Parky at the Pictures (DVD 21/3/2019)

Returning home from a shoplifting expedition to the local supermarket, Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) and tweenager Shota (Kairi Jyo) see five year-old Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) alone and shivering in a dark ground-floor apartment. As it's freezing cold, Osamu decides to take her back to the home he shares with partner Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), her half-sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) and grandmother Hatsue (Kirin Kiki). While everyone tucks into a meal of croquettes and noodles, Hatsue notices that Yuri's body is covered with scars and bruises and Osamu and Nobuyo decide to give Yuri a bed for the night after they hear her mother involved in a blazing row when they try to take her home. 

Osamu works on a building site, while Nobuyo puts in long hours at an industrial laundry. But they don't insist on Shota going to school and, when Hatsue receives a visit from a snooper who thinks she lives alone, he slips out of the cluttered house to wander around the rundown Tokyo neighbourhood with Yuri, who refuses to tell him how she got the burn marks on her arms. Aki has misgivings about caring for Yuri, but Nobuyo notes that nobody has come looking for her and Hatsue concurs that she would be better off with them until her mother decides to reclaim her. 

Having injured his leg at work, Osamu is helped home by a colleague who is surprised to discover that he has a family. Shota takes Yuri out shoplifting and promises to teach her the tricks one day. He also suggests that she forgets about the dead grandmother who was so kind to her because she can no longer help her. Meanwhile, Aki takes Hatsue to collect the pension she keeps claiming on behalf of her late husband and is amused when the old lady discovers that she uses her sister's name, Sayaka, to perform at a sleazy peepshow, where she has a regular client known as Mr 4 (Sosuke Ikematsu).

In order to cut back on wages, the laundry puts Nobuyo into a workshare scheme and Osamu uses the phrase to explain to Shota that Yuri is now part of the team and that he should regard her as his new sister. She pulls the plug on the door at a tackle shop so that Shota can steal some fishing rods, but he likes being the baby of the family and resents the fact that Osamu keeps trying to get Yuri to call him `papa'. Despite being devoted to Osamu, Shota refuses to use the term, either. But he agrees to consider Yuri as his new sibling and asks Osamu if they can go fishing together before selling the rods. 

A short time later, Shota sees Yuri on the TV news and realises that her name is actually Juri. Her mother is being questioned by the police about her disappearance and Nobuyo decides to cut her hair short to make the child less recognisable and rename her Lin. She also takes her on a shoplifting trip to find new clothes and Yuri is particularly taken with a new yellow swimsuit. While the others are out, Aki asks Osamu if he ever sleeps with Nobuyo and he claims they no longer need a physical relationship because they are connected by the heart. Hatsue makes a similar remark to Nobuyo, as they ponder whether Lin will have a stronger bond with her new family because she has chosen it rather than being born into it. 

Yuri likes her swimsuit so much that she wears it in the bath, where she notices that Nobuyo also has a burn scar on her arm. She is happy they are together and calls Shota her brother when they go on a cicada hunt. But Nobuyo pays the price for taking Lin, as a workmate threatens to tell the police that she has stolen the girl unless she quits the laundry to allow her to retain her full-time job. With Osamu ineligible for injury compensation, the family needs money and Hatsue pays a visit to Yuzuru (Naoto Ogata), the son sired by her husband with his second wife. They are Aki's parents and we see her teenage sister on her way to school, as her mother, Yoko (Yoko Moriguchi), fibs that Aki is working in Australia (as they have no idea where she is). As she leaves, they give Hatsue a small gratuity and she complains to herself about their stinginess. 

While mooching around a corner shop, Lin steals a rubber ball and the aged shopkeeper (Akira Emoto) gives Shota some popsicles in warning him not to lead his sister off the straight and narrow. They arrive home in a downpour and nearly catch Osamu and Nobuyo in a rare moment of intimacy. She has purchased some new underwear with her severance pay and she seduces him over a lunch of cold noodles. Aki also snatches some physical contact when Mr 4 agrees to meet her in the peepshow chatroom and they cling to each other when she discovers that he is mute and hits himself as a form of self-punishment. She arrives home to tell Nobuyo and finds Osamu doing magic tricks to amuse the kids. They hear fireworks going off near by and a top shot looks down on their faces, as they peer upwards from beneath the sloping roof.

