took tea with her to discuss life, art and her Siamese cats. Cross-cut with this footage of Aridjis flitting around the capital are shots of her supervising the hanging of Carrington's canvases at Tate Liverpool. She gazes across the Mersey through a window, as she posits that Carrington refused to accept the world as it superficially appeared and the role it gave her as a woman. Strongly identifying with such a perspective, Aridjis suspects that she was `born in the wrong century', but concedes that she has decided to give the current one a chance.  

If her wallflower experience at a gallery viewing is anything to go by, Aridjis seems out of step with the chatterati. Friend Devorah Baum teases her about putting herself out there to find her perfect man and she recalls the passionate affair that the young Carrington had with fellow artist, Max Ernst. However, Aridjis reveals that she hates being in the spotlight and is dreading the public engagements connected to the Carrington exhibition. She says as much to one of the Tate staff, who reassures her that everything will be fine. Her editor (Angus Wright) does much the same, as he condescendingly pats her knee as she asks for an extension to the deadline for her next book.

Back in her apartment, Aridjis watches a clip from Carrington's 2011 interview with her journalist cousin Joanna Moorhead, in which she reflects on how little control we have over our lives. The words seem to echo in Aridjis's mind, as she becomes aware that a man (Marc Hosemann) is standing in the shadows behind her while she looks at `And Then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur' (1953) on the gallery wall. She also feels the gaze of Ludwig, as she tries to work in her London home and the cat's piercing eyes are contrasted with those of the sitter in `Portrait of Max Ernst' (c.1939). However, on returning from another discomfiting engagement - conducting a Q&A session with Trans author Juliet Jacques, which is cut to make Aridjis look tongue-tied and detached - Ludwig plays hard to get and scratches her hand after she scoots him away from the exit, as he is very much a house cat. 

A cutaway focuses on `Self-Portrait' (c.1937-38), in which Carrington depicts herself with wild hair as she reaches out to a hyena while a white horse gallops outside and a rocking horse flies behind her. However, Aridjis is surveying `The Magical World of the Mayas' (1964) in the gallery when she turns to see the stranger pulling faces and making bird whistles. She smiles and wanders around trying to find him. But, even though he passes close by, he remains elusive, as Aridjis pulls back layers of plastic sheeting draped from the ceiling to reveal `The Giantess (The Guardian of the Egg)' (c.1947).

Rushing out of the Tate, Aridjis pursues the mystery man along the waterfront past the Three Graces and follows him into a packaging plant. But she loses him and is asking the gallery desk clerk if he has seen anyone behaving oddly when Detective Inspector Morris of Scotland Yard (Patrick O’Kane) warns her about a potentially dangerous man he is tracking. She insists she hasn't seen anybody matching the description, but takes the policeman's card before a shot of her shadow dissolving to white match cuts to the blank computer screen, as she tries to gather her thoughts and focus on her book. She is interrupted by a gnomic phone call from her father (Helder Macedo), who cautions against going out to a party because it's about to rain and Aridjis is perplexed when the heavens open seconds after his prognostication. 

Feeling spooked, Aridjis dons a see-through plastic raincoat and hastens through the streets to the venue for the party. Parting some plastic strips to enter the main room, she hooks up with her friends and is mildly irritated when one of the men (wearing a chicken head) gets a little frisky on the dance floor. She is rescued by a stranger wearing a tricorn hat and a beaked mask and she follows him to discover his identity. When she opens a door off a garishly lit corridor, however, she is surprised to see him demanding to be slapped across the face by a dominatrix. 

Seeing the look in the woman's eye when the man grabs her round the throat, Aridjis beats a hasty retreat. Giving her pals the slip, she follows the stranger from the gallery and peers through the window, as he tucks into a hunk of meat in a restaurant called Trapped in Freedom. She scuttles away when he comes out to confront her and keeps walking the streets until first light to avoid him following her home. But, as she approaches the door, she sees him waiting for her on the pavement and accepts his invitation to go for a drink on Saturday evening. As she goes inside, the man bows while walking away backwards repeating the word `maybe'. Watching him from her window, Aridjis strokes the claw marks on her hand and the images segues into Carrington's `Quería ser pájaro/I Wanted to Be a Bird' (1960).

The heavily pregnant Baum wonders whether Aridjis is wise to go on a date with someone who sounds like an oddball and her plight is encapsulated by a shot of her standing in front of `Spiderweb' (1948) on the gallery wall. She dozes off on the sofa and is plunged into a nightmare involving the stranger, Ludwig and lots of plastic sheeting. When she wakes, she discovers the apartment door is ajar and she ventures into the street calling for her cat. She sees a carcass in the road and rushes back inside, only to be swept up in a round of television interviews for the show. She also has to endure a surprise birthday party and her father asking her down the phone what she has learnt from her experiences. As she fights off a panic attack, Carrington appears in a clip advising against the folly of over-intellectualising. 

Aridjis keeps her rendezvous with her admirer and they wander around a cabinet of curiosities, take a river trip and ride on a merry-go-round before stopping to chat. She tells him about the Carrington exhibition and he reveals that he is half-Austrian and half-German and likes sex, art and meat. Their conversation is awkward and punctuated with nervous smiles and, so, Aridjis is taken aback when her date declares his love for her. She protests that they hardly know each other and he is hurt by her refusal to take him seriously. Yet, when he goes to leave after she takes a sip of his beer, he returns to kiss her hand and suggest that they go back to his hotel room. 

Keeping her distance, Aridjis looks at the pictures on the wall and moves away when the man makes a move. However, she lets him kiss her and sweep her up in his arms before depositing her on the bed. She looks up at the ceiling (without noticing the hole under the arm of his cheap brown pullover) and her passivity prompts him to get up and disappear into the bathroom. He emerges with a large sheet of plastic, which he wraps around her head and she struggles to get free. Running out of the hotel room (without alerting anyone or calling for help), Aridjis flees on to Hampstead Heath, only for the stranger to catch up with her and pin her to the ground. The camera passes by the left, but backs up to show Aridjis straddling her assailant and pounding his head with a rock to the sound of the dawn chorus. 

