Parky at the Pictures (DVD 25/9/2014)

A key character is missing from this sorry saga, however, as while verse playwright Paul Claudel travels to Avignon to see his sister in the Montdevergues asylum, he was less a concerned younger brother than an emissary of his mother, Louise, who so disapproved of Camille's choice of profession and association with Rodin that she seized the opportunity on the death of her husband (who had encouraged his daughter and financed her career) to have Camille committed to the psychiatric hospital of Ville-Évrard in Neuilly-sur-Marne a mere eight days after Louis's demise on 2 March 1913. Louise also sanctioned Camille's move to Enghien to protect her from advancing German troops and her final billeting in the Vaucluse, where she received just seven visits from Paul and none from her mother in the following three decades before her own death on 19 October 1943.

Throughout this period, Camille's doctors suggested that she might benefit from being reintegrated into the family, but the advice was ignored and she ended up being buried in a communal grave. Much of this information is conveyed in bookend captions, as Dumont reduces a life to its bare essentials. But such is the watchful intensity of Binoche's performance that he is able to provide a frank assessment of Camille's psychological vulnerability, while also capturing the atmosphere of a milieu that seems to have been simultaneously indulgently humane and wholly inappropriate.

The 50 year-old Camille is first seen with her back to the camera, as she waits in a corridor before reluctantly taking a bath. The nuns caring for her (Nicole Faurite, Régine Gayte, Sandra Rivera and Florence Philippe) are solicitous and reassure her that the water will soothe her, as she stares sullenly into the distance while enduring what she considers to be an indignity. She dresses in her room and boils potatoes in the kitchen, where she resists the admonition of an intern (Eric Jacoulet), who is unaware that she is allowed to prepare her own food because she is convinced that Rodin has instructed his acolytes to poison her. Opting against sharing a table with her fellow patients, Camille eats in the courtyard and gazes at a bare tree against the perimeter wall. She is joined on her bench by Lucas (Alexandra Lucas), who attempts to engage with the older woman in spite of her limited communication skills and Camille leads her back to the cloisters with a distracted tolerance that re-emerges when a younger woman watches her sob at her desk after words elude her while trying to write a letter.

Camille's mood improves, however, when the senior doctor (Robert Leroy) informs her that her brother Paul (Jean-Luc Vincent) is coming to see her. She goes to the chapel to pray that she can return to her family and resume her career and she joins in happily when Danielle (billed only as Danièle) strides on to the altar and starts chanting `alleluia'. In the music room, Camille smiles fondly at the patients playing instruments before going for a stroll in the grounds. She listens to the bird song and returns to a sitting room to stare at the sunlight falling on the carpet, while the two other occupants regard her with a blankness that contrasts sharply with Camille's artistic appreciation of her surroundings.

During supper, Blanc the kitchen maid (Marion Keller) assures Camille that no one is trying to poison her. She agrees to post a letter and allows Camille to use her mother's address for incoming mail. Back in her room, Camille writes to cousin Henriette Thierry about her recent experiences and her dreams for the future. She begs her not to mention receiving the missive and feels a surge of hope as she reads in the chapel and feels the morning sun on her skin. In the garden, she kneels and starts moulding some soil with her fingers before tossing it down with a mix of disgust and frustration that prompts her to consult the doctor.

Camille asks why she is being kept in such an unsuitable place and demands to know when the joke will be over. She complains at being treated like a criminal and cries bitterly while trying to fathom the uncaring silence of her mother and sister. Accusing them of seeking to steal her inheritance, she insists she simply wishes to be allowed to live with her cats and create again. But she knows that her family regard her as `a phantom of their crime' and she curses them for conspiring with Rodin, who she claims has trained men to steal her notebooks and sketches. As her rage subsides, Camille pleads with the doctor to help her, but he merely reminds her that 20 years have elapsed since she broke up with Rodin before ushering her out of his office.

Camille wanders into the garden and watches a woman (Myriam Allain) in manacles shouting at the nun attending her. Welcoming the chance to escape the confines, she joins Lucas and several sisters on a walk in the parched countryside. The white stones crunch underfoot on the path up a hill that affords a fine view and the opportunity to see the sky and feel the wind. Lucas pats the ground to encourage Camille to sit beside her, but the nuns are keen to have their charges home before dusk and they are seen in a long shot as black specks picking their way through the arid scrub.

