In many ways, Romy Schneider was the Marilyn Monroe of continental cinema and Emily Atef's 3 Days in Quiberon has much in common with Simon Curtis's My Week With Marilyn (2011). Yet, while Michelle Williams was a passable physical double for Monroe, Marie Bäumer so strongly resembles Schneider that it sometimes feels as though one is eavesdropping upon private grief, as the Austrian actress pours out her heart in what would be her last major interview before her tragically early death from a heart attack at the age of 43 in May 1982. 

Needing to sober up in order to repair her relationship with her 14 year-old son, David (Kalle Schmitz), French-based film star Romy Schneider (Marie Bäumer) has checked into a spa hotel in the Breton resort of Quiberon. She has invited childhood friend Hilde Fritsch (Birgit Minichmayr) to stay with her and they look on with amusement as a testy guest complains to the chef about the quality of the food. A waiter (Stéphane Lalloz) sympathises when Schneider asks for orange juice, as her diet prevents her from eating sugar. But, as they share a bath in Schneider's room, she confides in Hilde that she is willing to endure any hardship to reconnect with David, who would rather be riding in fast cars with his stepfather, Daniel Basini, than hanging around film sets with her.

Hilde is surprised when their chat is interrupted by the arrival of Stern magazine journalist Michael Jürgs (Robert Gwisdek) and his photographer, Robert Lebeck (Charly Hübner). Schneider is keen to do an interview to repair her reputation in the German-speaking world and she has known Lebeck for many years and trusts him. However, she has never met Jürgs before and is discomfited when he deflects her attempts to find out a bit about him by his insistence that they launch straight into the interview on his terms. 

He begins by asking if it bothers her that she has never been able to shake the image of the perfect princess that director Ernst Marischka created in the trilogy of films about the Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1955-57). Schneider is grateful to the Sissi saga for making her name, but she is not that kind of person off screen and Schneider bridles when Jürgs suggests that she is caught between the fans of these lavish, sentimental historical dramas who see her as a saint and those who consider her to be a whore because of her involvement in a series of scandalous romances with the likes of French actor, Alain Delon.

Jürgs also inquires about her relationship with her mother, Magda Schneider, who had been a minor star in Germany in the 1930s and was better known for Adolf Hitler having a crush on her than her acting. He asks if Magda had tried to manipulate her career in order to sample the success that she had been denied. But Schneider insists that she loves her mother and accepts that she made mistakes in trying to do her best. 

She has no easy answer, however, when Jürgs mentions the hanging suicide in 1979 of her first husband, Harry Meyen, and wonders why people failed to take his depression seriously. Schneider insists that this is a difficult illness to fathom and curtails the interview when Jürgs reveals that he was in the underground car park when she was smuggled away by her minders to go to the funeral. However, when Lebeck challenges him about this, after Schneider leaves the room, he admits that that a colleague at Stern had witnessed the scene and told him all about it. 

Keen to get out of the hotel, Schneider heads to a tavern in the town and is allowed in because the innkeeper is flattered to have such a celebrity at a family wedding. Disregarding her regimen, Schneider orders champagne and cheerfully signs autographs for some of the bride's cousins. She also accepts Jürgs's offer to use their interview to set the record straight and give the world an overdue glimpse at the real Romy Schneider. But she only relaxes when a long-haired poet (Denis Lavant) comes to their table and recites borrowed version with such passion that Schneider warms to him. 

She accompanies herself on an accordion, as she sings a sad song and then dances with the poet to Deep Purple's `Hush'. However, as dawn breaks and the innkeeper sleeps with his head on the bar, Hilde persuades Schneider to go back to the hotel, where she prevents her from taking sleeping pills after having had so much alcohol. After only a couple of hours of fitful dozing, Schneider is woken for her shower treatment and an appointment with the doctor, who fails to realises she is hungover after falling off the wagon. She wanders around the complex and joins Lebeck on a walk across the cliffs. He reminisces about their brief affair, but Jürgs gets nowhere in his crafty efforts to coax Hilde into discussing Schneider's childhood. 

When they reassemble in the interview room, Schneider is amused by the formal manner in which Jürgs greets her. But Hilde is dismayed when two bottles of chilled white wine arrive and she tries to persuade her friend from answering any more questions after she blurts out that she is an unhappy woman who just happens to be famous. Furthermore, she is interrogated about having frittered away the earnings from over 50 films and about her relationship with Wolf Albach-Retty, the actor-father who left her mother while she was still young. However, Schneider prefers Hilde to leave the room and she asks Jürgs to continue. Even Lebeck is affronted when the journalist wonders why Schneider has lost control of her life and suggests that it will take more than a sabbatical after her next film to build bridges with her children and find the peace she claims to crave. 

Dismayed by the smug brutality of his companions line of inquiry, Lebeck seeks solace in a bar in town. Hilde packs her case and prepares to leave, only to bump into Schneider in the corridor and take a phone call from David when his mother feels too emotionally overwrought to speak to him. Lebeck returns to sit with the sleeping Schneider when Hilde's taxi arrives. But she is too concerned about her friend to leave and is annoyed when Jürgs comes to her table in the dining-room. She asks if he is rude to everyone or just women and he tells her to stop being so holier than thou because she exploits Schneider as much as anybody else, as being her pal prevents her from being a plain, lonely nobody. 

When Schneider wakes from her nap, she asks Lebeck to hold her and reveals that she is scared of herself, as she has no idea how to reconcile her career and her role as a mother. Lebeck tries to empathise and reassures her that she always looks good on camera, even when she can't bring herself to look at the results. She poses under the covers for him, but keeps feeling pangs of guilt for letting her children down and for allowing herself to keep falling into despair. 

There's no sign of Schneider when Lebeck wakes the next morning and he joins Hilde in searching for her on the beach. Jürgs spots them and points them in the direction of some rocks, where Schneider is looking out to sea. She is in good spirits and leaps around the rocks so Lebeck can take some more photographs. But she breaks her ankle and has to endure a prickly phone call with the producer of her next picture when she rings to ask him to postpone the start of shooting. While Hilde packs her bags, Schneider tells Jürgs that she trusts him to do the right thing with the interview and he warns her that she is likely to face quite a backlash among the Sissi crowd. 

A week later, Lebeck comes to Scheider's apartment in Paris to take some snaps of her with her young daughter, Sarah. She hints that her injury is nowhere near as serious as she has made out because she realises she needs to spend some quality quiet time alone. He shows her the text of Jürgs's interview and she only requests the removal of a line that might upset her mother. Otherwise, she is happy to sign it off, with a handwritten coda that she intends to continue living life to the full.

