Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 6/12/2018)

Opening with an image of an upwardly pointing finger, the initial remarks warn about the silence of Bécassine, a Breton peasant cartoon character who featured in a series of books from 1913 by artist Joseph Pinchon and the writer Caumery (aka Maurice Languereau). Over footage of a pair of hands manipulating a strip of celluloid, Jean-Luc Godard opines in a gravelly voice that man's true condition is to think with his hands. However, only a portion of his remarks are translated in the subtitles and those without an acute aural understanding of French are placed at a distinct disadvantage.

A flurry of captions and clips follows, as a section entitled `1. Remakes' opens with a mushroom cloud billowing into the air, as Godard warns that the world has lulled itself into believing that nuclear war is a threat of the past. Extracts from Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and FW Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) follow, as Godard uses an exchange between Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden from Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) to suggest that we ask our politicians to lie to us and then believe every word they say. A meandering melody played on a mournful piano recalls the sounds extemporised by The Beatles on the 1968 White Album track, `Revolution No.9', as Godard strings together images from old films including his own Les Carabiniers (1963) to suggest how today's terrorists put a cinematic flourish on the atrocities they post on their social media sites. 

Having sprung the slogan `Rim(a)kes' upon us in the middle of snippets from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante (1934), Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (1944) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), Godard leads us into `2. St Petersburg's Evenings'. Over clips from what is presumably Sergei Bondarchuk's Oscar-winning adaptation of War and Peace (1966), Godard cites Joseph De Maistre's contention that Heaven can only be appeased by innocents shedding blood for the guilty. Following a glimpse of Rosa Luxemburg's gravestone, he subjects us to a bombardment of bellicose images that are more terrifying than anything in a horror movie, as Godard reminds us of the violent nature of existence and our folly in believing that victory in war is ever achievable or conclusive. 

Tinkering with aspect ratios and frequently cutting to black or removing all sounds, Godard distorts the visuals by heightening or bleaching any colours, as he seeks to disorientate and manipulate. Entering `3. Those flowers between rails, in the confused wind of travels', he reads the opening lines of Fedor Dostoevsky's The Idiot while coupling extracts from such trainbound films as Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express (1948), George Cukor's Bhowani Junction (1956), Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman's The General (1926), Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932) and Clarence Brown's Anna Karenina (1935). Each clips pits individuals against the throng and implies that we are being transported towards our destiny with no idea of what our final destination will be like. However, fleeting images of box cars and swastikas serve as a reminder of the part trains played in the Holocaust. 

Moving into `4. Spirit of Laws', Godard quotes Artur Rimbaud, while a caption flashes up that terrorism should be considered one of the fine arts. He denounces the governments of Europe and the people who elect them for turning a blind eye to poverty and prejudice, as well as the migration crisis and human trafficking. He shows Henry Fonda being enthralled by a legal textbook in John Ford's Young Mr Lincoln (1939) and wonders when law ceased to matter. Yet the same sequence also includes a snippet of Fonda behind bars in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1957) and we hear a French voice intone, `there is something wrong with the law', while a caption proclaims that `society is based upon a shared murder'. As Ingrid Bergman burns at the stake in Victor Fleming's Joan of Arc (1948) and Michel Bouquet go to the block in Guy Lessertisseur's Le Procès de Charles 1er (1963), Godard berates the continent for lacking the necessary virtues to pull itself out of its tailspin and links clips from Leo McCarey's Duck Soup (1933), Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du Soir (1942) and Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la bête (1946) to hint at some of the forces at work in a situation that continues to veer between the sublime, the ridiculous and the petrifying.

Taking its title from a 1971 experimental film by Michael Snow, `5. La Région Centrale' allows Godard to muse upon the Arab World and celebrate its achievements while castigating the West for its prejudicial misunderstanding of its culture and beliefs. Having contrasted the fate of those at opposite ends of the wealth ladder in making a passing allusion to the factors contributing to climate change and the depletion of our natural resources, Godard reflects on `Joyful Arabia', `The Lost Paradises' and `Those Flowers Lost in the Wind' in protesting at the West's ignorance of the Arab bloc. He also muses on the calm that exists when recreating an act of violence on screen and considers how a composer uses melody and counterpoint. 

As the images tumble in on each other, Godard assumes the mantle of Scheherazade to relate a tale about Sheikh Ben Kadem and his younger cousin Samantar in the fictional emirate of Dofa, which is of no interest to the world's superpowers because it has no oil. However, the Gulf Liberation Force seeks to win hearts and minds by distributing leaflets full of revolutionary slogans that no longer have any meaning. He notes how reliant Christianity, Judaism and Islam are on books of rules and compares their methods with the direct activism of the rebels and states unequivocably that he will always be on the side of the bombs. 

Declaring the men currently in power across the world `bloody morons' for wanting to be kings rather than Faust, Godard continues the story after the toppling of Ben Kadem, as Samantar meets Tarek, who feigns being mad because it gives him complete freedom of movement. He also uses children to carry out his terrorist attacks on such capitalist bastions as banks and import-export exchanges because no one would ever suspect them. Godard asserts that chatting with a lunatic is a rare privilege and Bécassine pops up again, as a female voice opines that we are never quite sad or desperate enough to demand change. Worse still, no one is listening any more. 

As the credits roll, Godard name drops Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in discussing authenticity and the need for a revolution. He splutters as he hopes that his generation holds tight to its dreams and that they are taken up by those that follow. But, in ending on the optimistic sight of the swirling dance hall sequence from Max Ophüls's Le Plaisir (1951), he turns down the sound. The rest, as an indecisive Dane once said, is silence. 

One hopes this won't be the last we hear from Jean-Luc Godard, even though his utterances are becoming increasingly gnomic and even the best-read intellectuals are struggling to spot all of the allusions in his work. But, after a second viewing, The Image Book begins to seem more accessible on a thematic and a stylistic level. Despite being made in collaboration with Swiss film-maker Fabrice Aragno, former production manager Jean-Paul Battagia and theorist Nicole Brenez, this has Godard's fingerprints all over it, which is fitting considering the recurring images of hands and one telling shot of a spool of celluloid being unwound and almost caressed by someone who appreciates the tactility of cinema. 

Echoes of Chris Marker and his own monumental Histoire(s) du cinéma (1998) reverberate around the five chapters, as Godard strives to be scholarly, poetic, provocative and mischievous in putting his head above the parapet to survey a world he barely recognises and appears to despise. However, he isn't quite prepared to give up on hopeless humanity just yet and plunders art, literature, cinema, television, social media and reportage to superimpose his own meaning on to the densely packed images and provide us with pointers of how to get ourselves out of this mess before it's too late. Following them is a challenge, but it's one well worth undertaking, even if you only pick up a fraction of what this enduring enfant terrible is trying to impart.