Wandering through the streets, Aridjis ducks into the Moth Club and, in the bluish light, watches a singer performing on a small stage. As she finishes her number, she passes the microphone to Aridjis, who sings a song in Spanish and receives generous applause from the audience. The experience seems to free her mind and she returns home to write fluently on her laptop, with a purring Ludwig at her feet. Feeling in better spirits, she meets Jacques and another friend for a drink and apologises for being out of sorts. When they ask how her date went, she admits to bashing in the man's face with a stone and they laugh. 

Captured in intimate close-up, Carrington confides that she finds romantic love stupid and cautions against entrusting one's soul to a man. In a round of interviews and speaker sessions, Aridjis claims Carrington as one of the great undiscovered artists and lauds her love of the feral that prompted her to declare herself a `female human animal'. Suddenly confident about what she wants to say, Aridjis presents her editor with her manuscript and brushes aside his suggestion that it won't be ready to print until he has given her his notes. She is equally assured when it comes to giving her Tate speech, in which she concludes that people should always leave space in their lives for the unknown. 

A short montage of paintings follows, starting with `Lepidopteros' (1969), before the pictures are wrapped in plastic and packaged for transportation. Back in London, Aridjis leaves a bookshop and a clear carrier bag blows against her leg. She drops it on the floor and the camera pursues it, as it is buffeted by the passing traffic. The closing shots, against a magic hour sky, depict a selection of bags caught in the bare branches of trees before we are taken inside a factory producing sheeting and bags. 

Having already rethought the documentary in conjunction with academic wife Devorah Baum in The New Man (2016), Josh Appignanesi takes the form into unchartered territory in this bewitching hybrid. Part biographical profile, part fever dream rite of passage, the action takes some following, as Chloe Aridjis drifts between the scenes that seem to have been culled from The South Bank Show and Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien andalou (1929). But it sweeps the viewer along to witness Aridjis tapping into her inner Leonora Carrington in order to regain control over her existence. 

This isn't the first time the daughter of a Lancashire mill owner has featured on screen, as she was the subject of both Felipe Cazals's 1965 short, Leonora Carrington o el sortilegio ironico, the Mexican television portrait, Leonora Carrington, imaginación a galope fino, and Teresa Griffith's BBC tribute, The Lost Surrealist (both 2017), which features Arijdis's real parents, Homero and Betty. But Appignanesi uses Carrington's life and work to explore Aridjis's dreams, desires and dreads, as well as the status of women in the art world and the extent to which art and actuality overlap. 

Shooting on a 1986 Panasonic AG-450 video camera, Appignanesi,  cinematographer Tristan Chenais and production designer Erik Rehl give the visuals a found footage feel, while also evoking the colours, motifs and surrealist intensity of Carrington's canvases. Working with editor Martin MacDonald, Appignanesi also succeeds in pitching the viewer into Aridjis's swirling vortex, which is made all the more disconcerting by Andy Cooke's stealthy score (although the `Minotaur' theme was composed by Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). It's a bold approach that often feels closer to a thriller like Camille Thoman's Never Here (2017) than a traditional biodoc. But it works wonderfully and allows Appignanesi to exploit to the full Carrington's maxim about being `liberated from all expectations'.

Although the work of artist Yayoi Kusama is highly distinctive and not particularly similar to the pieces produced by Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, echoes of Zachery Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer (2013) nevertheless reverberate around Heather Lenz's Kusama; Infinity, a documentary profile of the 89 year-old avant-gardist, who left Japan for the United States around the same time as contemporaries Yoko Ono and Atsuko Tanaka, who are notable for their absence from this lively and visually striking, if factually selective and occasionally fawning profile of the queen of the polka dots. 

Following an opening caption, in which Yayoi Kusama declares that all art is a gamble, the red-wigged octogenarian is seen embarking upon a sketch in black marker pen. Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe and psychologist Judith E. Vida describe Kusama's childhood in provincial Matsumoto City, when she developed her habit of working quickly because her disapproving mother used to snatch drawings away from her. Tate Modern's Frances Morris and Miki Muto of the Matsumoto City Museum of Art explain that there were domestic tensions between her parents, as her father had agreed to give up his own surname in order to continue the Kusama name and that he had enjoyed numerous affairs to compensate for feeling emasculated. 

Art historian Midori Yoshimoto reveals that Kusama's mother had once sent her daughter to spy on her husband during one of his trysts and suggests that what she witnessed must have left sizeable emotional scars. Former Matsumoto City mayor Tadashi Aruga explains that the family owned a wholesale seed business and was very wealthy. However, around the age of 10, Kusama suffered a traumatic experience in a field of flowers and, despite being plagued by recurring hallucinations, she has subsequently attempted to recreate the sensation of disappearing into her environment. 

Taken with the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama wrote her a charming letter telling her how impressed she had been by `Black Iris' and how she hoped that the American would mentor her. While awaiting a reply, Kusama staged her first exhibition in a small gallery above a Matsumoto movie theatre and best friend Akira Iinuma remembers helping her set it up. Few came to see the pictures, however, and Kusama had to fight parental attempts to marry her off in order to follow her dream. O'Keeffe was intrigued by the watercolours that Kusama had sent her and wrote back to offer support. But she also issued a warning that it was difficult for a woman to become an artist in the United States and that she would have to overcome many obstacles to realise her ambitions. 

Helaine Posner of the Neuberger Museum of Art mentions how O'Keeffe tried to help Kusama find exhibition space and we learn that Kusama set light to around two thousand canvases before leaving for New York in 1958.
Hanna Schouwink of the David Zwirner Gallery reveals that she arrived with dollar bills sewn into her kimono in order to beat currency regulations and Kusama recalls going to the top of the Empire State Building and vowing to channel the energy of the city into her work.