Closing on a freeze frame that shows how closely cinematographer Thomas W. Kiennast has copied the tone and texture of Robert Lebeck's original monochrome photographs, this is a timely study of the way the global film industry uses and abuses its biggest (and often most vulnerable) female stars. Romy Schneider was very much responsible for several of her own bad choices. But her troubled home life, the pressures placed on her by her mother and her fans, and the French film industry's periodic struggle to find projects worthy of her talent contributed to her addictions and excesses. 

She seemingly had no regrets about failing to make it in Hollywood, but it's interesting that adopted compatriots like Brigitte Bardot, Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve similarly struggled to entice the studio chiefs, while Italian counterparts Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale and Gina Lollobrigida were eagerly sought. But this is less a film about cinema or celebrity than a tribute to a woman who fought an uphill battle with a tenacity and integrity that was rarely repaid in kind by either her employers or her lovers. 

Those familiar with Schneider's films will be mesmerised by Marie Bäumer's performance, which is superior to both Katja Flint's Marlene Dietrich in Joseph Vilsmaier's Marlene (2000) and Heike Makatsch's Hildegard Knef
in Kai Wessel's Hilde (2009). The way in which she switches from wounded introspection to unaffected vivacity is particularly skillful, while Birgit Minichmayr is admirably watchful as the fictional friend trying to protect Schneider from both her inquisitor and herself. Apparently, Schneider did have a companion in Quiberon, but creating a composite makes dramatic sense, especially as Jürgs accuses her of being a ligger who uses their relationship to plug the gaps in her own unfulfilled existence. 

Stalking his prey with a ruthless watchfulness that enables him to pounce when his quarry is least expecting it, Robert Gwisdek trades a touch too heavily on the popular conception of the muck-raking hack, while Charly Hübner is required to be little more than tubbily avuncular. Denis Lavant plays his cameo to the hilt and it's odd to see Vicky Krieps - who was so compelling opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread (2017) - settling for such a minor role as the hotel maid, a role she also played to disquieting effect in Ingo Haeb's The Chambermaid Lynn (2014). Yet, while this is a carefully constructed and indubitably sincere, the insistent strains of Christoph Kaiser and Julian Maas's score suggests that Atef is guiding the audience's response to the action rather than leaving us to come to our own conclusions about media misogyny and who, in this tense encounter some four decades ago, was actually exploiting who.

French director Laurent Cantet has always been at his best when investigating workplace situations. He lost focus when turning to leisure pursuits in Heading South (2005) and Return to Ithaca (2014) and struggled to impose himself on the Joyce Carol Oates story that inspired his sole English-language outing, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (2012). But he returns to the kind of terrain explored in Human Resources (1999), Time Out (2001) and The Class (2008) in The Workshop, which also sees him renew ties with his favourite co-scenarist Robin Campillo, who has now established himself as a fine director in his own right with The Returned (2004), Eastern Boys (2013) and 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017).

Crime novelist Olivia Déjazet (Marina Foïs) arrives in the southern French town of La Ciotat to host a writing workshop for young people. Famed for the railway station that the Lumière brothers filmed to audience-terrorising effect in 1895, the once-thriving shipbuilding centre now survives on the making and maintaining of luxury yachts and Antoine (Matthieu Lucci) and his working-class classmates poke fun at Olivia's Parisian accent, as they walk home from their first session, in which they had contemplated the opening scene of a thriller. 

Although Antoine had contributed to the discussions about how the victim might be murdered and where their body could be found, he is happier playing video games alone in the comfortable home he shares with his mother (Anne-Sophie Fayolle), father (Cédric Martinez) and younger sister (Chiara Fauvel). However, he also looks at army recruitment clips and anti-immigration diatribes by right-wingers like Luc Borel (François Cottrelle). Consequently, he often finds himself in conflict with Malika (Warda Rammach), whose grandfather had come to La Ciotat from Algeria to work in the CNC shipyard that gave the town its character. 

Olivia tries to referee the squabbles while coaxing her students towards thinking for themselves. They can't decide whether to set their story in the past or present and argue over whether the victim should be a yacht-owning toff or a migrant victim of racial prejudice. However, Benjamin (Julien Souve) isn't interested in participating at all, as he only signed up to the course to please the job centre and Olivia agrees to let him stay with the group on condition that he doesn't distract the others when they're supposed to be writing. 

Rinaldi (Pierre Bouvier) gives the class a guided tour of the yard, whose cranes still dominate the skyline. He was a Communist and participated in a decade-long occupation to try and prevent closure. But craft only come for renovation nowaways and Antoine slips away from his party to ask permission to explore below deck on one of the yachts. The others show up soon afterwards and Antoine tries to convince Olivia to agree to setting the story in the present and using the past for flashbacks to a possible motive. He is taken by her composure and quick wit and goes home to watch her being interviewed for a literary programme on television about the way she depicted macho brothers in one of her books. 

Antoine begins to read one of Olivia's thrillers and gets teased by his cousin Teddy (Olivier Thouret) when he defends her while hanging out with their mates. The consensus is also against him during the next session, when he follows Malika's description of the launch of a huge tanker (which is accompanied by old news footage) by reading out a graphic account of a massacre perpetrated by a sacked worker. 

Olivia commends the structure of his piece, but criticises the style for its complacent complicity in the slaughter. Boubacar (Mamadou Doumbia) takes exception to its racist undertones and Benjamin has to separate the pair when they square up to each other. However, Antoine also offends Fadi (Issam Talbi) by mentioning the attack on the Bataclan in November 2015 and Etienne (Florian Beaujean) and Lola (Mélissa Guilbert) wonder whether they shouldn't discuss the impact that radicalisation has had on the mood of the country and the fact that future terrorist atrocities are a certainty. 

Fadil urges Olivia to denounce Antoine's bigotry, but she explains that authors don't always agree with the ideas spouted by their characters and accepts his assurance that his intention was to start the story with a bang not score cheap points, because politics doesn't interest him. When she bumps into Antoine, while swimming off the rocks with her publisher, Boris (Lény Sellam), Olivia tells him that she is always available if he wants to talk, But he scurries away to film her in the water and on her balcony and play back the footage on his phone. That night, Antoine also joins Teddy and his crew to spy on a caravan camp full of migrants and even blacks his faces with mud before having target practice with a pistol. 