At one point, Godard avers that `Nothing is as handy as a text.' In the hope that a checklist is the next best thing, here is a rundown of the (majority of the) films he cites: Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien andalou (1929), Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), Arthur Penn's The Miracle Worker (1962), Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945), Paisà (1946), Germany Year Zero (1947), The Flowers of St Francis (1950) and The Messiah (1975), Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu (2014), Georges Franju's Le Sang des bêtes (1949), Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer's People on Sunday (1929). Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down (2001), Mario Imperol's Blue Jeans (1975), Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975), Frank Borzage's The River (1929), King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1952), Boris Barnet's By the Bluest of Seas (1936), Isabelle Clarke's 8 Mai 1945 (2005), Jocelyne Saab's Les Enfants de la Guerre (1976), Joseph Vilsmaier's Stalingrad (1993), André Malraux's L'Espoir (1940), Jean-Pierre Melville's La Silence de la Mer (1949), Youssef Chahine's Central Station, Djamila (both 1958), Silence, We're Rolling (2006) and Le Chaos (2007), Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) and Metropolis (1926), Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1950) and Testament d'Orphée (1959), Arthur Aristakisjan's Paumes de la mendicité (1993), Hassan Benjelloun's Les Oubliés de l'histoire (2010), Mikhail Chiuarelli's The Fall of Berlin (1945), Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927), Jean Renoir's La Nuit de carrefour (1932) and La Règle du Jeu (1939), Julien Duvivier's Here's Berlin (1932) and La Bandera (1935), Alekseï Outchitel's L'Affrontement (2010), Theo Angelopoulos's Landscape in the Mist (1988), Roy William Neill's Terror By Night (1946), Ingmar Bergman's The Silence (1963), Victor Turin's Turksib (1929), Marlen Khutsiev's The Two Fedors (1959), William Wellman's Wild Boys of the Road (1933), Jacques Perconte's After the Fire (2010), Peter Watkins's La Commune (2000), Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954), Henri Calef's Les Chouans (1947), Roy Battersby's Mister Love (1988), Sergei Paradjanov's The Colour of Pomegranates (1969), Luis Buñuel's Las Hurdes (1933) and Los Olvidados (1950), Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), Harold Medford's Marilyn (1963), Andrei Konchalovsky's The First Teacher (1965), Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), Sergei Eisenstein's ¡Que viva México! (1932) and Alexander Nevsky (1938), Ossama Mohammed and Wiam Simav Bedirxan's Silvered Water, Syria Self-Portrait (2014), Louis Feuillade's Fantômas (1913) and Judex (1916), Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003), Jack Conway's Viva Villa (1934), Stellio Lorenzi's La Terreur et la vertu (1964), Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai (1947), Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Philippe De Broca's Les 1001 Nuits (1990), Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Boris Rytsarev's Aladdin and His Magic Lamp (1967), Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades (1935), Sidney J. Furie's Going Back (2001), Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo (1991), Artavazd Peleshian's Nous (1969), Roger Leenhardt's The Last Vacation (1947), Nacer Khemir's The Dove's Lost Necklace (1991), Moufida Tlatli's The Silences of the Palace (1994) and The Season of Men (2000), Gavin Hood's Rendition (2007), Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), Bernard Borderie's Poison Ivy (1953), Faouzi Bensaïdi's A Thousand Months (2003), Safia Benhaim's La Fièvre (2015), Asgar Farhadi's About Elly (2009), Clive Donner's The Thief of Bagdad (1978), Michael Bay's 13 Hours (2016), Merzak Allouche's The Rooftops (2013), and Francis Alÿs's Reel/Unreel (2011).

The odd identification might be inaccurate, as the credits don't date or attribute the references. However, the Godard titles sampled are unquestionably King Lear (1987), Le Petit Soldat (1960), Vrai faux passeports (2006), Hélas pour moi (1993), The Kids Play Russian (1993),  JLG JLG (1994), Notre Musique (2004), Liberty and Homeland (2002), Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company (1986), 2 x 50 Years of Cinema (1995), For Ever Mozart (1996), Tout va bien (1972), Week-End (1967), Vladimir and Rosa (1971), Détéctive (1985), Film Socialisme (2010) and Ici et Ailleurs (1974).

Very much a companion piece to The Image Book, Gürcan Keltek's Meteorlar is showing at The ICA in London. Taking its title from the Leonids, a meteor shower that is usually visible across Turkey in mid-November, this is a cine-essay designed to show how the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps its darker deeds out of the media spotlight. Drawing comparisons with Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light (2010) and The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda), a 2016 experimental documentary produced by the Dutch collective, Metahaven, this makes for demanding viewing. But the striking monochrome imagery proves disconcertingly mesmerising. 

In the first section, entitled `Hunters', the focus falls on a group of men stalking some bezoar ibex in the mountains. The clouds scud across the sky and the wind whistles in the microphone, as masks are used to approximate the gunsight coverage the hunters have of the unsuspecting animals feeding on the slopes. With their curled horns, the ibex look magnificent and the knowledge that one or more will be shot creates a terrible suspense before a shot finally rings out and sends the creatures scurrying for safety. One is bagged, however, and a closer view of its corpse gives way to a long shot of vehicles speeding along an exposed road and the dust they create is match cut with plumes of smoke hovering over a town.  

Returning to the remote highway, a vehicle disappears into an explosion caused by either a mine or a drone missile. A series of detonations follows in hill country surveyed by a shaky camera capturing grainy grey footage of atrocities that still cause a shudder, even though their impact can only be guessed because the lens is too distant to reveal the brutal truth. Figures can be seen clambering over rocks to find cover, as novelist narrator Ebru Ojen Sahin reads from a brief account of the attack that is chilling in its simplicity.

Cutting away from extreme close-ups of Ojen's face to a gaggle of children clapping and singing around a bonfire, `They Come At Night' reveals what seem to be Kurds chanting around and leaping through a bonfire before masked men come down from the hills carrying lighted torches. These are carried into a built-up neighbourhood and women and children join the procession, which culminates in a firework display. However, this is clearly an act of defiance and the sparks flying through the darkness are obliterated by explosions caused by the police trucks that regain control of the streets. 

The sound of triumphant ululating and the banging of tin cans is replaced by the boom of ordnance, as the sky is streaked by bullet and missile trails. Ojen murmurs that such sights are not conducive to the creation of literature, cinema and art, as they are too real. People die and the rooms in which they once dwelt are now filled by their absence. As she presses her face against the window and looks out into the night, she resembles Maya Deren in the famous shot from Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

As flames and smoke rise from a building in a town in South-East Turkey `The Lost Tapes of Ebru Ojen' begins with the author claiming that she had felt compelled to write down her favourite words, as the police and protesters battled for control of the streets, in case she could not remember them when the violence stopped. A cat scurries across a street, as the sounds of bombs and bullets echo around and the cameras of those recording to events as testimony for a potentially disbelieving world pick up the damage to property in the hope that viewers will recognise that there is also a human cost to the carnage. 

Ojen interviews children caught up in the fighting. Some giggle nervously in discussing death and destruction, while others sound notes of defiance. One serious-faced boy wishes that things could go back to normal and a woman who has lost an 18 year-old son and her grandchild feels pity for the bereaved on both sides. As the kids play in the street with armoured cars in the background, Ojen captures the shattered fronts of shops and houses, while one lad complains that the police went around the neighbourhood breaking down doors. Images of pockmarked masonry is intercut with futile efforts to make repairs to homes and businesses, as people try to restore some normalcy. But, with soldiers besieging communities and the power, phone and Internet all down, everyone feels cut off and scared. But also angry, determined and united. 

The scene shifts to the countryside for `Disintegration', as a vast crowd beats a retreat. Youth rush at a perimeter fence to kick it down, as screaming can be heard above the sound of firing. In the town, tear gas is fired into the civilians milling around on the streets, unsure where to go or how to resist the relentless bombardment of the security forces. From behind barricades and burning cars, kids chuck stones or return smoking canisters from whence they came. Others fire catapults at the heavily armed troops in an unfair fight. 

When morning comes, Ojen looks out across the desolation and reports that this is the second month of martial law and that around 300 people are rumoured to have been killed. Entire estates have been eradicated and she thinks of gouged eyes when she sees to many gaps in the rows of houses. The camera follows Ojen, as she picks her way through the rubble. An old woman tells her they have been cursed, another suggests they have been punished for waking the Turkish devil. Birds flit between bare branches and a black cat sits impassively on a step, as though it can't believe what it is seeing. 

