Having explored the lot of the migrant in his supernatural debut, Shelley (2016), Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi focuses on a customs officer in Border, a genre-bending hybrid adapted from a short story by John Ajvide Lindqvist, whose novel, Let the Right One In, was filmed so evocatively by Tomas Alfredson in 2008. A trans subplot has aroused ire in certain quarters, but this blend of social critique, mythological horror and Nordic noir is on much safer ground in its exploration of otherness, conformity, duty and the crises facing human civilisation. 

With her Neanderthalic features, Tina (Eva Melander) stands out from her colleagues on the customs barrier at an unnamed Swedish port. As the passengers go by, she scents their fear and her colleagues have come to trust her instincts, as she stops an underage kid with a bagful of alcohol and a smug suit (Viktor Åkerblom) trying to smuggle child pornography into the country on a memory card hidden in his phone. 

Although she lives with Roland (Jörgen Thorsson), he is more interested in the three Dobermans he grooms for dog shows. So, as soon as she gets home, Tina wanders into the woods barefoot to commune with nature and escape from the sense of being different and alone. One day, however, she discovers she isn't quite as unique as she had thought, as Vore (Eero Milonoff) shares her facial features, although he also has a cockiness that makes her feel nervous while searching his bag. 

She doesn't mention the stranger when she visits her father (Sten Ljunggren) in his nursing home. He is suffering from dementia, but remembers disliking Roland and Tina is forced to defend him when she wheels him into the grounds for an illicit cigarette. She is embarrassed when he mentions the physical side of their relationship, but reflects on it when she wanders outside while Roland is watching buggy racing on the telly. As she stares in through the window of her own home, she feels like an outsider before she is consoled by a passing elk, which stands calmly beside her in the darkness - in contrast to the frantic barking of Roland's dogs whenever they see her. 

At work, Tina is asked about her powers by her boss, Agneta (Ann Petrén), who is convinced that the child porn smuggler is in direct contact with the people who produce the material and she asks Tina if she would be willing to help with her investigation. Returning home that night, Tina goes skinny-dipping in the lake, as though she is trying to wash off the contamination of contact with such a depraved world. 

She can't stop thinking about Vore and has him cavity searched when he next comes through customs. Tina is taken aback when Tomas (Matti Boustedt) informs her that Vore has female genitalia and she wonders aloud if she has had a sex change operation. However, she is intrigued when Tomas mentions a scar on Vore's lower spine, as she has one exactly the same. She apologies to Vore for having put her through such a humiliating ordeal, but she shrugs it off and reveals that she is so used to being treated differently that she now moves around all the time to avoid the fuss. 

When she next visits her father, Tina asks about her own scar and he insists that she cut herself when she was three years old and needed stitches to close the wound. But Tina is sceptical and is driving home in the dark when she is flagged down by her neighbour, Stefan (Tomas Åhnstrand), who needs a lift  because his wife, Esther (Josefin Neldén), has gone into labour. As she speeds along, she suddenly picks up a scent and slows down to allow some deer to cross the road. Her passengers are astonished by her gift, but barely manage to thank her before dashing off into the hospital. On arriving home, Roland tries to coerce her into having sex and she pushes him off the bed. When she looks up at the window, however, she sees a fox checking up on her and she giggles when it tries to lick her fingers through the glass. 

Feeling drawn to Vore, Tina drops round to the hostel where he is staying and finds him collecting maggots off a tree. He urges her to taste one and she does so with bashful reluctance. When she asks how he is enjoying his stay, he says the surroundings are gloomy. So, she offers him her guest cottage and Tina is amused when Vore silences the barking dogs with a gutteral growl of his own. Roland is also uneasy at meeting the newcomer and is cross with Tina for not consulting him, even though he is more of a freeloading tenant than a partner. 

Agneta teams Tina with cop Daniel (Kjell Wilhelmsen) and asks her to use her senses to assess those visiting an address identified from the porn smuggler's phone. She is convinced that a cyclist smells of shame and follows him to his apartment, only for Daniel to have to make excuses for her when she is caught sniffing through the letterbox. However, he confirms to Agneta that he also heard a baby crying, even though no newborns have been registered to that household. 

Wandering in the woods to relax, Tina runs into Vore by a waterfall. Vore claims it looks like something out of a fairytale, but Tina says she doesn't believe in such things, even though she had always felt special as a girl before she was told how different she was. She blushes when Vore spots the lightning scar on her forehead and insists that humans are too stupid to recognise true beauty and she feels accepted when Vore shrugs off the fact that she can't bear children because of her distinctive genitalia. Tina introduces Vore to Esther and Stefan and is pleased by how cool they are about Vore being around their baby. That night, however, Vore appears to experience labour pangs in the depths of the forest. 

Tina and Daniel wait until Patrick (Henrik Johansson) and Therese (Rakel Wärmländer) go out to a bar and break into their apartment. She finds a camcorder hidden in a silver trophy in their bedroom and Agneta interrogates him about the sordid images it contains. But he denies everything, even though his fingerprints and DNA have been found on the camera. 

When Roland takes the dogs to a show, Tina can barely suppress a smile because she knows she will be alone with Vore. They shelter under the kitchen table together during an electrical storm and venture into the woods to make love. Much to Tina's surprise, she sprouts a penis and emits feral grunts as she mounts Vore. As they lie together, he reveals that they are trolls and that the scar on her back was caused when she had her tail removed. Excited to have discovered the truth about herself, Tina joins Vore in running naked through the trees and bathing in the lake. 

During another late-night tryst, Vore tells Tina that humans are parasites who abuse the Earth. She tries to defend her father, but Vore insists that he has been telling her lies her whole life because she will have been separated from her troll parents so that they could be experimented on. Feeling betrayed, Tina confronts her father, but he refuses to speak to her. She also turfs Roland and his dogs out of the house. But Vore warns her that the troll life is not an easy one and her confidence is shaken when she creeps into the cottage and finds a `hiisit' (or unfertilised egg) in a cardboard box in the gaffer-taped fridge. 

When Patrick is killed in an ambush on his way to prison, Tina picks up Vore's scent and is appalled to discover that Vore is part of the paedophile ring because humans deserve to be punished for the way they have treated trolls. Back at the cottage, Vore feeds the hiisit and explains that it's not an infant in the human sense. But Tina is enraged when Vore admits to kidnapping and selling babies and she snarls in confusion and betrayal before walking away. However, she knows she has to act when Vore steals Esther and Stefan's child and leaves the hiisit in its place. Vore has left a note to meet on the ferry and she declines the invitation to run away together and start a family. She claims not to understand Vore's need to be evil and stands aside as the police close in. But Vore has no intention of being detained and jumps over the side of the boat. 

A few days later, Tina's father comes to the house to explain that he used to be the caretaker at the psychiatric hospital where trolls were kept. He had offered to take care of her after her parents died and tries to apologise for withholding the truth and not doing more to protect her from the taunts she has endured her whole life. She asks if she had a troll name and he reveals that she was called Reva. Having visited the cemetery at the back of the hospital, Tina tries to pick up the threads of her life. However, when she returns from foraging in the woods, she finds a box on the door containing a troll baby and a postcard from Finland (where Vore had claimed a community of trolls lives freely). Unsure what to do with the child, Tina feeds it a spider and feels a surge of affection when it stops crying and looks up at her with a smile. 

Audacious in terms of its concept and content, this may not make for comfortable viewing. But Abi Abbasi challenges the viewer to draw parallels between the mythical and the millennial, as he and co-writers John Ajvide Lindqvist and Isabella Eklöf contemplate how the planet's other occupants might exact their revenge on humanity for its deplorable stewardship of the precious resources vital for life. This is no preachy eco parable. however, as Abbasi blends folkloric, police procedural, dysfunctional domestic and doomed romantic elements to create a saga that plays as much on the imagination as it does on the conscience. 

Unrecognisable under the Oscar-nominated make-up that took Göran Lundström and Pamela Goldammer four hours to apply each day, Eva Melander gives a wondrous performance as the border guard trapped between her human and troll natures. Making more expressive use of her eyes than Eero Milonoff as the less acclimatised Vore, Melander bears the burden of her alienation on her stooped shoulders, as people stare in supermarkets and she is treated as sub-canine by the shoddily exploitative Jörgen Thorsson, who makes no attempt to hide the fact he is talking to his lover when Melander is within earshot. Yet, such is the dignity of her demeanour and the potency of the being that is awakened within her that Tina never feels pitiable and it's tempting to suggest that Abbasi has invested her with some of his own sense of émigré (if not to say, X-Men) tenacity and self-worth.

The abduction-molestation plotline strains credibility in places, with the birth of a baby in the remote neighbourhood feeling overly convenient. The climactic parcel delivery also seems specious, as surely someone handling the box would have heard the gurgling noises coming from inside. But when did fairytales have to stick by the rules of social realist fiction, especially when they are told with such deceptive humour and humanity? All that matters is that the performances compel, while Frida Hoas's production design, Nadim Carlsen's camerawork, Christian Holm's sound scheme and Peter Hjorth's visual effects lure the audience into a woodland realm in which anything might happen. Abbasi won the Best Director prize at Cannes's Un Certain Regard and it will be fascinating to see what he devises next.

Not that long ago, it used to be common practice for American film-makers to rework box-office hits from around the world. Having debuted with Little Accidents (2014), sophomore Sara Colangelo becomes the latest to follow this enduring, if somewhat discredited trend with The Kindergarten Teacher, a remake of a 2014 Israeli film of the same name that was by Nadav Lapid. Switching the action from Tel Aviv to New York, Calangelo narrows the focus of the original scenario to focus on the eponymous protagonist, who is played with typical assurance and enigmaticism by Maggie Gyllenhaal. 

Lisa Spinelli (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is a fortysomething kindergarten teacher on Staten Island. Once a week, she takes the ferry to Manhattan to attend a poetry class led by Simon (Gael García Bernal), who informs her that her haiku is derivative and needs to show more personality. Husband Grant (Michael Chernus) tries to be supportive, but he's not much of a literary type and Lisa shows him her efforts with considerable reluctance. 