At the next session, Antoine and Malika trade insults again over the direction of the story. But Olivia is disturbed by his insistence that the killer should be  driven by idle curiosity rather than rage or hatred. Antoine avers that the Bataclan terrorists were less inspired by ideology than an urge to experience the taking of a life and he reads a passage from Olivia's book to accuse her of creating a murderer who had no passion for his crime. She is happy to take criticism, but she has no intention of being disrespected and asks him to leave. Yet, that night, when she Skypes with Boris about the problems she is having in finishing her latest novel, it's clear that Antoine is precisely the kind of character she is striving to produce. 

Having checked out the social media pages of Antoine and his gang, Olivia visits his home to ask him to tone down his more provocative ideas in class and he insists that he is merely speaking his mind. During the next meeting, he is quieter than usual, as Malika and Fadi suggest that the death could be an accident after laid-off workers kidnap a foreman who is doing well for himself at the marina. So, Olivia seeks Antoine out on the cliffs that afternoon and inquires whether he would be willing to help her with a troublesome character by answering some questions about his lifestyle and beliefs. 

Hesitant about keeping their appointment, Antoine is on his guard when Olivia asks if she can record their conversation. He mumbles inconsequential details about his downtime and is taken aback when she reveals that she has seen him camouflaged and brandishing a gun on Teddy's Facebook page. She wonders why he would have made this and an extract from one of Borel's speeches available to public gaze and Antoine insists he neither knows nor cares. Teddy is his married cousin, who struggles to feed his family with his wages as a mason and repeats his assertion that he has no truck with politics. 

He claims that Olivia is interested in him because he scares her and demands to know if this turns her on. Maintaining a poker face, she assures him she is solely intrigued by his views and behaviour and he accuses her of being a vampire who exploits ordinary people to make herself rich and famous. She denies this and suggests they pause. But Antoine has had enough and storms out and he does so again during an interview with a local news crew, as Olivia extols the therapeutic benefits of writing and how she hopes that her students will be proud of getting their collaboration published. 

That night, Antoine comes to Olivia's house with Teddy's gun. She tries to remain calm, as he appears on the terrace through the darkness and he orders her to drive him to the coast. Ignoring her attempts to engage him in conversation, Antoine escorts Olivia to the clifftop. He explains that he has never been here at night before and tells her she can go, as he fires three shots at the moon before tossing the gun into the Mediterranean. 

A few days later, Antoine turns up at the classroom and asks if he can read something he has written. Boubacar and Fadi don't think he should be given the air time, as he has not taken the exercise seriously. But Olivia nods and he hurries through a character thumbnail about someone who has been driven to distraction by his dead-end town and has feigned friendships to hide his loneliness and show willing at trying to belong. But his boredom and disillusion keep driving him towards killing a random human being to prove to himself that such a senseless crime was possible. He knew the cops would put it down to racism or homophobia. But he would always know he had killed because he could and there was nothing better to do.

Bidding farewell, Antoine leaves Olivia to slump in her chair. As the film ends, Antoine has found a job on a cargo boat and he is shown the ropes by a black sailor. Feeling something close to freedom and relieved to have escaped La Ciotat, he stands in the stern and watches the cranes and wind turbines diminishing in the distance. 

Although the setting invites comparison with Cantet's Palme d'or winner, The Class, this also has much in common with Return to Ithaca, as a small group of people debate a range of moral, political and personal issues with rising levels of tension and disenchantment. There are moments when Cantet and Campillo allow their non-professional debutants to soapbox, as they explore literary theory, recessional economics, the ethics of migration and the daunting dangers of ennui with a touch too much eloquence and assurance. But the exchanges are never dull and Cantet should be commended for eliciting such natural performances from his young leads. 

Matthieu Lucci is particularly impressive, as he struggles to understand the world around him and his role within it. He also achieves a simmering rapport with Marina Foïs, who keeps close guard over the nature of her ongoing project and her own emotions, as she becomes grimly fascinated by a boy whose refusal to play by her rules by excites and intimidates her. However, she seems less engaged with the others in the group, even though Warda Rammach displays a creative spark and a commitment to her hometown that is largely lacking in classmates who exhibit the classic millennial traits that prevent them from emerging as rounded individuals. 

That said, in realising a project that was first conceived in 1999, Cantet and Campillo avoid sweeping generalisations in providing a vivid snapshot of French youth and the attitudes they have inherited (but not necessarily understood) from their elders. The isolating influence of the Internet is deftly exposed and the most striking moments come when kids who are not used to having their opinions challenged have to fight their corners and carry others with them. Thus, while Pierre Milon's seascapes are sublime and Bedis Tir's score creeps under the skin, it's the byplay between the first-time actors that makes this so compelling and disconcerting.

As regular viewers of Talking Pictures will know, Soho was favourite location for the quickie film-makers who had their offices there in the 1950s. First seen and heard in Harry Lachman's Songs of Soho (1930), this compact enclave was home to émigré shopkeepers before the sleaze merchants moved in and transformed Soho's atmosphere and reputation. The change is chronicled in pictures like Frank Chisnell's It Happened in Soho (1948), Val Guest's Murder at the Windmill (1949), Jules Dassin's Night and the City, Cecil H. Williamson's Soho Conspiracy (both 1950), Richard Vernon's Street of Shadows (1953), Vernon Sewell's Soho Incident (1956), Julian Amyes's Miracle in Soho (1957) and Alvin Rakoff's Passport to Shame (1958). 

But, while Soho became synonymous with the vice and violence captured in Arnold L. Miller's London in the Raw (1964) and Primitive London (1965), the arrival of jazz clubs and coffee bars also gave it a bohemian edginess that was readily evident in features like Edmond T. Gréville's Beat Girl, Val Guest's Expresso Bongo (both 1959), Ken Hughes's The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) and Gerry Levy's Where Has Poor Mickey Gone..? (1964). Documentarist Burt Hyams offered a sanitised vision in Sunshine in Soho (1956). But Free Cinema transformed the depiction of British actuality and it's the energy generated by this boldly modish meld of attitude and style that Pablo Behrens recreates with such fidelity and finesse in his chic adaptation of Colin Wilson's 1961 novel, Adrift in Soho, which was written as a riposte to the Beatniks and Angry Young Men who had hijacked contemporary literature. 

It's 1959 and aspiring film-makers Marcus (Angus Howard) and Jo (Emily Seale-Jones) are pounding the streets between St Patrick's Church, Café Italia and Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club to find material for their documentary on Soho. They wear matching black polo necks and pore over the images captured with their 16mm wind-up Bolex cameras, which they turn on each other to extol the virtues of Free Cinema and the nouvelle vague. But, while they spout aphorisms about perfection not being their aim, they are aware enough to know that film stock is expensive and they also make TV commercials to pay the bills.