Back at the institution, Camille enters the small theatre and sits behind Lucas, who is watching a rehearsal of Molière's Don Juan. She reaches out to touch the back of Lucas's extended hand and laughs as the players keep forgetting their lines and are scolded by the nun supervising them. However, the passage about being too deeply in love to deceive strikes an unwelcome chord and Camille brushes away Lucas's hand and begins to cry. She rushes outside and weeps at the thought of Rodin's treachery. When Lucas comes to console her, Camille orders her to go away and a young novice (Armelle Leroy-Rolland) tries to calm her down, as Camille claims to no longer feel human in the company of creatures who turn her stomach. However, she regains her composure when she is asked to escort a couple of the actors to the main building and trudges back along a path in the breezy sunshine to say the rosary in her room.

As night falls, the focus shifts to Paul, who is motoring down from Paris. He gets out of the car to thank God for waking him from the slumber of a dead man and placing him in His presence. Raising his eyes to the heavens, Paul avers that he will believe whatever God tells him and, declaring himself to be a finger in the wounds of Jesus, vows never to stop loving Him. On arriving at Frigolet Abbey near Tarascon, Paul strips to the waist and writes a letter to Camille, asking how she can live with her conscience after aborting a child. He then confides in his diary that his sister is possessed and cites pride, contempt for others, delusions of grandeur and persecution mania as the telltale symptoms. Accepting that God has spared him from succumbing to similar traits, he wishes he could exorcise his sister from a distance and bemoans the fact that the Benedictines have denied him both a vocation and a chance to become a saint.

The following morning, Paul leaves the magnificent chapel and falls into step with a priest (Emmanuel Kauffman), who listens patiently as his companion recalls being brought to God by the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. He recalls feeling nothing but duty as he attended mass on Christmas Day in 1886, but later felt compelled to attend vespers, where the touch of the Lord helped him understand the eternal infancy of Christ. The priest nods as Paul declares that he became a Christian to obey and discover the plan the Almighty has in store for him. Yet, he drives to Montdevergues with little compassion in his heart, let alone fraternal affection.

As Paul negotiates the winding roads, Camille prays in the chapel with a half-smile of excitement and trepidation on her lips. A nun comments on how happy she looks, as she guides a male patient through a doorway, and Camille embraces Lucas with genuine gratitude when she comes to her room to let her know that her visitor has arrived. Paul awaits her in the sitting-room and blenches when Camille throws herself into his arms. She asks tearfully why she has been shut away with people who would be willingly rejected by her parents and Paul insists that he is doing his best to keep her safe during the war. She thanks him for making a large donation to the asylum, which she knows he will find hard to afford with four children to raise. But she urges him to recognise how difficult it is to live in a place in which she has so little control.

She asks to return home and says she would rather live with the commoners in the main wing than be coddled with those being shut away by wealthy relatives. When she asks why her mother stays away, Paul averts his eyes and Camille accuses him of being manipulated by Rodin's chemist friend Marcellin Berthelot. She blames Rodin again for stealing her ideas and her studio and implores Paul to realise that he is being manipulated by a man who exploited her as a woman and as an artist and then sought to crush her when she became an inconvenience.

The camera closes in on Camille's face, as she asks why God is letting her rot. But Paul reminds her that everything happens to enable us to understand His mysteries and prepare us for Heaven. However, he is no longer willing to submit himself to such interrogation and tells Camille that he has prayed for her every night for 20 years and will never abandon her. She walks him back to the cloister and assures him she is at peace here before disappearing sadly into the garden. Paul walks out to his car with the doctor and regrets that genius must come with such a heavy price tag. The doctor assures him that his sister is docile for much of the day and suggests that the time might be right for Camille to return to the capital. But Paul's expression hardens and he drives away with no intention of honouring his promise to give the matter some serious consideration.

Camille watches a nun working in the garden, as the scene fades to black and a closing caption reveals that Paul stayed away from her funeral and survived her by 12 years. Such spans become almost meaningless, however, as time seems to stand still during the three days under scrutiny. The air of oppressive inertia is superbly reinforced by Riton Dupire-Clément's austere production design and Guillaume Deffontaines's discreet camerawork, which often appears to frame Binoche in much the same way that Carl Theodor Dreyer photographed Renée Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). But Dumont also makes typically evocative use of the landscape to convey the languor of Camille's stifled existence, which is made to seem all the more cocooned by Philippe Lecoeur's acute sound mix.

Some may take exception to the decision to employ real mental patients as Binoche's co-stars, but there is nothing exploitative about their depiction or performances. Indeed, Binoche's interaction with Alexandra Lucas is deeply touching and serves to highlight Vincent's lack of empathy when he wriggles away from Binoche's embrace and invokes delusional mysticism rather than basic Christian charity to justify callous actions proposed by his evidently heartless mother. Dumont resists making Camille a martyr, however, and the instances in which she allows her hatred of Rodin to get the better of her are as revealing as sly asides like the allusion to Paul's long affair with married mother of four Rosalie Vetch, who left him for another man while carrying his child in 1905. But, with Binoche giving her best performance since Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy (2010), in which she also had to temper fragility with fury, this remains more a study of injustice, suffering and suppressed artistry than hypocritical morality, misguided medicine and sibling rivalry.

