As is often the case in screen history, Georges Méliès was the first to take multiple roles in one film when he played seven musicians in The One-Man Band (1900). Buster Keaton surpassed his feat of trick photographic innovation when he essayed the orchestra and the audience, as well as numerous other roles in The Playhouse (1921). Yet, the record for the most characters played by one actor in a single picture had already been set by Rolf Leslie, who took on 27 different parts in Bert Haldane's biopic of Queen Victoria, Sixty Years a Queen (1913). 

Two years later, Joseph Henabery nabbed 16 roles, including Abraham Lincoln, in DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), while comedian Lupino Lane directed himself in 24 different parts in the 1929 short, Only Me. Subsequently, Fernandel (The Sheep Has Five Legs, 1954), Jerry Lewis (The Family Jewels, 1965), Eddie Murphy (Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, 2000), Denis Lavant (Holy Motors, 2012) and Noomi Rapace (What Happened to Monday, 2017) have all taken on the challenge of creating numerous characterisations, as have such Bollywood stars as Kamal Haasan (Dasavathaaram, 2008) and Priyanka Chopra (What's Your Raashee?, 2009). 

But, while Peter Sellers and the Pythons regularly mixed and matched, the most celebrated example of multi-thesping in British cinema saw Alec Guinness play eight members of the d'Ascoyne family in Robert Hamer's Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Now, however, Guinness has competition in the form of Timothy Spall, who tries his hand at 15 characters in Stephen Cookson's Stanley: A Man of Variety, an unsettling rumination on the dark heart of British comedy that lacks the thematic depth to match the boldness of its conceit and the brilliance of Spall's performance(s).

Six days before the closure of the Estuary Island psychiatric facility, Stanley (Timothy Spall) divides his time between cleaning the floors with a mop and bucket and inserting tokens into the television in his cell to watch snippets of an old black-and-white film before the power gives out. When he visits the bathroom, a monochrome James Finlayson emerges from one of the stalls and begins covering his face with foam and shaving him. In true slapstick style, he even covers Stanley's glasses.

Left to his own devices again, Stanley wipes away the words, `Rest in Peace, 15 Years', which have been written in suds on the floor. As he cleans the steps of the staircase, however, Max Wall appears before him and urges him to write a letter requesting compassionate leave in order to mark the 15th anniversary of his daughter's tragic demise. As Wall does some trademark bandy-legged dancing, Stanley taps away on a typewriter, even though Wall reminds him that his request is unlikely to be granted, as the judge said he should spend the rest of his natural life behind bars. 

Stanley rifles through some law books in the library in the hope of finding a clause to support his application. When Wall hands him a letter denying permission, Stanley tries to hang himself with a sheet slung over a pipe. But he winds up strapped to a bed in an empty room, where he is examined by Dr Boob, an Indian physician modelled on the character that Peter Sellers played by Peter Sellers alongside Sophia Loren in Anthony Asquith's The Millionairess (1960). Boob comments on the fact that Stanley is a racist for conjuring up a caricature based on such outdated notions of imperial supremacism. Yet, while Stanley denies being racist and declares that he simply wishes to visit his daughter's grave, Boob says he has no chance of being granted a pass. 

Having taken a bath, Stanley starts cleaning the windows and engages in a conversation with Tony Hancock, in his iconic Homburg hat and Astrakhan coat. He complains that he sought fame only to drink himself to death and warns Stanley about getting his name in the papers. Stanley insists that he wants to remain anonymous and Hancock snipes that he will do because he's a nobody. Hancock laments the state of the world economy, the threat of war and famine and the fact that he's got hard skin on his toe because somebody stole his pummice stone. Stanley protests his innocence, even though he's the only person in the asylum, and Hancock curses the fact that we are all alone and heading towards our inevitable demise. 