The penultimate chapter, `Meteors', begins with a shot of the moon filling the frame. Screams can be heard, but they are coming from a fairground, as the thrill of the rides replaces the terror of the bombs. But, on 17 November, Ojen reports that meteors competed with the shells to illuminate the night sky and we see an array of spectacular shots tracking the particles that have broken off from the comet, 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. For a moment, the conflict ceased and friend and foe alike looked to the skies. 

As rocks showered the area, locals went hunting for souvenirs in the streets and fields. However, when rumours spread that a scientist has declared the space stones to be valuable, the gathering comes to be taken more seriously, as young and old scour the undergrowth for treasure. But Ojen has had enough of seeing the places she recalls with such affection being blitzed out of existence. She declares during the final chapter, `Mount Nemrut', that she feels the time has come to flee because she is an animal and needs to migrate with the seasons. However, as we return to the mountains, we see two ibex locking horns on a narrow pathway and two snakes intertwined in a titanic battle. Even the natural world has forgotten how to coexist in harmony. No wonder, therefore, that the film opens and closes of shots of a crescent moon looking down on a planet that seems to have taken leave of its senses.

Devoid of any contextualising or identifying captions, this is very much an impressionistic snapshot of the suffering being endured by Turkey's Kurdish population. However, Keltek taps into the spirit of resistance and makes powerful use of composed images and the reportage of citizen journalists to fashion a pseudo-story around Ojen and the passages she reads from her novel, The Vaccine. This isn't made clear in the film itself, however. Consequently, the audience finds itself being lulled into a blur of fact and fiction that patchworks together into a contumacious mosaic that stands like the temple ruins in the final sequence as a statement of what cannot be unremembered and an indictment of the tactics of the Ankara regime that the rest of the world can judge for itself now that the genie is out of the bottle. 

Costume comedy is such a tricky proposition that film-makers have generally given it a wide berth. Bob Hope had fun as a tailor's apprentice posing as a great lover in Norman Z. McLeod's Casanova's Big Night (1954), but there's a fine line between anachronistic tomfoolery and postmodern smugness, as Sofia Coppola while making Marie Antoinette (2006). The French have a decent track record when it comes to historical capers, with Christian-Jacque's Fanfan la Tulipe (1952), Philippe de Broca's Cartouche (1962) and Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Swashbuckler (1971) all cutting a slapstick dash. But, despite the best efforts of a willing cast, Laurent Tirard Return of the Hero always seems to be straining to match its forebears when it actually comes closer to Matthew Butler-Hart's Miss in Her Teens (2014), which was based on a 1747 play by David Garrick and also turns around a soldier returning from active service to discover that the world he left behind has changed considerably in his absence. 

No sooner has Capitaine Charles-Grégoire Neuville (Jean Dujardin) donned his scarlet Hussar finery to propose to Pauline Beaugrand (Noémie Merlant) than he is called away to fight the Austrians. It's 1809 and, with Napoleon Bonaparte's hegemony over Europe being challenged, Pauline's parents (Christian Bujeau and Evelyne Buyle) understand Neuville's failure to keep his promise to write every day. But, with her sister suffering from pneumonia after stalking off in the rain after months of silence, Elisabeth (Mélanie Laurent) decides to take matters into her own hands and forges a billet doux from the front that restores Pauline's spirits.

When Pauline insists on writing back, however, Elisabeth is dragged into a correspondence that compels her to invent a secret mission to Pondicherry in India, as she knows that Neuville is a bounder who has left her sibling high and dry. She consults an encyclopaedia to give her missives a ring of authenticity, but she sometimes gets carried away and gossips in the nearby town of Bourgogne marvel at Neuville's daring deeds and his speculations in a tobacco plantation and an elephant farm. Eventually, however, Elisabeth decides to cut her losses and concocts a farewell from a besieged fortress, in which Neuville urges Pauline to forget him and move on with her life. 

Taking him at his word, Pauline marries neighbour Nicolas Bonvallet (Christophe Montenez) and starts a family. In 1812, however, a dishevelled and heavily bearded Neuville returns to Bourgogne and Elisabeth spots him mooching around the market after he disembarks from a stagecoach. He knocks her to the ground on being ejected from the inn and confesses that he is a deserter who has fallen on hard times. But, when he declares his intention to call on Pauline (whose name he can't remember), Elisabeth tells him about the letters and shows him the monument that the townsfolk erected in his memory. However, any hopes she might have had that she had seen the last of Neuville when he departs on the coach are soon dashed when he makes a return in the garb of a country gentleman. 

Graciously wishing Pauline and Nicolas every happiness, Neuville accepts an invitation to lunch and feigns amnesia to explain his reluctance to discuss his wartime exploits. When Madame Beaugrand asks about his escape from the fort surrounded by 2000 rampaging Englishmen, however, he embellishes details provided by Elisabeth to bluff his way through a far-fetched account that culminates in the 11th-hour arrival of the cavalry. Despite Elisabeth mocking the novelettish nature of his anecdote, everyone else at table is enthralled and bursts into spontaneous applause at his derring-do and modesty.

Indeed, Neuville is acclaimed as a hero throughout the town and he is presented with an award in front of a fawning crowd. Moreover, the wealthy Denoyer (Laurent Bateau) offers Neuville the use of his chateau in return for allowing him to invest 50,000 francs in his Indian diamond mine. But Loiseau (Jean-Michel Lahmi) hears of the deal and persuades Neuville to sell him some shares of his own. Such is the esteem in which Neuville is held that he is made guest of honour at a grand ball and Pauline even suggests that she would be willing to fulfil the erotic promises made in the letters that Elisabeth had confiscated before they could be posted. When she catches Neuville heading towards an upstairs room with a bottle of champagne, she guesses his intention and scoffs at his delusion that he is the most desirable man in Bourgogne. 

Sneaking into the woods to keep his assignation with Pauline, Neuville is surprised by the sordid nature of her desires when she drags him into the barn. He is relieved, therefore, when Elisabeth bangs at the door and takes the opportunity to slip away without having to subject Pauline to corporal punishment while describing his encounters with toothless women of the night. But Elisabeth is determined to expose Neuville as a cowardly rogue and she slips one of Pauline's unposted missives into Neuville's jacket, which she allows Nicolas to discover. Appalled by the contents of the note, he challenges Neuville to a duel as he is re-enacting another of his heroic rearguards for Pauline, her mother and their female friends. 

Unable to find a way of avoiding the showdown, Neuville spends an age selecting his pistol and is mightily relieved when Pauline rushes into the dawn glade to plead with him to spare her spouse. When Nicolas orders her out of the firing line, Pauline reminds him of the fact that he has shown no interest in her honour when she was being ogled by others. Indeed, she makes such a scene that Neuville has to take Nicolas to one side and suggest that he slaps his wife's face in order to reassert his masculinity. As Elisabeth watches from behind a tree, she is amused by the way in which Neuville again turns the shortcomings of others to his own advantage. But she has misgivings when she is kept awake by Pauline and Nicolas's loud and energetic love-making, complete with her gasped requests for him to claw her like a tiger. 

The revelation that her parents intend to invest in Neuville's non-existent mine proves too much for Elisabeth, however, and she orders him to dissuade them or risk her exposing his entire charade. But he calls her bluff by asking the Beaugrands for her hand in marriage and they readily offer their congratulations, even though Elisabeth's father has to ask her to leave the room after she throws a tantrum denouncing Neuvillle as a charlatan. Indeed, he even gives Neuville the chance to renege on his promise when Elisabeth invites campaign veteran Général Mortier-Duplessis (Féodor Atkine) to lunch and attempts to upstage him when she realises that she has brought him face to face with a man who has the power to court martial him as a deserter. 