The idyll continues with a day at the seaside. Osamu notices Shota staring at Aki's bikini and reassures him that his curiosity about women is entirely natural for someone his age. As they watch Aki holding Lin over the incoming tide, Hatsue tells Nobuyo that she has a pretty face. She covers the age spots on her legs with sand and repeatedly whispers `thank you' because she has been given a second chance of security and contentment with her adopted family. 

During the night, Lin loses one of her milk teeth and Shota is tossing it on to the roof under Osamu's instruction when Aki realises that Hatsue has died in her sleep. As they don't want to draw attention to themselves, they decide to bury her in the back garden and Osamu tells Shota that he has to forget she existed and remember that there has only ever been five people living in the house. After he has finished digging, Nobuyo helps Osamu shower and they mention the fact that this isn't the first corpse they have buried. 

The next day, Nobuyo clears out Hatsue's bank account and Osamu finds some money she had hidden away in her belongings. Shota looks on, as though trying to work out his feelings for the couple who have raised him. While out with Nobuyo, he had asked why she had never been concerned about him not calling her `mother' and she jokes that she is different from Osamu, who likes feeling paternal. But the boy remains perplexed and he questions why Osamu is breaking into a parked car to lift a handbag when he had always told him that it's only okay to steal from shops because the goods on the shelves don't belong to anyone. He also inquires whether Osamu had really rescued him from a car or had snatched him during a robbery and he is only half convinced by the answer. 

Shota's doubts increase when he discovers that the old shopkeeper has died. But he has not forgotten the value of loyalty he has learned from Osamu and Nobuyo, as he sacrifices himself to prevent Lin from being caught stealing sweets in the supermarket and breaks his leg in jumping off a walkway in order to escape from the pursuing shelf-stackers. Osamu comes to the police station when he learns that the boy has been injured, but Nobuyo drags him away before he can say anything they might regret. However, as they pack up to do a midnight flit, they are apprehended and taken for questioning. 

While being quizzed by Takumi Maezono (Kengo Kora) and Kie Miyabe (Chizuru Ikewaki), Lin draws a picture of the trip to the beach and remembers not to include Hatsue. However, the cops convince Shota that his makeshift family was about to abandon him when they were stopped and they also inform Aki that Osamu and Nobuyo's real names are Shota Enoki and Yuko Tanabe and that they were charged with the murder and burial of her first husband, only for the judge to rule that they had acted in self-defence after being caught in a love affair. 

Under questioning, Osamu insists that Nobuyo had brought Juri home and that they had agreed it wasn't kidnapping because her home life was such a nightmare. However, Nobuyo takes the blame for burying Hatsue, even though she knows she will face jail. Meanwhile, Miyabe tells Aki that Hatsue had been taking money from her parents and suggests that she had only invited her to live with her because it made it easier to extort money from her guilt-ridden father. 

Maezono shows Shota the hostel where he will be staying and inquires whether he is looking forward to going to school. He asks after Juri, who is back with her mother, Nozomi Hojo (Moemi Katayama), who is sporting a fresh bruise on her face after another altercation with her husband, Yasu (Yuki Yamada). She snaps at the girl for poking at her cheek and quickly loses patience when Juri refuses to speak to her. Nobuyo is missing her and, when Miyabe asks whether she abducted her because she couldn't have children, she responds that giving birth doesn't automatically make a woman fit to be a mother. 

Aki returns to the house to find it empty, while Shota goes fishing with Osamu, who has been released without charge. They visit Nobuyo in prison and she tells the boy that they found him in a car outside a patchinko parlour and tells him the name of his birth family, so he can meet them if he so desires. It snows when Shota comes to spend a night with Osamu and they build a snowman under the streetlights. As they share a bed, Osamu admits that they were going to flee without him and, the next morning at the bus stop, Shota reveals that he allowed himself to get caught shoplifting. Hurt by the remark, Osamu runs after the bus to tell the boy that they planned coming back for him and Shota whispers the word `dad', as he turns to see him chasing after the vehicle. 