Sitting in the visiting room, Stanley chats with Noël Coward, who is sporting a smoking jacket. He has little sympathy with Stanley's plight and opines that he is not a skillful enough actor to press his case with any conviction. Stanley complains that his heart is going `boom diddy boom' and Coward scoffs at his dismal display of self-pitying hypochondria and concurs when Stanley confesses to being a sorry little man. Canned laughter rings out as Stanley claims to be having a heart attack and Coward commends him on his performance when he keels off his chair - not great acting, but good enough for this lowbrow bit of nonsense.

Stanley wakes on the bed again. But he doesn't linger and sets off with a torch into a dark corridor. He finds a candlelit room and is greeted by an Igor-like character, who considers Dr Boob to be his master. He informs Stanley that he is going to be allowed out and needs him to sign his name at the bottom of a long scroll. When Stanley inquires how he is going to be taken out, Igor pushes him backwards into a coffin-shaped box (even though Stanley is claustrophobic and needs the loo). As Igor cackles, the box whisks through a hole in the ceiling and Stanley finds himself suspended from a hot-air balloon decorated with a large pair of eyes.

Stand-up comedian Max Miller stands on the coffin and begins a patter routine full of double entendres about a man with a large nose. He asks Stanley to tell him a bit about his family and he describes how his father wore a suit (which had been donated by a morgue attendant) in all weathers and attracted some negative publicity when he was caught decapitating guinea pigs with a miniature guillotine. His mother had been a woman of a strong constitution, whom he sees in his mind's eye scoffing chocolates in bed. She fell ill because the eyepatched Mrs Moler accidentally put chilis in her rissoles. Stanley avers that they argued with him because they were unable to appreciate the subtext in the comedy shows they all enjoyed and Stanley had decided to destroy the radio by dropping it in the bath. Unfortunately, his brother was bathing at the time and he was frazzled to death.

When the balloon lands with a bump that causes the film to rewind on itself in a rapid montage, Miller saucily declares a need to toss himself off in order to avoid injury. On opening the coffin lid, Stanley creeps along a corridor and finds a door, whose key is hanging from a piece of string inside the letterbox. Venturing inside, he sees a long-abandoned room with dust sheets over the furniture. There's a theatrical poster on the wall and the cover of an old copy of Radio Times. Under a blanket on the table is a dust-covered collection of old cigarette cards. As Stanley turns round, George Formby rises from the sofa clutching his ukulele. He sings a song about a coffin being laid in the ground for all recorded time, as Stanley searches around for the location of his daughter's gravestone. 

Formby suggests a game of hide-and-seek and promptly vanishes. Stanley wanders outside and bumps into his parents, who urge him to admit his guilt. He wonders what they are talking about and finds himself propping up a bar with Frank Randle, who is wearing a greatcoat and baggy flat cap. Randle takes two slugs of booze and fishes round in a jar of pickled onions, while asking Stanley is he has ever done anything wrong. Bashfully, he admits to having stolen a penny chew and having once gone to school without a clean handkerchief. But he can't think of anything bad. When the gurning comic inquires whether he has ever hurt anyone, Stanley takes bemused offence and sidles away. Pausing for a moment, he stares at himself in the mirror and feels somebody put a blanket over his head and silence only conquers a throbbing cacophony when he shatters the glass with his fist. 

Climbing some stairs, Stanley sees a figure in a pool of light emanating from a doorway at the far end of the corridor. The shadowy form approaches and reveals itself to be Alastair Sim, replete with long white hair and a top hat. He explains that he is going to act as a Dickensian guide in the hope he can help Stanley face up to his guilt an avoid becoming an unrepentant souls trapped in Purgatory. Sim asks Stanley if he has anything on his conscience and he concedes that he has spent the last 15 years being tormented by guilt. He wishes that he had brought his daughter up differently, as she was teased at school because of his antics and her odd clothes. After a while, Stanley had withdrawn her for home schooling. But a man had intruded upon their bliss and Sim feigns surprise that she would have used a stranger to help her escape the nightmare of life with her father. 