Provincial writer Harry Preston (Owen Drake) is also facing a cash crisis, as he nurses a drink in the corner of an empty pub while taking a break from striving to find his voice. He gets chatting to American student Doreen Taylor (Caitlin Harris), who attracts the attention of James Compton-Street (Chris Wellington), a louche actor, who sketches her portrait while she waits for her toff boyfriend to escort her to the theatre. Intrigued by this chance encounter, Marcus begins filming and James can't resist playing up to the camera before he warns Harry about catching `Sohoitis', which he describes as a `venereal disease of the spirit'.

Harry delivers a philosophical piece to camera on the theme that is much more to Jo's taste than filming an erotic dancer (Lara Graham) in a seedy club. But he is still something of an innocent abroad and is taken aback when he is accosted in the pub by Robert de Bruyn, aka The Count (William Chubb), who insists on him taking on approval a first edition of Les Chants de Maldoror, which was written in the 1860s by the Uruguayan poet, Isador Lucien Ducasse under the nom de plume, Le Comte de Lautréament. 

As he finds his feet, however, Harry joins Jo in interviewing Ironfoot Jack (Martin Calcroft), a wheeler-dealer with long grey hair and a suitcase full of dodgy merchandise. Jo also records Marty (Olly Warrington) brandishing a hammer and a sickle on the nocturnal streets and bellowing Marxist slogans to put the wind up the bourgeois denizens. He bumps into her again at a Beatnik happening, where a poet (Hayley Considine) recites some doom-laden verses. By contrast, James prefers to spend his time luring Myra (Lauren Harris) into bed on a promise he can introduce her to Dylan Thomas. 

Having no visible means of support, James persuades Harry to enter into an agreement in which they pay each other's bills on consecutive fortnights. He also convinces him to flirt with Doreen, who is impressed that he is writing a book about philosophy. She smokes dope with him and his new friends at a party, where Jo brushes away Marcus's clumsy attempt to kiss him and she severs their partnership, as she would rather film the Aldermaston March with the puppyish Marty than sell her soul by making porno vérité. 

However, Marcus gives Jo some film to record an interview with a Francis Bacon-like artist (William Jessop), while Harry makes the acquaintance of a Jamaican woman (Adei Bundy) who came to Britain on the Empire Windrush and James sleeps with a waitress (Mama Manneh). They also pop pills in a burlesque club, learn about the death of James Dean from the newspaper wrapped around a fish supper and use the rest rooms at the British Museum to have a wash. Harry also finds The Count dead on a bench in a churchyard, as he becomes the latest victim of Sohoitis to be carried away in a black coffin. When he tries to explain his theories on the condition to Doreen in Soho Square, however, he is challenged by Musketeer, Raoul Montauban (Warwick Evans), who is preparing for a duel and only departs when Doreen gives him the marble she keeps in her coat pocket.

But James isn't so fortunate in fighting off his demons. When Myra resists his efforts to atone for his serial infidelities, she repairs to the strip club, where he tries some LSD. Gazing at his distorted face in the washroom mirror, he cuts his handsome mouth with a knife and Marcus and Jo find themselves filming his funeral, as a horse-drawn hearse leaves The Coach and Horses in Old Compton Street. Harry says a few words by way of a eulogy before captions reveal that he left Soho forever with Doreen, while Myra quit the stage to have a family and the other principals followed their filmic and political destinies. 

Loosely based on Colin Wilson's own experiences of living hand-to-mouth in Soho and on his friendship with actor Charles Belchier, who played Titanic bandleader Wallace Hartley in Roy Ward Baker's A Night to Remember (1958), this is a fascinating and beautifully realised evocation of a place, the aspirations it engendered and the realities it wrought. Owen Drake and Chris Wellington make for engaging travelling companions and they are surrounded by such colourful characters that it's easy to excuse the stiffness of some of the support playing. 

Similarly, one can forgive sloppy details like the death of James Dean (which took place in September 1955) being announced in a London newspaper four years later and the poetic licence of allowing a clockwork Bolex to record direct sound when the mechanism would have been too loud. But one can only admire the way the debuting Behrens (who hails from Uruguay) makes such canny references to Free Cinema masterpieces like Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson's Momma Don't Allow (1955), Alain Tanner and Claude Goretta's Nice Time (1957) and March to Aldermaston (1959), which was produced by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Chris Menges and narrated by Richard Burton. 

Given the budgetary restrictions, the audiovisual aspects of the film are hugely creditable. Steven Blundell's production design makes adept use of Soho locations and reclaims the streets from the traffic that now chokes them to a standstill. First-time cinematographer Martin Kobylarz nimbly shifts between aspect ratios, stock styles and monochrome and colour, although he is abetted in achieving such rich hues by grader Steffan Perry from the Framestore company that won an Oscar for Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (2017). The sound design concocted by Max Behrens and Brendan Feeney is equally immersive, while the tone set by Anthony Reynolds's catchy score is reinforced by the smattering of period songs. 

There's no such thing as an entirely original plot and the plot of writer-director Tom Edmunds's debut feature, Dead in a Week (Or Your Money Back), feels awfully similar to that of Aki Kaurismäki's first English-language offering, I Hired a Contract Killer (1990). Jean-Pierre Léaud's desperate bid to find hitman Kenneth Colley after a dramatic change of heart is scarcely representative of the Finn's finest work. But it feels like a masterpiece of noir farce beside this genial, but lightweight stab at black comedy. 

Having already failed to kill himself on numerous occasions, aspiring writer William Morrison (Aneurin Barnard) steels himself in preparation for a plunge from a London bridge. He is interrupted by a shadowy stranger in a trenchcoat and fedora, who proffers his card in case William botches the job. In fact, he lands on a party boat passing under the bridge and survives to be fired from his job as a lifeguard by a boss who has tired of his moping. On discovering he can't gas himself in the oven because  he's been cut off, William contacts Leslie O'Neill (Tom Wilkinson) and they meet in a backstreet café. 

Urbane and punctilious, Leslie is a member of the British Guild of Assassins and has to fill out a form before accepting William's commission. He gives him a glossy brochure depicting possible methods of dispatch, but William only has two grand to spend and Leslie concludes a special deal to shoot him from a distance, as he needs to fulfil his quota because the arrival of ruthless Eastern European means that times are hard for homegrown hitmen. 