As the film ends, Juri is left to play alone on the balcony of the Hojo apartment. She climbs on a toy box to peer over the ledge and the film cuts to black, as we are left to wonder how these desperately sad characters are going to cope without each other. We are not told how long Nobuyo will be inside or whether Osamu stands a chance of finding another job. Similarly, we don't get to learn whether Aki returns home or tries to find Mr 4. But the sheer number of imponderables only increases the fascination that this exceptional piece of film-making exerts. 

All six members of the Shibata family are superb and it's such a shame that Kirin Kiki passed away in early September. As always, Kore-eda coaxes wondrously natural performances out of his juvenile actors, with Miyu Sasaki being adorably trusting as she comes to realise she's better off with strangers than her parents and Kairi Jyo struggling with his first feelings of curiosity and rebellion. Mayu Matsuoka also feels tempted to spread her wings, but remains out of loyalty to her grandfather's ex-wife, who she believes is protecting rather than exploiting her. But the rapport between Lily Franky and Sakura Ando is particularly poignant, as they cling together in a bid to forget their past and make the best of their calamitously ill-conceived situation. 

There's a hint of Setsuko Hara in the way Ando pauses in the doorway before returning to her cell and the spirit of Ozu clearly pervades proceedings. But the fact that the female characters are all prepared to make sacrifices to help loved ones brings to mind the masterly gendai-geki melodramas of Kenji Mizoguchi, in which mothers and sisters became geishas to help feed their families. This link is reinforced by the intimacy achieved by Keiko Mitsumatsu's cosily cluttered interiors and the gentle probing of Ryuto Kondo's camera that contrasts with the more challenging interjections of the score composed by Haroumi Hosono of the famous Yellow Magic Orchestra. 

But the picture's brilliance lies in Kore-eda's writing, direction and editing, which enables him to let vital information slip out through small gestures and expressions and half-guarded words that cause the viewer to double-take and question their precise meaning. Yet, even when the full truth is known, Osamu and Nobuyo remain eminently empathetic and one is left to recall Jean Renoir's famous maxim about everyone having their reasons. Kore-eda is known to admire Ken Loach, but this unpatronising depiction of life in the margins knocks spots off anything he has done since the early 1990s. This is what political humanist cinema should look like.

It's readily evident from watching An Elephant Sitting Still that Hu Bo  had a promising future as a film-maker. Having graduated from the famous Beijing Film Academy with the award-winning short, Distant Father, Hu published two novels, Huge Crack and Bullfrog, the first of which provided the source story for his feature bow. But, in October last year, the 29 year-old Hu committed suicide and a team from China's FIRST Film Festival completed a project that had been launched under the auspices of famed director Wang Xiaoshuai's production company in July 2016.

Sprawling to almost four hours, this hugely ambitious picture brings to mind Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) and Jia Zhang-ke's Unknown Pleasures (2002). But, as it interweaves stories about four characters with the fate of an elephant in a zoo in the northern town of Manzhouli, this hugely ambitious undertaking begins to establish its own identity and exert a soberly witty fascination. 

Teenager Wei Bu (Peng Yuchang) lives in a cramped apartment in a coal-mining town with his verbally abusive father (Zhao-Yan Guozhang) and distracted mother (Li Suyun), who is struggling to make ends meet since her husband lost his job for taking bribes. Bu is worried for high school classmate Li Kai (Ling Zhenghui), who is being threatened by a bully who has accused him of stealing his phone. Li Kai is grateful to Bu, but he takes matters into his own hands by pinching a gun from his father's collection to defend himself if the going gets too rough.

Somewhere on the same estate, Wang Jin (Liu Congxi) shares a confined space with his daughter (Li Danyi), son-in-law (Kong Wei) and granddaughter (Kong Yixin), whose ambitions to become a dancer have convinced her parents that it is time for Jin to leave them the flat and go into an old people's home. However, he doesn't feel ready to edge towards the exit and refuses to budge because the home won't allow him to bring his beloved dog.