Touched by Elisabeth's efforts to deflect the conversation away from the Battle of Aspern-Essling by accepting his proposal and summoning musicians so that the guests can dance, Neuville becomes serious, as he describes how Napoleon's bid to cross the Danube ended in slaughter. Yet, when he concludes that he had fled in terror after seeing his comrades ripped apart, the general merely roars with laughter at his humility before dashing off to deal with some Cossacks who have reportedly been seen in the area. 

Feeling guilty for landing him in such a situation, Elisabeth takes Neuville's hand beneath a shady tree in the garden and apologises. They kiss, but she doesn't feel any passion and inquires whether he would settle for them being partners in a pyramid scheme built around the diamond mine. Reluctantly, he agrees to a 51-49% split (as it is 1812 and not the Dark Ages). But they are disturbed by news that a Cossack band has strayed on to the estate and is lined up to attack. 

Everyone has faith that Neuville will be able to organise a successful defence of the chateau after his exploits at Pondicherry. But he makes for the stables as soon as he has armed the family and servants with muskets and is only shamed into standing and fighting by Elisabeth's dismay at his shameless pusillanimity. As she gazes from the window of a barricaded bedroom, however, she fears for his life, as Neuville walks steadfastly towards the charging Cossacks. He kills one with a sure shot, but seems doomed to die before Mortier-Duplessis unleashes his cannon and the intruders flee in panic. 

A wayward cannonball bursts close to Neuville and Elisabeth fights back the tears. But he rises through the clearing smoke and brushes himself down, as though nothing untoward had happened. Realisng he is her hero after all, Elisabeth consents to matrimony. As they enjoy their first dance, however, a messenger arrives with orders for Neuville to report to Leipzig and the guests gather to wave him off. But, as the escort turns left at the gates, Neuville gallops off in the opposite direction and Elisabeth is delighted that her husband has more sense than bravado. 

Representing a massive improvement on Tirard's last collaboration with Jean Dujardin on the height disparity romcom, Up for Love (2016), this confirms the impression given with Molière (2007) and the René Goscinny-inspired trio of Petit Nicolas (2009), Astérix and Obélix: God Save Britannia (2012)  and Nicholas on Holiday (2014) that Tirard seems more at home in the past than the present. Writing with Grégoire Vigneron, he parodies the same social mores that inspired contemporary English writers like Jane Austen. But the satire is nowhere near as astute, while the plot needs a couple of extraneous prods to restore its flagging momentum in the third act. 

Nevertheless, this is consistently amusing, with set-pieces like Neuville's elaborate examination of the duelling pistols and Elisabeth's petulant post-proposal outburst being the comic high points. The ever-dependable Dujardin also conveys the pitiless horror of Napoleonic combat with tone-shifting poignancy during the luncheon sequence. But much of the bluster is as blatant as the slapstick and it's only the excellence of the ensemble that prevents this lapsing into clumsy lampoon. 

Tirard's direction is steadily apposite, although it occasionally twinkles like Mathieu Lamboley's catchy score. But, beside Dujardin and Laurent's spirited byplay, the picture's greatest strength lies in its production values, with the photography of Guillaume Schiffman (who teamed with Dujardin on his Oscar-winning turn in The Artist, 2011) showing off the magnificent interiors scouted by designer Françoise Dupertuis and Pierre-Jean Larroque's elegant costumes to excellent effect.

Since graduating from the Lodz Film School with one of the most admired shorts in its long history, Malgorzata Szumowska has been steadily positioning herself as Poland's most significant woman director after the peerless Agnieszka Holland. Following her debut feature, Happy Man (2000), with Stranger (2004), in which a woman develops a relationship with her unborn child, Szumowska has contrasted the corporeal and spiritual well-being of her compatriots with the state of a nation that has failed to exploit the benefits of capitalism and democracy after five decades of Communism. She hasn't always succeeded in satirising with subtlety in pictures like 33 Scenes From Life (2008), Elles (2011), In the Name Of (2013) and Body (2015). But Szumowska has consistently proved herself to be a fearless critic of her homeland and she once again exposes its hypocrisy, venality and myopia in her latest offering, Mug. 

In a small town near the Polish border with Germany, a department store attracts extra custom by having a pre-Christmas `underwear stampede' that requires the shoppers to compete for their bargains in a state of undress. Jacek Kalisztan (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz) and manages to get hold of a widescreen television and takes it by ferry to the island farm where he lives with his paternal grandfather (Tadeusz Mikiewicz), widowed mother (Anna Tomaszewska), older brother (Dariusz Chojnacki) and sister Iwona (Agnieszka Podsiadlik), and their respective spouses (Martyna Krzysztofik and Robert Talarczyk). They tease Jacek about leaving to make a fresh start in London, but he is in no hurry to go anywhere, as he has a decent job working on the construction of a gigantic statue of Jesus Christ and is dating Dagmara (Malgorzata Gorol), who likes his long hair and beard, his denim and tattoos, and the deadpan sense of being a rebel outsider that he plays to the hilt as he zooms along empty roads blasting Metallica's `Hardwired' from his car stereo. 

They dance, gallop on horseback and hurl insults on their neighbours from the sanctuary of the woods. But Jacek and Dagmara are trapped in a lakeside dead end and his sister urges him during the Christmas festivities to escape while he can and make a fresh start for himself. Instead, he toils with a bunch of migrants who don't speak Polish on the statue that the parish priest (Roman Gancarczyk) boasts will be bigger than Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. Over a few drinks, he laughs at the mildly racist jokes cracked by his luggish brother-in-law and enjoys playing fetch with his dog, Gypsy. Moreover, he is overjoyed when he proposes to Dagmara on the bridge spanning the lake and she accepts. 

Shortly afterwards, however, while on some scaffolding inside the base of statue, Jacek falls backwards and is fortunate to survive. He is visited in hospital by his family and the priest, who tells him that God has spared him for an important purpose. But Jacek has undergone Poland's first total facial transplant and nothing is ever going to be the same again. When he first catches sight of his new self in the window of his high-rise room, he dims the light to negate the reflection. However, he puts on a show of bravura at a press conference, even though he can barely speak, and experiments with new hairstyles when looking at himself in the bathroom mirror after arriving home. 

His family can't quite bring themselves to look him in the eye, however, and Dagmara becomes increasingly conspicuous by her absence. The local drunks take him as they find him when trying to cadge money, while the congregation crowds around him for photographs after mass. As the state refuses to pay for the pioneering treatment, the priest organises a special collection and Jacek feels embarrassed as his neighbours look over at him as they make their donations. But Dagmara's mother (Iwona Bielska) orders him to stop pestering her and he is crushed to see her kissing someone through the car window when she returns home late at night. 

Denied compensation because he is deemed capable of working part-time (even though he is almost blind in one eye and can't risk catching an infection), Jacek agrees to promote a skin care cream and Iwona goes to see Dagmara to ask if she still loves her fiancé now that he's a model. But her husband is frustrated by the fact his wife is devoting her time to her brother and the priest is sympathetic during confession when he admits to watching porn. He even excuses him calling Jacek `Mug' and Iwona herself struggles to put on a brave face when she is interviewed for a television news report about Jacek's progress. 

The confessional becomes increasingly busy, as Jacek's mother comes to ask if the priest can perform an exorcism, as she believes her son has been possessed by an evil spirit who looks at her in a menacing and indecent way. Dagmara also shows up to inquire whether it's a sin to stop loving someone and she is curious to know what the priest wants to know details about what she gets up to with her new boyfriend. As for Jacek, he is distressed to see a picture of him beaming with Dagmara in the window of the photography studio and is hurt when he tries to cover her up when she starts dancing topless in the local bar and some of his former friends jostle him to prevent him from interfering. 