Markedly more plot led and much less substantial in terms of character development is Chinese Puzzle, the latest instalment of the Cédric Klapisch series that started with Pot Luck (2002) and Russian Dolls (2005). There's more than a hint of François Truffaut's Antoine Doinel cycle about this triptych, as Xavier Rousseau is another wannabe writer whose complex personal life keeps getting in the way of his literary ambitions. But, while Romain Duris is as genial as Jean-Pierre Léaud, the estimable Klapisch isn't on a par with Truffaut, even though he captures the urban mood with energetic aplomb and conveys something of the mischievous enjoyment he obviously derived from indulging in the odd stylistic flourish.

In a breathless opening that sets the tone for the entire film, Romain Duris is rushing through the streets of New York with children Pablo Mugnier-Jacob and Margaux Mansart. They are trying to get to his wedding to Li Jun Li and Duris explains to editor Dominique Besnehard how he came to be in this situation. It all started when English partner Kelly Reilly met a new man while working on a screenplay and decided to take the kids for a fresh start in the United States. Preoccupied with donating sperm so that friend Cécile De France can have a child with her lesbian lover Sandrine Holt, Duris is distraught and, because he doesn't believe in God, turns to Arthur Schopenhauer (Jochen Hägele) for advice. Besnehard barely bats an eye at being told that Duris communes `in person' with a 19th-century German philosopher and is no more fazed when he breaks down at a book launch shortly after seeing his family off at the airport and announces that he is also heading for the Big Apple.

Arriving in a downpour, Duris feels like an alien from the outset. De France and Holt put him up while he gets his bearings, but he detests the subway journey from Brooklyn to Central Park South and is appalled to discover that Reilly is sending Mugnier-Jacob and Mansart to a school that insists on uniforms. He resents being told about Peter Hermann's parenting skills, even though he takes his side in suggesting that Reilly should consider Duris's feelings when making future decisions. Suitably piqued, she tells Duris to communicate thenceforth through her lawyer (Byron Jennings) and he has to hire the cheapest representation he can find (Jason Kravits) in order to retain access to his kids.

Feeling a long way from home, Duris skypes with old flame Audrey Tautou and her children Amin Djakliou and Clara Abbasi. Having struggled to find digs (in a montage filled with estate agent brochures, maps, street views, e-mails and phone calls), Duris moves into the flat in Chinatown that Holt has owned since her student days. He tries to settle down to write, but is interrupted by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (also Hägele, this time in 18th-century apparel), who urges Duris to remember his teaching on the simplicity of life when confronted with the tyranny of the blank page and the problems of juggling his domestic responsibilities.

Faced with writer's block, Duris is grateful when Mugnier-Jacob and Mansart come to help decorate the cramped apartment and they watch The Simpsons on his laptop as Mansart complains that Reilly never allows them junk food. He takes them to the neighbourhood playground and pals up with Sharrieff Pugh, an African-American who claims that all weekend dads are warriors. Hermann also tries to be reassuring when Duris returns the children, but Reilly keeps him at the door and he is forced to pay another visit to Kravits, who warns him that he will need to find a job if he is to pay his legal bills. However, Duris is not entitled to work on a tourist visa and Kravits suggests he gets paid in cash under the table. Luckily, Adrian Martinez's courier company is prepared to bend the rules and Duris settles in after he wins over pugnacious Hispanic Jose Soto, who objects to foreigners taking jobs from ordinary Americans.

Duris is soon whizzing round the city on his bicycle and he realises that everyone tends to look down, even when reaching for the sky. But he also discovers that New York is a place of feuding races and short fuses when Chinese cabby Phil Nee gets into a fight with a truck driver in a West Village traffic jam and Duris ends up having to drive Nee to hospital after he is attacked with a baseball bat. Besnehard pleads with Duris to concentrate on his writing, but he is more concerned with finding a way to stay in the States after Kravits suggests he spends $50,000 on an arranged marriage in order to obtain his Green Card. As luck would have it, Nee's daughter, Li Jun Li, is so grateful to him for helping her father that she offers to be his bride. But, just as Duris is trying to sort out his future, a ghost from his past pays an unexpected visit.