Across the concourse, small-time crook Yang Cheng (Zhang Yu) has been spending the night with his lover (Wang Xueyang), who is married to his best friend (Wang Chaobei). Unfortunately, he comes home to collect some of his belongings and is so dismayed to see Cheng hiding away in the corner of the bedroom that he leaps out of the high-rise window to his death on the concrete below. Nearby, Huang Ling (Wang Yuwen) argues with her mother (Wang Ning about the blocked toilet and the fact that Ling has trodden on a piece of cake that her mother had walked miles to buy for her as a treat. As she leaves for school, Ling fumbles for a baseball bat in the doorway in case a growling white dog comes too close. 

Ling is friends with Bu and warns him not to risk alienating bully Yu Shuai (Zhang Xiaolong), as he has a thuggish brother. However, Bu is determined to defend his pal, even though it gets him a ticking off from the school dean (Rong Dong Xiang), who is having an affair with Ling, even though he has a wife (Guo Jing). He tells Bu that the school is about to close down and that he will be lucky to get a job as a fast food vendor. But Bu has a more pressing problem after he confronts Yu when he accuses his pal of stealing his phone and he accidentally pushes him down the stairs. Returning home to discover that his father has pinched the money he has been hiding under his bed, Bu goes on the run.

Meanwhile, the female owner of the white dog (Huang Ximan) puts flyers up around the estate after the dog disappears and Jin goes to see her after it attacks and kills his pet in an alleyway. When he tells her husband (Li Qing) about what happened, he accuses Jin of trying to blackmail him or make trouble and refuses to believe that Pipi could do anything so violent. Meanwhile, Bu takes a bus to hide out with his grandmother, only to find her dead in her flat and he wanders around the corner to inform his uncle (Liu Jianmin), who seems unconcerned by her passing. He goes to the snooker club to try and sell his cue so he can raise enough money to go to Manzhouli to see the elephant. Bu offers it to Jin, who is a neighbour, and he gives him what little cash he has after he intervenes when Pipi's male owner drives up in his car and tries to intimidate him.

With Yu in hospital, Cheng gets a call from his mother (Shunzi) ordering him to find Bu and avenge his brother. However, Cheng has been told by his dead friend's wife that his mother (He Miaomiao) is coming to see him because she is so distraught about her son's suicide. She dislikes her daughter-in-law because she thinks she bullied her husband into buying an apartment he couldn't afford and that the financial strain is the reason for his death. Cheng is grateful that the wife protects him by saying nothing to the cops about him being a witness to the plunge. Thus, when he sees Jin carrying Bu's cue, he calls off his henchmen and also sympathises with Bu when he sees him watching through the window of a swanky hotel, where Ling is meeting the dean.

He is disappointed because Ling has refused to go north with him and he wants her to break off with the dean before anyone finds out about the affair and her reputation is ruined. But she is happy to get what she can out of the relationship, even though the dean tells her that she is foolish if she thinks that life is anything but an endless struggle. However, he is the one to lament his fate when they go up to their room and Ling checks her phone to discover video of them together has been posted online. 

While the dean is cursing that Ling has ruined him, Cheng is saying the same thing to his lover (Zhuyan Manzi), as he is angry with her for rejecting his advances and driving him into the bed of his dead friend. She refuses to take the blame for his problems, but recognises that he is in a bad place because he has to deal with his pal's mother and his own mother's insistence that he punishes Bu, even though he is well aware that his brother is a thug who probably deserved what happened to him. 

Just as they are having their conversation, Bu arranges to meet Li Kai at the shopping mall. He is dismayed to see he has brought Bu's parents with him and, when he headlocks him into a stairwell, Li Kai admits that he stole Yu's phone because he had video of him weeing that he kept threatening to share on group chat. Li Kai also reveals that Yu has footage of Ling and the dean singing karaoke together and he mocks Bu for being so loyal and for lashing out and landing himself in a heap of unnecessary trouble. 