The parishioners stop donating towards Jacek's medication. So, when a cleric and a nun come to perform the exorcism, he toys with them by pretending to be under the influence of a raging demon. Yet, while he mocks them when they try to film the ritual (as he had earlier bared his bottom to the compensation panel), he attends the first communion picnic and imagines Dagmara abandoning her new beau to return to him because (in her eyes) he looks the same as before. However, the truth is very different and Jacek gets so drunk that he has to be helped home by his brother and Iwona's husband. 

Meanwhile, the archbishop has come to inspect the statue and is furious that it is facing the wrong way. He informs the priest that he will turn a blind eye to his bungling and his use of Muslim labour if he puts things right. But he is in no mood to listen when his underling tries to explain that the Roma aren't followers of Islam. While a solution is being found, Jacek's beloved grandfather dies. As Gypsy curiously disappears from the story, he alone has accepted Jacek for who he is and he is so disgusted by the graveside fight that breaks out between his sibling and his brother-in-law over the ownership of the old man's field that he takes the bus one morning and leaves. As he looks out of the window, he sees the statue with the crowned head turned to look over its right shoulder, as though he can no longer bear to look at those who have driven the sadder and wiser Jacek away. 

A closing caption reveals that Christ the King monument at Swiebodzin took five years to build at a cost of $1.5 million, which was raised by the 21,000 residents of the town. Standing at 108ft, it's the biggest structure of its kind in the world and Szumowska wittily uses it to bring about the anti-miracle at the heart of her adult fairytale. However, she pushes her luck slightly by having Jacek nicknamed `Jesus' by the local winos because of his long hair and beard. Moreover, the sequence in which the priest presses Dagmara to give him some juicy details about her sex life feels like a cheap dig after having already laid into the Roman Catholic Church in In the Name Of. 

Indeed, much of the social satire feels a little forced, as the country folk betray their insular prejudices and backward hypocrisy. One joke even manages to be racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic. But Szumowska and co-scenarist Michal Englert (who also doubles as cinematographer) keep an undercurrent of bleak humour bubbling throughout proceedings that often move as slowly as the ferry crossing the placid lake. They also achieve a mischievous sense of storybook otherworldliness by shooting with a shallow field of focus and blurring the frame periphery in a manner that recalls Feng Xiaogang's use of an oval mask in I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016). 

Of course, Szumowska is similarly seeking to expose the narrow horizons and blinkered perspectives of the townsfolk, who appear no more sophisticated than the villagers in a Frankenstein movie. But she somewhat stymies herself by reducing them to mere ciphers rather. Even Jacek's family members are sketchily drawn, with only Iwona being afforded a name. She is played with a dour sense dutiful pity by Agnieszka Podsiadlik, which contrasts with Malgorzata Gorol's display of selfish hedonism as the stupified Dagmara. Robert Talarczyk and Roman Gancarczyk are drolly effective as the blunt brother-in-law and the jobsworthy priest. But the standout performance comes from the director's husband, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, who is touchingly vulnerable beneath Waldemar Pokromski's outstanding make-up, which almost makes it seem as though another actor has been cast as the post-accident Jacek.

CinemaItaliaUK returns this week with the first feature directed by Emanuele Scaringi. After 13 years making shorts, he teams with graphic novelist Zerocalcare for The Armadillo Prophecy, an offbeat slacker story set in the Roman suburb of Rebibbia that was co-scripted by Oscar Glioti, Pietro Martinelli and the prolific actor Valerio Mastandrea.

Zero (Simone Liberati) is a graphic artist who lives in a cramped apartment in the outlying district of Rebibbia, which is primarily known for its prison. Working late to a tight deadline, he continues a lively dialogue with an imaginary armadillo (voiced by Valerio Aprea), who keeps urging him to do something more interesting than scribble. However, when he gets a blank e-mail from his French friend, Camille, Zero is thrown into a panic that she might be coming to stay. But a follow-up message from her father reveals that Camille has died and Zero calls his mother (Laura Morante) to break the shattering news. 

When not drawing comic strips or designing posters for punk bands, Zero dons a suit to time how long people linger on  the concourse at the airport. He also teaches French to Blanka (Samuele Biscossi), a precocious kid from a smarter part of the city, who enters into a discussion about the difference between what is wrong and right but illegal when Zero tells him to download Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine (1995) so he can learn about banelieu life.

In addition to Armadillo, Zero also hangs out with his childhood buddy, Secco (Pietro Castellitto), who fritters away his days building up a tolerance to pepper spray. Zero tells him about Camille and wonders if Greta (Diana Del Bufalo) remembers the pact they made years before. Riding the train between jobs, Zero has flashbacks to when he and Camille were kids (Valerio Ardovino and Sofia Staderini) and, over lunch with his mother, they wonder how her father (Vincent Candela) is coping with his loss. However, Zero quickly loses patience with his mother, as she refuses to learn how to use her new laptop and keeps managing to crash it while doing the simplest task. 

Before she had returned to Toulouse, Camille and Zero had been inseparable (much to the annoyance of Armadillo, who was always locked out of the room when they were together). But, when she paid return visits, she seemed burdened and, even when she tried to teach Zero to dance, she appeared to be trying to escape the dark thoughts that plagued her. In many ways, Blanka is just as confused, as he takes things so literally that struggles to appreciate metaphors. However, he makes Zero feel old when he points out that he shares gestures and expressions with his father and he is still fulminating on this observation when he accompanies Secco to the commune where Greta is reportedly living. 

They meet an old hippy named Boar (Gianluca Gobbi), who has seemingly been dating her. But he confuses her with somebody who died in Rajasthan two decades earlier and Zero loses his temper when Boar tries to sell him back a jumper that he had loaned to Greta the last time they met. In fact, he had shoplifted the sweater and deposits it in a charity recycling dumpster at the first opportunity and Secco is bemused by how wound up he gets. 

Italian tennis legend Adriano Panatta picks up on Zero's stress when he takes part in a survey at the airport. Waiving the fact that Zero hasn't got a clue who he is, Panatta tells him to stop focusing on power serves and savour the pleasure of deft volleys that leave the racket with a `pouff'. But he is soon being swept away again, when Secco borrows a scooter from Boar and they ride across Rome to attend a party thrown by some people who might know Greta. Secco gets teased by some trendy girls who mock him for bringing his own water bottle, while Zero is cold shouldered by another girl who finds his views on zombies to be infantile. 

Harking back to the night they had camped in tents on a rooftop to say goodbye to Camille, Zero realises that he had missed an opportunity to share his feelings. But he is quickly back in the real world, as his contract is cancelled at the airport and he is branded `a fink' by one of the air hostesses (Marianna Di Martino) after he had reported that she kept chatting on her phone while taking tickets at the flight gate. Armadillo has little sympathy with him, as he was too naive to realise that he has been snooping for the management rather than collecting useful data. 

Zero lands a job at a graphics studio and is nervous that he has bluffed his way through the interview and will soon be rumbled. He thinks back to the time he and Camille had been caught riding a tram without a ticket. She had accompanied him on a visit to the Japanese Cultural Institute and she had been grateful to have a friend in Rome. When his mother comes to clean his flat, Zero tells her that Camille's father has organised a memorial service in Toulouse. But he isn't sure he wants to go and is taken aback, when they finally track down Greta, and she merely suggests that they send a floral arrangement. 

While they chat, Secco gets involved in a conversation about poverty with Greta's insufferably shallow friends and he is singularly unimpressed. On the way home, Secco takes Zero to watch a female member of a street-cleaning team (Kasia Smutniak) and swoons when she swirls her hosepipe in the air. However, when her supervisor spots them on an overlooking staircase, he orders them to get lost and Secco is crushed when his crush starts hurling stones to drive him away. 

