Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 25/9/2014)

Acting as his own narrator, Rosi explains the images that open the action. On 5 July 1950, Salvatore Giuliano (Pietro Cammarata) was found dead in a sunny courtyard in the Sicilian town of Castelvetrano. His body was riddled with bullets. But, while the local carabinieri took the credit for the kill, the 27 year-old bandit had actually been shot by his former second-in-command, Gaspare Pisciotta (Frank Wolff).

A series of fragmentary flashbacks sketches in a career that had started with the smuggling of black market food during the Second World War, when Giuliano had thrown in his lot with the separatist partisans resisting both the Axis and Allied forces fighting over Sicily from July 1943. Angered by the mainland government sending troops to quell the rebels, Giuliano had evaded a round-up in his home village of Montelepre and had become a colonel in the Movimento per l'Indipendenza della Sicilia. Yet, even after the island was accorded a degree of autonomy immediately after the war, no amnesty was extended to the mafiosi and pisciotti who had joined forces to resist tyranny.

Consequently, Giuliano and his band were left at large and turned to extortion, kidnapping and robbery in order to survive. However, conniving (and largely helpless) politicians turned a blind eye to his activities until 11 peasants (including a woman and three children) were slaughtered at a Communist rally at Portella della Ginestra on May Day 1947. Although the Mafia was initially blamed for the incident, suspicion soon fell upon Giuliano and Pisciotta was persuaded to betray his friend.

He gained little from his treachery, however, as he was put on trial at Viterbo in 1951. He sought to claim that the names of Giuliano's co-conspirators were contained in a notebook. But Pisciotta (who had become a member of the Mafia) was sentenced to life imprisonment in Palermo's Ucciardone Prison, where he was murdered on the orders of the Mafia in February 1954.

From the opening frames, it is evident that Rosi has no interest in uncovering the truth about Giuliano and Pisciotta or how they died. Instead, he presents an impressionist version of the facts and leaves the audience to infer what it may. Those who had lived through the events being alluded to here would easily have been able to read between the lines. But Rosi makes no effort to accommodate those not au fait with the facts of the case. However, while this may be frustrating on both an historical and a narratorial level, the fractured and obfuscatory nature of the action greatly enhances its cinematic intensity and fascination.

As the rather superficial Wolff and Salvo Randone (who plays the president of the Viterbo assizes) were the only professional actors in the cast, the performance are strikingly raw and it will surprise many how rarely the eponymous `hero' appears on screen (indeed, Cammarata isn't even credited). But Rosi and co-writers Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Enzo Provenzale and Franco Solinas (who would collaborate with Gillo Pontecorvo on that other Italo-political masterwork, The Battle of Algiers, 1966) adeptly capture the simmering tensions as the alliances between the police, the politicians and the various criminal fraternities shift so perfidiously over five short years.

Rose owes much to production designers Sergio Canevari and Carlo Egidi, as well as cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo, whose sweeping monochrome imagery is edited with laudable precision by Mario Serandrei. Having exposed municipal corruption in Naples in Hands Over the City (1963), Rosi would return to organised crime in The Mattei Affair (1972) and Illustrious Corpses (1976), while Michael Cimino would revisit the Giuliano legend to no great effect in The Sicilian (1987). But none of these films suggest the risk that Rosi must have taken in attempting to circumvent the code of omerta in relation to events whose ramifications could still be felt on a daily basis by those involved in their re-enactment.

Crime has never been the exclusive preserve of the lower classes and Paolo Virzi reveals the depths to which the Italian haute bourgeoisie are prepared to stoop in Human Capital. Renowned for his wit and intimacy, Virzi has long been the keenest commentator on all things Roman. But he shifts his attention to the Lombard elite in this adaptation of Stephen Amidon's admired novel, which relocates its simmering tale of greed, deceit, hypocrisy and lust from Connecticut to the prosperous town of Brianza. Moreover, by dividing the action into three chapters, each one of which focuses on a different character, Virzi and co-scenarists Francesco Bruni and Francesco Piccolo force the audience to concentrate on seemingly incidental details, whose significance becomes teasingly apparent as the skein re-ravels.