Meanwhile, Jin has returned home to tell his granddaughter that his dog is dead and his daughter wastes no time in suggesting that he no longer has a good reason for stubbornly refusing to go into the home. Despairing of her callousness, Jin collects a warm coat from the balcony (where he has been sleeping) and storms out. Still holding Bu's cue, he goes to the nursing home to take a look round and he is far from impressed by the sight of so many seniors sitting morosely without any stimulation or supervision. Nearby, as Ling wanders in a daze, she sees a poster advertising the circus in Manzhouli, which has become notorious because an elephant is simply sitting in trance and refusing all food, 

Both Bu and Cheng have mentioned going to see this pathetic animal and they almost run into each other when Bu goes to the hospital to see if Yu is recovering. However, he sees Cheng getting a rollicking from his mother about why he hasn't given Bu a beating and she also chastises him for having picked on Yu when he was a boy because his cruelty turned him into a bully. Ling's mother is also at the end of her tether, as she has returned home from a stressful day at work to hear about her daughter's affair going public. She berates her for sleeping with the dead and dismisses her insistence that she prefers being with him because his house is tidy. 

As they bicker, the dean and his wife (Guo Jing) bang on the door and demand to see Ling. In a panic, she leaves via her bedroom window. But she is so stung by the dean's wife calling her a slut that she picks up the baseball bat from the hallway and clubs them both unconscious with a single swing each before hurrying off. 

While Jin buys a ticket for himself and his granddaughter to travel to  Manzhouli, Bu tries to beat the queue by purchasing a cheaper ticket from a tout (Li Binyuan). It turns out to be a fake, however, and he demands a refund. The scalper insists they have to meet his boss and they go to some wasteland near the railway line to meet with his accomplice. They proceed to rough Bu up and discover from his ID card that he is the kid responsible for Yu's accident. 

The tout calls Cheng and he arrives to break the news that his brother is dead. He sends his sidekicks to buy a valid ticket for Manzhouli and asks Bu why he attacked Yu. He insists it was an accident, but also reveals that he no longer cares what happens to him and his courage prompts Cheng to call his friend's mother and confess that he was present when her son jumped out of the window. Turning back to Bu, Cheng is explaining that he is bound by filial duty to avenge his brother when Li Kai shows up brandishing his father's gun. Cheng is amused by his show of bravura, but Li Kai wounds him in the leg before declaring the world to be a disgusting place and shooting himself under the chin. 

Bu joins Ling, Jin and his granddaughter at the railway station. However, the train has been cancelled and Jin announces he would rather take the child home and get used to life in a hostel than take a changing bus service. He bemoans the fact that life is nothing but a sequence of dashed hopes and wishes he hadn't wasted so much of his time on false dreams. But Bu remains optimistic and urges the old man to join them on their journey to see what awaits them. Jin nods and the film ends with a long shot of the passengers playing keepy-uppy in the bus headlights when they hear the sound of an elephant trumpeting in the near distance. 

When film-makers from the Sixth Generation of Chinese cinema began to make an impact in the mid-1990s, their theme was invariably the effect of the new market conditions on ordinary citizens. However, the influence of the dGeneration of self-taught directors has filtered through to give post-millnennial Chinese films a starker neo-realist feel that reflects the harsh conditions caused by the post-recession downturn that stopped the economic miracle dead in its tracks. Hu  Bo's one and only feature captures this sense of austerity and disillusion with such potency and poignancy that it almost feels like a chronicle of a death foretold. Yet, the fact that he could also afford his characters an opportunity to make a fresh start roots his debut in the humanist tradition that dates back to the Strassenfilme of Weimar Germany and the Poetic Realism of 1930s France. 

In conjunction with production designer Lijian Xie and cinematographer Fan Chao, Hu uses close-ups, adroit framing and shallow focus to spare the audience from some of the grimmer details, while also directing their gaze towards the information he wants them to take to heart. Given the strictness of the Chinese censors, it's perhaps surprising that this unflinching depiction of graphic bleakness was allowed to slip through. But a number of critical Iranian films benefited from similar laxity around the turn of the century and one wonders whether Hu was allowed to speak his mind because the authorities knew he would not become an ongoing thorn in their side. 