Back home, Armadillo explains his prophecy, which suggests that every optimistic prediction based on subjective and irrational elements that is passed off as objective and logical is destined to fuel disappointment, frustration and regret. As if to bear this out, Zero learns from Blanka's mother (Claudia Pandolfi) that he has discovered a religious vocation and has gone to live in a monastery. Feeling low, he wanders to the building where Camille had once lived and recalls the party at which they had first met and he had watched her dance to the kind of boppy pop music he had detested. 

However, he plays it in his old bedroom when he asks his mother to give his hair a trim so that he looks neat at the funeral. He accuses her of giving him a bald spot and she suggests that he is feeling fractious because of Camille's death and the prospect of his new job. But he also feels guilty for confusing Blanka into his vocation and gets into an argument with some graffiti artists when they condemn him and Secco for destroying the environment because they have been complaining about the fact the train to Toulouse stops at so many stations.

During the journey, Zero recalls listening to music on shared headphones with Camille. They arrive at the ceremony, which is taking place outdoors in the middle of a rundown part of town. Camille's father thanks Zero and Secco for coming and the former feels compelling to say a few words after playing his friend's favourite song. He laments that people have become like Pavlov's dogs and wonders how they would react if they heard the sound of bongos rather than bells. But there is no automatic reaction to someone dying so young from anorexia and he admits that he doesn't know what to do.

Waking up on a bench back in Rebibbia, Zero is surprised to see Armadillo standing over him. He has brought his portfolio and he uses this to beat the creature when he tells him to confront the fact that Camille only liked him as a friend and had the hots for Secco. They walk slowly to the office building and Armadillo gives Zero a farewell hug, as he urges him not to let himself by swallowed up by the system. 

As he wanders inside, Zero thinks back to the day he had sworn an oath with Secco, Greta and Camille on the site where a woolly mammoth has supposedly been unearthed. They had all uttered the words and made a leap of faith off a ledge. But Camille had remained seated and the camera fixes on her nervous smile, as the film ends with an animated sequence from Zero's comic strip, which seems to be about him and Secco being beaten up by the cops at the G8 protest in Genoa. 

This closing reference epitomises the specificity that will baffle those unfamiliar with the bewildering array of throwaway cultural references stuffed into this unrelenting picture. However, such is the deteminedly modish approach taken by Emanuele Scaringi in capturing the rebel with a cause tone of Zerocalcare's source material that this is likely to appeal primarily to twentysomethings attuned to the justifiable grievances felt by the millennial generation that has known nothing other than recession and retrogression. 

Simone Liberati makes a suitably conflicted anti-hero and he banters breezily with Pietro Castellitto (who is the son of actor Sergio Castellitto and writer-actress Margaret Mazzantini) and the ever-wonderful Laura Morante. It's a shame she has so little to do, however, as her relationship with Liberati mirrors that between Samuele Biscossi and Claudia Pandolfi and it might have been useful to have seen how Morante interacted with the teenage Valerio Ardovino. However, his scenes with Sofia Staderini have an innocent sweetness that leaves one wondering how closely they had kept in touch after she had returned to France. 

Such gaps in the backstory prove frustrating, as does the fact that so many scenes are stand-alone set-pieces featuring ciphers who enable the scripting quartet to make a socio-political point that feels detached from the rest of the action. It also hardly helps that Armadillo feels more like a whopping contrivance than a genuine guide into Zero's psyche. We never learn when or why Zero felt the need to invent him and who, if anyone, knows of his existence. Moreover, while his cynicism allows Zero to fathom his feelings, he is so clumsily presented in a cheap and unconvincing costume that he is more irritating than insightful. By contrast, Gherardo Gossi's photography, Mauro Vanzati's production design and Roberto Di Tanna's editing are slickly proficient.

It's been a productive year for director John McPhail. Not only did he finally see his debut feature, Where Do We Go From Here?, secure a UK theatrical release after sitting on a shelf for three years, but he has also followed it with the zombie musical, Anna and the Apocalypse. Imagine George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) meeting Bill Forsyth's Gregory's Girl (1980) and you get some idea of what to expect. But McPhail and writers Alan McDonald and Ryan McHenry aren't simply content to recycle gags from Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004), as they've gone all High School Musical and tossed in a bunch of catchy songs by Roddy Hart and Tommy Reilly. 

As `Christmas Means Nothing Without You' plays on the car radio, Anna (Ella Hunt) curses best friend John (Malcolm Cumming) for letting slip to her dad, Tony (Mark Benton), that she is planing to take a gap year and travel. Switching off an announcement about the re-categorisation of a pandemic that's been sweeping the country, Anna pouts in the backseat and wishes her mother hadn't died when Tony tries to express his concern. Shuffling into school, she sees American classmate Steph (Sarah Swire) also having a rotten morning, as her parents are travelling in Mexico and won't be home in time for Christmas. 

Between the three teenagers, they express their frustrations in `Break Away', a bouncy song about self-assertion that could have been a quartet, as Chris (Christopher Leveaux) is also having problems making a showreel that will help him further his ambition to make movies, as Miss Wright (Kirsty Strain) wants him to make something serious not just another Hollywood horror rip-off. Chris is besotted with Lisa (Marli Siu), who is the star of the school Christmas show, which is being produced by the martinet Mr Savage (Paul Kaye), who is set to be promoted after the holidays and has plans to make the students dance to his tune. 

Irritated by the bullying Nick (Ben Wiggins) flirting with Anna in the dining hall (after he had dumped her after luring her into bed), John wonders why things never work out for nice guys like him in `Hollywood Ending', which is taken up by Anna (and even mumbled along with by Arthur Savage, as he loiters in an adjoining corridor), as she wishes she didn't have a soft spot for Nick and didn't have to put up with Chris and Lisa draping themselves over each other at every opportunity. She also finds it hard to connect with Steph, a lesbian with a habit of speaking before she thinks. Thus, when Anna is insufficiently sympathetic about Steph's parents putting themselves first, she thoughtlessly claims Anna is lucky for not having to put up with a ghastly mother. 

Stalking off to work at the local tenpin bowling alley, Anna completely fails to notice somebody looking decidedly worse for wear shuffling on to the campus. However, he makes his presence felt during the show that evening by thumping on the fire door. Already dismayed by a couple of penguins bopping to `The Fish Wrap' and outraged by Lisa relishing every Yuletide double entendre in the saucy `It's That Time of Year', Savage is in no mood to put up with troublemakers. Leaving Tony (who is the school caretaker) in the lighting booth, Savage snaps open the doors. But, as we see blood smears on the outside walls, we cut back to the stage to see Lisa take her bow and notice that Chris hasn't got back from a filming assignment with Steph to see her perform. 

Walking home from work, Anna and John make snow angels in the children's playground on the estate. She misses the fact she used to do this with her dad and John reassures her that he will come round to the idea of her travelling. He also promises to join her on a trek across the Outback and Anna goes to bed convinced that things will work out for the best. Despite oversleeping, she is still in a good mood the next morning and sets off for school with her headphones in, as she belts out `Turning My Life Around'. John duets on his own walk. But they are so preoccupied with the music and the optimistic sentiments of the lyrics that they fail to notice that their neighbours are fighting a losing battle against the living dead. Cars crash, bodies plummet from rooftops and women swing their handbags in self-defence, as Anna and John cavort around the graveyard without a care in the world. 

That is, until a zombie in a snowman costume collapses in front of them in the playground and Anna has to knocks his ravening block off with the seesaw. The severed head continues to growl on the tarmac, as Anna and John check their phones for information about what's going on. Having seen the Christmas tree in flames outside the town hall, they decide to take refuge in the bowling alley, where they find Chris and Steph, who have been holed up there all night after being chased by the undead while making their video clip. Sitting in the ball pit, Chris and John speculate about whether Robert Downey, Jr., Ryan Gosling and Taylor Swift have succumbed to what the news online is calling an apocalypse. But the girls find themselves being confronted by the zombified cleaning lady, Mrs Hinzmann (Janet Lawson), and Steph has to crush her head under a toilet seat.