She loves her job and teaching assistant Meghan (Anna Baryshnikov) has nothing but praise for her rapport with her students. At the end of one class, Lisa overhears Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) composing a poem, as he wanders up and down the classroom and she asks his nanny, Becca (Rosa Salazar), to make a note of anything else he comes up with at home. She shows the poem to Grant, who is impressed by its maturity. But Lisa is annoyed when he comments on the reference to God, as he doesn't think that five year-olds should be wasting their time with religion. 

As teenagers Josh (Sam Jules) and Lainie (Daisy Tahan) have almost separate lives from their parents, Lisa seems to invest heavily in making connections with her charges and she takes Jimmy to one side after she hears him using an inappropriate word during playtime. She had read his poem to the class and passed it off as her own when Simon had praised it. Now, she hopes that Jimmy will have words of wisdom to impart to address her assignment on mundanity and she tries to coax him round by talking about the magic to be found in everyday items within her classroom. But he isn't inspired and she is left to come up with something of her own.

When Becca comes to collect Jimmy, however, she presents Lisa with a poem about a bull and she is astonished by is simple intensity. She asks about the boy's home life and learns that his father, Nikhil (Ajay Naidu), won custody after a protracted court battle and that Jimmy considers his mother to be dead. Nikhil runs a nightclub and that was where he met Becca, who has ambitions to become an actress. Lisa leaves a message for Sanjay to call her and she heads to the city to read Jimmy's poem and win Simon's approval for a second time (even though some of her classmates are put out by her unconventional approach to the topic).

Arriving home, Lisa tries to persuade Lainie into using Grant's photographic equipment to develop her talent for taking pictures. But she is happy to keep snapping and posting with her phone and Lisa feels frustrated that she can't inspire her children to do something out of the norm. She expresses this concern to Jimmy's Uncle Sanjay (Samrat Chakrabarti), when he agrees to meet her when she fails to hear anything back from his brother. He is perplexed by her assertion that Becca is holding back Jimmy's creativity and promises to speak to Nikhil about nurturing his son's rare talent. But Lisa is more concerned by the fact that she keeps missing out on poems to read to the class and is cross with herself for failing to monitor Jimmy after she had taken him out of nap time into the washrooms to discuss the concept of seeing things from unusual perspectives (her theme for the week from Simon). 

In an effort to capture every verse, Lisa puts her number into Jimmy's phone (even though Meghan is becoming suspicious about her growing bond with the boy) and he calls her while she is in the middle of having sex with Grant. He is annoyed to be shunted off when he had been supporting Lisa in her opposition to Josh's plans to join the military rather than go to college. But, such is Lisa's obsession that she fails to notice the effect she is creating. 

Next day, while putting a plaster on a cut on Jimmy's knee, Lisa asks if she can read one of her own poems. She is nettled when he is unimpressed and takes it out on Lainie and Josh, who are having a pool party with friends in the backyard. When Lainie accuses her of being a hypocrite for stopping her smoking dope, Lisa complains that she has such a fine mind and yet shows no curiosity about the finer things in life and the wider world around her. She wishes she would read books instead of gazing at her phone and fears that the digital age is so warping the minds of future generations that the cultural glories of the past will be forgotten. 

In a bid to calm down, Lisa calls Jimmy and assures him that it's perfectly normal for kindergarten teachers to call their pupils. But Lisa is slowly going off the rails and, when Simon calls her into his office to invite her to perform at an open mike night, she allows him to seduce her and they make love on the carpet. As she returns to Staten Island, she hatches the idea to take Jimmy to the reading and seeks out Nikhil to ask if she can give him extra tuition because she is convinced she has a young Mozart on her hands. Busy with his club, he is happy to fire Becca and allow Lisa to babysit Jimmy after school. But he draws the line at the Manhattan trip because he has baseball practice that night and he insists that he keeps doing normal kid things to prevent him from turning into a misfiring bookworm like his uncle. 

Determined to show off her protégé, Lisa takes him to the city and they go to an art gallery together. She also coaches him about how to recite his poems on the school stage. On the night of the reading, she stands behind him as he performs and tries not to catch Simon's eyes. The audience is suitably impressed and ask Jimmy a few questions and Lisa is crushed when he reveals that he wrote one love poem about Meghan. She is also taken aback when Simon expels her from the class and accuses her of being a fraud for passing off someone else's work as her own. Hurt by his accusation, she insists she was nurturing a talent, but he denounces her as a dilettante who appreciates art without ever being able to create it. 

Putting Jimmy to bed on her sofa, Lisa climbs into bed with Grant. He asks if she's proud of her kids because Josh has confided that he feels she is disappointed in them. The next night, she tries to make things up by cooking a big family dinner. But she is also stressed because Nikhil had called to protest at her taking Jimmy to Manhattan without his permission and she had handed out healthy snacks to the class with tears in her eyes because he has decided to withdraw his son from the school. 

On the morning after the last supper, Lisa kisses Grant while he sleeps and sneaks out of the house with a suitcase. She follows Nikhil when he drives Jimmy to school and she comes to the playground fence to coax him into coming with her. Lisa drives north to a lake and Jimmy enjoys playing in the water with her. But, when they return to their woodland motel, he locks her in the bathroom and calls the police to inform them he has been kidnapped. Dismayed that he thinks this badly of her, Lisa tries to explain that she wants to take him to Canada to get his poems published because he has a rare gift. However, realising that he just wants to go home, she gives him the address and urges him to tell the cop on the phone that she is unarmed and not a threat. 

When he lets her out so she can get dressed, Jimmy slides off the bed and takes hold of Lisa's hand. She looks down sadly, as she is aware she has ruined her life and betrayed a small child's trust. But, as Jimmy is carried to a squad car by a policewoman, there is no one to listen when he pipes up that he has a poem. 

In many ways, it's a shame that the millennial malaise themes raised by this profound and disturbing film will be overshadowed by the abuse of power issues emanating from Lisa's growing obsession with Jimmy's gift and the unhinged manner in which she seeks both to protect and exploit him (yet without posing a credible threat to his safety). The intellectual threats posed by the Internet and social media are too easily brushed under the carpet, as similar warnings were made about motion pictures and television. But there is no escaping the fact that fewer books are being published and read and that a growing number of people would rather take their information and inspiration from websites, blogs and vlogs than they would from poetry, novels and plays. 

The irony, of course, is that Lisa isn't particularly creative and has only done a mediocre job in passing on her passions to children, who take more after their father in their philistinc attitude towards culture. But, while it's easy to see why Lisa would feel as though she had been blessed with her discovery of a pre-school wünderkind, it's more difficult to accept that she would behave in such a recklessly unprofessional manner in seeking to encourage him. Colangelo is fortunate in having an actress as nuanced and controlled as Maggie Gyllenhaal to limn Lisa's underdeveloped dilemma. But there are still moments when the inverted Cyrano-cum-Salieri plotline feels convoluted to the point of absurdity and one is left wondering why nobody in a school big enough to require such a huge hall has not noticed Lisa's wayward antics and her increasingly unhealthy attachment to a small and vulnerable child in her care. 

While Gyllenhaal (who also joins Trudie Styler among the 48 credited producers) inscrutably, but never unsympathetically dominates every scene, Parker Sevak provides disarmingly impassive support as the young boy who spouts poetry of touching poignancy without seemingly being aware of its source or quality. But Gael Garcia Bernal struggles to convince as the night school tutor who does little other than set assignments and criticise and seduce his students. None of the other supporting players is sufficiently fleshed out to invite interest, with the family unit being frustratingly flimsy. The visual side is also rather perfunctory, although production designer Mary Lena Colstan makes the classroom very inviting, while cinematographer Pepe Avila del Pino does nice things with the New York skyline and the lakeside vistas and Asher Goldschmidt's skittish blend of piano and strings prevents proceedings from lapsing into cornball melodrama.

Another teacher-student relationship comes under the spotlight in Edward Owles and Jaime Taylor's H Is For Harry, which spends two years at Reach Academy Feltham in south London to follow a new intake of children with learning difficulties. Showing in cinemas on World Book Day, this is a timely study of UK literacy standards and the education system's struggle to connect with so many white working-class boys.

Opening with Dumbledore's assertion to Harry Potter that `words are our most inexhaustible source of magic', the documentary takes us to Reach Academy Feltham, as a new term starts and head Ed Vainker and deputy and co-founder Rebecca Cramer greet the new intake and reassure parents and students alike that they will do everything they can to ensure they succeed. We meet newly qualified teacher Sophie Boullin, as she tells her Year 7 class that they are all on a path to university. The emphasis is very much on teamwork, but there is a degree of regimentation, as Rebecca teaches new students the dining-room mantra of `plate, knife, fork, spoon and water'. 

As Harry has failed to do his homework over the holidays, he finds himself in catch-up on his first day. He is also spotted with his eyes glazing over in a lesson about the importance of perseverance. But he chats happily to the camera on the walk home and he beams with pride as his dad, Grant, shows the crew around a garden filled with fish and rabbits. A flag of St George flutters from a pole,  while he explains that he had to bounce back from some tough times to reclaim the house and custody of some of his children after his wife moved out. Having struggled with reading and writing himself, he hopes that Harry's fresh start will give him a better grounding than he had. 

Strolling along corridors with aphorisms on every wall, Harry attends a lesson on the use of full stops that Sophie tries to enliven by giving out baseball caps emblazoned with the word `Stop' and encouraging the kids to make a power punch gesture whenever a full stop occurs in the passage they are reading. During a library period, teaching assistants and older students are on hand to offer help. Harry is also enrolled in special catch-up sessions, as he is so far behind the rest of the class after coming from a school with social, emotional and mental health issues. But Sophie is determined he will not be left behind and promises him that things will get easier if he can master the basics.

He is far from the only pupil with problems. One classmate, Anna, explains to an unidentified teacher that she is in detention for being late because she has to look after her four year-old autistic brother three nights a week while her mother is out at work. She finds it exhausting, as it's so difficult to communicate with her sibling and the sympathetic teacher suggests that she spends time with Georgia Crew, the pupil support officer, to get some of the attention she is not receiving at home. 

Sophie accompanies PE teacher Andrew Lait to watch a football match involving Harry's team. They lose, but they improve in the second half and everyone takes the positives. He is shown responding more readily in class, as Sophie and her colleagues coax him along and make him feel involved and valued. Grant has high hopes that he can break the repetitive cycle, as neither he nor his father can read well and he knows that such a drawback has impacted upon their quality of life. Thus, when Sophie commends Harry on making progress during a parents' evening, Grant is proud of him. Furthermore, Harry is reminded that people look up to him in class and that this popularity brings responsibility and he clearly likes the idea of being considered a leader and is chuffed when he gets 10/10 in a spelling test. 