One suspects that those entrusted with editing the picture similarly decided to honour Hu's intentions and resisted the temptation to trim the running time. However, such is the measured pacing that removing the odd narrative digression or philosophical diatribe would have done little to speed up proceedings, as they unfold over 12 hours in a single day with the occasional interjection of Hua Lun's affecting score. Besides, time never hangs heavy, as the central foursome edge towards their destinies in an unnamed northern town in which everybody seems to be aggrieved or aggressive. While excellent, Liu Congxi and Wang Yuwen seem less at the heart of the action than Zhang Yu and Peng Yuchang, who shade the distinctions between being the hunter and the hunted until Zhang seems to allow Wang to escape as an act of atonement for driving his friend over the edge.

It says much that the best films about the French Revolution have been based on works of fiction like Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities and Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel - and, yes, that does include Gerald Thomas's Carry On Don't Lose Your Head (1967). The same year saw the release of Peter Brook's Marat/Sade, which captured a performance of Peter Weiss's play, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. However, this said more about the politics of the time than the events that followed the Fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. 

The same could probably be said about DW Griffith's Orphans of the Storm and Dimitri Buchowetzki's Danton (both 1921) and WS Van Dyke's Marie Antoinette and Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise (both 1938). Subsequently, while Hollywood has played fast and loose with the facts in such antic outings as Anthony Mann's The Black Book (aka Reign of Terror, 1949), Bud Yorkin's Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2005), European film-makers have produced more considered interpretations as Ettore Scola's That Night in Varennes (1982), Andrzej Wajda's Danton (1983), Patrice Leconte's Ridicule (1996), Eric Rohmer's The Lady and the Duke (2001) and Benoît Jacquot's Farewell, My Queen (2012). Thus, it would be nice to report that Pierre Schoeller's One Nation, One King is on a par with Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927) and Robert Enrico's bicentennial mini-series, The French Revolution (1989). But, for all its grand intentions, this bold bid to put a populist spin on authentic recreation fails to work as either a history lesson or an allegorical comment on Macroniste France. 

During the Maundy Thursday feet washing ceremony at Versailles, the angel-faced P'tit Prosper (Aymeric Castelain) looks down at Louis XVI (Laurent Lafitte), as the absolutist monarch imitates Christ by kissing the feet of the poor, and informs him that he hopes one day to own a pair of clogs. The boy has been plucked from the neighbourhood in the shadow of the Bastille in which glassblower Louis-Joseph Henri (Olivier Gourmet) has his workshop and Solange (Noémie Lvovsky), Françoise (Adèle Haenel) and Margot (Izïa Higelin) take in laundry. But, while they join in the celebrations as Reine Audu (Céline Sallette) sings a song about brandy flowing like water, Prosper and his playmate Clémence (Emma Stime) fail to appreciate the significance of the storming of the forbidding prison and the penknife decapitation of its superintendent. 

Some time later, Henri (who is known to all and sundry as `The Uncle') joins with Tonin (Johan Libéreau) and Landelle (Audrey Bonnet) in gazing up in disbelief at the sunlight filtering into their benighted enclave for the first time in centuries as stones are chipped away from the turret of the Bastile. But Françoise is in no mood to marvel, as she is consoled by Margot, following the death of her newborn baby. Come October, however, the sisters stand shoulder to shoulder during the march of the faubourg women to Versailles to demand that the royal family moves to Paris to deal with the ongoing crisis in the capital. Reine Audu and Pauline Léon (Julia Artamonov) are among those attending the National Assembly under President Jean Joseph Mounier (Guillaume Marquet) in order to alert the estates to the flour shortage. 