Six months before waiter Gianluca Di Lauro is knocked off his bike on his way home from a school function and left for dead at the side of a snowy country road, estate agent Fabrizio Bentivoglio drops teenage daughter Matilde Gioli at the luxurious hillside villa where boyfriend Guglielmo Pinelli lives with parents Fabrizio Gifuni and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Awestruck by the affluence, Bentivoglio wanders around the grounds and finds himself making a fourth at tennis with Gifuni and his business pals.

Gifuni is a hedge fund trader and the opportunistic Bentivoglio asks if he can invest in his latest scheme, as he is feeling the pinch as the recession starts to bite and needs a quick cash injection to keep his company out of the clutches of a rival run by Pia Engleberth. So, Bentivoglio mortgages his house and agency in order to secure a loan from banker pal Gigio Alberti and sinks €700,000 into Gifuni's project, without informing psychologist wife Valeria Golino, who has just broken the news that she is pregnant with twins

Half a year later, however, the investment has failed to pay off and Bentivoglio is avoiding calls from both Engleberth and Alberti. However, he is too self-obsessed to notice that Gifuni has also cooled towards him and he is busy trying to schmooze him at the school benefit when the distressed Golina insists on going to hospital because she is experiencing excruciating contractions.

Bentivoglio seeks reassurance from Gifuni the following day, but he is in the middle of a vital meeting and resents being asked to repay the stake when he is fighting for his financial life. Oblivious to the police activity on the road home, Bentivoglio tries to discover where Gioli has been since Golina entrusted her with her car at the school. But she is in too much of a hurry to speak to him and he is fielding a phone call from Engleberth when the police come looking for his daughter.

As the second chapter begins, Virzi turns to Bruni Tedeschi, who has been pampered into supineness by a husband who considers her more of a trophy than a companion. She spends her days being chauffeured between shops and is returning from buying antiques from close friend Silvia Cohen when she spots a rundown theatre and, recalling her days as an amateur actress, promises Franco Maino that she will do everything in her power to prevent it being converted into a bank. Gifuni is amused that his wife wants a project and agrees to bankroll the renovation. But Bruni Tedeschi quickly realises that she has her work cut out when she convenes a meeting of the trustees and is grateful for the encouragement of academic Luigi Lo Cascio, who has fond memories of her playing Juliet in her youth.

By the night of the school gala, Bruni Tedeschi has developed a crush on Lo Cascio and feels even closer to him when Gifuni informs her that he has already signed a contract to turn the theatre into flats. Consequently, after Pinelli fails to win a class prize and Gifuni stalks out in disgust, Bruni Tedeschi returns to her empty mansion and invites Lo Cascio to watch Carmelo Bene's Our Lady of the Turks (1968), which they are considering staging. As the film unspools in the basement cinema, however, Lo Cascio's hand creeps higher up Bruni Tedeschi's thigh and she is only prevented from succumbing to temptation by the sound of her drunken son crashing around the kitchen.

The following morning, Gifuni arrives back from a crisis meeting in Milan and warns his spouse that they stand on the brink of ruin. Seeking solace, Bruni Tedeschi pays a visit to Lo Cascio. But, when she tells him that the theatre dream is over and tearfully resists his clumsy advances, he accuses her of being a hopeless actress and a worthless tease. Suitably distraught to shout at a female motorist blocking the road, Bruni Tedeschi feels so wretched at taking her angst out on a stranger that she reverses to apologise.

She also tries to make-up with Pinelli after finding him in his bedroom with Gioli. But he is too busy cleaning inside of his SUV and touching up a scratch on the paintwork to listen to her prattling. However, Pinelli is soon protesting his innocence when Inspector Bebo Storti comes to ask whether he had driven home drunk from a party thrown by Cohen's twin sons. Yet, when Bruni Tedeschi looks in on him later, Pinelli disowns her for kissing Lo Cascio and she is even more dismayed when Cohen bars her from the shop for attempting to blame her kids for Pinelli's intoxicated antics.