Christmas comes and goes and Class 7Don return for Spring Term to discuss what they did during the holidays. Anna has discovered that she is moving to Bristol and her best friend gets upset and Sophie has to console her with the help of her classmates. She cheers up and, after school, goes to a playground with Anna to muse on why Shakespeare didn't use proper English. Harry is also on an upswing, as his grade marks are improving. But, at a meeting with Grant, staff draw attention to the fact that Harry often finds himself in detention and needs to work on his behavior and social interaction skills.

However, he is promoted into the main English class and celebrates with chocolate cake and a game of table tennis against Sophie, who sits beside him during lessons to provide supplementary teaching on a one-to-one basis. But he still has his off days when he struggles to concentrate and he gives Sophie plenty of backchat when she tries to get him to imagine where he will be when he is 25 and sign a form committing to continued improvement. As he leaves the classroom, he passes a quote from Walt Disney on the stairs: `All out dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.' But this is clearly more easily said than done and Grant concurs that life is more about survival than aspiration. Yet, he has built a plastic pool for Harry to swim in and he is delighted that his fresh start has kept him on the straight and narrow and away from the temptations that confound so many kids of his age.

As Summer Term begins, 7Don boards a bus for a residential week on a farm and country life evidently agrees with Harry, who is praised for being calmer and more receptive than he is back in London. A montage shows the various activities the class engages in, as they help out with the animals and explore the great outdoors. He has an appointment with Georgia to examine his state of mind as he prepares for Year 8 and Sophie sets the class an assignment to write a letter to themselves outlining their successes and failures so they can embark upon the new year with a sense of achievement and some new goals. 

The summer takes its toll on Harry, however, and he is demotivated by the time Autumn Term begins. Grant comes to see Sophie, who warns Harry about falling behind with his homework, while assuring him that she will continue to provide all the support he needs. He looks bored in a lesson about the Shakespearean theatre and a montage shows him becoming disruptive in class and being excluded from lessons and receiving numerous demerits. Eventually, Grant is summoned when Harry tells his science teacher that she's ugly and Sophie urges him not to waste the progress he has made by letting frustration get the better of him. But Harry confides to camera that he can't see the point of school when it takes up so much of his day and even Sophie struggles to motivate him in individual sessions, which (a caption informs us) result in the school spending more than double the additional allocated funding it receives for him.

With Harry becoming an increasingly disruptive influence, he meets with Sophie and some of the leadership team to discuss his attitude. They agree he has made progress with his social skills and become a more rounded person. But he is at the school to learn and has not built upon the improvements made in Year 7. A caption reveals that an annual review with Grant and the local authority concludes that Reach Academy no longer feels it can meet the boy's needs and it's agreed to find him a specialist school with the funding to provide him with the one-to-one tutoring he needs. In the meantime, he is transferred to a primary class to provide mentoring support and is shown helping the kids over the fence into a muddy pig pen at the school farm. 

Sophie regrets that Harry was not able to overcome his inferiority complex at always being behind his classmates, but accepts that the greater good has to prevail. He is shown charging around the playground with the little ones and enjoying being the big man on campus. Indeed, he expresses an interest in working with younger children when he grows up. As Harry cycles off into his future (with a prediction he'll last five days at the new place), Rebecca and Sophie welcome a new boy who was excluded from his last school for stabbing someone with a knife. His mother looks on with pride, as the lad reads the declaration of intent. But his dad sits by himself, with little interest in a process that has already, quite probably, failed him. 

Closing captions note that the link between low income and poor academic achievement is greater in the UK than almost any other developed country, with only a quarter of white, working-class boys achieving the government benchmark by the time they leave school at 16. As early intervention can make a difference, Reach Academy has opened a community hub to help underprivileged families. But, while this provides a useful plug for the school, it doesn't explain how the initiative would work and how it plans to connect with parents prejudiced after their own schooldays. 

Indeed, this reluctance to delve beneath the surface consistently hampers a film that bears comparison with Jerry Rothwell and Ranu Ghosh's The School in the Cloud (2018). Profiling a troubled lad who is struggling to concentrate in class is a tricky assignment and nobody addresses the issue of how being followed by a camera crew is going to impact on an 11 year-old making a fresh start. Clearly, Owles and Taylor were not present for every lesson over the two years of filming, but it's hard to see how they could not have been a distraction in certain instances to Harry and his classmates, no matter how discreet they were. It must also have been difficult for the newly qualified Sophie to impose her personality on her charges while under the microscope. 

It's intriguing to contrast between the classroom scenes shown here and those in The Kindergarten Teacher and note the levels of commitment required of the staff. Sophie is evidently an inspirational teacher and her disappointment at not being able to help Harry is palpable. One also feels a pang for Grant, a devoted dad who wants to do the best for his son without being able to provide essential educational support because of his own limitations. It has to be said, however, that the family doesn't appear to be living on the breadline, with Harry having numerous pets, a pool and a new bike by the end of Year 8. Nevertheless, the sociological points are well made and, if editors Matthew Scholes and Emiliano Battista, occasionally make this seem like a promotional video for Reach Academy, there's no doubting the project's good intentions.

In 1990, Turner prize-nominated artist Richard Billingham published a book of photographs entitled Ray's a Laugh, which borrowed its title from comedian Ted Ray's 1950s radio show to chronicle the lives of his parents and brother in a high-rise tenement block in Birmingham. Expanding upon the 2016 short, Ray, he returns to this subject matter for his debut feature, Ray & Liz, which draws scathing parallels between the effects on the working poor of Conservative policies in the Thatcher and May eras. As though compressing the Bill Douglas (1972-78) and Terence Davies (1976-83) trilogies into a single film, this goes a long way to restoring social realism to the pristine purity that has been scuffed by decades of holier than thou socialist point scoring. 

Rarely leaving his bedroom, Ray (Patrick Romer) lives a solitary existence in a West Midlands flat overlooking a railway line. Insects crawl around the room and Ray rouses himself only to smoke and guzzle down treacle-coloured home brew from large plastic bottles. These are supplied by his long-haired and bearded neighbour, Sid (Richard Ashton). But Ray feigns sleep to avoid contact with him when he drops off the latest batch and annoys him by scrawling his name above picture of Jesus Christ on the front of a religious brochure that has been popped through his letterbox. 

As he gazes out of the window while listening to the radio, Ray's mind is taken back a decade to the early 1980s, when he (Justin Salinger) shared an end-of-terrace council house with his wife, Liz (Ella Smith), their 10 year-old son, Richard (Jacob Tuton), and their two year-old, Jason (Callum Slater). Times are tough and they have rented out the spare room to Will (Sam Gittins), who intimidates Ray's brother, Lol (Tony Way), who has learning difficulties. He lives round the corner with his mother, Hilda (Mary Helen Donald), and hardly seems to mind that Richard calls him `Simple Lawrence'. 

As Liz wants to go shoe shopping, she asks Lol to keep an eye on Jason while they're out. She has made him lunch and warns him off touching the alcohol stash that she has bought with Ray's redundancy money. Preoccupied with her flower arranging and embroidery, Liz has little time for Lol and is easily annoyed by his habit of repeating words and chattering for the sake of it. Indeed, she is too busy threatening him with a brandished fist to notice that Jason has hurt his finger playing with the contents of a jar of nails. 

No sooner have Liz, Ray and Richard gone out than Will gets home. He chides Lol for sitting in the dark and the light reveals the shabbiness of the wallpaper and the dirtiness of the net curtains. Will's arrival seems to unsettle the budgie and the hamster, as well as the brown dog named Sooty, who shifts uncomfortably in its badly chewed cardboard box. Keen to keep on Will's good side, Lol tells him about the hidden booze and he goes searching for it. He finds it hidden in the basement and returns to ply Lol with shots from every bottle. 

As he becomes inebriated, Lol reprimands Will for mentioning the Nazis and for trying to make him swear at God. But he soon passes out and Will empties his wallet before depositing him in the settee (after breaking the arm with a well-aimed kick). He also covers Jason's face with black boot polish and leaves him holding a large carving knife. When Lol vomits in his sleep, Sooty scampers out of his box to lick it up and the eyes in all the tacky paintings hanging on the tattered walls seem to glare accusingly as the Siouxsie and the Banshees track `Happy House' blares out from the television. 

Arriving home to find her toddler playing with a serrated blade, Liz loses her temper and, encouraged by the newly returned Will, she punches the slumbering Lol on the nose. She orders Ray to check his wallet, as she intends making him pay for the damage. But he doesn't have a penny to his name and Will tuts disapprovingly in an effort to rouse Liz to new fury. He keeps stirring the pot after Ray goes to the pub and, when he also pops out, Liz removes a shoe and beats Lol around the head before banishing from the house forever. 

He staggers out without realising what has happened. But his innocence is confirmed when Jason clicks on the portable tape recorder he had been playing with during the boozing session and Liz hears Will encouraging her impressionable brother-in-law to drink. Richard also hears the tape, but Liz orders him to take Jason to bed before unspooling the cassette and destroying the evidence so that Lol remains the culprit. 

Back in the 90s, Ray sees Liz (Deirdre Kelly) through his rain-spattered window and calls down to her. She promises to call in a couple of days and he goes back to sleep. He wakes to find Sid standing over him, with the news that he has paid his bills and his poll tax from his benefits and is pleased to tell him that he has a few quid over. 

Prowling round the room to catch some flies in Ray's beer glass, Sid urges him not to hand the cash over to Liz in a bid to retain contact with her. But Ray insists she's a good sort and begins to reminisce about the time Jason frightened the life out of him by putting a spider in his matchbox. Ray looks at the fading school photo of his youngest son on the wall and, having woken in the night to the sound of fireworks, his mind goes back to when the entire family lived in the flat. 

Now nine, Jason (Joshua Millard-Lloyd) is a bit of a scamp, who drops things out of the window at passers-by to stave off boredom while 16 year-old Richard (Sam Plant) studies on his bed and their parents have a lie in. Making himself a sandwich from a large jar of pickled red cabbage, Jason nuzzles the cute baby animals on a wildlife show on the television before stroking the rabbit that has left its droppings on the settee cushion. He also keeps snails in an a plastic tub under his bed and is playing with them when the dog piddles on an official-looking letter that drops through the door. 