Author Eric La Prade, collector Hanford Yang and Glenn Scott Wright (of the Victoria Miro Gallery) reflect on Kusama's early frustrations, as women were rarely afforded solo shows at the time and she struggled to get her work seen. Lynn Zelevansky of the Carnegie Museum of Art explains that she had to start wearing American fashions in order to fit in and Kusama concedes that this was a difficult period because she had so little money. Nevertheless, it was also a period when she could dedicate herself to her painting and art historian Midori Yamamura reveals how she hit upon her trademark style of `infinity net' painting with `Pacific Ocean' (1958), which had been inspired by Kusama looking out of an aeroplane window and seeing some fishermen casting their nets. 

Artists Carolee Schneemann and Ed Clark reminisce about Kusama being aggressive in her efforts to find a patron and throwing in her lot with the Brata co-operative, which had previously shown Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline. Ultimately, she was discovered by critic Donald Judd, who helped her connect with Beatrice Perry of the Gres Gallery, who was curating an exhibition of contemporary Japanese artists like Kenzo Okada and Minoru Kawabata. However, Kusama was furious at being treated like a minor figure in the show and demanded the return of her paintings. Artist Frank Stella was so taken by one yellow dot painting that he agreed to buy it, even though he thought $75 was an exorbitant price. 

Around this time, Kusama met Surrealist Joseph Cornell, who lived with his mother and disabled brother in Utopia Heights. He wouldn't sell work to galleries and one owner had hoped Kusama would charm him into parting with a few pieces. Despite his initial caution, Cornell became obsessed with Kusama and she recalls phone calls in which he had refused to let her hang up and she would return to her apartment hours later to find that Cornell was still on the other end of the line waiting for her. She reveals that neither liked sex, so they had enjoyed a platonic relationship until his mother had poured a bucket of water over her when they were kissing in the garden. When Cornell apologised to his mother rather than Kusama, she announced that she was going to devote herself to painting and they broke up.

Among the net paintings that Kusama produced at this time was a 30ft canvas and Marie Laurberg of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opines that something this large ceases to be a picture and becomes a spatial happening. Arts presenter Beate Sirota Gordon remembers being concerned about Kusama's health and advising her to see an analyst. She admits to having an obsessive compulsive personality and Yamamura links this to the net paintings and accumulation pieces like the chair that was shown at the Green Gallery in June 1963, which was covered with stuffed pieces of fabric that had a provocative phallic appearance. Among the other items in the show was a papier maché suit by Claes Oldenburg and Kusama was appalled when he made the headlines later in the year with a soft sculpture exhibition that had so clearly been influenced by her work that his collaborator wife, Pat Mucha, later apologised to Kusama. 

She bounced back with the One Thousand Boats show at the Gertrude Stein Gallery and we see Kusama sitting in a soft sculpture rowing boat. Pop artist Andy Warhol was impressed by the fact that she had created an installation by covering the walls with photographs of the aggregation boat and, once again, Kusama was dismayed when he stole the idea for his Cow exhibit and the voices off suggest that she was often the victim of the sexism and racism that existed in American society and the art world in the mid-1960s. 

In November 1965 and March 1966, Richard Castellane hosted shows at his gallery that challenged the views on perspective that had held sway since the Renaissance. In the `Peep Show' piece, Kusama covered the walls with coloured light bulbs and the walls with mirrors to create a sense of infinity that Castellane compares to the images of the cosmos that were being captured by NASA's space programme. We see unattributed psychedelic footage of Kusama in the room and the effect is dazzling. But the segment also emphasises the shortcomings of the Lenz's documentary and its reluctance to identify works or go into critical detail about their genesis, meaning and lasting significance. 

Once again, however, Kusama's ideas were appropriated by another artist, this time Lucas Samaras, who exhibited a mirrored room at the Pace Gallery in October 1966. The voiceover claims that no one had used mirrored environments before Kusama, but this ignores hall of mirrors attraction frequently found at fairgrounds and the use made of them in films like Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai (1947). However, the strain of others having greater success with variations on her themes eventually took its toll and Kusama jumped from a window in 1966 and was only saved because she landed on a bicycle. 

Around this time, she started showing work in Europe and we see images of her in Amsterdam. Akira Tatehata of the Yaoshi Kusama Museum recalls her attempt to enter a piece called `Narcissus Garden' at the Venice Biennale, which was made up of 1500 mirror balls purchased from a workshop in Florence. She placed them outside the Italian Pavilion and donned a kimono to sell them at $2 a pop and was asked to stop by the festival organisers. So, Kusama removed her kimono and was photographed lying among the mirror balls in a red body leotard and the exhibit garnered more attention from her reaction being censured than it would have done if the bigwigs had not been so stuffy. 

Back in New York, Kusama took on the Museum of Modern Art by suggesting that there was nothing modern about its exhibits and criticised the American gallery scene for showing dead art by dead artists while living artists are left to die. As part of her protest, she had models pose naked in the Sculpture Garden. Runaway Jeannette Hart Coriddi remembers Kusama painting her body with polka dots and organising gay marriages long before anyone else came up with the concept. She also ventured into films with Self-Obliteration (1967), which was made by experimental film-maker Jud Yaklut. Gordon recalls going to the New York premiere and Kusama inviting audience members to undress so that she could paint their bodies, while a band played and people danced. Amusingly, while Gordon's husband had wanted to go home, her elderly mother had insisted that they stayed and had a marvellous evening.

As the Vietnam draft was introduced, Kusama staged a nudity protest and artist Joshua White and art historian Reiko Tomii trace her pacifism back to the Second World War when she had objected to sewing parachutes in a factory. They describe how her happening in New York was stopped by the NYPD and her family had disowned her when news of her antics reached Japan. The election of Richard Nixon in November 1972 ushered in a new conservatism and Kusama found it harder than ever to compete in a world that had been established to promote white men and her refusal to jump on the Modernist bandwagon further marginalised her. 