As Stanley struggles to remember what he has done, Sim warns him that the noose is tightening around his neck and beckons him to follow so that he can witness his misdeed. Stanley re-enters the dustsheeted room and takes a tray of drugs off the top of a metal chamber pot (which has an eye on its base) and proceeds to set about an unseen figure on the sofa. Blood splatters on to the cigarette cards and other objects dotted around the room. 

Venturing into a courtroom, Stanley sees that Margaret Rutherford is the presiding judge. She reminds him several times that she suffers from amnesia, as she coaxes him into confessing his crime. Rutherford also criticises Stanley for forcing his obsession with old-fashioned and unfunny comics on to his daughter until she was driven as mad as he is. Feeling as though he has made a mistake in trying to hang himself, Stanley explains that he hated John Wilson, as he had hooked his daughter on the drugs that had killed her and admits that he bludgeoned him to death with the chamber pot. On hearing this declaration, Rutherford asks the jury for its verdict and, in a series of close-ups, Stanley's comedy heroes denounce him. She asks the 13th member of the jury to deliver the sentence and a monochrome Stanley calls for the death penalty. 

Shocked by the sight of himself among his accusers, Stanley mewls that he wishes to live. But Rutherford has moved on to the next case and he feels himself struggling with the makeshift noose around his neck. As his glasses fall on to the rug beneath his feet and he dangles like a grotesque puppet in a blurred view along the corridor, Stanley wakes with a start in his cell, whose walls are adorned with Radio Times covers. But Stanley appears to have survived his ordeal and he shuffles along the asylum corridor clutching a suitcase.

Back in his tidy flat, Stanley speaks on the phone to the doctor and assures him that he is feeling calmer than he has done in years. He promises to contact him if he sees the visions again and says `bye bye' like Harry Corbett at the end of The Sooty Show. Pouring the contents of a bottle of pills over his cigarette cards, Stanley sweeps them into the chamber pot, as the phone starts to ring. He places a bag of rubbish in the bin in the corridor, which has bicycles outside two of its other doors. He throws three objects down the corridor and a distorted song begins to play on the soundtrack. Stanley smiles and, when he looks up, the corridor is completely empty. But he starts talking to an unseen person and claims not to have the time to go with them or finish their game because he has to have his tea.

Returning indoors, Stanley sits at the table with the pills on the cards and the phone ringing. He picks up to an inquiry about a missing female named Alexandria, but he has no idea who they are talking about and apologises for being unable to help. The kettle boils on the stove, as Stanley sweeps the pills into the potty. He takes two cups out of the cupboard and calls Alexandria, hoping that she has taken good care of his magazines or she will face the consequences. 

Hearing voices at the door again, Stanley edges into the corridor and chats with another unseen figure about raising funds for his charity. He goes back inside and makes a phone call to arrange for the sale of his memorabilia, much of which is very rare and had been considered lost forever. Stanley walks across the now empty room to his suitcase before a sudden cut places him back at the sitting-room table with the sofa (which hadn't been there when he returned) in prominent view. He stares at the door, as though dreading someone coming in, and the camera retreats, leaving him sitting at the table playing the spoons. As the pull away reaches the corridor, a caption reveals that Stanley's psychiatric carer believes he poses no threat to the wider community. Just before the front door shuts, another caption reveals that Stanley has never had any children. 

This bravura enterprise rather limps over the line, as Cookson and Spall seek to make their point about mental health care in this country. Taking more cues from David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) than Kind Hearts and Coronets, the scenario affords Spall a unique opportunity to demonstrate his talent. Opting for impersonation rather than impressions and favouring mannerisms over catchphrases, he captures the despairing cynicism and sinister wretchedness of a well-considered range of comic greats. However, even the keenest student of old-time comedy will struggle to recognise Laurel and Hardy's Scottish sidekick James Finlayson and Lancashire likely lad Frank Randle (misspelt `Randall' in the credits) from Spall's interpretation. He's more successful with the likes of Maxes Miller and Wall, Coward, Hancock, Formby and Sim, however, while he raises disquieting questions about the tradition of male comics blacking and dragging up in his displays as Dr Boob and Margaret Rutherford. 