As Bruni Tedeschi fears that her world is falling apart, Gioli retains her sang froid in the face of Storti's repeated assertion that Pinelli knocked Di Lauro off his bicycle. Virzi flashes back six months to reveal Pinelli showing off his new car to Gioli and she reacts angrily to his insistence on keeping up the charade that they are a couple. She is also appalled by Bentivoglio's gauche efforts to ingratiate himself with Gifuni and wonders why someone as grounded as Golino would want anything to do with him (even though she has some sympathy with him because of her mother's adultery).

While collecting some keys from Golino's surgery, Gioli bumps into Giovanni Anzaldo, who had been expelled from school for dealing drugs. He is one of Golino's patients and is so impressed by the lightning sketch he draws of her that she starts seeing him in secret, even though she thoroughly disapproves of his dubious relationship with sub-uncle Paolo Pierobon, who allowed him to take the rap for his crime. When Pinelli sulks after losing out on his prize, Gioli decides she has had enough of his brattishness and leaves the soirée to sleep with Anzaldo. However, she gets a call asking her to drive the inebriated Pinelli home and reluctantly agrees when Anzaldo asks to tag along for the ride.

He is blown away by the opulence of Cohen's property and begs Gioli to let him drive the SUV, while she takes Pinelli in her car. Anzaldo speeds off before she can stop him and he only reappears close to Pinelli's place. No sooner has Gioli deposited Pinelli on the doorstep, however, than Anzaldo confesses that he may have killed a cyclist and they see the ambulance arriving as they pass the spot on the road back to town. Unable to sleep and disturbed by the scars on Anzaldo's arms, Gioli goes to the hospital next morning and sees Di Lauro's wife telling a friend on the phone that he is going to die.

Desperate to protect Anzaldo, Gioli drops Golino's car keys back home and rushes round on her scooter to convince the impressionable Pinelli that one of Cohen's sons probably returned the SUV as a favour. She also calls to reassure Anzaldo, who is frantic with regret that he has ruined his one chance of happiness. Gioli promises him everything will be okay, but even she has her doubts as Storti vows to keep her in custody until she confesses that Pinelli was driving the car that killer Di Lauro.

Some may be frustrated by the decision to delay Anzaldo's appearance until so late in the piece and it does seem more than a little convenient for Gioli to keep up the pretence of romancing Pinelli when the conceit brings so few advantages. But Virzi goes some way to atoning by making such a neat job of tying up the loose ends in a coda that is positively brimful of melodramatic contrivances.

Prevented by the manipulative Pierobon from seeing Anzaldo after the news breaks that Di Lauro has died, Gioli storms home and starts writing an impassioned e-mail in which she promises her lover that she will never desert him. However, she leaves the document on screen as she takes a seemingly necessary shower and this allows Bentivoglio to discover the proof of Pinelli's innocence and attempt to use it to recoup his losses. Gifuni refuses his call, but Bruni Tedeschi is so determined to do whatever it takes to protect her child that she meets with Bentivoglio in the empty theatre and not only agrees to pay him €980,000, but she also accedes to his request for a French kiss.

While this tryst is taking place, Gioli confides in Golino, who is concerned for both her stepdaughter and her patient. They rush round to see Anzaldo, only to find emergency service vehicles in the street outside his home. Golino tries to gain admittance as his doctor, but Gioli bursts in silent slow-motion through the police cordon to see Anzaldo unconscious in his room after slashing his wrists. She is consoled by Golino, as the scene fades and Virzi sweeps us forward an unspecified period of time to a sunny day in the hills outside Brianza. Gifuni is hosting a party for his family and friends, having made a fortune from the credit crunch. But Bruni Tedeschi is far from impressed that he won a bet on the country's near-collapse and she has much less to look forward to than Gioli, who visits Anzaldo towards the end of his sentence for manslaughter.