Having written the poem, `A Manhattan Suicide Addict', Kusama decided there was no place for her in the new landscape and, in 1973, she returned to Japan, where she had to start again from scratch. She felt so ostracised by the art world and the media that she attempted suicide following the loss of her father and voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric hospital. One of the doctors favoured art therapy and Kusama found the supportive environment conducive and began producing collages like `Now That You Died', `Green Coloured Death', `War', `Soul Going Back to Its Home', `Tidal Waves of War' and `Graves of the Unknown Soldiers'.

Unfortunately, Kusama's critical stock plummeted after the Village Voice denounced her lust for publicity and two decades passed before Munroe went to Japan to find her and curate a major retrospective at the Centre for International Contemporary Arts in the 1989. It was a huge success and prompted Tatehata to put her forward for the 1993 Venice Biennale (although he opted to keep quiet about the fact that she was still living at the hospital) and Kusama became the first Japanese artist to be awarded a solo show in the national pavilion. We see her posing with Yoko Ono at the show (whose own work is ignored completely here, even though there are obvious parallels) and its success led to Zelevansky curating another career retrospective in 1998. 

In her 80s, Kusama walks to her studio from the hospital each day and is currently in a fantasy phase. Such is her appeal that she ranks as the most attended living artist in terms of gallery numbers, with the Pompidou Centre and Tate Modern among the venues to host blockbuster shows. She is also the top-selling living female artist and plans to devote the remainder of her life to creating. 

While it's good to see that Kusama has found peace and is able to express herself without needing to worry about the art market or her own psychological state, it has to be said that she is given a remarkably easy ride in this highly conventional chronological portrait, which seems have been a decade in the making. What is most striking is the lack of critical insight offered by experts who scrupulously avoid theorising about Kusama's childhood traumas and proclaim her greatness without making any attempt to discuss her methodology or the meaning of her oeuvre. 

It also seems odd for a film that harps on about the sexism and racism that Kusama endured to restrict mention of Yoko Ono to a couple of posed snapshots at a later retrospective. The subtext appears to be that Kusama did everything first, better and didn't need to marry a Beatle for publicity. But it's duplicitous to suggest that Kusama was pioneering in vacuum when Ono was branching out into literature and music, while also producing art, installation, filmic and performance pieces and protesting against the war in Vietnam. 

That said, this represents a solid introduction to Kusama and her unique approach to structure, perspective and materiality. Cinematographer Hart Perry does a splendid job in conveying the ravishing colour and tempting tactility of the artworks, while the footage of Kusama beavering away with undiminished energy and enthusiasm so late in her ninth decade is humblingly inspirational. With a few more facts and a lot less gushing, this could have been definitive. As it is, it's a fond tribute to a woman who has borne the slings and arrows with considerable tenacity and wit and one can only hope that she continues to create for many years to come.

The infamous Munich Agreement was agreed on 30 September 1938 and the Czech Centre marks the 80th anniversary with a special screening on 6 October of Petr Zelenka's absurdist farce, Lost in Munich (2015), which will be followed by a discussion with historians Vit Smetana and Peter Neville. No members of the Czechoslovakian government were present when a document impacting upon the country's future was signed by Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Édouard Daladier and Benito Mussolini. But Zelenka doesn't address the pact and its genesis directly. Instead, the acclaimed playwright and director of Happy End (1996), Buttoners (1997) and Year of the Devil (2002) - who was returning to cinema for the first time since Karamazov (2008) - uses a film within a film to comment on the fraught business of making deals and movies. 

An introductory passage takes us back to 1938, as Hitler makes his demands about the Sudetenland on 20 September. Hoping that France will honour its treaty agreement with Czechoslovakia, President Edvard Beneš accepts the claim, only to be faced with the threat of a general strike and demands for the reconvening of parliament. As forces mobilise, a four-power conference opens on 29 September and Beneš is forced to accept the terms dictated by Germany, Italy, Britain and France, who opted to sacrifice the Czechs to keep the peace. 

In 2008, journalist Pavel Liehm (Martin Myšicka) is sent to cover a press conference marking the 70th anniversary of the Munich Agreement. He is dismayed to discover that his editor has sent him to witness the unveiling of Sir P, a 90 year-old African grey parrot that had belonged to Daladier and can testify that the French prime minister regretted at his conduct at the peace conference for the rest of his life. Seizing an opportunity, Pavel steals the bird's carrying case and deposits it on the editor's desk so he can conduct the interview himself. 

Not only is Pavel fired, but he also discovers that his wife, Dana (Jitka Schneiderová), is having an affair. So, he leaves home to find sanctuary with fellow reporter, Jakub (Marek Taclík), who records Sir P's chatter and has it translated to reveal Daladier's true views of the Czechs and both his admiration for the Führer and his conviction that he had done the right thing in signing the accord. While Pavel does radio and television interviews that suggest the French have been reckless in sending such an outspoken witness to Prague, the director of the French Institute, Philippe Lacroix (Stanislas Pierret), is doing his level best to limit the damage, while under pressure from the ambassador and his wife, Laura, who reminds him that this isn't the first time he has embarrassed La Patrie. 

Meanwhile, Jakub has flown to Switzerland to cover Roman Polanski's arrest at a film festival. Pavel arranges to move into the cottage he owns with Dana, who meets him in his car to discuss their future. She is cross that he still has Sir P and gets in a flap when the parrot flies at her when she raises her voice. Pavel agrees to give her time to sort herself out, but she is concerned that he is placing himself in unnecessary danger for a scandal that will soon become old news. However, Pavel has become fond of Sir P and he cuts a deal with Lacroix to hand over a non-talking lookalike to return to the Famous Animals agency and bring the diplomatic incident to an end. 

As he watches Lacroix drive away from the country cemetery where they have met, Pavel sees a grey feather float into the air and, by the time it descends, the scene has shifted to 2014 and we find ourselves in the middle of a documentary about the making of a film about the Sir P episode. In a series of freeze frames, we are introduced to Jean Dupont (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo), the first assistant director who doubled as the parrot's dialogue coach, Martin Myšicka , who is appearing as himself, production manager Vladimir (Vladimír Škultéty), and Tomáš the director (Tomas Bambusek). However, a news bulletin reveals that Gérard Pierret (Stanislas Pierret), the actor playing Lacroix in Lost in Munich, has been killed in a car crash and the anchorwoman suggests that the curse of the conference has returned after 76 years.