A quartet of red-hoodied jocks burst through the wall and they find novel ways using bowling balls, skittles, mops and kitchen utensils to fend them off before dispatching them. Chris declares that this isn't fun any more and the same feeling pertains at the school, where Savage has barricaded everyone inside and is making their lives a rulebook misery. As explosions ring out across the town, the power goes down and Lisa becomes concerned for Chris's elderly grandmother, Bea (Ruth McGhie). Savage insists that only the strong can survive and Lisa chimes in with `Human Voice', which Chris sings out of frustration at losing his phone signal at the bowling alley. Cutting between the two locations, the five kids and Tony express their regrets that they didn't get round to making their emotions clear.

Having slept in the ball pool, Anna, John, Chris and Steph make their escape from the bowling alley by using the inflatable as a shield. However, they attract the attention of some undead pensioners, one of whom has a sit down on Steph's head. She is busy relieving herself when she is dispatched by Nick, who is having a whale of a time and has just been looting with his mates. Glad to see him, even though they all agree he's a buffoon, they look on as Nick uses a baseball bat to bludgeon a shamble of zombies while posturing to the macho lyrics of `Soldier At War'. 

Meanwhile, back at the school, the dancing penguins have joined the flesh-eaters in the playground and the survivors are becoming bored with Savage trying to impose his petty rules. While he sulks in a corner, Anna's party makes its way through the deserted shopping precinct. She reminds John that they are besties and nothing more when he starts getting sentimental and Nick accuses him of being a wuss, as they decide to take a shortcut through a warehouse selling Christmas trees. Chris drops the phone with which he has been recording the drama and they have to drag him away when Nick's three chums are turned by critters lurking behind the conifers. But there is no time to mourn, as they have to reach the school to see if anyone is still alive. 

As they walk through the mall, John lists the names of Santa's reindeer after spending days trying to remember them. However, as he extends his arms with a triumphant flourish, he is bitten on the hand. Realising he's done for, he protects Anna so that she can escape with Nick, Chris and Steph before being overpowered by the horde. Heartbroken at losing her confidante, Anna uses a red-and-white swirl cane to smite the zombies in her path, while Steph defends herself with a mannequin limb. 

Arriving at the school, however, they are appalled to see that Savage appears to be the only human left, as he barricades himself behind a protective shutter. He smarms his way through `Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now', as he takes pride in the fact that he stayed true to his principal's principles and has no pity for those who ignored him and succumbed. While Nick and Anna go in search of Tony, Steph goes to check on her car and Chris finds Lisa looking after his grandmother, who has died peacefully in a storeroom. 

They keep watch while Steph creeps across the staffroom to reach Savage's office to find her confiscated car keys. She discovers some useful items in the contraband box under his desk and emerges to see that Chris has plugged his phone into the television set and is holding the zombies at bay with his footage of their adventures. However, the battery dies and the spell is broken and both he and Lisa are bitten. He waves Steph goodbye, as he kisses and hugs his girlfriend and she is touched by their undying devotion. 

Meanwhile, Nick tells Anna that they make a good team and she chides him for enticing her into sharing family stuff before they had slept together. But he shows a vulnerable side by revealing that he had killed his soldier dad on his orders after he had been bitten and that he has been trying to hold it together ever since. When a stumble of slavering monsters lurch into the school kitchen, Nick braces himself to handle them on his own while Anna tracks down her father. 

However, he has been taken captive on the hall stage by Savage, who encourages his star pupil to `Give Them a Show' in order to secure Tony's freedom. She thrashes at all-comers with the candy cane and makes it to the stage to release her dad from the rope of fairy lights and tinsel binding him. Leaping up, Tony aims a punch at Savage and they struggle. As Anna looks on helplessly, Savage falls off the stage and is cackles like a demented crowd surfer as he is borne away by the mob. 

During the tussle, however, Tony is bitten on the leg and he entrusts Anna to Nick when he rushes out of the wings. Telling his daughter how proud he is of her, Tony duets with her on `I Will Believe', as he slips out of consciousness and Anna feels the snow falling on her face before Steph zooms up in her car to whisk her and Nick to safety. As they drive out of Little Haven, Steph asks the other two what they plan to do now and, as the vehicle heads towards the horizon, a zombie Santa drops from the sky and bellows into the lens. 

Ryan Joseph Burns croons `What A Time To Be Alive' over the closing credits, which poignantly dedicate the film to co-scenarist Ryan McHenry, who died from bone cancer in 2015 at the tragically early age of 27 before he could direct this expansion of his 2011 short, Zombie Musical. John McPhail steps into the breach with considerable aplomb, as he dots the action with generic grace notes, as well as a fond nod to Gregory's Girl with the gag involving the penguins wandering around the school. But this isn't all coy homages, as the action is often grimly macabre, as body parts go flying amidst the zombie carnage, most notably during the brilliantly staged `Turning My Life Around' set-piece. They still win the day, however, although it's something of a pyrrhic victory, as their supply of snacks has been seriously depleted. 

McDonald and McHenry's screenplay follows predictable lines and the pace starts to flag shortly after the outliers leave the bowling alley. The quality of the songs also begins to vary, as they become increasingly introspective. But Hart and Reilly deftly ensure that the tunes emerge organically from the storyline and, in `It's That Time of Year', they have a smutty ditty that makes Eartha Kitt's `Santa Baby' feel like a medieval carol. Marli Siu savours every word, as a chorus of strapping hunks in spangly red shorts parade behind her. Doubling up as choreographer, Sarah Swire makes more of an impact than she does in the narrative, as Steph's abandoned lesbian backstory seems strained and she always feels like something of a spare part until she gets behind the wheel at the denouement. 

Ben Wiggins also struggles to make much of Nasty Nick, while Christopher Leveaux is often hidden behind his camera phone. Malcolm Cumming is more engaging as the platonic chum harbouring a crush and his slow demise in a woolly jumper with twinkling Xmas tree lights is nicely done. But, while Mark Benton and Paul Kaye provide sterling adult support (with the latter seething amusingly behind a bushy beard), it's Ella Hunt who carries the majority of the tunes and makes a suitable feisty heroine. 

Questions might be asked about why there are so many English accents in a film set in Scotland and why there are so few (if any) non-Aryan characters. But this is a blood-spattered bauble rather than a slash of social realism and production designer Ryan Clachrie, cinematographer Sara Deane, editor Mark Hermida and make-up creator Maxine Dallas all rise to the challenge of giving this a touch of musical gloss on what was clearly a modest budget. Had it managed to sustain the bouncy brilliance of the first third, this might have become a firm festive favourite. As it is, it's guaranteed plenty of cult kudos and it's only a shame it's screening in so few venues across the country. Put it on your Christmas list as a DVD stocking-filler for this time next year.

Three decades separate John Baxter's Flood Tide (1934) from Duncan Wood's The Bargee (1964), during which time barges made rare appearances in such diverse British pictures as Oswald Mitchell's Sailors Don't Care (1940), Charles Crichton's Painted Boats (1945), Charles Saunders's Love in Pawn, John Gilling's Three Steps to the Gallows (both 1953) and Lewis Allen's Whirlpool (1959). By contrast, in the last two years alone, canals and houseboats have cropped up in Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley's The Darkest Universe (2016), Paul King's Paddington 2, Richard Loncraine's Finding Your Feet, Carlos Marques-Marcet's Anchor and Hope (all 2017), Oliver Parker's Swimming With Men and Mandie Fletcher's Patrick (both 2018). Now, adding to this number is Tupaq Felber's monochrome debut, Tides, which accompanies a group of friends on a short barge holiday that teaches them that it's often easier to look back through rose-tinted spectacles than to take a clear-sighted view of what lies ahead. 