Promising to complete the task within or week or return William's money, Leslie avers that it will be a pleasure to kill such a nice young man. He files the paperwork at the office hidden within a nondescript building on an industrial estate and checks out a weapon. However, he winces at seeing the number of kills achieved by Ivan (Velibor Topic), who has been voted Hitman of the Year by the other members of the guild, and shrugs on learning that he has not been invited to a conference at a swish hotel by his demanding boss Harvey (Christopher Eccleston). 

Arriving home to wife Penny (Marion Bailey), Leslie chats to his beloved budgies and sits down to tea on a tray in front of the television. However, Penny is less than amused to learn that her husband has decided not to retire and join her on a round the world cruise, as he still enjoys his job and wants to prove to Harvey that assassination isn't just a young man's trade. That said, he needs two bullets to off his next client and he's still feeling a bit sheepish when Penny shows off her latest piece of embroidery while playing bridge with the vicar.

Despite penning his suicide note, William is keen to get a few things done before he meets his maker and Leslie spies on him as he delivers clothing to a charity shop and gives a football to a kid he often sees having a kickabout in the street. But, just as he is resigning himself to his fate, William gets a call from junior book editor Ellie Adams (Freya Mavor), who is interesting in his manuscript and he has to knock on Leslie's car window to ask if he can postpone killing him until he's had lunch with his potential publisher. 

Instantly smitten with Ellie when he arrives at the outdoor restaurant, William is surprised by her enthusiasm for his book, as he has based it around his attempts to kill himself. She is impressed by the twisted darkness of his imagination. But William is less enamoured of her foul-mouthed boss, Brian Bentley (Nigel Lindsay), who wants to repackage the text as an idiot's guide to suicide. 

He is asking whether William would be willing to commit suicide to coincide with the paperback publication when he is shot in the back of the head by Leslie, who has taken up position with a high-powered rifle in a building overlooking the courtyard. Ignoring William's gesture to desist, Leslie fires off another bullet before beating his retreat, leaving William cowering under the table with Ellie. 

Busy at work on a new book about Leslie and his lonely world, William is surprised when Ellie shows up at his poky bedsit to suggest they meet regularly to work on his suicide project. When he admits that he doesn't have much time because he's hired a hitman, she tells him to call it off. But, when he phones Leslie, he hears his ringtone outside his door and the pair have to flea via the rear exit with the killer popping off bullets behind them. Unfortunately, he hits a traffic warden giving him a ticket and, as William and Ellie escape on her motorbike, Leslie is hooded and bundled into the back of a van by a couple of Harvey's oppos.

Even though Brian was on their hit list, Harvey refuses to credit Leslie with the kill and presents him with a carriage clock to mark his retirement. When Leslie pleads for another chance, the cursing Harvey makes a distasteful reference to Michael J. Fox and his Parkinson's Disease as an example of someone who knew when to quit while they were ahead. But Leslie needs his job to feel alive and storms out of the dimly lit office reeling at the news that Ivan has been handed his assignment. What he doesn't hear, however, is Harvey also asking Ivan to eliminate the rival who has become a liability. 

Meanwhile, Ellie has taken William to the country house she inherited when her parents were killed in a car crash. He sees the scars on her wrists and they agree they are terrible at committing suicide. She asks how his folks died and a flashback shows them being crushed by a falling piano and the young William being frustrated that his father expired before passing on his last words of wisdom. Shrugging, Ellie returns from the kitchen with two carving knives and suggests that they off each other. But the wind up kissing and a neat cross-cut takes us to Leslie and Penny sitting up in bed, while she works on a cushion for an embroidery competition and he flips through his scrapbook and vows to show Harvey he still has the right stuff. 

Next day, Ivan breaks into the house just as Leslie is leaving to find William. He kills the budgies and Penny finds them on returning from her contest. She calls Leslie just as he is about to shoot William and, in picking up, he fails to see Ivan stalking him. As Leslie hits the floor, the Russian orders William to commit suicide with Leslie's gun. But Ellie points out that this makes no sense, as he wouldn't have been able to shoot Leslie and kill himself with the same gun. They swap weapons and William tells Ellie he has finally found someone worth dying for. 

However, Leslie only suffered a flesh wound and he bludgeons Ivan to death with a conveniently placed iron. As he is about to shoot William to reach his quota, Ellie suggests that she could take out a contract on Ivan so that he hits his target that way. Despite quibbling that retrospective commissions are highly irregular, Leslie agrees and they dump the body in the river before going their separate ways. 

That night, Harvey pays Leslie a call and threatens to punish him for killing Ivan. But Leslie produces the contract signed on William's unused suicide note and explains that he paid for the hit with the refund from his own hit. When the pair pull guns on each other under the kitchen table, Penny shuffles in with her prize-winning pillow and convinces Harvey that Leslie is ready to retire and accept his clock with good grace. Each man is grateful to her for defusing the situation and, after Harvey leaves, she admits to being relieved that she didn't have to use the bread knife she had hidden behind the cushion.

As for William, he is happily discussing plans for his next book with Ellie when he sees the lad who took his football run out into the road. Living out his dream death scenario, William pushes the boy to safety and his hit by the speeding van. Ellie rushes to his side and lies on the tarmac beside him, as the onlookers start to applaud and the camera pulls into a towering drone shot, as the ambulance arrives and we are left unsure whether William survives or not. 

Numbering Stephen Fry among its executive producers and with Elbow's Guy Garvey sharing a composing credit with Peter Jobson and Paul Saunderson, this isn't just any first-time feature. Edmunds tackles the theme of depression with a light, but responsible touch that mirrors the unshowy assurance of his direction. Yet this lacks the offbeat grimness that made Kaurismäki's picture such a disarming delight. 

In many ways, it's closer in tone to Matthew Butler's Two Down (2015), which featured a pair of incompetent sibling assassins. But the dialogue has nowhere near as much sour fizz, despite the efforts to spice things up by having both Christopher Eccleston and Nigel Lindsay spout profanities as though they were in a Guy Ritchie movie. 

Channelling his inner John Le Mesurier, Tom Wilkinson lacks the lugubrious coffin lid quality that someone like Alastair Sim might have brought to the role. Similarly, Aneurin Barnard would have been advised to watch the young George Cole in action. Nevertheless, they play off each other well enough, while Freya Mavor and Marion Bailey provide selfless support. Indeed, the latter comes close to stealing the show with her disarming cushion speech and the quiet, amoral pride she takes in her husband's proficiency. The whiff of Ealing is unmistakable, but Edmunds confirms the promise shown in the shorts Prada & Prejudice (2007), Is This a Joke? (2012) and 2 Birds and a Winch (2014) and it will be interesting to see what he does next.