Tautou works in the food standards business and has come to negotiate with tea merchant Jeff Lau. She persuades Duris to pose as her assistant during the meeting and he is impressed by her fluent Mandarin and hardball attitude. However, she feels homesick when she gets a call that Djakliou is unwell and Duris cuddles her as they platonically share his bed. She wonders if they could rediscover the spark they had in Barcelona, but he protests that life is already too complicated without adding romance. He kisses her at the airport bus stop and goes to a meeting with Reilly and Jennings, who congratulates them on showing such maturity in their break-up. As they take the lift to the street, Reilly apologises for being so cold and promises to be more reasonable once she has married Hermann.

Duris doesn't let on that he is also about to tie the knot and a photo-montage shows him faking a whirlwind courtship with Li to show to INS agent Peter McRobbie. He is sceptical about the authenticity of the evidence and Duris loses his temper when he adopts a highly personal line of questioning about their honeymoon and living arrangements. As they go their separate ways outside, Li assures Duris that everything will work out for the best and he is pleased to have married such a nice woman. However, he continues to struggle for inspiration and is almost relieved when father Benoît Jacquot calls to say he is coming to New York. The pair have drifted apart in recent years and Duris is resentful that Jacquot asks few questions about his life while bombarding him with details of his own. They go looking for the initials that Jacquot and Duris's mother had carved into the sidewalk when they visited as newlyweds and Duris is pleased to find them by chance a short while after Jacquot has departed, as it proves they were in love when he was conceived.

This happy discovery coincides with the birth of De France's baby and Duris feels sheepish on breaking the news to McRobbie, as he doesn't want any unnecessary complications when the birth is registered. However, he is aghast when De France reveals that she has fallen in lust with Belgian babysitter Flore Bonaventura and, when he warns her not to lose Holt, she lectures him on the need to get some passion into his own life as he is becoming a dullard. By contrast, Besnehard wishes Duris would stop being distracted and focus on his writing, as he has only a fortnight to deliver his manuscript before a major publishing conference. But any chance of finishing the novel on time seems to disappear when Tautou and her offspring arrive for a holiday and she seduces Duris, who frets that they are clinging to fond memories rather than acting rationally. However, he feels a surge of affection when Tautou reads his story and insists he is a better writer than ever.

One afternoon, De France tracks them down to the playground and asks Mugnier-Jacob to mind the baby while she rendezvous with Bonaventura in Holt's flat. However, Duris gets a call from Holt to say that McRobbie is about to pay a surprise visit to check that he and Li are cohabiting. Having contacted Li, Duris realises that De France has switched off her phone and has to dash home to get her out before everyone else arrives. He bounds up the fire escape and gets in through a window to warn De France and Bonaventura, who have to grab clothes off a rooftop washing line to make their escape. Li shows up shortly after McRobbie, who seems content that all is above board. But nobody has told Tautou what is going on and Duris has to tell her in Spanish to pose as the babysitter. As McRobbie leaves and Reilly arrives, Holt notices the baby and Mugnier-Jacob has the presence of mind to say that he had asked De France if he could get to know his sister. She arrives on cue to collect her daughter and Holt kisses her without being aware she has been duped.

In order to celebrate the narrow escape, Duris takes Tautou, Reilly and De France to dinner and they watch buskers performing on the subway. They discuss the kind of woman that Duris needs by his side and tease him that his soulmate would contain a little bit of each of them. Mugnier-Jacob and Mansart have enjoyed having Djakliou and Abbasi around and they are sorry when the time comes for them to go home. Duris is also downcast and charges after Tautou after Mugnier-Jacob gives him the same `New York is a great place' speech that he had used on saying his goodbyes in Paris. He suggests that they can find Tautou an American man to marry and they kiss at the bus stop.

Duris delivers his manuscript to Besnehard, who complains that the happy ending is implausible. However, Tautou snaps at him on skype and he sighs that he finds it impossible to know where fact and fiction end where Duris's life is concerned. As the credits roll, Duris and Tautou walk in the park with their kids, while De France and Holt embrace and Li cosies up to Pugh. Duris ponders a flurry of flashbacks from the first two films and, when Tautou asks what he is thinking about, he merely replies, `life'.

There is a suggestion that this flash-cut summation signals the end of a cycle that has consistently amused and engaged. But many reuniting with Klapisch and his characters will be hoping for further complications somewhere down the line, as this lively episode certainly leaves plenty of questions unanswered. It also contains its share of ill-fitting pieces, but Klapisch takes things at such a clip that the puzzle eventually slots together with a satisfying click. Much of this is down to editor Anne-Sophie Bion, whose slick montages convey both the pace of New York and the fact that life is hardly slowing down for these freewheeling spirits, even though they are rapidly approaching 40. Christophe Minck and Loïc Dury's score also reflects the quotidian tempo, while Natasha Braier's photography and Roshelle Berliner and Marie Cheminal's production design help to reinforce the contrasts that exist across the city and within Duris's intimate social group.