Encouraged by Richard, Jason feeds the snoring Ray a teaspoon of chili powder and scarpers down the stairs before he gets into any trouble. But Ray is in too much of a daze to do anything other than drink from the kitchen tap and hide the micturated missive at the bottom of a drawer so that Liz doesn't see it. While she does a jigsaw, Jason bunks off school and uses the money he stole from her purse to go to Dudley Zoo. He sees some baby hyenas and watches the seals being fed before offering a giraffe in an indoor enclosure a branch to eat. 

Back at the flat, Liz chats on a CB radio and tells Ray to shut up when he suggests the start doing the football pools to win some money. Kevin (James Eeles) turns up to ask Liz if he can cadge some of the fag ends she keeps in a jar for rainy days. However, Ray refuses to share his golden home brew and can barely summon the energy to greet Jason when he gets home and shuffles into the kitchen to make a cabbage sandwich. Liz asks about school and he fibs convincingly to join Richard in the living-room, where he is soaking his feet while watching Fritz Kiersch's take on Stephen King's Children of the Corn (1984) on the telly. 

When the flat is plunged into darkness when the meter runs out, Jason is left alone as the others file out to find alternative sources of light, heat and amusement. He remembers an invitation to a bonfire party at a friend's house and tugs on a pullover before heading across the estate. While Richard finds sanctuary on Uncle Lol's sofa, Jason scurries through the cemetery and finds Tony (Roscoe Cox) toasting bread over the fire. As Musical Youth's `Pass the Dutchie' plays on the soundtrack, Jason has fun with sparklers, while his mother phones a friend in the hope he can lend her some money. She uses her last coins on the call and is frustrated to be given short shrift by her mate's disapproving spouse. Liz snaps at Ray when she gets home for leaving her to do everything, although he has found some oil lamps and makes her a glass of hot milk on the gas cooker. 

At the end of the party, Jason tries to find his way home in the dark. However, nowhere looks familiar and he quickly becomes scared by the nocturnal noises. So, he returns to Tony's place and beds down for the night under a blanket he finds in a neighbour's shed. Too busy with her jigsaw of a wide-eyed cherub who vaguely resembles her youngest, Liz doesn't notice his absence and Jason is only found the next morning when he is suffering from hypothermia. Recognising the symptoms, Tony's mum, Zineb (Michelle Bonnard), wraps Jason in blankets and seats him in a chair by the fire. He likes the feel of her hands warming his fingers and toes and tucks into warm toast as she agrees to let him stay for the night if it's okay with his mum. 

When he returns home to check with his parents, Jason finds them asleep and lies that he has their permission to stay over. He hugs Zineb when she shows him where he will sleep and enjoys Tony's company, as they play with a handheld games console. The next day, they frolic in the park, where they bump into Ray and Liz, who seem unconcerned that he has been missing for a couple of days and that the police have called round to ask about him. They are wheeling his rabbit around in a pram and appear content when he promises to go to school the next morning. However, the headmaster (Andrew Jefferson-Tierney) has heard about his plight and has made arrangements with social services for Jason to be placed with foster parents until a full investigation is completed. Shrugging in compliance, the boy shows no emotion at being removed from his home. 

Liz and Ray are more bothered about the fact that they will lose £25 a week in child allowance than they are about Jason being taken away. But the social worker (David Heeks) has little comfort to offer Richard, who is too old to be placed in foster care and he is told to grin and bear it until he turns 16 and he can leave of his own accord. When Liz starts to cry, Ray tries to console her, but she would rather have a cigarette than his pity. 

Jolted out of his slumber by the front door slamming, Ray falls out of bed and Liz berates him for being drunk at 9:30 in the morning. She plonks herself down on the bed and lights a fag before pouring out her woes. Despite the fact she does nothing but insult him, Ray shows concern that her gas has been cut off and that she might be evicted. But as soon as he gives her the £12 burning a hole in his pocket, Liz snatches the cash and scarpers, leaving her ex-husband alone. As dusk descends, he pours himself a drink and gets teary in the red glow of his bar fire while singing along to Dusty Springfield's "Some of Your Lovin'" on the radio. 

Closer in tone to the work of the Amber Collective than Ken Loach, this is not only a poignant human drama, but it's also a notable work of art. Filmed on 16mm in the Academy ratio by Daniel Landin, the unflinching footage reveals a photographer's eye, as Billingham's gaze alights on the telltale details within Beck Rainford's exceptional mise-en-scène. But he also has an insider's compassion for people he cannot bring himself to judge because he lived through these episodes with them and knows that their individual flaws were exacerbated by their penurious circumstances. 

The sole villain of the piece is the least convincing character, as we're not presented with enough background to understand why Will would want to inflict such senseless damage on the people keeping a roof over his head. This whiff of contrivance recurs in the casting of new actors as the older Ray and Liz, as they wouldn't have changed that much in a decade (even if poverty had ravaged their health) and one suspects that Patrick Romer was chosen to justify the rather stuntish casting of Deirdre `White Dee' Kelly from Benefits Street (2014) as the latterday Liz. Channel Four was condemned for peddling poverty porn with this series, which was filmed on James Turner Street in the Second City's Winson Green district. But similar accusations can't be levelled at Billingham, as this is much more reflective than exploitative. 

The standout performance comes from young Joshua Millard-Lloyd, as the neglected rascal who seems to seek out trouble as easily as it finds him. However, Ella Smith is equally impressive as the self-centred matriarch, whose floral dresses and numerous tattoos offer subtle hints into a psyche that has been coarsened by years of having to scrape through. Patrick Romer and Justin Salinger offer poignant support, as the milquetoast who seems to have lost the will to fight back, in much the same way that Tony Way's well-meaning sibling is powerless to prevent life from repeatedly beating him over the head. Therein lies the film's political message. But there's no sign of a Loachian soapbox, as Billingham confronts us with his recollections and leaves us to reach our own conclusions about there the blame should lie.

Bosnian director Danis Tanovic has spent his entire career taking creative and socio-political risks. He won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for his debut feature, No Man's Land (2001), which centred on a UN peacekeeping force's bid to rescue a trio of troops from a land mine during the Bosnian Civil War. Then, having taken on the script for L'Enfer (2005) that Polish auteur Krzysztof Kieslowski had intended to be the central part of a trilogy on Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, he considered the war in Kurdistan in Triage (2009) and the dissolution of Yugoslavia in Cirkus Columbia (2010). Now, having united a real-life Roma couple with the actors playing them in An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013), Tanovic uses the wraparound story in Tigers (2014) to explore the moral responsibilities facing film-makers when they dramatise actual events.

The tone is set in an pre-credits audio exchange from 1978 between Senator Edward Kennedy and the head of a company producing milk formula, in which the latter denies responsibility for parents endangering their babies by mixing the powder with contaminated water. However, the scene quickly shifts to 2006, as film producer Alex (Danny Huston) gathers in London with director Nadeem (Khalid Abdalla), lawyer Frank (Sam Reid) and World Health Organisation representative Maggi (Maryam d'Abo) to Skype with Ayan (Emraan Hashmi) to clear up a few details before they can commit to making a movie about his life. 

Ayan takes them back to Pakistan in 1994, where he and wife Zainab (Geetanjali Thapa) are living with his parents in a crowded apartment and trying to survive on his salary as a salesman for a local drug company with a poor reputation. He is overjoyed, therefore, when he lands a job selling infant formula with Lasta Foods, a pharmaceutical multinational that Alex decides not to call Nestlé in a telling cutaway from from the flashback. However, Alex has misgivings about Ayan's insistence that he was hired because he showed tenacity in his interview, as Lasta have claimed that he forged a college diploma to meet the qualification criteria.

Starting out with high hopes that he will be able to give Zainab a place of her own and make a difference to ordinary people in his community, Ayan forms a friendship with Dr Faiz (Satyadeep Mishra), who has a large number of new mothers among his patients. Among his other clients is Dr Salim (Ashwath Bhatt), who has contacts with important people across the city and who introduces Ayan to Maggi, who disapproves of Big Pharma and refuses to attend events sponsored by the leading conglomerates. But boss Bilal (Adil Hussain) is pleased with his progress and gives him a moped to help him make his rounds.

Two years pass and the sky appears to be Ayan's only limit. He has moved house and fathered a son. Moreover, he is hugely popular among his clients, as he takes an interest in their lives and showers them with gifts from the `imprest money' that Bilal gives him to grease palms. However, Faiz returns from studying in Karachi and takes Ayan to a ward filled with dying children who have suffered from organ failure as a result of the diarrhoea and dehydration caused because their mothers have mixed the formula with dirty water. 

Ayan is dismayed by what he sees when he tours the poorer parts of town. So, when Faiz shows him photographs of a mother who lost the twin who used formula while saving the one she breastfed, Ayan resigns and is appalled when Bilal reminds him of the charter he signed forbidding him to discuss operational procedures with the outside world. As his father. Mustafa (Vinod Nagpal), has taught himself law, he helps Ayan draw up a complaint against Lasta. But going public merely antagonises the company and alienates Ayan from clients who have been exposed as corrupt. 

When Faiz is threatened by Bilal for co-operating with Ayan, they take their evidence to Maggi, who is amazed by the comprehensive nature of his evidence and agrees to provide WHO backing. However, Ayan is spooked when the colonel at the local military hospital has him detained for besmirching his reputation and only releases him with a warning that Lasta is too powerful a concern to confront. Yet, when he tries to back out, Zainab declares that she will lose all respect for him unless he does what is right and, having sent her to stay with relatives in another part of the country, he renews his crusade. 

Despite the testimony, Alex remains nervous that Ayan is an unreliable witness and turns to Maggi to tell her side of the story to make sure the screenplay is watertight and can't be contested by Lasta and their lawyers. She recalls how Ayan joined his family in hiding, while German documentary maker Michael (Roman Leitner) recorded interviews to support the booklet that Maggi intends releasing to the media. When she informs Ayan that it would be safer if he left Pakistan, Mustafa insists that he goes and promises to take care of Zainab and her new daughter. 