Yet, while there's no denying Spall's versatility or the excellence of Coleen Kelsall's costumes and Penny Smith's make-up, this always feels more like a novelty showcase than a serious study of the human condition or what British comedy has to say about the nation's socio-cultural preconceptions. Production designer Felix Coles makes adroit use of the rooms in Tower Bridge Magistrates Court, while Konstantinos Koutsoliotas takes pains to ensure that the special effects don't overwhelm Ismael Issa Lopez's visuals. But, for all the canny word play and hall of mirrors ingenuity, this exercise in what Spall calls `English noir' is stronger on atmosphere and comic critique than it is on storyline and psychiatric authenticity.

Although best known for being married to Sting, actress-cum-activist Trudie Styler has an impressive CV as a film producer. In addition to Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000), she has also worked on such feted indies as Dito Montiel's A Guide to Recognising Your Saints (2006), Duncan Jones's Moon (2009) and Sara Colangelo's The Kindergarten Teacher, which goes on general release this week. But, in making her solo directorial debut with Freak Show - after The Sweatbox, a 2002 documentary about the making of Disney's The Emperor's New Groove (2000), which she had co-directed with John-Paul Davidson went unreleased - Styler demonstrates a surprising lack of artistic personality and political sensitivity in adapting James St James's lauded Young Adult novel.

In voiceover, Billy Bloom (Alex Lawther) invokes the spirit of Bette Davis as he invites us to `buckle up' while he takes us on a little ride he calls his life. Having doted on his mother, Mauvine (Bette Midler), the young Billy (Eddie Schweighardt) had developed a distinctive sense of style under her tutelage. However, when she mysteriously goes away, Billy is sent to live with his estranged father, William (Larry Pine), in the sprawling mansion that is maintained by Florence the housekeeper (Celia Weston). She tolerates the flamboyant costumes he dons when they are alone, but warns that the Adam Ant ensemble he selects for his first day at Grant Academy is not going to go down well with kids in the Deep South. 

Billy hardly helps his cause with his opening gambit, `I just moved here from Darien, Connecticut, the hometown of Chloë Sevigny.' But, while his outrageous dress sense and fey mannerisms alienate jocks and mean girls alike, the garrulous wallflower he nicknames Blah Blah Blah (AnnaSophia Robb) takes a shine to him and tips him off that Bib Oberman (Walden Hudson) was in a boy band, Lynette (Abigail Breslin) will do anything to become homecoming queen, Sesame (Charlotte Ubben) is dating the entire basketball team, Tiffany (Willa Fitzgerald) is ultra-Christian, Bo Bo (Daniel Bellamy) is a boneheaded jock, Bernard (Christopher Dylan White) is to be ignored at all times and that Flip (Ian Nelson) is the football star who got the whole town talking with an amazing somersaulting touchdown. 

Naturally, Billy falls in love at first sight and is delighted when Flip chats at his locker about the fact they are both reading Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. But Billy has no intention of making friends with Lynette, Sesame and Tiffany and disses them when they ask him for fashion advice after English class. As a consequence, he gets picked on in biology lessons and has to resort to fencing masks, ski goggles and a motorcycle helmet to protect himself from spitballs in the corridors. However, he is beaten into a coma when turns up in a bridal dress with long veil and horror red eye make-up and is delighted to wake-up in hospital to find Flip waiting for him along with his father and Florence. Indeed, he is so smitten that he feigns a relapse to prevent Flip from going to football practice and Dr Vickers (Mickey Sumner) rushes to his bedside to check up on him. 