Rewinding five months, we see Martin, Tomáš and assistant director Adam (Jirí Rendl) at Václav Havel Airport awaiting the arrival of Jean-Louis Trintignant, who has been cast as Daladier's indiscreet assistant. However, he is too ill to travel and Tomáš suggests tweaking the script to have a parrot drop the clangers instead of a doddering old diplomat. Producer Kryštof (Kryštof Mucha) agrees to the change on the proviso that they hire a French parrot to ensure co-production funding. They also recruit Jean to teach the bird to speak with a French accent and he is introduced to the crew at Barrandov Studios.

Initially cross because he thought he was going to be an assistant director, Jean becomes intrigued by both Charlie the parrot and Daladier.Thus, when the bird becomes temperamental on set, he is able to calm him down and acquires a certain kudos as a result. However, Martin has less luck with his bid to strike up a rapport with Charlie by wearing a parrot head in homage to Marlon Brando's promiximity style of Method Acting. Moreover, Marek (Marek Taclík) gets annoyed when Adam uses his jacket to try out the bird dropping mixture he has created. But Tomáš is enjoying making fun of the French with their own money and asks cinematographer Alexander Koch (Prokop Holoubek) to get hold of a drone, so he can shoot Sir P's aerial perspective. 

All hopes of securing a big-name French star are dashed and Kryštof has to make do with Gérard, who is quickly rumbled as a nobody by the crew because he doesn't have a website. The make-up team try out various wigs to hide his bald pate and he relies heavily on translator Edita (Edita Leva) to make himself understood. Tomáš is far from impressed, however, and their is bemusement when Gérard states at the press conference that Munich seriously damaged the sale of French smoked meats in the Czech lands. However, Jana (Jana Plodková), who is playing Lacroix's assistant at the French Institute, is taken with him, even though she has just postponed her honeymoon with Viktor (Václav Neuzil) to shoot the film.

The mood isn't helped at the pre-shoot party when crew members Jan (Jan Kadlec, Jr.) and Viliam (Viliam Dostál) drown out a song that Jean and Gérard are singing. But things deteriorate during the shooting of the first scene when Martin develops a severe allergic reaction to Charlie and has to be taken to hospital. Convinced Martin is perfect for the role, Tomáš has Jarda the prop man spray a toy parrot grey and has make-up artist Johana (Johana Matousková) create facial hair so that one of the runners (Nikolas Tusi) can double for Martin in the reverse angle shots. 

Despite a downpour, they go for a take on the car scene between Pavel and Dana, only for it to transpire that Martin is also allergic to flowers. However, they somehow manage to get the footage they need and the picture progresses. During the second week, however, Martin discovers new allergies to wool and coloured dyes and Tomáš has to try and shoot a phone call scene with a hand double. It's then that a homeopath informs Martin that he is solely allergic to the Munich Agreement because his grandfather had been so appalled by it and that this is manifesting itself in his other complaints. 

While he goes to Pilsen for treatment, Tomáš becomes so bothered by people congratulating him for making a film about Munich (when he thinks he's producing a comedy about a man and a parrot) that he reads the agreement and is puzzled by references to an existing demand. Convinced he has made an important historical discovery, he confides to the camera that he vowed to find the document that will prove his theory. But he soon had other things to worry about, as Jean had bought Charlie and become his agent and, in this capacity, he starts demanding an easier workload. Moreover, Charlie blurts out that Jana and Gérard are having an affair and Viktor tries to run the Frenchman over with his car. 

But Tomáš has more important things to worry about after Martin returns to the set and introduces him to the revisionist theories of historian Jan Tesar. He claims that Beneš knew that his situation was hopeless and that he gambled on going along with Hitler's terms in the hope that Germany would lose an inevitable war. By playing doggo (but with a display of mobilisatory bravura to persuade the people he's fighting for their survival), Beneš hoped to prevent fighting on Czechoslovakian soil and pass the blame for the `betrayal' on to France, who would be seen as cowards for refusing to stand by their treaty promise. However, he had to keep playing the victim for the ruse to work and this meant continuing to manufacture arms. The irony was that Hitler confiscated these on rolling into Czechoslovakia in March 1939 and that the tanks that helped conquer France were produced by its forsaken ally. 

At the end of the war, Beneš negotiated for the return of all lost territories and succeeded. But, despite the audacity of his plan, he couldn't tell a soul about it because it would besmirch his reputation by shifting the blame away from the French and on to himself. When Martin and Tomáš explain this hypothesis to Vladimír and ask if there is any way to get it into the script, he is amenable, even though it means that the target for the satire would switch from the French to the Czechs because they have used September 1938 as an excuse for every subsequent national failing, whether it's the election of 1946, the 1948 coup or the Prague Spring of 1968.

When Kryštof comes to discuss the script changes, however, he reveals that there never has been any French input to the project, as he had to pretend their was in order to secure funding from the European Union's Eurimages arm. But they declined to give him a grant and, as a consequence, the entire picture is in the balance. He admits that the Gallic cast members are non-professionals and, when news of this leaks to the Czech crew, they decide that they have been betrayed by the French, as their forefathers had been. 

With the shoot suspended after three weeks, the bikers on the crew start stealing anything that's not nailed down. Moreover, they drown Charlie in the prop guano and Jean is distraught. This wanton act puts an end to Tomáš's hopes to film for another couple of days with a skeleton staff and Jean winds up in hospital suffering from burns after he sets light to one of the thugs' motorbikes. As he clears his office - and takes down the poster for François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), another film about a tortuous shoot - Tomáš discovers that Gérard is really a butcher with a shop in the same Prague building as Kryštof's office. 