Once in Germany, however, Ayan is hit with an accusation that he sought hush money from Lasta and a recording is produced of him setting up a meeting with Bilal to find a way out of the impasse. But, while he was offered $60,000, Ayan refused to take it because both Mustafa and Zainab threatened to disown him if he backed down. Michael's employers pull his film and Alex admits to being close to walking away, as the story is too open to litigation.

It's revealed that Ayan is now in Toronto working for a doughnut company and that he has not seen his wife and children in seven years. Maggi had promised him he would return a hero and, yet, he is a pariah who has lost his parents and his credibility. Nadeem assures him that he has faith in his cause and his integrity and Maggi continues to insist that he should be lauded to refusing a life-changing bribe. But Frank is adamant that the film is too full of legal loopholes for his backers to take a chance. 

Closing captions reveal that Zainab and the children finally made it to Canada, where Ayan now drives a cab. We are informed that the footage we saw of dying babies was filmed for a programme that was broadcast in 1989, while the other sick babies shown in the picture were found in hospitals by Tanovic and his crew. As the final caption states, this is a true story that keeps repeating itself. Yet, for all its excellent intentions, this never quite gels as either a declaration or a drama and it's somewhat surprising that it has reached UK cinemas half a decade after it was produced. 

Subtitled `Can a Salesman Be a Hero', the film stumbles between its depiction of Ayan's travails and the deliberations between those seeking to bring them to the big screen. Each segment is significant and Tanovic deserves credit for showing how film-makers have to dot the i's and cross the t's in producing advocatory cinema. Indeed, he takes a sizeable gamble in referring directly to Nestlé in having its name changed to Lasta on the placard of the chauffeur collecting Ayan for his interview. But, while it's important to know that a whistleblower can be left high and dry because the big corporations can use their clout to silence them by intimidating potential media partners, Tanovic and co-writer Andy Paterson struggle to link Ayan's personal plight, the meta-meta freedom of speech issue and the infant formula tragedy into a cohesive narrative.  

Bollywood star Emraan Hashmi exudes decency as the earnest, but naive salaryman trying to do the right thing by his family and his conscience, while Vinod Nagpal, Satyadeep Mishra and Geetanjali Thapa provide effective support, as do Danny Huston and Maryam d'Abo. But this Franco-Indian co-production is Tanovic's most conventional outing to date, with cinematographer Erol Zubcevic spending more time confined to KK Muralidharan and Rachna Rastogi thoughtful interiors instead of being out capturing the atmosphere of a little-seen setting. Editor Perna Saigal deftly incorporates the archive footage, but Pritam Chakraborty's score tugs a touch too insistently on the heartstrings when emotional restraint is required to convince the audience rather than merely carry them along.

The BFI continues its project to bring Merchant-Ivory back to British cinemas with the latest offering being Heat and Dust, a 1982 tale of the Raj that was adapted by German screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own Booker Prize-winning novel. Although it emerged in the wake of Richard Attenborough's Oscar success for Gandhi (1982) and became rather forgotten after the release of David Lean's EM Forster adaptation, A Passage to India, as well as the small-screen variations on Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown and MM Kaye's The Far Pavilions (all 1984), this handsome and involving drama saw American director James Ivory and Indian producer Ismail Merchant return to the subcontinental themes they had been exploring for two decades in such varied pictures as The Householder (1963), Shakespeare Wallah (1965), The Guru (1969), Bombay Talkie (1970), Autobiography of a Princess (1975) and Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures (1976). 

In the present day, Anne (Julie Christie) sets off to India to research the 1920s experiences of her great-aunt. Armed with the letters that Olivia Rivers (Greta Scacchi) had written to her sister (Anne's grandmother) and a taped interview with Olivia's old friend, Harry Hamilton-Paul (Nickolas Grace), Anne arrives in Satipur, which was once the capital of the princely state of Khatm that was ruled over by the Nawab (Shashi Kapoor). She finds lodgings with Inder Lal (Zakir Hussain), who lives with his mother (Tarla Mehta) and his wife, Ritu (Ratna Pathak), and soon finds herself becoming as intrigued by their travails as she is by the plight of the unfortunate Olivia. 

She is married to Douglas Rivers (Christopher Cazenove), the assistant collector of Satipur, whose superior is Arthur Crawford (Julian Glover), who is married to Beth, the Burra Memsahib (Susan Fleetwood). Among those in their social circle are medical officer Dr William Saunders (Patrick Godfrey), his wife, Joan (Jennifer Kendal), Harry Hamilton-Paul and Major Carter Minnies (Barry Foster), who is the political agent to the Nawab, who is very much subservient to his mother, Begum Mussarat Jahan (Madhur Jaffrey).

Looking directly into the camera to deliver in monologue the letter that Anne is reading in the present day, Olivia describes being presented at the Nawab's court, where the Begum and her entourage sit behind a mesh curtain, smoke cigarettes and peer through the binoculars at the colonial officials trying to curry favour with the Nawab in a bid to bind his protectorate more closely to the crown. The Begum is amused by Olivia having to spit out a delicacy that has been served to her, but the new arrival is also aware of the pomposity of the ceremonial that prevents the British emissaries and the Nawab being frank with each other. 

Such problems continue into the present, as Anne comes to see the office where Inder Lal works (because it used to be her great-aunt's bungalow) and he is embarrassed as his workmates have inferred that the white woman is waiting for him because they have a sexual relationship. He laments their ignorance and how affairs between the genders are so complicated, but he is also stressed because Ritu is prone to night terrors and his mother has to perform traditional rituals in an effort to calm her down. 

Inflamed passions also concern Mrs Saunders, who confides in Olivia that Indian men are only after one thing because the spices in their diet overheats their blood. She is still mourning the loss of her child and Inder Lal shows Anne the stone angel that was imported from Italy to adorn the grave. He teases her about being unmarried and, when she reveals that she had just been jilted by her newly divorced lover, he jokes that he should find her an Indian husband so she can have lots of babies. His indiscretion is matched by Olivia blurting out at a reception hosted by the Begum that her son is a handsome man who would be the dashing darling of any London drawing-room. 

As she is still finding her feet, Olivia pleads with Rivers not to send her to Simla for the summer, as she would rather be hot and irritable with him than bored with a bunch of hobnobbing memsahibs. At a dinner party at the palace, Olivia blunders through the wrong door and finds herself alone with the Nawab and his servant. He politely asks her to leave and Rivers escorts her to supper. She chatters happily with Hamilton-Paul, who concedes that he has introduced the Nawab to his entirely unsuitable English wife. Mrs Saunders gossips to her neighbour that the Begum had poisoned the woman to prevent losing influence over her son, but nobody knows the real story. 

Everyone falls silent, as the Nawab recalls how an ancestor had once answered a slight by inviting his foe to a tented banquet and then cut the guy ropes so that his guests were trussed up for slaughter. Undaunted, the British contingent join the Nawab for musical entertainment in an awning in the garden, fresh from accusing him among themselves of being in cahoots with a band of looters rampaging around the countryside under the orders of Dacoit chief, Tikuran (Sajid Khan). They hope to expose him and use his complicity as an excuse to depose him. But, for now, they maintain the civilities and frown on Olivia when she slips away from the rest of the women to listen to the raga from a bench by a fountain. She is joined by Hamilton-Paul, who acts as the Nawab's go-between and she is delighted when he extends the invitation to a private dinner with her husband. 

Instead of being honoured, Rivers is dismayed because the invitation breaks protocol and he reprimands Olivia for disporting herself in front of the servants in her nightgown. She complains of being bored and threatens to run away unless he spends more time with her. No sooner had she spoken than the Nawab calls to sweep her away for a picnic with his retinue to make up for River declining the dinner date. Hamilton-Paul acts as their chaperone, as they sip wine, explore a temple built to commemorate a military victory and play musical cushions on a large rug spread across the dusty ground. As Anne recalls in her notes, Olivia had meant to tell Rivers about her day out, but he had arrived home late and she had contented herself with describing the scene to her sister, instead. 

Anne attends a ceremony at the temple that is now used by Muslims and Hindus and she notes that things have a habit of getting muddle up in India. At the river's edge, she meets Chid (Charles McCaughan), an American sannyasi who came to India seeking enlightenment and discarded his past when a guru gave him the name `Chidananda' (`bliss of mind'). He invites himself back to her digs and Inder Lal is happy for him to stay, as charity provides good karma for the next life. 

However, Anne soon tires of Chid rummaging through her papers and trying to talk her into sleeping with him so that they can enjoy tantric love. When she tries to throw him out, however, Ritu welcomes him back and Anne feels guilty when her mother-in-law summons another traditional medicine man to try and cure her psychological ills. She asks Inder Lal to let her take Ritu to a doctor in Delhi, but Chid tells her to stop interfering in family matters and accuses her of thinking that she is Olivia reincarnated. It comes as a relief, therefore, when Chid accompanies Ritu and her mother-in-law on a pilgrimage. 

Their journey reminds Anne of the time that Hamilton-Paul sought sanctuary with Olivia during a time of sandstorms and civil unrest. Rivers was under great strain after witnessing an acid fight between two women in the market and having turned the guns on a demonstration that he is convinced was provoked by the Dacoit bandits to unsettle the British community. Beth comes to reassure Olivia that everything is under control and offers Hamilton-Paul a chance to return to Blighty to see his ailing mother. But the Nawab woos him back to the palace and, when Olivia comes to see him when he falls sick, her host presses her for information about what rumours the collector and his cronies have heard about his association with the Dacoits. 

Such is her loyalty to the Nawab that when Rivers informs her that he is bankrupt and is likely taking a cut from Tikuran's raids, Olivia dismisses the accusation as a slur. She frequently visits the palace to see Hamilton-Paul and the Nawab invariably joins them and he guides her away so they can be alone and he can justify himself to her as both a ruler and an abandoned husband. As they grow closer to each other, so do Anne and Inder Lal and, following a visit to the palace (which is now a tourist site), they sleep together and she becomes pregnant. 

This breach of etiquette echoes Olivia's transgression and Hamilton-Paul warns her to stop coming to see him because rumours are spreading about her relationship with the Nawab. He points out that she is being dishonoured by being entertained by eunuchs and by being kept away from the Begum (who spies on her every move), as she is deemed beneath her dignity. The servants have also started gossiping about Olivia and she gives them grist for the mill after she becomes the Nawab's mistress after he uses a drive into the country as an excuse to meet with the Dacoit leaders (and Olivia has a daydream about the massacre in the tent). 