Florence is immune to Flip's charm, but William regards him as the son he never had and Flip tells Billy that he doesn't know he's born, as his father forced him into playing football and once burned his comic-book collection. Indeed, he would kill him if he knew his secret ambition was to become an artist and that he once skipped a football game to go to an exhibition in New York. But Billy knows William is a macho buffoon who drove Muv to drink and he cringes when he roars up in a red sports car to invite Flip on a fishing trip. He feels much better, however, when Flip joins him in a recreation of John Travolta and Uma Thurman's dance in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) and fools around with him in the expansive grounds to the strains of Plastic Bertrand's `Ca Plane Pour Moi'.

While sketching Billy in a Statue of Liberty pose, Flip asks him to tone down the fabulousness when he returns to school. As he will do anything that Flip asks, Billy agrees and is given a hero's welcome, as Principal Onnigan (Michael Park) has expelled the bullies and introduced a zero tolerance policy where homophobia is concerned. Amused more than touched, Billy acknowledges the cheers and holds court in the canteen in a laboured pastiche of Leonardo Da Vinci's `The Last Supper'. But Flip reminds him to dial down the pizzazz, even though he likes the aquatic outfit in which Billy is cavorting in front of a bubble machine when he calls round that night. He tries to explain why they are friends in heteronormative mumblespeak and offers Billy his favourite teddy bear. But he winds up sleeping it off on the sofa after he gets drunk on the booze that Billy downs like pop.

Having wowed his English teacher by dressing as Zelda Fitzgerald for a book report, Billy falls foul of Coach Carter (John McEnroe) during a gym class when he gets an erection watching Bo Bo shin up a rope. Flip pleads with him to behave more responsibly and spurns his concern after he gets into a fight with Bernard on his behalf. Sensing trouble in paradise, Lynette, Tiffany and Sesame (whose father has bought her a boob job to help entice Flip) plot his downfall. However, the unexpected reappearance of Mauvene from rehab means that he has more to worry about than his reputation at school, as he not only sees her drunkenly drape herself over Flip, but he also overhears her demanding child support from William because she has done her duty in giving him the son he always craved. 

William is baffled how to connect with Billy and Florence declares that they have more in common than liking the crusts cut off their sandwiches. But he is embarrassed that Billy has announced his intention to run for homecoming queen during an interview with TV reporter, Felicia (Laverne Cox). As she asks Billy how he wants to be identified, he suggests `gender obliterator'. But Bernard calls him a `freak' and he is happy to reclaim the word in representing everyone marginalised by their prejudiced peers. Flip disowns him and Bernard makes a clumsy pass at him in the washroom. But they ever-loyal Blah Blah Blah (whom he discovers is really called Mary Jane) tells him that he is the King of the Shadow People, the average kids who drift through life with no one noticing them. They back his campaign and even help him blackmail Bib into supporting him by threatening to reveal his boy band past. 

Having split up with Lynette, Bo Bo is also rooting for Billy and Flip calms down enough to wish him luck. But, while Billy steals Lynette's thunder by gazumping her float by standing on a giant high-heeled shoe at the big match pre-show, the afternoon ends badly for Flip, as he damages his shoulder so badly that his sporting days are over. He manages to give Billy a thumbs up from the stretcher carrying him off the field, but Billy knows he will be known as Mark and not Flip from thenceforth. There's no sign of him, as Bo Bo takes all the plaudits at the ceremony to acclaim the homecoming queen and Billy stares at himself in the dressing-room mirror as he gathers his thoughts. 