He shakes his hand for putting up such a good performance. But it proves to be the last time they meet, as Gérard's car hits a tree and Jean is convinced that he was killed by the xenophobes on the crew (although the camera picks out Viktor shooting furious glances at Gérard embracing Jana). All agree, however, that Munich has created another myth, as the publicists spin the line that a masterpiece has been lost - when storyboards showing Martin and Charlie running away to join a circus in France and romancing an acrobat before seeing the fortifications along the Maginot Line and ringing a bell at Notre Dame very much suggest otherwise.

Closing with footage of President Emil Hácha's obsequious speech of welcome to Konstantin von Neurath as the new Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia and boldly positing the notion that the Czech nation hasn't always participated in its own history, this is a dazzling blend of satire, absurdism and historical dissidence. The sheer audacity of Zelenka's conceit is made all the more impressive by the structural risks he takes in shifting from the newsreel sobriety of the opening segment to the whimsy of what turns out to be the film-within-the-film, the self-reflexivity of the mockumentary passages and the cold calculation of the Tesar theory and its suggested consequences. And he achieves all this while paying homage to Truffaut's Oscar-winning lampoon of the film-making process and commenting on the state of the film business across a continent where the prospect of an EU grant is more significant to a project being greenlighted than the plausibility of the storyline or the presence of a bankable star. 

Leading an heroic ensemble, Martin Myšicka and Tomáš Bambušek excel as the allergy-afflicted actor and the hack director undergoing a Damascene transformation. But, once again, Zelenka's stage background means that he places more emphasis on the dialogue and the performances than he does on the visuals. Thus, despite the presence of director David Ondrícek (Loners, 2000) among the producers, Alexander Surkala's cinematography and Ondrej Nekvasil's production design are largely functional. The lack of stylistic flourish isn't particularly problematic, as, where this clever, compelling and contentious picture is concerned. the ideas matter much more than the images.

Despite not always convincing since making his feature bow with The Late Twentieth (2002), British director Hadi Hajaig has proved himself to be a dab hand at neo-noir thrillers with Puritan (2005) and Cleanskin (2012). However, he comes unstuck in attempting to pay tongue-in-cheek homage to the barrage of wisecracking crime indies that deluged release schedules in the wake of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie's first movies. Winkingly self-reflexive from the get-go, Blue Iguana might have eponymous echoes with John Lafia's The Blue Iguana (1988) and Michael Radford's Dancing at the Blue Iguana (2000), but this coarse caper is no more distinguished than its titular predecessors.

Flying to New York on the recommendation of cousin Tommy Tresham (Al Weaver), lawyer Katherine Rookwood (Phoebe Fox) tracks down petty crooks Eddie (Sam Rockwell) and Paul Driggs (Ben Schwartz) to the crummy diner where they are working for buttons. She offers them $30,000 to go to London and intercept a package with Tommy at the Natural History Museum. Eddie is sceptical, but agrees after witnessing the confident manner in which Katherine blackmails their boss (Glenn Wrage) into squaring things with their parole officer. 

Naturally, everything goes wrong when the trio attempt to steal a blue haversack containing the parcel during a reception in Hintze Hall,as a Mexican standoff turns into a punch-up and a complete stranger plummets to his death after trying to run off with the bag. News of the botched ambush reaches Deacon Bradshaw (Peter Ferdinando), a Northern-accented daddy's boy who runs a spit-and-sawdust boozer with his man-eating Bow Bells mother, Dawn (Amanda Donohoe). She mocks his prized mullet in front of his Mockney henchmen and, in order to show off how tough he is, he decides to front the raid on the bag snatchers when they meet Katherine to collect their pay.

Once again, things don't go according to plan, as Deacon loses a button of his beloved father's denim jacket while teaching some manners to a smarmy café owner (Anton Saunders). Moreover, he loses his temper and shoots him through the head for making an unfortunate remark about his barnet. Meanwhile, Deacon's oppos (who are cunningly disguised as waiters) get beaten up by Eddie and Paul when they try to grab the bag and the brown envelope of cash that Katherine has brought with her. The New Yorkers are furious at being deducted $10,000 each because of the fatality at the museum. But their debate is disrupted when Deacon's duo come round and require further pulping to render them properly unconscious, which gives Katherine the opportunity to abscond with both the bag (which is full of bonds) and the loot. 

She presents them to Arkady (Peter Polycarpou), a Russian mobster who just happens to be Deacon's boss. When he sidles into the meeting room, Katherine notices the missing button (which she had spotted on the café floor) and realises that he's up to no good. However, as she refuses to tell Arkady where Eddie and Paul are holed up, he reinstates the debt she owes him and warns Deacon that he will be in serious trouble if he discovers that he knew anything about the attempt to steal the bonds. 

While stuffing her face in the foyer, Katherine sees Arkady meet up with a trio of infamous villains and she scurries over to tell Paul and Eddie that she suspects he is planning to use the bonds to fund a major operation. When Eddie refuses to co-operate because they've not been paid for the museum mission, Katherine threatens to give evidence against them and they have no option but to go along with her plan. Consequently, they move into an art studio opposite to Prince of Wales to keep tabs on Deacon, who has just bumped off his goons before they can betray him to Arkady. 

Tommy and his Cornelius Schlessvig Von Holstein (Robin Hellier) take turns in monitoring activity, while Paul develops a crush on Dawn after watching her putting on stockings through her bedroom window. Despite himself, Eddie has also grown fond of Katherine and learns from Tommy that she became indebted to Arkady when a feckless boyfriend used her as a front to embezzle some money before running off with her best friend. However, when Eddie tries to impress her with a Cockney accent, she is dubious at best and squirms away when he attempts to get up close and personal. 

Paul has more luck flirting with Dawn when he pops into the pub, but he has to duck down when Deacon returns with his new entourage. In order to snoop on them, Katherine and Tommy enlist the help of their posh Uncle Martin (Simon Callow) and his friends, Fosdyke (Martin Muncaster), Gilbert (Nigel Nevinson) and Quentin (Christopher Terry). They report the overheard banter in cut-glass accents and let slip that there was much discussion of a blue iguana, which Katherine knows is a priceless diamond that was presented to Princess (Frances Barber) by her rich husband. However, she lost it in a card game and has seemingly hired Arkady to steal it back so that she can wear it at a big family gathering. 