Olivia also falls pregnant and breaks the news to Rivers and the Nawab, who insists that his son shall be born in the palace. He beams with pleasure at the prospect of humiliating the British and Olivia realises that he has been using her for his own ends. Yet, when Minnies and Crawford come to dinner, she is distressed when they discuss replacing him with a malleable nephew and incorporating his state into the Empire. Anne also feels conflicted and pays a call on Maji the midwife (Praveen Paul), who offers to massage her stomach to help bring about a miscarriage. But she decides to keep the child and leaves her hillside shack with a smile. She also puts on a brave face when she waves goodbye to Chid, who has fallen ill on the pilgrimage and agreed to fly back to the States. 

Hamilton-Paul and the Begum had joined forces to find Olivia a backstreet abortionist. But Saunders had recognised the twig method used and wasted no time in telling anyone who would listen that he knew she was a bad egg from the moment he laid eyes on her. Rivers is crushed by the news that Olivia has cuckolded him and sought sanctuary with the Nawab, but he throws himself into his work, while Olivia moved into a house in the snow-capped mountains bought for her by the Nawab. As Anne pays a pilgrimage, she imagines them together and the reflections of all three are caught in the same window. She had learned from Hamilton-Paul that the Nawab and his mother had moved to London to argue over his throne and the family jewels and that Olivia had stayed on alone after he had succumbed to a sudden heart attack. Now, Anne will have her baby in a monastery nearby and fulfil the destiny that had not befallen her great-aunt.

Although it dawdles in places and the modern story lacks the intensity of the flashback, this is a textbook piece of heritage cinema that confirmed Merchant-Ivory as the leading purveyors of period pieces in the Thatcher era. Given that Jhabvala's book was about the inequality that women had to endure in the 1980s, as well as in the past, this added irony makes the screenplay's simmering rage all the more relevant today, as so little has changed. It's fashionable to dismiss Merchant-Ivory as political film-makers, but don't be fooled by the refinement. As gay men who had experienced plenty of prejudice themselves, they were, for all the crinoline on display, astute and often acerbic commentators on the contemporary scene.

Barbara Lane's costumes are among the many plus points, along with Richard Robbins's score, Wilfred Shingleton's production design and Walter Lassally's cinematography (although criticism of his overuse of soft focus is hard to deny). But, while this looks magnificent, it's the intensity of the performances that fixes the attention. Approaching the peak of her powers as the doyenne of Anglo period pieces, Greta Scacchi makes Olivia as reckless as she is restless in failing to appreciate the wider picture in seeking to shake up the stuffy community in which she has been stranded. The contrast between the damage she causes and Anne's seemingly consequenceless adultery is striking, as she can choose to keep her child without causing an international incident (but we never get to know if she tells Inder Lal that he's going to be a father). This makes the casting of Julie Christie all the more shrewd, as she had been playing such free spirits since the early 1960s. 

The reunion with Merchant-Ivory stalwart Shashi Kapoor also makes perfect sense, as he ably conveys the cruelty behind the charm with a dash that is missing from the stuffed-shirted jobsworthiness of the British civil servants, who seem hopelessly out of their depth, while being utterly convinced of their own competence and rectitude. Kapoor's wife, Jennifer Kendal (who would die just two years latet at the age of 50), is also superb as the doctor's grieving wife, while Susan Fleetwood and Madhur Jaffrey go about being the power behind the throne in amusingly different ways. But the great strength of this compelling drama is Jhabvala's understanding of India's transition from an imperial province to a non-aligned republic and she cleverly contrasts the prince and the bourgeois to sum up its mindset, while also using a self-deceiving hippie to examine her own relationship with her adoptive homeland.

CinemaItaliaUK returns this week with Alfredo Fiorillo's debut feature, Respiri. Having made his name with commercials and a range of television programmes, Fiorillo teams with producer and co-scenarist Angela Prudenzi to create an hallucinatory puzzle that explores human responses to pain. Wavering between psychological study and ghost story, this is an ambitious and meticulously made picture. But its tendency towards legerdemain and detachment means that it doesn't quite succeed in carrying the audience along.

An aerial shot hovers over Lake Iseo, as Francesco (Alessio Boni) arrives by speedboat at the Art Nouveau villa where he plans to live with his red-haired daughter, Elisa (Eleonora Trevisani). Many years have passed since he last visited the family homestead and Anna the housekeeper (Milena Vukotic) makes sure that everything is ready for his return. She is mute and devoted to 

Eleanora (Gaia Cagna), who is comatose and connected to a ventilator. Consequently, she is reluctant to go to Milan for a few days and leave him to care for her patient with Virginia the nurse (Eva Grimaldi). He promises to keep his temper and apologises for past misdeeds and she hugs him tearfully. 

As darkness falls, Francesco gets a visit from Marta (Lidiya Liberman), an old friend who has been coming to the villa since she was a girl. He asks her to keep an eye on his wife while he gets his affairs in order and she agrees with a degree of reluctance. From the tone of their conversation, they were clearly once more than friends and Marta was hurt. But she is ready to forgive and forget and is pleased to have Francesco close at hand. 

Following an eerie top shot of what appears to be Elisa's face being covered by dead leaves and red rose petals, a top shot on to a road in the nearby town gives way to Marta pondering what to wear to make the right impression on Francesco. However, she wipes off the scarlet lipstick and opts for a more modest outfit, as she wanders through the echoing hallway. Francesco has driven into town with Elisa to order his business manager to sell his vineyards and stables, as he wants to simplify his life. But he returns to the car to find Elisa missing just as Marta becomes concerned by the sound of distressed breathing coming from Eleanora's locked room. As Francesco scours the narrow streets before finding his daughter with scuffed knees sitting by the fountain, we see the spectral figure of Eleanora gliding out of his vision.

Chiding Elisa for running off by herself, Francesco arrives home to dismiss Marta's concerns about Eleanora's health and she feels slighted by his off-handedness. However, he is more gracious the next time she pays a visit. But, in dropping her off in town, Francesco spots the ghost of his wife, Francesco's wife (Valentina Cenni) and follows her through the backstreets. Meanwhile, Giulio the odd job man (Pino Calabrese) comes to sit beside Elisa, while she plays with a doll under a tree in the garden. He hugs her and reminds her that their meetings must be kept secret and she agrees in letting slip that her father once did a very bad thing. Perhaps that's why he has his face scratched by Paco the cat. However, the scurrying white-and-black creature also gives Virginia a shock when it gets into her car, as she prepares to go home after settling Eleanora for her night's sleep.

However, we see Virginia's corpse dangling from a tree in the nearby woods as Francesco and Marta make love, seemingly blithely unaware that they are being watched by the wide-eyed Elisa. She rushes off into the night, as Francesco's conscience gets the better of him and he testily sends a bemused Marta packing. He follows his daughter through the trees, but doesn't seem to see her meeting with Giulio, who cradles her on his lap while she sings a ghoulish nursery rhyme. When he tries to join in, she scolds him and reminds him of the promise that he had made to her. Francesco eventually finds Elisa sitting on the front step and he carries her into the villa. Someone has daubed the word `whore' on the stone staircase and Francesco loads a gun before bolting all of the doors and shutters. Upstairs, however, Giulio creeps into Elisa's bedroom and wishes her a good night. 

The next morning, Francesco orders Giulio to clean the graffiti and Elisa boasts about her handiwork as she helps him scrub. Doctor Michele (Lino Capolicchio) calls to see how Francesco is coping and suggests that it might be better to move Eleanora to a clinic, as he is clearly finding caring for her a struggle. But he insists she must stay in the villa and hopes that things will be easier once Anna returns. While Francesco promises Elisa a trip to see the dolphins, we see Michele's body floating face down by the jetty. Marta is the next casualty when she falls down the stairs after hearing Paco miaowing after making love with Francesco and creeps up the staircase (under the sinister gaze of Elisa) and runs into her lover, who is angry with her for daring to look in on his wife. 

Fortunately, Marta survives her tumble and Francesco apologises for losing his temper. She leaves with the intention of staying away, but soon returns and smells the flowers blooming by the lake with a look of faraway dreaminess. Francesco blames Elisa for the incident and threatens to confiscate her beloved doll and lock her in her room, as he is tired of her sabotaging his life. But she escapes to the woods and, while Francesco visits  a family tomb in search of guidance, Elisa conspires with Giulio to abduct Marta when she comes to the house and drops into Eleanora's bedroom. Knocking her cold, Giulio drags her body into the basement and leaves it bound and gagged on the floor. 

When Francesco goes looking for her, Elisa delights in watching him panic. He goes to see Eleanora and blames himself for everything that has gone wrong. As he comes downstairs, Giulio attacks him with a sickle, but Francesco overpowers him in a struggle. Meanwhile, Marta has escaped from the cellar, only for the power to cut out and she screams as she stumbles around in the darkness. Giulio comes round and lumbers after Francesco, who is calling for Elisa. When the old man jumps on him, Francesco kills him and tells his daughter not to be afraid because no one is going to harm her any longer. 

In an alternative version of reality, Giulio carries Elisa upstairs to Eleanora's room, while Marta staggers into the town to tell her story to the police. As the squad car arrives at the villa, we see Francesco slump down beside the bed as Eleanora looks round at a photograph that reveals the fact she is Elisa's sister and a soft-focus, slow-motion flashback shows how Elisa and her mother were killed when they ran into the road to catch Paco and Francesco ploughed into them with his car (presumably while returning from a tryst with Marta). The camera hovers over him, as he sits where Giulio had been holding Elisa's motionless body, and Francesco cackles in a manner that suggests that the combination of the guilt and the ghosts have finally deranged his mind.

Given that he has withheld so much background information, Fiorillo has left himself the latitude to spring any surprise he wishes. But, as the credits roll, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the audience can rightly feel shortchanged after having been required to make a considerable emotional and intellectual investment for such a meagre payoff. Echoes abound throughout of Michael Winner's The Nightcomers (1971), which anticipated the events in Henry James's `The Turn of the Screw', which had been filmed as The Innocents (1961) by Jack Clayton. But Fiorillo also draws heavily on the giallo tradition, although he also seems to have been influenced by the hybrid brand devised by the Belgian duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. 