Having made a decent impression with his feature bow, Frank & Lola (2016), Matthew Ross succumbs to second filmitis with Siberia, an old-fashioned fish out of water thriller that might have been made in the 1970s with Elliott Gould in the lead because Robert Redford and Warren Beatty were gainfully employed elsewhere. Keanu Reeves turns up the impervious impassivity to 11. But, while Ross makes the most of the kind of backwater burg glimpsed last week in Vitaly Mansky's documentary, Putin's Witnesses, Scott B. Smith's scenario struggles to hold the attention after its opening twists and has long parted company with credibility before the climactic shootout. 

Arriving in St Petersburg to find his contact, Pyotr (Boris Gulyarin), has gone missing, American diamond trader Lucas Hill (Keanu Reeves) cuts a deal to sell a consignment of blue diamonds to Russian thug Boris Volkov (Pasha D. Lynchnikoff) before flying to the Eastern Siberian town  of Mirny to rendezvous with Pyotr in a small hotel. No sooner has he stepped into the lobby, however, than he receives a call from South African shark, Vincent (James Gracie), who is keen to gazump Volkov and acquire the rare gems for himself. 

Needing a drink, Lucas braves the cold to go to a nearby café, where Ivan (Dmitry Chepovetsky) asks a pair of lugs to keep an eye on his waitress sister, Katya (Ana Ularu), so that the Yank doesn't try to take advantage of her. They get a bit boisterous and leave Lucas in a heap after he tries to intervene and Katya gives him a couch for the night. However, as Ivan is convinced that she has already slept with the stranger, she makes a deal with Lucas to introduce him to Pyotr's miner brother, Andrei (Vlad Stokanic) if he agrees to bed her on their return. 

Andrei informs Lucas that Pyotr left almost as soon as he arrived because he is being trailed by a gangster who knows about the stones. However, Andrei reveals that the gems his brother has sourced are fakes of exceptional quality and that they stand to make a killing if the deal goes ahead. Realising he's been lured into a trap and is powerless to do anything until he finds Pyotr, Lucas Skypes wife Gabby (Molly Ringwald) and returns to the bar, where Ivan and his brother, Leo (Taran Vitt), warn him off Katya and invite him to join them on a bear hunt. He impresses them when he puts a suffering wolf out of his misery and he feels guilty about sleeping with Katya, as not only is he married, but she is also promised to Anton (Cory Chetyrbok), who seems a decent bloke. 

Returning to St Petersburg, Lucas finds the sample diamond hidden inside a blue candle in Pyotr's room. As he had given Katya an identical candle from his hotel room, he asks her to bring it to him and promises to send a private plane. He also arranges meetings with both Vincent and Volkov and loads the gun that Pyotr had hidden in his suitcase. The former tells him to leave Russia because major malfeasants are watching his every move and Katya is also disappointed that he is involved in something so shady. However, she is more concerned that he still has feelings for Gabby, despite their living separate lives, and she asks him to make love to her as though she were his wife. 

Annoyed at being left in the room while Lucas visits Volkov, Katya finds the address on a notepad and joins the party. She has to pay a high price for her line of cocaine, however, as Volkov insists on oral pleasuring to seal his pact of brotherhood with a nauseated Lucas, who realises he has no option but to comply with the demand. Managing to calm Katya when they leave at dawn, he is unable to protect her when FSB agent Polozin (Eugene Lipinski) offers to return her safely to Mirny in return for Lucas convincing Volkov that the worthless diamonds Pyotr passed on to the big league crook so that he can recoup his cash. 

Unaware that Lucas can speak Russian, Polozin and his deputy joke in the car that he will be a dead man once Volkov discovers the deception and Gabby and Katya will also the ultimate price for his folly. Persuading Volkov not to use a spectrometer to examine the stones because they are brothers, Lucas receives payment and emerges from the lair unscathed. However, he receives a message that Pyotr has returned to Mirny and he asks Vincent to make Volkov a $60 million bid for the blue diamonds so that he can fly east and find out what's going on. 

Asking Ivan for a favour, he finds Pyotr's frozen body in an outhouse beside a dacha in a snowy forest. His arm is blackened from puncture marks and Lucas asks Ivan to take his sister to safety and the Russian leaves him his rifle so he can defend himself. Holing up inside the cabin, having lied to Katya that he will make her French toast in the morning, he activates the GPS in his phone so that Volkov's snarling sidekick Pavel (Rafael Petardi) can find him. Lucas kills a few of his goons before Pavel shoots him in the back and he dies with an image of making love with Katya flashing through his mind before the camera lingers on his cold, lifeless eye. 

Grinding to a halt for prolonged periods while Keanu Reeves and Ana Ularu give each other smouldering looks before jumping each other's bones, this so desperately wants to be a complex, sophisticated exposé of Russian criminality, along the lines of Michael Apted's Gorky Park (1983). But it proves as bogus as one its Macguffin diamonds, as the screenplay is so sketchy and strewn with ciphers that it singularly fails to make us care a jot what happens to Reeves or his cardboard cut-out lover. 

It doesn't always pay to spoon-feed the viewer, but we learn precisely nothing about Reeves's background or business operation  and, as a consequence, it's a big ask to accept him as a stubbled, sharp-suited troubleshooter along the lines of such charismatic B movie rogues as The Lone Wolf, The Falcon or The Saint or such archetypal Keanu characters as John Wick. Similarly, we're supposed to deduce the depth of Reeves's adulterous guilt on the strength of two brief scenes with Molly Ringwald and a passionate fling that struggles to generate any sparks because Ularu is presented as an ice queen and Reeves is being Keanu.

Eric Koretz's photography is suitably imposing, while Jean-André Carrière's production design draws effective contrasts between the eastern backwater and the Window on the West. But Ross struggles to convey any authentic atmosphere, as he settles for clichés and stereotypes that will play into the preconceptions of his American audience. He also misjudges the tonal shifts and deserves nothing but censure for the grotesquely misogynist and utterly redundant fellatio sequence. But, while Ross emerges with little credit, Scott B. Smith seems to have fallen a long way off the pace since he wrote Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan (1998).