Despite enjoying flirting with Katherine, Eddie is keen to return Stateside and asks if there's a way in which they could force Arkady into stealing the stone before Princess arrives in a month's time. Katherine knows he has just increased the fire insurance on one of his buildings and suggests that they could put the police on his tail if they indulged in a little arson. However, she rushes off to keep a dinner date with her ex, in the hope he might want her back. Instead, he reduces her to tears and she looks on admiringly as Eddie (who has followed her to the restaurant) pulps the chap off screen. 

As a reward, Katherine lets her hair down and slaps on some make-up when she joins the gang in the backseat of their motor to press the detonator and drop Arkady in the mire. In her lawyer guise, she warns him that the cops will investigate and that he could find himself behind bars and he is furious that it's as easy to bribe his way out of little difficulties as it is back home. But, when he charges out of their meeting and Eddie follows him, he goes to an exercise class and it's only when Katherine looks at the footage that Eddie recorded on his phone that she spots the blue holdall being picked up by a guard from the storage facility where the Blue Iguana is being kept. 

Guessing that Arkady has gone out of town to be out of the picture when Deacon steals the diamond, Katherine sends Eddie, Tommy and Cornelius into a slow-motion shootout at the Prince of Wales that results in Tommy leaving with the Blue Iguana and a wounded Deacon taking Eddie hostage. Katherine calls to offer a trade and Deacon agrees to meet her in a café. Unfortunately, she has also called Arkady and told him that Deacon intends handing the diamond to the Princess in person for a sizeable reward. Thus, she is able to leave him in the Russian' safe hands, while she returns to the studio. 

The second part of her plan, however, involves Paul going into the pub and killing the guards watching Eddie (who is bound to the pool table) with the gun he had left hidden in the bathroom before sleeping with Dawn. Despite finding the weapon, Paul bungles the rescue attempt and it lucky that the dropped gun lands near enough for Eddie him to plug the uglies. That said, one of them proves only to be wounded and the timid Paul (who is covered with the splattered brains of the other oppo) has to kill somebody after all. 

As the good guys reunite at the studio, Tommy notices Arkady and his heavies entering the pub with Deacon. Convinced he has hidden the Blue Iguana, the Russian slices off one of Deacon's fingers with a blade. However, as he writhes on the floor, Deacon finds a dropped gun and not only shoots Arkady and his crew with unerring accuracy, but also taunts them with a chorus of `nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah'. 

Having broken Dawn's neck when she nags him once too often for getting lost in the car park of the hotel where Princess is staying, Deacon ambushes the quintet as they are about to leave with a bagful of dosh. He ushers them into a bathroom and describes in gruesome detail how he is going to kill each one of them. But Eddie has put a small explosive device in the bag and he splatters Deacon to smithereens and they manage leave the hotel in slo-mo with a police escort and without attracting any attention because a film crew just happens to be shooting a zombie movie on the premises. No, seriously. 

Back at the studio, Tommy (who turns out to be gay) bids farewell to Eddie with a lengthy kiss on the mouth, while Paul and Cornelius leave with their share of the £1 million payoff to make a film (because Cornelius is a frustrated actor and Paul fancies becoming a director). This leaves Eddie to remove Katherine's glasses and push back her long, dark hair. But, rather than focus on their embrace, the camera glides into the next room to close on the last spread of the chivalric superhero graphic novel that Eddie has been reading throughout the picture. 

It's a neat final set-up in a picture that can never be accused of lacking ambition and brio. But, despite the commitment of Sam Rockwell, Ben Schwartz and Phoebe Fox, this caper consistently strains for comic effect and, as a result, it winds up being resoundingly unfunny. Indeed, the only laughs come from Amanda Donohoe's blowsy derision at Peter Ferdinando's hairdo and his infantile ridiculing of the dead Arkady with a playground chant. Simon Callow also has fun as the ex-military toff who gets a kick out of helping out his nephew and niece. But the majority of the cast are saddled with clunking caricatures, which they play with varying degrees of skill. 

As writer, director, producer and co-editor, Hajaig throws everything at the screen in the hope enough sticks to produce the odd guffaw. But the cartoonish violence is vulgar and the dialogue (whether scripted or improvised) is often shudderingly awful. Moreover, the mannered stylistic tics are tiresomely recycled rather than kitschily ironic and one is left pining for the very post-Reservoir Dogs copycats that Hajaig is seeking to pastiche, such as Richard Shepherd's The Linguini Incident (1992) and Tom Schulman's 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997). Oh, and before anyone asks what Sam Rockwell is doing starring in and co-producing this faux indie after winning an Oscar for Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, this misjudged and frequently distasteful misfire has been on the shelf for two years.

Despite social realism being the cornerstone of British cinema, the majority of  films about those struggling on or below the lower rungs betray how little their makers actually know about life in the margins. Hopes were higher for Chris Green's Strangeways Here We Come, however, as he had once worked as a postman on the very Salford estates depicted in this dark comedic follow-up to his 2015 feature bow, Law and Disorder. But, while it's nowhere near as twee in its depiction of the daily grind as another picture about a Mancunian postie, Ken Loach's Looking for Eric (2009), this hodge-podge of clichés and caricatures fails to deliver. 

As Brian (James Foster) limps back from the 7/11 with two carrier bags full of beer, Gary the postman (Ste Johnston) dons the protective gear he wears under his uniform while delivering to a particularly tough Salford tower block. One woman hurls a bin bag at him for bringing her a bill, while he is nearly beaned by a bicycle that has been thrown out of a window by a mother threatening to send a kid's other toys the same way if she catches him smoking drugs again. 

While Gary gets shot in the face with an air rifle by wannabe gangsta Oliver (James Coonie), doorstep missionaries Charlie (Peter Caulfield) and Bud (Peter Ash) try valiantly to interest the tenants in the Afterlife. Meanwhile, dressed in a variation on a Superman costume, Aaron (Oliver Coopersmith) keeps watch over the neighbourhood from the roof before coming down to ground level to tend to his little garden. 