Their demands are challenged, however, by the likes of François-Henri, Comte de Virieu (Patrick Hauthier) and Philippe-Claude, Comte de Montboissier (Guillaume Clémencin) and consensus is only secured when Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (Rodolphe Congé) calls upon Louis to accept the August Decrees ending feudalism in France. The king signs the document by candlelight and the terms of the Declaration of the Rights of Man granting liberty, fraternity and equality are proclaimed before the Assembly. The shutters are closed at Versailles and Louis and Marie Antoinette (Maëlia Gentil) take a coach to Paris with the children, while the Assembly moves into the former riding school at the Tuileries. 

Down by the Seine, Reine Audu leads the washerwomen in a chorus commenting upon the state of the revolution and they occupy the gallery, as incorruptible lawyer Maximilien de Robespierre (Louis Garrel) addresses the Assembly on liberty and vows to uphold the rights of the people to enjoy it. Among those to benefit from the relaxation of the law is Basile (Gaspard Ulliel), a chicken thief who is freed from the stocks through the intercession of curé Norbert Pressac (Stéphane De Groodt) during a tree-planting ceremony at Saint-Gaudent in June 1790.

By February 1791, the Assembly is busy drafting a constitution and In June 1790, Basile is freed from the stocks via the intercession of a priest during a tree-planting ceremony. By February 1791, the Assembly is working on the constitution and Françoise raises eyebrows by demanding that women should play an active part in political life, as they were at the Bastille and have a right to be equals. Janis the actor (Baptiste Chabauty) extols the virtues of censitary suffrage, but Françoise feels it's unfair to be excluded and The Uncle warns that only tax payers will be enfranchised. Away from the lively debate, however, Louis is visited in the night by the ghosts of Louis XI (Serge Merlin), Henri IV (Patrick Préjean) and Louis XIV (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), who chastise him for being a coward and frittering away their legacy. 

A caption declares 1791 to be `The Time of Betrayals', as Basile is working in the fields when Louis is detained at Varennes during his failed bid to flee France. The king accompanies his daughter, as she relieves herself in a woodland clearing surrounded by troops, and Basile kneels at Louis's feet. He lays his hand upon the peasant and he looks meaningfully at Antoine Barnave (Pierre-François Garel) before returning to his carriage. He rides through the Parisian crowds in silence, while the rabble-rousing Jean-Paul Marat (Denis Lavant) calls him a traitor, a label that is taken up in the Assembly. Some supporters protest that Louis was abducted, while others accuse him of absconding in order to raise an army. But, while some propose regicide, Pugnon (Fabrice Cals) insists that the country needs to retain a balance between monarchy and elected assembly to prevent despotism from exploiting the divided factions forming into the Girondin and Jacobin camps.

As the heroes of Varennes are billeted on the people, Basile comes to live with The Uncle, who accepts him even though he doesn't seem to know what the Revolution is about and clearly played no direct part in apprehending the fugitive king. Desperate for another child, Françoise tries to sleep with him, but is repulsed by the prison branding on his chest. He seduces her anyway and she feels sufficiently close to him to show Basile a handkerchief that had been tossed to the crowd by Marie Antoinette. Excitedly, he reveals that the King had shown him kindness on the road to Paris and they are momentarily lost in the mythology of the monarchy. Yet, they rush to the Tuileries to protest when the royalists call for an end to the revolution, as it has served its purpose in establishing a constitutional crown. 

On 15 July 1791, Barnave echoes this call for reflection, as he fears that further reform would bring about the end of the monarchy. Marat brands him a reactionary, but he counters with the contention that governments can only grant freedom if they are stable and warns that further chaos would be to the detriment of France. The Uncle and Françoise are among those to condemn Barnave from the gallery and, in the tavern that night, they agree to join the Cordeliers on the Champs de Mars for a call for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. Basile is surprised by Françoise's vehemence, as she had so clearly treasured the queen's monogrammed keepsake.

Fearing that the protest and the signing of a petition could provoke unrest, military leader Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette declares martial law on 17 July opens fire on the crowd. Tonin and Margot are among those killed and Janis, The Uncle and Françoise are arrested. The latter is questioned about her affiliations and what she saw during the massacre. But she remains defiant and curses Lafayette in declaring that the word `citizen' should not be debased. Shortly afterwards, Louis is presented with the constitution, which he signs in September 1791. But Robespierre is not content with the new regime and, while he writes about the people taking charge of their own destiny, Françoise gives birth to a daughter. 