Following on from Mike Todd's Shankly: Nature's Fire and Stewart Suggs's Kenny (both 2017), Sam Blair's Make Us Dream completes a trilogy of fine documentaries about Liverpool Football Club legends, as it presents an unexpectedly frank insight into the life and mind of Steven Gerrard. Indeed, such are the revelations about the psychological pressure and physical strain that fans foisted upon their No.8 and captain that many will find it difficult to watch this considered survey without feeling the odd pang of guilt at having placed such a burden on the shoulders of a hometown boy who had the courage, commitment and sense of communal duty to give everything and more for the cause he shared with his fellow Koppites. 

In a measured voiceover, Steven Gerrard explains that football isn't just about playing a game. While living the dream of every Red Scouser, he has enjoyed ecstatic highs and endured cruel lows. But dealing with those twin impostors is as much a part of being an elite footballer as having the skill to get supporters out of their seats and Gerrard has had to learn this lesson on his journey from Huyton to Los Angeles via Anfield. 

Convinced he was born to represent his people, Gerrard knew about the bond between Liverpool and its fan base from being a die-hard supporter growing up on the Bluebell Estate, with his parents, Paul Gerrard and Julie Byrne. Paul recalls him making his mark with Whiston Juniors by scoring 12 in a 27-0 win and catching the eye of Liverpool scouts around the age of eight. As we see home movie footage of mazy dribbles and audacious finishes, Gerrard admits that he didn't have a clue how good he could be. He simply loved playing and picking up trophies with his mates. 

Gerrard was only nine when 96 fans lost their lives at Hillsborough and he was hit particularly hard, as cousin Jon-Paul Gilhooley was among them. But the tragedy also impacted upon the club, as manager Kenny Dalglish resigned in February 1991 in order to escape the pressure cooker and deal with his frayed emotions. Working in the changed environment of the Premier League, his successors found it impossible to bridge the gap between a Manchester United revitalised by Alex Ferguson and a Chelsea being bankrolled to unprecedented levels by Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich. Thus, by the time Gerrard made his debut against Blackburn Rovers in November 1998, almost a decade had passed since Liverpool had last been champions. 

Youth coach Hugh McAuley remembers being impressed by Gerrard's competitive instincts and the midfielder concedes that he used to enjoy nailing the biggest opponent early in a match to let him know he was around. But there was also a vision and finesse to Gerrard's game that enabled him to forge an understanding with forward Michael Owen and make the transition to the first team, alongside fellow Scouser, Jamie Carragher, where he quickly had to learn the consequences of his actions after he was sent off in the Merseyside derby in September 1999 for a late tackle on Kevin Campbell. 

Three months later, he scored his first goal in a red shirt with a fine solo run at the Anfield Road End against Sheffield Wednesday. Also around this period, he signed with agent Struan Marshall, who would become an important figure behind the scenes as his fame and value grew. In May, 2001, Gerrard and Owen proved pivotal as Liverpool avenged losing the 1988-89 title to Arsenal by winning the FA Cup in Cardiff. A few days later, the club beat Alavés to lift the UEFA Cup, with Gerrard scoring the second goal. In voiceover, he reflects on having the power to make so many people happy and admits that he sometimes needed to see a game on television to believe it was all really happening to him. 

Gerrard topped off the season by winning the PFA Young Player award and managed Gérard Houllier looked on with doting pride, as fans hoped they had unearthed the star who could guide them to the title. Sociologist John Williams notes, however, that Gerrard's rise coincided with the arrival of Abramovich and new manager José Mourinho, who had no qualms about working for a boss who could solve problems by throwing money at them. Indeed, the Portuguese made no secret of his admiration for Gerrard and only the arrival of Rafael Benitez at Anfield persuaded him to turn down a £20 million offer in the summer of 2004-05. 

Unfortunately, a Gerrard own goal helped Chelsea win the 2005 League Cup Final. But, having rescued their tilt with an inspired result at Anfield against Olympiacos, Liverpool wrought their revenge in the Champions League semi-final and went on to take the trophy on penalties in Istanbul after a fabled second-half comeback having trailed AC Milan 0-3 at the break. Yet, while this would prove to be the high-water mark of Gerrard's Anfield career, his chilly relationship with the manager and a breakdown in contract talks convinced him that he should accept Chelsea's improved offer. 

At this point, even though some Liverpudlians had started burning his shirt as rumours circulated that he had agreed to leave, Paul Gerrard asked his son if he could live with walking out on people who idolised him as one of their own. Consequently, Gerrard agreed a new deal that effectively condemned him to missing out on the domestic honours he so craved with a Liverpool side that couldn't compete on a technical or a financial level with Chelsea, United or Arsenal. Looking back, he reveals that the strain of essentially carrying a mediocre team was taking its toll, especially when he had to put up with the taunts of serial winners when he joined up with the England squad. 

This aspect of Gerrard's career is glossed over and, surprisingly, only a passing mention is made of the 2005-06 FA Cup semi against Chelsea and the Wembley final, when he scored a 35-yard equaliser against West Ham. Moreover, nothing is said about losing the 2006-07 Champions League final against Milan or the 2008-09 near miss, when Liverpool finished runners-up in spite of only losing two games all campaign and winning 1-4 at Old Trafford. 

Yet, just as Michael Owen had left for Real Madrid in 2004, so star striker Fernando Torres decamped to Chelsea and Gerrard began to realise that he would never win the Premiership, especially when new owners George Gillett and Tom Hicks were making such a calamitous mess of running the club. Once again, he had to deal with the disappointment of fans who lashed out in their frustration, unaware that he had often been playing through injury and that only his wife, Alex Curran, knew how much physical and psychological pain he had endured to do his job - and allow the supporters to keep dreaming. 

A prolonged layoff was necessitated by a serious groin injury that threatened to end his playing career and he sought the help of a therapist to help him face the prospect that the end might be nigh. But Gerrard wasn't finished yet and the signing of Luis Suárez sparked a remarkable 2013-14 campaign (under an unmentioned Brendan Rodgers) that seemed to turn in Liverpool's favour after a famous victory at Anfield against the new financial superpower of English football, Manchester City. However, during the crucial home game against Chelsea, Gerrard (who had been given an epidural in his back to allow him to play) slipped shortly before half-time and was unable to prevent Demba Ba putting the visitors 0-1 in front. A late second burst the bubble and a 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace sent the title to the Etihad and left Gerrard blaming himself for robbing the fans of the cherished championship.