On the stage, Lynette reminds the electorate that a queen should be a girl and that anything other than her victory will make the school the laughing stock of the state. But, rather than shoot down her `make America great again' rhetoric, Billy appears in a sober suit and appeals to everyone to recognise that they are all freaks and should vote for him out of respect for whatever it is that makes them stand out from the pack. As Sesame and Tiffany remain rooted to their chairs, the rest of the assembled leap to their feet and cheer to the rafters. Yet, when they cast their votes by smartphone, the students conform to type and award the crown to Lynette. Sesame orders Billy off the stage, but Tiffany commends him on his courage and he's overcome to see William waiting for him at the back of the hall to congratulate him on his campaign and to reassure him that he accepts him completely for who he is. As the film ends, Flip confides that he deliberately took the tackle in the game in order to break his father's hold over him and Billy strolls into school wearing a dress and beret with his friends acknowledging him and no one else seeming to regard him as anything out of the ordinary. 

This slo-mo finale sums up everything that is right and wrong with this well-meaning, but patronising picture. Styler wants to send out a positive message about sexual acceptance and freedom of expression, but Billy's glib assertion that everyone is a freak simply fails to convince in relation to a nation that voted Donald Trump into the White House. There's a nodding recognition of this in the fact that the audience acclamation fails to reflect the final result. But Styler and writers Beth Rigazio and Patrick J. Clifton succeed only in creating a Dixie Neverland that bears little resemblance to the sad reality. 

Since making a fine impression made as the young Alan Turing in Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game (2014), Alex Lawther has played variations on the same theme in Andrew Steggall's Departure (2016), Simon Curtis's Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017), this creaky rite of passage and even in Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson's Ghost Stories. Thus, for all its commitment and finesse, his `I gotta be me' performance seems overly familiar and it would be good to see him attempt something completely different next time round. Given his resemblance to a young Stan Laurel, someone should surely usher him into a biopic about the aspiring comic's journey from Ulverston to Hollywood. 

Lawther's capably supported by Ian Nelson, Abigail Breslin and AnnaSophia Robb. But they are largely required to play cookie-cutter caricatures that say more about the enduring legacy of John Hughes's brand of teenpic than about contemporary youth and the attitudes they have inherited from their parents. Their efficacy is mirrored by Dante Spinotti's glassy widescreen photography and Franckie Diago's production design. But nothing matches the wit and whimsy of the costumes fashioned by Colleen Atwood and Sarah Laux, which deserve better than this spirited, but slight confection, which leaves one wondering how it might have turned out in the hands of a bolder, bolshier director.

The focus switches to lesbianism in Polish writer-director Olga Chajdas's debut feature, Nina. Exploring how church and state seek to dictate how women use their bodies, this is a well-meaning melodrama that also touches on the way that class and external cultural influences impinge upon post-Communist society. But, for all her references to Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963), Chajdas over-indulges her penchant for artily significant imagery, while struggling to impose herself upon a story that often defies narrative logic.

Magda (Eliza Rycembel) is a security guard at Warsaw airport who likes to sleep around when stewardess lover Ada (Tána Pauhofová) is out of town. Sometimes cutting it fine before kicking conquests to the kerb, she meets Nina (Julia Kijowska) when the French teacher bumps into her car while parking near the garage owned by her husband, Wojtek (Andrzej Konopka). Initially, Magda is far from impressed by the haughtily bourgeois Nina, who tries to interest her class in the films of Jean-Luc Godard and installations by female Polish artists. 

She is also striving to find a surrogate mother, as she cannot conceive. However, her latest lead insists on retaining contact with the child and she is sufficiently frustrated to go along with Wojtek's suggestion that they invite Magda to dinner and sound her out about carrying their child. They get tipsy and smoke a joint before Magda asks if they want her for a threesome. However, she loses her nerve when Wojtek says she would only be sleeping with him and she composes herself in her car, while Nina browbeats her husband for making such a clumsy advance. 

But something has clearly clicked in Magda and she crashes her car so she has to return to the garage. Nina is also intrigued by the spiky stranger and asks Wojtek to give her two weeks to broach the subject of surrogacy. She calls round to her apartment to check she is okay after being concussed and they flirt while being wary of each other. But Nina feels under pressure from her mother, Ewa (Katarzyna Gniewkowska), to produce grandchildren like her sister, Sylwia (Magdalena Czerwinska), and convinces herself that becoming parents is the only way to save her stale marriage to a man she has known since they were at school, even though they are from very different backgrounds and have little in common beside their romance.