With her flaming hair and piercing eyes, Eleonora Trevisani takes the acting honours, as she manipulates the creepily devoted Pino Calabrese and torments the short-fused Alessio Boni. Paco the cat also has a keen sense of timing. But, as Fiorillo ensures that every expression is loaded with significance and each utterance is delivered with hushed gravity, the stylised acting can become a little wearisome. However, Massimo Foletti keeps his camera moving stealthily, while art director Mauro Radaelli makes effective use of the villa, which is located near Sarnico in the Lombard province of Bergamo. Teho Teardo's score is also noteworthy. But this is more unsettling and capriciously confusing than being tense and genuinely terrifying.

No sailor in modern times has been discussed more on screen than Donald Crowhurst. Since Paul Foot made the BBC documentary, Donald Crowhurst - Sponsored for Heroism, in 1970, he has been the subject of fictional offerings like Peter Rowe's Horse Latitudes (1975), Christian de Chalonge's The Roaring Forties (1982), Nikita Orlov's Race of the Century (1986), Simon Rumley's Crowhurst (2017) and James Marsh's The Mercy (2018), as well as such documentaries as Jeremy James's Alone (1979), Jill Evans's The Two Voyages of Donald Crowhurst (1993) and Jeremy Rothwell and Louise Osmond's Deep Water (2006). 

Of course, the tragic conclusion to Teignmouth Electron's bid to win the 1969 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race plays right into the British wheelhouse. Maybe that's why it's taken so long for somebody to make a film about Tracy Edwards and the all-woman crew who not only competed in, but also completed the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race and made maritime history into the bargain. But the wait has been worth it, as Alex Holmes's Maiden is a fitting tribute to a restless spirit and her dauntless crew. 

Over opening shots of a raging sea, Tracy Edwards declares: `The ocean is always trying to kill you. It doesn't take a break.' Born in 1962, she was raised in Pangborne by a dancer mother who had been the first woman to ride a motorbike on the TT course on the Isle of Man. She had been driving go-karts when she first met her engineer husband, who had designed stereo speakers before dying when Edwards was 10. Her idyllic lifestyle changed dramatically when her mother remarried and moved to Wales. But, while she met lifelong friend Jo Gooding, Edwards had to put up with the abuse of her drunken stepfather and became such an angry teenager that she was suspended 26 times before she ran away from home after being expelled. 

Nothing is said about how Edwards managed to cross Europe or reach Piraeus in Greece, where she became a stewardess aboard a yacht. But, once there, she developed a passion for the sea and, having found a book about the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race, she was encouraged by no less a person than King Hussein of Jordan to get a berth as a cook after she met him on a cruise. In 1985, sailing was a man's sport, as skippers Bruno Dubois and Skip Novak and journalists Barry Pickthall and Bob Fisher condescendingly recall. But Edwards was hired to cook for Norsk Data GB before switching to Atlantic Privateer for the second leg.

As one of only four women among the 230-odd men competing in the race, Edwards was deemed sufficiently newsworthy for Frank Bough to interview her for BBC Breakfast Time. When she looks back now, she realises she was treated like a skivvy. But Edwards was determined to fit in and recalls the thrill of being part of a crew that won the leg culminating in Auckland. 

The experience convinced her that an all-female crew could cope with the rigours of the race and compete as equals. Edwards made her announcement at the Southampton Boat Show and, with Howard Gibbons as project manager, she gave herself three years to find a team. Gooding was summoned from Wales to be cook and Edwards also recruited Sally Creaser (née Hunter; helmswoman), Nancy Hill (née Harris; sail trimmer), Jeni Munday (bowman), Kiwi Claire Warren (née Russell; doctor), American Dawn Riley (watch captain), Irishwoman Angela Farrell (née Heath; sail trimmer) and Frenchwoman Marie-Claude Kieffer (née Heys; first mate). Each woman appears in talking-head interviews to reflect on how proud they were to have been chosen and how desperate they were to be taken seriously.

The news coverage was patronising in the extreme, however, with Fern Britton calling Edwards `a gorgeous slip of a girl' during their TV meeting. Moreover, rival skippers were every bit as scathing as the press. But Edwards wasn't in the mood for scoring gender political points, as she admitted in one interview that not only wasn't she a feminist, but she also hated the word. Her aim was simply to show that women could be equal to men on the high seas. But, as she was regarded as something of a maverick, finding sponsors proved exceedingly difficult, as potential suitors were either chauvinists or milquetoasts concerned about bad publicity in case there was an accident. 

After two years, Edwards decided to buy a secondhand boat and put the crew to renovating it in the boatyard before Maiden was launched by Sarah Ferguson. The delays led to tensions with Heys, however, who was easily the more experienced sailor. She admits now that she didn't realise the pressure that Edwards was under, having re-mortgaged her house (although it's not explained how she could suddenly afford one) and being tortured by self-doubts about whether she had the skills to skipper the boat and keep the crew together. 

Gooding admits that things were thrown when tempers frayed. But the strain eased when King Hussein persuaded Royal Jordanian Airlines to sponsor the boat and Edwards decided to enter the Fastnet Race, just three weeks before the Whitbread, as a trial run. Unfortunately, Gooding broke her wrist when the boat lurched in a heavy swell and Edwards fired Heys for having told Russell not to pack a full medical kit. This meant that they had to return to Plymouth and face media sniping that they weren't up to the challenge. Looking back, Mundy and Russell admit they had misgivings, as Heys was a fine yachtswoman. But the crisis enabled the 27 year-old Edwards to impose herself and demonstrate her leadership credentials.

On 2 September 1989, Maiden set sail from Southampton on the first leg to Punta del Este in Uruguay and the crew members admit to nerves on the morning. Gibbons reveals that the press had a book on how far they would get and Fisher remains convinced that they were right to doubt them, as it was a man's sport and they had precious little experience. There was also plenty of resentment amongst the other skippers, with Belgian Dubois on Rucanor Sport being cross at being placed in the same classification.  

Without Heys and Gooding (Kristin Harris cooked during the first leg), Edwards had much to prove and they lost time to sluggish winds in the early stages. But Tanja Visser (sail trimmer) recalls that they got their act together and started to grow as a crew. Indeed, they were disappointed to be only third in their class after 36 days (despite being eight days behind the bigger boats) and they all remember deeply resenting the patronising questions about how so many women were going to get along in such a confined space and manage for so long without make-up. 

Fisher dubbed them `a tin full of tarts' in The Guardian and Pickthall concedes that he was only marginally less dismissive. But Creaser and Mundy were seething at being presented in such a shoddy manner and Edwards confirms that they embarked on the second leg with a burning sense of having something to prove to the naysayers. 

The Southern Ocean is a tough place to be, however, and voiceovers describe how dangerous it can be over archive footage of New Zealanders Grant Dalton (Fisher & Paykel) and Peter Blake (Steinlager 2), American Skip Novak (Fazisi) and Brit John Chittenden (Creighton's Naturally) admitting to not looking forward to the ordeal ahead. At least the latter had the decency to hope that everyone gets to Western Australia in one piece. 

Boldly, Edwards went further south than anyone else in an effort to go in a straighter line. However, they experienced temperatures of -20° with the wind chill and it took 30 minutes to don all their thermal clothing. Moreover, they had to endure hellish lookout shifts with all the icebergs and fog. But they got through it, with Heath and Mundy recalling surfing the big waves with real relish. Sadly, Chittenden lost two overboard and, because he didn't have a medic on board, Russell had to provide radio assistance. While Bart van den Dwey was resuscitated, however, Anthony Philips died after hitting his head on a stanchion. 

It was tough to take, but Maiden ploughed on and after 65 days at sea, the crew approached Fremantle to learn that they had won the leg. Edwards was ecstatic and proud and mother Pat jokingly tells an interviewer that she can't believe that `that little horror' who never finished anything had turned into such an intrepid achiever. Despite the success, the press declared them lucky and Dubois was furious at having been pipped by a woman. It was at this point that Edwards realised she had become a feminist because no one was willing to give them a shred of credit. 

The next leg was to Auckland and the crew spent Christmas at sea. They were often racing against Rucanor and Patrick Tabarly's Esprit de Liberté and Edwards became increasingly confident that they could match them tactically. After 87 days at sea, they came in at midnight to find a huge crowd waiting for them on the quayside, as they had won Division D again and had a 16-hour lead over Tabarly. Even a sceptic like Fisher now had to accept that they were racing on equal terms and they were ecstatic at the reception they received from the New Zealanders, with children knowing all about them, as they drove through the streets on a parade float. 

Aghast at the prospect of throwing away her lead, Edwards became gripped with fear and over-thought her route around Cape Horn. Consequently, she made mistakes in trying to claw back some time. Maiden began to leak water because the mast had taken such a buffeting in the heavy seas and the crew had to make running repairs. They even had to mayday to the Falklands to keep an eye on them. Thus, an 18-hour lead became a 16-hour deficit and Edwards, as both skipper and navigator, was feeling very low. 

In an effort to distract the press from their poor performance, they decided to wear swimsuits to enter Fort Lauderdale in Florida. However, they now regret the message this gesture sent, as they were subjected to sniping accusations that they were women bickering among themselves when they should have been commended for overcoming the challenges that the rigorous race had thrown up.

Edwards was very down at no longer being competitive and the crew knew that their chances had gone when there was a complete lack of wind in the Atlantic. She began dreading the finishing line, as she would have to confront her failure. But, as Maiden approached the Needles at dawn, a dinghy containing a couple of kids sailed out to meet them and they were soon being followed in by a small flotilla into Ocean Village in Southampton. 

Fisher beams that it was one of the great Whitbread receptions and Dubois jokes that he knew it wasn't for him. They all felt overwhelmed, as horns were sounded to welcome them home and Edwards and her crewmates tear up at recalling both the reception and what it signified. 

In the weeks that followed, Edwards became the first woman to be named Yachtsman of the Year and she paid handsome tribute to her crew while holding back the tears in giving her acceptance speech. Gooding says it was a dream that came true and showed what women could do. But this feels like an anticlimactic end to a remarkable story. We are told nothing about what Edwards and her companions have done in the intervening three decades and there is no reunion on camera to show that the camaraderie remains, along with the pride in an achievement that the crew members speak of so fondly and eloquently. 