Tautou, Reilly and De France seem to enjoy reprising familiar roles, but Duris dominates with another display of the effortless charm that is becoming his trademark. But this is very much an auteur picture, with Klapisch stuffing the early sequences with playful gimmicks, such as the animated porn mag images, Duris's medieval garb when complaining that Reilly is making him feel like someone from the Olde Worlde and the encounters with Schopenhauer and Hegel. The latter feel like something from a Woody Allen film and his influence is as apparent as Truffaut's throughout. But Klapisch has always had a way with ebullience and ensembles and few would complain if he took up the story again as Duris and his entourage begin to experience a few midlife crises.

Experienced TV documentarist Bruce Goodison also focuses on immigration in his fictional bow, Leave to Remain. However, the tone is considerably more sombre in this well-meaning drama that deplores the fact that only one in ten of the thousands of teenagers who risk their lives to flee to Britain each year are granted asylum by the Home Office. Stated so baldly, this sounds like a shocking statistic. But Goodison and co-scenarist Charlotte Colbert are at pains to point out that while many deserving cases are shamefully turned away, some of those claiming to be escaping from war zones, political/religious persecution or institutionalised misogyny are not necessarily telling the whole truth to the lawyers, activists and lay people committed to helping them secure a second chance.

The week's third French picture is the kind that rarely makes it across the Channel, even though dozens of them are churned out for domestic consumption each year. Rooted firmly in the tradition of the Hollywood romantic comedy, Alexandre Castagnetti's Love Is in the Air differs from other rom-copycats in so far as it reworks an original screenplay by American actor Vincent Angell. In all other regards, however, it sticks as slavishly to convention and caricature as such recent romps as Frédéric Beigbeder's Love Lasts Three Years (2011), David Moreau's It Boy and Danièle Thompson's It Happened in St Tropez (both 2013), which it resembles in the fact that the lovers first meet in transit, with a transatlantic jet replacing the EuroStar express on which Lou de Laâge first encounters Max Boublil.

Trendy sculptress Ludivine Sagnier is on her way from New York to Paris to marry her lawywer fiancé,

Arnaud Ducret. As the plane is full, however, she is upgraded and finds herself sitting next to ex-boyfriend Nicolas Bedos, another lawyer whom Sagnier has not seen since they split up acrimoniously three years earlier. He is heading home for a job interview and seems pleased to see his old flame. But any hopes he might have had of flirting with her as they reminnisce about old times are soon doused when Sagnier reminds him of the reasons for their parting and the first of many flashbacks takes us back to the night on which Bedos and Sagnier first met, somwhat improbably, in a gentlemen's lavatory.

Seemingly already aware of Bedos's reputation as a womaniser (he nickname is `Mr Two Weeks'), Sagnier refuses to succumb to his advances. However, perhaps because she fancies taking him down a peg or two, she agrees to give him an hour to impress her and, lo and behold, her reluctance melts away with an alacrity that ruthlessly exploits the truism that even the nicest girl is unable to resist a rogue. Mother Clémentine Célarié is dismayed that Sagnier is consorting with such an unregenerate chauvinist, but she refuses to take any advice and even astonishes Bedos's best mate Jonathan Cohen when she agrees to move in with him.

Sagnier still wishes Bedos drank less and kept his eyes to himself a bit more, while he resents the fact that she cramps his style. But they seem to be making a go of things until she is awarded a bursary to study in Japan and not only does Bedos sabotage her plans (because he is too insecure to accept that she might have talent and could drift away from him), but he also gets caught with a naked woman in their bathroom. The fact that there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the latter doesn't concern Sagnier, as she is so furious that Bedos would seek to ruin her career that she walks out on him without a backward glance.

Naturally, by the time the plane lands, Bedos has managed to breach Sagnier's defences once again. Thus, when she bumps into him at the offices of Ducret's firm (which is, of course, where Bedos is being interviewed), she cancels the wedding plans and heads off into the sunset with a man she knows is going to be trouble, but whom she is convinced she cannot live without.

The recent revelations about President François Hollande's liaison with actress Julie Gayet seem to suggest that the French are willing to forgive a charmer any peccadillo and this self-satisfied battle of the sexes relies heavily on that trait. British audiences may not know that Bedos (who is the son of comedian Guy Bedos and co-scripted along with five others) has something of a bad boy reputation, thanks to his acerbic writing for the stage, television and the popular press, and he clearly tailored his first starring role to suit his public image. However, he merely comes across as boorish, sexist and utterly irresponsible and it is difficult to accept that he would be in such demand as a lawyer, let alone that Sagnier would give him a second chance. However, she only fares marginally better, as she clearly has little talent as an artist, while her ditzy jealousy quickly becomes as resistible as his caddish swagger. Moreover, her rant at Célarié, in which she declares that she would rather be mistreated than alone, is unforgivable.