When not clumsily striving to seduce Madga while trying to sell her a new car, Wojtek is also concerned about his hospitalised father (Ryszard Jablonski). So, he gives Nina carte blanche in her dealings with Magda. She takes her to see Natalia Bazowska's womb-like installation, `Birth Place', and they lounge around inside the red-lined, light-pulsating cocoon and discuss the inner strength that women have and how the wives of some Persian warriors had used the act of `anasyrma' to renew their courage after defeat at the hands of the Medes.  

For all their circling of each other, however, neither woman places her cards on the table. Thus, Magda is taken aback when Nina finally asks her to be their surrogate and Nina is equally nonplussed when she follows Magda to the bar where she is due to meet a same-sex blind date. Despite their mutual surprise, Nina follows Magda to a lesbian club and, with loud music throbbing in time to their heartbeats, they watch another couple canoodling in a corridor and mock some soldiers on duty before Nina returns home to inform the slumbering Wojtek that she doesn't love him any more.

When they next meet, Nina surrenders herself to Magda and they sleep together. She also joins her at a club with Lola (Maria Peszek) and the other members of her five-a-side football team. However, Wojtek sees them gyrating together through the window and he gives Nina a fortnight to sort herself out or he will leave her to face telling her family that she is gay. But, just as she is coming to terms with being Magda's lover, Ada surprises them in the bath together and Nina is jolted out of her daydream and flees into the wintry night. She confides in her younger sister, Malwina (Alicja Juszkiewicz), that she is now `Magda-sexual' and doesn't know what to do for the best. 

Magda is also in a spin and goes to a bar to find a random guy to sleep with. However, Wojtek has followed her and takes her back to the room above the garage where he is staying. He demands to know whether they laughed at him while they made love and makes a half-hearted attempt to force himself upon her. But Magda takes control of the situation and gets pregnant. She calls on Nina and places her hand on her belly, only for her to recoil in horror. 

Shortly afterwards, Nina and Wojtek attend Malwina's wedding. During the reception, he whispers something in her ear and she stalks out of the hall and finds herself striding along a snow-covered highway (as she had been in a dream she had confided to Magda). She pauses to look at a deer with its fawn in a field and smiles when the animal turns to meet her gaze. Heading back to the city, she goes to Madga's flat and stands meekly before her in the hope that they can make a go of things. 

Given that few Polish actresses have played lesbians since Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak and Grazyna Szapolowska in Karoly Makk's Another Way (1982), Julia Kijowska and Eliza Rycembel deserve considerable credit for their performances in this bold feature, which Chajdas has co-written with Marta Konarzewska and edited with her partner, Kasia Adamik, who is the director daughter of the award-winning doyenne of Polish cinema, Agnieszka Holland. But, such is Chajdas's determination to turn each frame into a social, sexual and aesthetic statement that her strained saga becomes increasingly self-conscious with each twang of Andrzej Smolik's excruciating experimental score. 

Production designer Anna Anosowicz does a good job of contrasting Nina and Magda's apartments. But Chajdas has cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk shoot so many scenes through windows, doorways and framing metalwork that any sense of the images reflecting Nina's confused and myopic worldview is quickly overtaken by a longing for the dizzyingly restless camera to settle down and observe the action from an unencumbered vantage point. 

The stylistic skittishness does distract from the implausibilities of plot, however, as Nina and Wojtek seem to have been brought together solely for thematic convenience, while Chajdas and Konarzewska similarly struggle to persuade us of the risk-all passion between Nina and Magda. The leads do what they can, but the characterisation is as perfunctory as the chaste eroticism and the emotional superficiality of a meandering romance that misses the opportunity to declare that Polish women no longer need men's permission to lead free and fulfilled lives.