This is a shame, but it shouldn't detract from what is an accomplished and fascinating memoir. Perhaps Holmes is busily recording the round the world voyage that is currently being undertaken by the renovated Maiden, which was discovered in a marina in the Seychelles in 2014. Maybe executive producer James Erskine, who is a leading light among sports documentarists, might feel inspired to turn his attention to other female athletes, as the field is currently restricted to the roller skating trio of Robert Kaylor's Derby (1971), Bob Ray's Hell on Wheels, and Lainy Bagwell and Lacey Leavitt's Blood on the Flat Track (both 2007) and the ski-jumping duo of Virginia Madsen's Fighting Gravity (2009) and William A. Kerig's Ready to Fly (2012), as well as other isolated outings like Katya Bankowsky's Shadow Boxers (1999), Yaron Zilberman's Watermarks, Ruth Leitman Lipstick and Dynamite, Piss and Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (both 2004), Ward Serrill's The Heart of the Game, HBO's Dare to Dream: The Story of the US Women's Soccer Team (both 2005), Maiken Bird and Michelle Major's Venus and Serena (2012), Christo Brock and Grant Barbeito Touch the Wall (2014) and Amber Faeres's Speed Sisters (2015). 

As with Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story (2014), Holmes leaves a frustratingly large number of questions unanswered. But, thanks to editor Katie Bryer, he captures the sporting and human drama of the 33,000-miles odyssey. The talking-head approach is getting very stale, but the women speak with such acuity that there's never a dull moment. Edwards particularly emerges as an inspirational and insightful character and that's why many will feel shortchanged that Holmes comes to a dead halt in the spring of 1990. However, those caught up in the story can make a comparison between Holmes's film and the official race record, which can be found on the Volvo Legends Regatta page on YouTube.

There have been numerous films about viniculture, but other tipples have been given short shrift. Andrew Peat seeks to redress the balance with Scotch: The Golden Dram, a rumination on the making, marketing and lore of whisky that centres on the Bruichladdich distillery on the island of Islay. Eminently genial rather than entirely engaging, this affectionate toast to `uisge beatha' (`the water of life') wets the whistle, but will leave connoisseurs thirsting for a little bit more.

Following a bevy of talking-head remarks and a montage of Hollywood clips showing scotch on screen, we are informed that a dram is a shot measuring 1/16 of an ounce. Next, we hear about the cultivation of the barley used in producing whisky on Islay and the importance of its salt soil and the peat used in the roasting process. Among those with view to impart are Kenny MacKenzie from the Black Isle Growers, `King of Soil' James Brown, Bruichladdich distillery manager Duncan McGillvray, Lyndsey Grey, the manager Quaich Whisky Bar in Speyside, and Neil Ross, a champion sheepdog trainer from Leault Farm. 

Such was the popularity of the golden fluid that illicit stills sprang up across the Highlands and Islands and historian Michael Mills. Professor Steve Murdoch of the University of St Andrews, Dr Kieran German of the University of Strathcyde and whisky writer Charles MacLean (the author of Scotch Whisky: A Liquid History) discuss production either side of the introduction of the Excise Act in 1823. But, rather than continuing along this route, Peat asks Lucy Whitehall, a global ambassador for The Famous Grouse, writer and broadcaster Billy Kay and Bruichladdich global brand manager Lynne McEwan about their first dram. The most illuminating response comes from Tomatin Distillery manager Graham Eunson, who recalls sampling Stewarts Cream of the Barley at a friend's house when his parents were out. However, he has since become passionate about Glenmorangie. 

Lynne's father, Jim McEwan, is the production director at the Bruichladdich Distillery and has spent over 50 years in the whisky business. He reflects upon his apprenticeship after he started out as a cooper under David Bell at the Bowmore Distillery. His career changed direction, however, when he was given the chance to attend a blending course in Glasgow and he has never looked back. Ian MacMillan, the master blender at Burn Stewart in Deanston recalls being ordered to remove a block from a pipe when he was a rookie and getting covered in gunk with an odour that required several baths to remove. 

McEwan and McMillan explain the chemical processes involved in fermentation and distillation, as the starches in barley flour are turned into sugars and the resulting alcohol is left to mature in casks. Darren Morrison from the Speyside Cooperage notes that the industry mostly uses American Oak casks, as the wood is so sympathetic to the whisky. Dr Bill Lumsden, the director of whisky distilling and creation at Glenmorangie, and Richard `The Nose' Paterson, a master blender at The Dalmore whose nose insured for $2 million, concur with McEwan and McMillan's verdict that getting the right cask wood is crucial for a trademark blend, as customers can always tell if there has been a change in the process. 

McEwan's assistant, Adam Hannett, and Bruichladdich quality controller Lawrence Vellam join him to discuss to art of blending. He recalls being at Bowmore when it was acquired by Suntory with the intention of making it the biggest single malt in Scotland. Over a clip of Bill Murray advertising the scotch in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003), McEwan decribes how he has taught hundreds of aspiring blenders the secrets of the trade and admits that he will miss the daily routine when he retires in a few months time. However, both he and Lumsden dislike the use of the term `master blender', as they believe it's largely a PR term that is awarded to people who are often far too young to be masters of anything. 

After 38 years with Bowmore, McEwan took an enormous gamble in joining Bruichladdich, as its six owners since 1881 had let the premises fall into disrepair while using old-fashioned equipment. However, he felt it was a Cinderella distillery whose high-quality spirit simply needed to be produced and marketed more efficiently. Michael Mills explains how Invergordan Distilleries sold Bruichladdich when they took over Whyte & Mackay and admits many had grave doubts that McEwan could revive the rundown plant when he arrived in 2001. 

Even some of the company stalwarts were concerned when the first batch proved cloudy. but those interviewed remember being almost too moved to speak when they tasted the first dram that signalled they were back in business. According to McEwan's daughter, Lesley Whearty, he and McGillvray are like a comedy double act and staff members agree that the distillery manager is something of a maverick. McEwan reminisces about the time they went for a meal at the Hancock Building in Chicago and McGillvray (who didn't know he was in a revolving restaurant) complaining that the room was spinning after drinking tequila like fruit juice.

It's often presumed that whisky is a man's drink. But Georgie Bell, a global ambassador for Mortlach, and Susan Morrison from the Scotch Whisky Experience insist that scotch is enjoyed by women around the world. David Williamson of the Scotch Whisky Association pays tribute to such whisky pioneers as Bessie Williamson, Maureen Robinson and Stephanie MacCleod, while Christy McFarlane, who conducts tours at the Ardbeg Distillery, Georgie Crawford, the manager of the Lagavulin Distillery, and Alwynne Gwilt, who writes under the name `Miss Whisky' claim that women often have a better nose than their male counterparts. Indeed, MacLean suggests that they often also display more finesse in describing aromas and flavours. 

Restless as ever, Peat whisks us off to meet Nichola Burns and Brodie Nairn at Glasstorm to learn how they make bottles for expensive limited editions aged 25, 50 and 70 years, as well as designer glasses for the big companies. However, he returns to Islay for MacLean to tell a story about McEwan paying a bartender in Texas to spare his blushes before a blind tasting was sprung on him. Such astuteness has helped him revitalise Bruichladdich and Lynne McEwan is proud of the fact he has brought work and prosperity to their part of the island. Across, Islay, John Campbell, the manager of the Laphroaig Distillery, is equally aware that whisky puts the community on the map. Yet, while it generates sizeable revenues, McEwan complains that it's taxed too high so that tourists are ripped off. Moreover, too little of the income is reinvested locally, as there is no dentist on Islay, while the hospital isn't equipped for births. 

While it remains the life blood of the Scottish economy, whisky is also a delicacy that should be savoured, as the Duke of Argyll, a brand ambassador for the Chivas Royal Salute blend, Andrew Brown, the manager of the Bunnahabhain Distillery, and Ben Kaylor, an ambassador for the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, reveal. Paterson discusses training the nose and the taste buds, while Morrison explains about the legs and tears that form on the inside of the glass. McEwan waxes lyrical about the fruit and other ingredients in particular blends and how the nose is `rewarded' with the fragrances. Indeed, by the end of this sensual segment, it's likely that even a fervent teetotaller would be tempted to partake of a snifter. 

Much is made of the age of a scotch, but McEwan reveals he is just as happy to drink young blends, as their flavours are so vibrant. Lumsden suggests that old whiskies cost more because of their rarity value rather than because of their taste and he warns about the `angel's share' that evaporates away when older makes are left in the cask. He admits to preferring 8-10 year-old blends, as they are less influenced by the wood. But the joy of whisky is that everyone has their own taste and favourite tipple times. Donald Campbell, the retired manager of Tomatin, says it's perfect for both fishing and sitting by the fire, while McMillan harks back to the special drams he shared with his father. Most agree that the time, the place and the company matter as much as the aroma and taste. But the combination of them all is ideal and Bell avers that whisky sums up the spirit of Scotland. 

At his last tasting before he retires, McEwan relates the story of Bonnie Prince Charlie's tears in the river feeding a distillery. He jokes that a good deal of nonsense is spoken about whisky and he dislikes the way it's romanticised. But he still declares whisky to be `the blood of Scotland' and is proud that the Black Art brand has just won an award because it's made with such passion. In July 2015, after 53 years at Bowmore and Bruichladdich, McEwan called it a day. However, he couldn't stay away and, as the film ends in 2018, he is involved in setting up Islay's ninth distillery at Ardnahoe in the north-east of the island. 

Photographed by Arjun Kamath with a palpable sense of place and atmosphere, this is an affectionate portrait of Jim McEwan and the craft to which he has dedicated his life. With so many contributors, it can feel a little busy and bewildering and, on occasion, there's a risk of the entire enterprise becoming a glorified advertisement. But, while Dustin Painter's score sometimes errs on the twee side, American Andrew Peat resists the temptation to become too misty eyed, as he seeks to explore every aspect of the whisky making process. 

He might have lingered longer on the distillery floor to capture the hushed tones and sense of reverence that reveal the extent to which the workforce realises that it's upholding an historical tradition rather than simply putting in a shift in return for pay. The odd interjection from a satisfied customer might also not have gone amiss, along with an insight from someone at the start of their career about why they want to follow in McEwan's footsteps. But, this is a pleasant way to spend 90-odd minutes, although it could always be improved by a glass or two.