In fact, Célarié has some of the best lines, along with Michel Vuillermoz, as a waspish flight attendant who might have enlivened Pedro Almodóvar's in-flight-farrago, I'm So Excited! (2013). Arnaud Ducret also shows well in the other man role that was perfected by Ralph Bellamy in a number of classic 1930s screwballs. Moreover, Yannick Ressigeac's widescreen imagery is pleasingly glossy and some of editor Scott Stevenson's montages and scene transitions are amusingly innovative (although most viewers would be willing to forego the kitschily explicit illustrations from the Kama Sutra). But the Gallic laddishness of the humour doesn't travel well, especially when it jars so frequently with the classily relaxed tone for which Castagnetti is evidently striving in including so many jazz and Motown standards on the soundtrack. The only upshot, to paraphrase Samuel Butler, is that only two people will be made miserable by Bedos and Sagnier's rapprochement instead of the four who would have suffered if they had remained apart.

Adam Bakri finds himself caught between clashing cultures in Hany Abu-Assad's Omar, a tense mix of political thriller and romantic drama that represents a vast improvement on the Nazarene's American debut, The Courier (2012). It also marks a return to the Palestinian question for the first time since Abu-Assad followed his excellent feature bow, Rana's Wedding (2002), and the trenchant documentary Ford Transit (2003), with the exceptional study of a suicide bomber's psyche, Paradise Now (2005). But what makes this so riveting is the moral ambiguity the characters feel towards their cause and comrades when faced with conflicting personal desires or the dictates of the Israeli Defence Force.

Scaling the Qalandia Wall and burning his hand on the rope as he slides down the other side after being shot at, West Bank baker Adam Bakri goes to see his pals Iyad Hoorani and Samer Bisharat for tea and chat. He also swaps covert notes with Hoorani's teenage sister, Leem Lubany, who loves his writing and promises him that they will run away together to a new life the first chance they get. However, social visits come at a price and, when Bakri is returning from an early morning assignation with Lubany, he is caught by an IDF patrol and has his nose broken with a rifle butt when he gets mouthy after being ordered to stand on a rock with his hands on his head.

Such provocation convinces Bakri of the rectitude of Hoorani's plan to kill a soldier in the barracks and the pals target shoot in the wilderness to prepare themselves for the mission. As they discuss the future, it becomes clear that they are still naive and Bakri is stung by Hoorani's reluctance to let anyone date his sister. Despite their callowness, however, Bisharat succeeds in picking off a trooper in the compound and Bakri drives the getaway car before blowing it up to destroy any evidence.

Shortly after snatching a kiss off Lubany the next day, however, Bakri is chased through the streets and felled by a shot to the leg. He is manacled and beaten by a torturer and has his genitals scorched when he tells his abuser to wipe his nose. Left in solitary, he dreams of Lubany. But he is eventually moved to a bigger dormitory cell, where he is approached by members of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigade. Uncertain who to trust, he lets down his guard when a kindly prisoner warns him against collaboration and avers that he has nothing to confess. His words are played back to him by agent Waleed Zuaiter, who assures him that this slip is serious enough to put him away for 90 years and Bakri's lawyer confirms his plight. However, Zuaiter offers Bakri a way out, as he will let him return to Lubany if he betrays Hoorani.

Returning home with the story that he was released through lack of evidence, Bakri rushes to show Lubany that he is safe. He also leaves a message with Bisharat's seven spinster sisters for him to get in touch and is give instructions where to meet. Unwilling to compromise his friends, Bakri tells Hoorani that he has been freed to trap him and he promises he will think about him dating Lubany if he arranges the ambush of some off-duty soldiers to prove his loyalty. Readily assenting, Bakri rendezvous with Lubany at the humble home he has found for them and they kiss for the first time after she gives him a beany she has knitted for him. This comes in useful when he is pursued by IDS agents who come snooping around his home and he ditches his jacket and covers his head to give them the slip.

When he goes to meet Lubany from school, however, Bakri sees her talking through the fence to Bisharat and he becomes more suspicious when she asks for details of the ambush he is setting up. She warns him that some of her classmates think he is a traitor because he was released so quickly and urges him not to be jealous of Bisharat, as she only loves him. Confused, Bakri goes about his task and Rohl Ayadi confesses that he has been offered a visa to New Zealand to snitch for the IDS. Hoorani is delighted that the quisling has been caught and not only gives Bakri a photograph of Lubany to copy, but he also promises to arrange their nuptials as soon as he can.