The summer of 1792 brings insurrection, with the Cordeliers calling for the king to abdicate because armies representing his fellow despots are massing on the border. The people arm themselves to resist and Louis is suspended for failing to prevent the Champs du Mars outrage. He is forced to attend the National Concention and listen to proceedings behind bars at the back of the hall. On 21 September. Georges Danton (Vincent Deniard) calls for extreme laws to help regain control. But Marat speaks against a reign of terror and Solange faints as he speaks. He calls for calm and urges the deputies to listen to the people and not the Girondins who oppose him. 

When Solange comes round, Year One of the Republic is proclaimed and she returns to the faubourg to attend to The Uncle, whose eyes have been damaged while fighting the invading forces, As the autumn comes, the situation deteriorates and the king becomes more vulnerable. Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just (Niels Schneider) calls for the king's death. But Fauchet (Jean-Philippe Meyer) opposes his demand and Robespierre avers that he has no hatred for Louis, only his crimes. Nevertheless, he supports his execution so that the Nation can live, while Marat insists that the vote should be taken by roll call so that everyone in France can know how their delegates voted. 

Across the city, The Uncle tries to teach Basile the art of glassblowing and he slowly becomes accustomed to the heat of the furnace and the touch of the rod holding the molten liquid. But the temperature is no less excruciating at the Convention, as speakers for and against deposition and death hold the floor. Some, like Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (John Arnold) fear anarchy if the king is removed and advise imprisonment and banishment when the war is over. But Camille Desmoulins (Étienne Beydon) and Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans (Gérard Cesbron) join Marat, Robespierre and Danton in advocating the guillotine. The verdict is delivered on 17 January 1793, with 370 voting for immediate death and 319 for banishment. 

Landelle attracts the scorn of her neighbours by saying they will come to regret their folly, while The Uncle hugs Basile because he has created a perfect glass sphere, which proves that `Le Peuple' can succeed with the right tuition and intentions. On 21 January 1793, Louis prays in his carriage and the crowd falls silent as he steps out. He has his hair and collar cut and tries to resist having his hands tied, as he is warned of the slippery steps to the dais. Looking around, he asks where his good people are before meeting his fate. His head is brandished and a cheer rings out. While some dance, a small girl dabs a handkerchief in the blood spattered on the skin of a soldier's drum. That night, Basile dandles the daughter whom Françoise is proud to call a Child of 92.

One can sympathise with Pierre Schoeller's aim in trying to show how people power transformed France. But his determinedly classical approach to recreating the past leaves this handsome, but hollow film looking old-fashioned and staid. While those portraying historical figures declaim like animatronic waxworks, those cast as the fictional characters strain for a sans-culottish naturalism that feels increasingly arch with each politicised utterance. Viewers without a solid grounding in the Revolution's ever-shifting complexities will struggle to recognise anyone bar Louis Garrel's Robespierre, Denis Lavant's Marat and Laurent Lafitte's Louis XVI. But any hopes that Schoeller might have had of making events accessible by presenting them from the perspective of ordinary people are dashed by the cipheritic dullness of the storylines involving Olivier Gourmet, Adèle Haenel and Gaspard Ulliel's plebs. 

The latter do their darnedest, as they keep finding themselves as witnesses to epochal events that have a habit of spiralling out of control within shakily established time frames. But they are confounded by the stiltedness of Schoeller's sloganistic dialogue, which contrasts starkly with the melodious grandiosity of his score. There is much to admire in Julien Hirsch's photography, Thierry François's production design and Anaïs Romand's costumes. Yet, despite its laudable attempt to place women in the vanguard of change, this lacks the distinctive vision of, say, Yorgis Lanthimos's The Favourite. Consequently, there is little wonder that it recouped so little of its €16.9 million budget at the domestic box office.