Fortysomething Jon (Jon Foster) is gazing at the photos on his phone on the bank of canal somewhere in southern England when he's joined by his old mate, Zooby (Jamie Zubairi). The latter has arranged the canal trip on which they will be joined along the way by Red (Robyn Isaac) and Simon (Simon Meacock), and they struggle to take everything in while being given a crash course in steering the `Snow Goose' and operating the locks. However, they are soon underway and make their first stop to pick up some provisions at a supermarket and discuss the fairest way of dividing up the costs because Red is only going to be with them for a single night. 

Chattering non-stop, the pair soon get their bearings and Jon enjoys taking the tiller. After a couple of hours, they spot Red waiting on the bank. She is going to a wedding and can wishes she could stay longer. But she is aware that Jon has been having a hard time and asks Zooby if he's up to talking or should be left alone with his thoughts. Knocking back the wine before moving on to vodka, Red helps Zooby unpack the groceries and they tease Jon when he moors the boat for the night. The moment he stops having to concentrate on steering, however, Jon is overcome with emotion and he chastises himself for letting his guard down. 

As darkness falls, they are joined by Simon, who creeps up along the towpath and makes Jon jump. He is also an actor and they challenge each other to do various accents over supper. But, as the booze begins to flow and the estranged friends slip back in the old routine, Red begins to feel the chaps are picking on her and she skulks on to the deck for a cigarette. Jon follows to check she's okay and she hums and haws over telling him about the problems she's been having with her on-off boyfriend. She explains how he refuses to commit because he is forever seeking new sensations and experiences and she reveals how sad she felt watching a documentary about a couple who had been together for 50 years because she knows she is unlikely to enjoy the kind of intimacy that comes from longevity and the easy familiarity that comes after the sexual fire dies down. 

Back in the cabin, Red natters with Jon and Simon after Zooby goes to bed early. However, she gets irked when they start talking about video games and she complains that they are boring, middle-aged geeks. When they protest, she goes for another fag and chugs from the wine bottle before leaving them to smoke dope on the deck. Simon asks Jon if he is cool with the fact that everybody has been treading on eggshells in striving to avoid one particular topic of conversation and he admits that it's still too painful to address. He feels the boat rocking beneath him and decides the time has come to turn in. 

When they wake around midday, they all feel the worse for wear except Zooby, who is making coffee. Jon Skypes his partner, Amanda (Amanda Rawnsley), who has their infant son on her knee, while Red reaches for her sunglasses because she feels so rough. She has to catch a train to get to her wedding and they pore over maps to find her a suitable station en their route. When they reach a lock, she takes photographs while Simon opens the gates and Jon does the steering. 

Up on deck, Simon and Jon agree that it would be wonderful to bring their families on a canal holiday when their kids are a little older. In the galley, Red asks Zooby if Jon is cross with her because of her rant the previous night. But he thinks things are fine and they leave him at the helm, while they tuck into brunch with Simon. Zooby lies on the roof to do some watercolours and Red jokes that Simon always talks about himself and never asks anyone about what's happening in their lives. She wishes she didn't have to go to Chelsea and they try to coax her into staying if she's only important enough to be invited to the evening do. 

However, she does her make-up on the roof, as the countryside glides by, and changes into her best frock. Jon carries her case over the bridge to her taxi and returns to snap at Zooby and Simon about mooring up and going to the nearest pub for something to eat. When the others reassure him they have plenty of daylight left to press on further, Jon blows up at them and insists he is too tired to go on and feels they should respect his wishes. He calms down after the first pint and sympathises with Simon when he reveals that he is waiting to find out if his character is going to be killed off in the TV series he is banking on to pay his mortgage now that his wife has quit her job to raise their daughter. 

When Jon goes to the village shop for some supplies, Simon and Zooby have nothing to say to one another. Consequently, we follow Jon on his errand and watch him try to balance several items in his arms because he can't be bothered getting a basket. Once back at the boat, Zooby plays a pleasing melody on his guitar, while Simon lounges in the setting sun. But Jon feels restless and suggests that they make the most of the beautiful evening and chug on. The others josh him, but readily agree and they make steady progress with Simon at the tiller. 

Zooby paints Jon's portrait and asks how he's coping and he shrugs in confessing that he has good days and that learning to deal with change is part of life. They pass a man on the bank having a heated conversation on his phone and have to suppress giggles when he struts past them in some distress when they reach the lock. By the time dusk densens, they have found their mooring place beside a ruined priory and make fast before tucking into Zooby's curry. The conversation touches on fatherhood and the uniqueness of parental love, as well as Christian Marclay's 24-hour video installation, The Clock (2010), which is made up of film clips showing timepieces at different times of the day. Jon explains how he tried to impose a narrative on the footage and has similarly done the same thing in trying to make sense of his father's recent death. He breaks down and Simon hugs him and Zooby tells him not to worry because they are all friends and that they will always be there for him. 

Having talked all night, the trio go for a dawn stroll. They look across the fields to the priory and watch some ducks sleeping on the water. Further along, they look over a bridge at the water hurtling through a weir before returning to Snow Goose. Turning to face the rising sun, Jon feels the warmth on his face and a gentle smile plays on his lips, as he comes to terms with his new reality.

Beautifully photographed by Paul O'Callaghan in shimmering black and white along the River Wey in Surrey, this is the most visually engaging narrow boat saga since Luke Korzun Martin spent two uninterrupted hours on the Kennet and Avon for All Aboard! The Canal Trip (2015). That leisurely odyssey almost doubled BBC4's average audience, but it's hard to see 600,000 people shelling out to watch Tides at their local cinema. This is a shame, as there is much to admire about Tupaq Felber's first feature. But the improvised banter between four old friends in various stages of inebriation soon begins to grate and leave one pining for Marc Hatch's sublime blend of rippling water, bird song, barking, treetop breezes and chugging motors. 

The films of Jon Saunders have demonstrated that immersive drama isn't always the result when experienced actors are allowed to improvise in front of a camera. Thus, while it's intriguing to speculate about the relationship histories between Jon, Red, Zooby and Simon, their actual interactions rarely make for engrossing viewing. Despite the best efforts of Jon Foster, Robyn Isaac, Jamie Zubairi and Simon Meacock to remain in the zone, their naturalism often seems strained, with the result that the viewer is left to feel like a spectator at a drama workshop rather than an eavesdropper on a slice of life. 

Acting as his own editor, Felber makes frequent use of ellipses to inject a little pace and convey the lowering of defences as the pals who haven't seen each other for some time get back into their old rhythm. But the decision to withhold the reason for Jon's emotional fragility feels like a miscalculation, as it fails to generate any sort of melodramatic suspense and suggests that the foursome aren't as close as Felber would like us to believe. Even though there were tensions within the group in Lawrence Kasdan's The Big Chill (1983), one never gets the impression that this quartet have only kept in touch fitfully over the years and that it wouldn't make a huge difference to the overall dynamic if Jon had chosen three completely different acquaintances. 

Nevertheless, vague insights into an actor's life (with all its attendant sacrifices and uncertainties) emerge from the sometimes waspish banter, along with an appreciation of the self-absorption that seems essential to any form of artistic or sporting endeavour. But, while the cast members strive to remain centre stage, O'Callaghan's canny camerawork makes the most of the cramped interiors and the tranquil waterway to suggest that all four have become becalmed in drifting apart.