It's been a year since his mother died and lonely window cleaner Lucy (Nina Wadia) readily accepts his invitation to a party to mark the event. Nurse neighbour Jean (Ania Sowinski) also promises to come along after chiding Oliver for brandishing a replica gun against Aaron's head. He also asks Demi (Michelle Keegan) and her fellow student flatmates Sian (Saffron Hocking) and Becki (Chanel Cresswell), as well as Marvin (Perry Fitzpatrick), who makes a living selling meth and raining on any ideas that girlfriend Shelley (Lauren Socha) might have about improving herself. 

Everyone's a bit taken aback when they arrive to find Aaron's flat decorated with streamers and fairy lights. They're even more surprised when he serves trifle and starts a game of pass the parcel. Demi and Sian are put out when cabby Max (Mark Sheals) gets lairy, while Becki, Lucy and Marvin can barely stay away as Brian recalls the night he has a stroke and missed his chance to become a middleweight boxing champion. But, as the booze begins to flow, everyone bops to `I Saw a Ghost' by The Slow Readers Club and, on the stroke of midnight, Aaron removes his superhero costume, as he has fulfilled the bargain he made with God to wear it for a year if his mother lived to see one more sunrise.

When they go downstairs to burn the costume in a drum, however, they are interrupted by sinister loan shark-cum-drug dealer Danny Nolan (Stephen Lord), who insists on crashing the party. Jean faces him down and he leaves with threats to harm Aaron the first chance he gets. But, as the guests sit together in the living-room, it becomes clear that each one of them is in debt to Nolan, who has humiliated them in return for cash. When Brian failed to make his payments, he was subjected to a thrashing with his own walking stick and Nolan took his boxing trophies in lieu. Marvin reveals that he bought out their debt to another shark and increased the interest, while Becki, Demi and Sian describe how he forced them into making a porn movie that he has threatened to post online unless they keep up their payments. 

When Aaron discloses that Nolan threatened to dig up his mother and let his dogs eat her if he failed to pay up, Brian suggests that they club together and solve their problems by killing him. But Max offers around his bag of happy pills and everyone dances into the wee smalls before crashing out, with Max wrapped around Sian, Brian lying between Demi and Becki, and Aaron squeezed between Lucy and Jean. No one feels proud of themselves, except Max, who hopes that Sian is pregnant so she will have to marry him. Naturally, she is appalled by the fact she slept with such a slob and watches on in dismay as he begins to strut his stuff after ingesting some of Marvin's latest batch of meth. 

While he dances on the roof of his cab, Jean gets a visit from Nolan, who is about to rape her in the kitchen when Oliver appears with his air rifle. He threatens to plug him unless he leaves and Nolan takes out his fury on Aaron, who has spent his spare cash on the party. When Jean finds him quivering in terror on the floor, she summons the others and they begin discussing ways to bump off Nolan. Unfortunately, someone has left the door open and he wanders in to start issuing threats. But, as he lashes out, a noose is looped over his head and Jean stabs him with a kitchen knife as he fights for breath. Suddenly, everyone leaps on him and, following a frenzied attack, he falls still. 

When Aaron suggests burying him in the communal garden, Brian and Marvin deposit the corpse in a shopping trolley to get it downstairs. Aaron is reluctant to disturb any of the pets dotted around the lawn, but they choose a spot and start digging. They manage the shallowest of graves and have to exhume him when Brian realises that his car is parked nearby. But they breathe a collective sigh of relief when the last spadeful is patted down and hope that they can get on with their lives. 

A few days later, however, Steph Nolan (Elaine Cassidy) goes door to door looking for her husband. The students refuse to let her in, but she threatens Brian when he claims to know nothing about Nolan. Luckily, she accepts a cup of tea from Marvin and Shelly, who have been using the cup to take meth and is reduced to a spaced-out wreck. Seizing the opportunity to get rid of the body, Jean and Brian bundle it in the shopping trolley and look for somewhere to dump it. A couple of passing scallies insist on posing for a selfie with the notorious Nolan, but they get stopped by a police car after Brian starts having a seizure. 

When the cops attempt to arrest Brian after he hits one of them with a flailing arm, Oliver  - who has just had with his mate Niall (Robbie Conway) a close encounter with a sex-crazed Steph - him with his air rifle and Jean, Marvin and the students manage to escape with the trolley. They hide it in the garden shed and Oliver and Niall are so impressed that they give themselves up when an armed unit arrives. But, just when they think they are off the hook, Steph barges in and sees her husband's body. 

Much to everyone's astonishment, Demi headbutts her and she collapses on the ground, as Aaron arrives in a black superhero outfit ready to take sole responsibility for the crime. He ushers the others out of the shed and they wait nearby to see what happens. They are astonished when Steph comes out adjusting her clothing after jumping Aaron's bones in gratitude for getting rid of her detested spouse. But, as she explains that she has insured him for a fortune, Steph also reveals that she intends to continue collecting their debts and the film ends with a freeze frame, as the friends rush after Aaron as he pursues Steph with a shovel. 

If it wasn't for the accents and a soundtrack stuffed with Madchester tunes selected by Terry Christian, this would be just another BritCrime romp in the Mockney mould. It starts brightly enough, as Chris Green conveys the atmosphere on the estate and introduces his characters with clipped efficiency. But the moment Stephen Lord intrudes and the plot begins to feel like some warmed-up Brookside leftovers, things fall apart with dispiriting speed. 

The schtick with the dead body may not be particularly funny, but it's much less distasteful than the genital-obsessed dialogue and the chauvinist attitude towards sex. To give them their due, the ensemble members give their all in trying to raise the tone. But Coronation Street fans will be dismayed to see Michelle Keegan featuring in such a feeble farrago. Beth Croft's production design and Paul Andrew Robinson's photography are grittily effective, but this one can only hope that this is not a film to live long in the memory.