The following day, however, as the three pals shoot the breeze in a café, they are ambushed and Bakri is suspicious that Bisharat disappeared moments before two men pulled guns from a dumpster on the pavement outside and began shooting. Hoorani escapes, but Bakri finds himself in custody again and Zuaiter is furious with him for trying to make him look foolish. He cautions Bakri that he knows what he is doing at any hour of the day and shows him a photo of him chatting to Lubany in an alleyway. Moreover, he warns him that he is now on his own and Bakri is savagely beaten in the corridor for being a traitor. He asks to see Zuaiter again and, on hearing him getting an ear-chewing from his wife on the phone, he jokes that no man is free. They laugh and Zuaiter offers Bakri a mint and a last chance at salvation.

Returning home with an electronic tag on his calf, Bakri tries to see Lubany, but she accuses him of having let the side down and says she wants nothing more to do with him. Distraught, Bakri tries to remove the tag with a buzz saw and watches helplessly as Bisharat and Lubany converse through the school fence. He asks Bisharat to meet him and they go into the wilderness above the village. Bakri puts a knife to his throat and charges him with passing secrets to the enemy. Bisharat insists that he had no option, as Lubany was pregnant and the IDS offered to help if he worked for them.

Deceived and confused, Bakri promises Bisharat that he won't let anything happen to him and even asks Hoorani to accept Bisharat as a brother-in-law when they meet the next day. Suddenly a shot rings out and Hoorani is killed. Zuaiter comes to inspect the corpse and gives Bakri his word that he will keep hold of it for two months so that nobody can blame him and Bisharat for being the last people to see him alive. Bakri then meets with Lubany's male relations and arranges the betrothal, which Lubany reluctantly accepts after Bakri refuses to pick up the note she proffered on a saucer while serving tea. Handing Bisharat a wad of cash, Bakri returns to his bakery and tosses Lubany's picture into the oven. A few weeks later, he catches her eye as he walks in Hoorani's funeral procession and informs Bisharat that he wants nothing more to do with him.

Two years later, senior Palestinian leader Ramzi Maqdisi tracks Bakri down and asks what he remembers about Hoorani's death. Bakri feigns ignorance when he asks where Bisharat got the money to marry Lubany and shows no emotion when Maqdisi says the autopsy proved that Hoorani had been dead several weeks before he was found. Bakri tries to scale the wall to find out what is happening, but has to rely on an old man to give him a boost up the rope. He calls on Lubany and sees her nursing two children. She has given up her studies to become a mother. But Bakri is stunned when she tells him her son is only a year old, as this means that Bisharat was lying when he told him Lubany was pregnant. She bitterly regrets that things didn't work out between them and says sorry for every doubting his probity.

Having apologised for letting her down, Bakri calls Zuaiter and asks him for a gun in return for delivering the real culprit for the barrack killing. He sends Lubany a letter and she looks towards the camera as she finishes reading it. But it is too late to stop Bakri, who asks Zuaiter to show him how to load the pistol and asks if he can have a try. Once he has the weapon in his hand, he turns to Zuaiter and, recalling an anecdote Bisharat had once told him, he asks the Israeli if he knows how they catch monkeys in Africa before shooting him in the head.

What makes this picture so sad is the futility of the assassination that ruins so many lives. Ground down by the petty humiliations of occupation, Bakri and his buddies convince themselves that a strategically worthless act of rebellion is entirely justified and their failure to recognise that their token gesture will have such hideous repercussions highlights both the desperation of the Palestinian people to recover some control over their lives and the pitiful ignorance of those unaware that every action is bound to have a more terrifying reaction. But Abu-Hassad refuses to blame the freedom fighters for their recklessness, as oppression appears to have left them with little option to do otherwise. Yet, it's love for a faithless girl rather than patriotism that drives Bakri to make so many self-destructive mistakes and it's noticeable that Abu-Hassad and production designer Nael Kanj fill Bakri's dauntingly enclosed world with so many advertisements making false promises about better times ahead.

Despite its surfeit of increasingly self-conscious twists, Abu-Hassad's screenplay is studded with similar ironies, as well as several darkly comic quips, which are delivered with confidence by an inexperienced cast. Outside the prison sequences (which are chillingly designed by Yoel Herzberg and photographed by Ehab Assal), Bakri perhaps falls short of the requisite mix of grit and vulnerability, while his apparent lack of understanding of the political complexities of his cause and the true nature of violence threatens to make him more of a cipher than a genuinely tragic anti-hero. But his helplessness when flirting with Lubany is deeply touching and, thus, his final sacrifice is stripped of any glamour, as this is the act of a man who is already dead inside.