After 710 appearances. Gerrard bowed out in a 1-3 home defeat against the same opposition on 16 May 2015. He had already announced that he would be joining LA Galaxy and his final season became something of a farewell tour. After just one season in the MLS, however, Gerrard retired from playing and took up coaching the Liverpool Under-18 team. Given that he left for Glasgow Rangers on 4 May, a closing caption might have noted that Gerrard had finally put himself before the club in seeking to manage in a major league against the man who had left him out at the Bernabeu in his final Champions League campaign. But this is a minor quibble with a documentary that gets inside the head of a sporting titan and allows him to reveal his very human vulnerability.

Considering what a private man he is (as anyone who watched the 2012 Being Liverpool series will know), Gerrard deserves enormous credit for his honesty. He may not appear on camera and is reticent to speak about anyone other than himself. Thus, while we learn little about his opinion of the occupants of the Anfield Boot or Board rooms during his time at the club, he fronts up with regard to personal issues and it's hard to hear him bearing his soul without drawing the conclusion that the greatest misfortunate of his career is the fact he never got to play for Jürgen Klopp, who would have given him the consoling arm around the shoulder that neither Benitez nor Rodgers could ever provide. 

Edited with pace and precision by Sam Blair and Ben Stark, this is very much a partial and an unfinished story. The predictably selective approach means that incidents like the 2008 clash in a Southport bar is omitted, while it might have been instructive to compare Gerrard's views of playing for his club and his country. There is also no journalistic or punditistic input and nothing is heard from the club hierarchy. But Blair is primarily concerned with allowing a quiet man to have his say. 

It would surprise no one if Gerrard eventually occupied the Anfield hot seat. But Liverpool are forever punching above their weight in the era of silly money and much will depend on the depth of the pockets of whoever succeeds John W. Henry and Fenway. Whatever happens and whoever holds the reins, however, Koppites will keep dreaming and remain forever grateful to their inspirational skipper for putting his body on the line in their name.

Documentarists often work in pairs, but the union of Peter Mettler and Emma Davie on Becoming Animal is particularly intriguing. The Swiss-Canadian Mettler has displayed an intuitive intelligence in such eclectic outings as Picture of Light (1994), Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands (2009) and The End of Time (2012), By contrast, Davie's teaming with Morag McKinnon on I Am Breathing (2013) had an intimacy and discretion that leaves one wondering how they shared their duties in collaborating on this cine-essay with cultural ecologist, David Abram. 

Venturing into the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, the trio come across a masticating elk, who rises lazily to urinate. As darkness falls, they hear an elk bugling in the distance and Abram notes how human music-making is rooted in the sounds of nature. Over a static close-up of a snail emerging from its shell, he also claims that humanity shares evolutionary muscles and movements with other creatures and, consequently, they are aware of us as we are of them. As he touches a tree, Abram avers that he can feel the bark sampling the chemistry of his skin. 

Mettler also experiences a connection between himself and the forest landscape he is recording with his camera and he wonders how film-making can reflect this bond. He includes himself and his colleagues in the shots and allows us to hear his breathing and footsteps on the soundtrack in a bid to place himself within the conjunction of forces he wishes to share with the flora and fauna around him and with the audience. By seeing and being seen by the world, Mettler understands the anthropological concept of `animism' and he claims over shots of mountain peaks and leaves rustling in the breeze that everything is not only alive, but also expressive.

Focusing on a fast-flowing stream, Abram notes the similarity between the words we use to describe running water and the noises it makes and concludes that our language belongs as much to the landscape as to those who speak it. He further compares human writing with the calligraphy of a river with the slash burns made by lightning into a tree trunk. As we see petroglyphic images of animals in wood and rock, Abram suggests that our urge to read derives from our ancestors discerning meaning from the tracks left by other creatures. He also reveals how hieroglyphic and ideographic symbols hail from the eloquence of the landscape, while alphabets are mirrors rather than windows looking out on to the natural world. 

Written language made humans more aware of linear time and that society is progressing towards its destiny. As a consequence, people focused more on themselves and less on plants and animals and Mettler uses figures silhouetted against the steam rising from hot springs to evoke an evolutionary mood, as we rise from the slime to stride boldly upright into the distance. But Abram believes we are obsessed with recording the minutiae of daily life because we instinctively sense an imminent catastrophe and are preserving facets of our existence for future generations. 

Following a sequence of lingering shots of the terrain and some noble beasts, the trio hit the road so that Abram can posit that, as they grow older, people start to look like their cars. He turns more serious, however, as he surveys a rugged valley and laments the fact that Silicon Valley is seeking ways to immortalise humans on hard drives at the very moment the environment is fragmenting and reducing the chances of their being a posterity to address. He finds it ironic that the gadgets that are supposed to help us communicate and give us a better understanding of our environs have an alienating effects that is driving a wedge between us and other life forms. 

Cutting from an undergrowth perspective to a bird's eye view of the forest, Mettler shows Abram standing with his arms outstretched, as though he was flying on terra firma. Filming the twinkling lights of a city from an aeroplane, Davie rather obviously reminds us that birds taught us the secrets of flight and that aircraft now threaten the very eco-system to which they owe their existence. 

Back on the ground, a series of exquisite shots of light playing on water is followed by shots of windswept trees, as we learn of the ancient affinity between the mind and the atmosphere and the fact that the mind is not a human property, but a property of the biosphere. Closing images show two elks locking antlers and a pair of ravens clashing beaks before a caption reads: `We are only human in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.'

While Abram's aphorism sums up what we have just seen, it scarcely feels like a seismic revelation and this sense of grandiosity permeates the entire exercise. Despite the earnest nature of the ruminations, they often feel more pompous than profound. Moreover, they tend to ramble rather than construct a tangible hypothesis. Thus, while this is frequently mesmerising on a visual level, it strains for intellectual significance. 

It's also something of a locational hotchpotch, as the scene shifts from Grand Teton National Park and the Legend Rock State Historic Site in Wyoming to McGregor Bay, Ontario and the Lake District and Wald in Switzerland without giving any indication of where we are. In the grand scheme, geographical specificity is irrelevant. But, in retrospect, the unlabelled switches have a dislocatory effect that further distances the audience from the film-makers and their intentions. 

According to the credits, Mettler shot the footage, which he co-edited with Davie, and recorded and mixed the sound in conjunction with Jacques Kieffer. But every effort is made with the awkward self-reflexive snippets to present this as a team project that stands apart from the kind of nature and wildlife documentaries presided over by the likes of David Attenborough. Yet, while it's often perceptive, this self-consciously deconstructive picture also feels frustratingly superficial and the intriguing ideas it raises rather get lost in its smugness.