Finally, the reckless fearlessness of youth comes under scrutiny in Diego Quemada-Díez's The Golden Dream, a companion piece to Cary Fukunaga's Sin Nombre (2009) that follows a trio of Guatemalan teenagers on a perilous journey through Central American to a longed-for new life in the United States. Shot on Super-16 and featuring a cast of non-professionals, this is very much a latterday exercise in neo-realism. However, as in so many Italian films of the classic era, an element of sentimentality is permitted to permeate the naturalism. Moreover, Quemada-Díez allows the action to meander slightly before it reaches its devastating denouement.

Sixteen year-old Brandon López lives in a rundown shanty in Guatemala City. As he heads back to the family shack, he passes through narrow streets with the sounds of poverty and crime hanging in the air. Hurrying into his room, he packs a bag and sews some dollars into the waistband of his trousers and leaves before anybody knows he has gone. He hooks up with buddy Carlos Chajón, who has been surviving by scavenging on a nearby rubbish dump, and gal pal Karen Martínez, who has cut her hair and bandaged her breasts to make her look more like a boy.

As if to celebrate their expedition to El Norte, the friends part with some precious cash to pose for photographs in a backstreet booth. Chajón stands proudly with the Guatemalan flag, while Martínez selects the Stars and Stripes. But López, who takes great pride in his cowboy boots, climbs on to a model horse and dons a ten-gallon hat and wields a toy six-shooter against an idealised Wild West backdrop that sums up the romanticised notions that the threesome harbour as they leave the penurious security of their family homes.

On arriving in the town of Chiapas, Martínez's disguise is easily seen through by Rodolfo Domínguez, a Tzotzil Indian who speaks no Spanish, but makes it clear to Martínez that he wishes to join her party. As he has feelings for Martínez, López takes a dim view of Domínguez, as they ride on the roof of a slow-moving train, along with hundreds of other migrants taking their lives into their own hands on the off-chance of finding gainful employment in America. But she insists that he is harmless and that it is better to travel in numbers. However, as they approach the Mexican border, the timid Chajón decides to back out and the trio press on without him.

They quickly fall foul of the police (La Migra) and are forced to work on a plantation in order to make enough money to make a second attempt at crossing the border. A dance thrown by the peasants provides a welcome break from the hard physical labour and the stress of being so far from home. But López becomes increasingly resentful of Domínguez after he dances with Martínez and she tries to teach him a few useful words and phrases.

Having successfully made it into Mexico, the youths take advantage of the charity of the strangers lining the railway track, who they throw fruit to sustain the travellers on their arduous journey. However, it's not long before disaster befalls them, as bandits stop the train and round-up the stragglers and expose Martínez as a girl. She is bundled screaming into a lorry destined for a brothel and López and Domínguez discover how hopeless any attempt to rescue her would be while spending the night in a religious shelter. Aware that they now have to rely on each other if they are to attain their goal, the pair befriend streetwise teen Ricardo Esquerra while riding their next boxcar and he promises to help them make some quick cash.

They soon realise, however, that Esquerra has lured them into the den of the machete-brandishing Luis Alberti, who has lots of other waifs trapped in a cramped room on the outskirts of a nowhere town. He admires López's spirit when he tries to protect Domínguez and allows him to leave. But López has learned that selfishness gets you nowhere on the road and he goes back to the compound to plead for his friend's release and they make the most of their second chance to keep their heads down until they reach the frontier. However, their first steps on American soil come at a hideous price.

Sticking close to the characters by often keeping the camera at their eye level, while also reinforcing their insignificance against the vast wilderness, cinematographer María Secco brings a certain intimacy to proceedings that have an undeniably familiar feel. The script, written in conjunction with Gibrán Portela and Lucía Carreras, draws on over 600 first-hand testimonies, but it tends to treat the kids as pieces being moved across a map rather than fully realised human beings. Moreover, like mentor Ken Loach (for whom he served as clapper-loader on Land and Freedom in 1995), the Spanish-born, Mexico-based director too frequently wears his political heart on his sleeve.

Denied access to the full script so that they were always acting in the moment, the young leads respond commendably to Quemada-Díez's direction and there are fleeting moments of gentle humour to offset more poignant episodes, like Martínez's abduction and López's showdown with Alberti. But, for all the harrowing detail and the mournful finesse of Jacobo Lieberman and Leo Heiblum's score, this is every bit as melodramatic as Sin Nombre, although nothing can prepare one for the climactic tragedy.