A closing caption explains how insurance companies calculate human capital by taking into account such matters as life expectancy, earning power and the quantity and quality of any emotional bonds. But, Virzi is less scandalised by the paltry sum of €218, 976 paid in compensation for a humble waiter's death than by the fact that everyone else involved in his demise can shrug at the cheapness of existence and resume their own lives as though nothing untoward had happened. Claude Chabrol would be proud of Virzi, as he exposes the reprehensible preoccupation with status and surface appearance that drives the three principal male characters and laments the fact that their female counterparts lack the means or the wherewithal to oppose them.

But Virzi doesn't quite have Chabrol's way with suspense or restraint and this does drift perilously close on occasion to high-class soap opera. Nevertheless, Andrea Bottazzini and Mauro Radaelli's production design is as perfectly judged as Carlo Virzi's score, while cinematographers Jérôme Alméras and Simon Beaufils make astute use of the contrasts between the azure summer and the bleak midwinter. The performances are equally well attuned to the changing tone, with Gifuni and Bentivoglio amusingly seething respectively with macho loathing and bromantic envy, while Gioli's street cunning compares neatly with Golino's nurturing trust. The standout display, however, comes from the underrated Bruni Tedeschi, as she struggles with her insecurities before settling for the miserable comfort she realises she cannot survive without.

No wonder local politicians complained about this picture when it went on release in Italy. It would make a splendid conclusion to a triple bill also comprising Luca Guadagnino's I Am Love (2009) and Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty (2013). But, while this triptych captures the mood of middle-class complacency in a time of crisis, Eric Lavaine misses the target by quite some way in Barbecue, a clumsy ensemble comedy that feels like the director and co-scenarist Héctor Cabello Reyes have tried to concoct a mid-life equivalent to a teenpic.

When not working for his father biotech company, 49 year-old Lambert Wilson is spending his evenings flirting with pretty girls while doctor wife Sophie Duez and his weekends watching Olympique Lyonnais with his pals. Franck Dubosc and Florence Foresti are no longer on speaking terms since she moved out, but she remains part of the gang along with the fussily garrulous Guillaume de Tonquedec and his wife Lysiane Meis, small businessman Lionel Abelanski and his mousy spouse Valérie Crouzet, and garage mechanic Jérôme Commandeur, who befriended the others when he was working as a janitor at the college café where the congregated as students.

Commandeur is too bashful to find a girlfriend and disapproves when Lambert uses him as an alibi to dine with Dutch beauty Julie Engelbrecht. However, he is just as concerned as everyone else when, shortly after his 50th birthday, Lambert has a heart attack during a fun run. Frustrated at having being stricken having exercised and eaten moderately his whole life, Lambert decides to quit his job and dedicate himself to a retirement of indulgent excess. Duez is dismayed by his attitude, but agrees to come along when he books an idyllic mountain villa for a fortnight and invites all their friends.

There's a moment's awkwardness when Foresti turns up having forgotten which weeks she and Dubosc had agreed to spend with the group. But they agree to let her stay after a spirited game of pétanque and urge the pair to try and be nice to each other. Wilson is particularly determined to enjoy himself and is peeved when De Tonquedec tags along on the daily groceries run to the village. He is even more dismayed when teenage godson Lucas Lavaine camps in the grounds in a tent for a few days and De Tonquedec asks Wilson to have a chat with him after he finds dope in is luggage.

True to form, Wilson buys the stash and shares it with Foresti, who lets slip that she and Wilson had a fling before she met Dubosc. He sulks during a picnic trek into the mountains, while Abelanski keeps slipping away to make phone calls because his business is struggling. Eventually, after a day of everyone getting on each other's nerves, Wilson takes potshots at his guests over supper and has just about succeeded in upsetting everybody when he crashes face down into his plate after a second cardiac arrest.

Back in Lyons, Wilson is left to recuperate on his own. However, he invites De Tonquedec to lunch by way of an apology and is asked to the barbecue that Commandeur is hosting at the weekend. He has invited neighbour Nabiha Akkari and everyone takes a shine to her. But nobody warms to Foresti's date, Stéphane De Groodt, who completely misjudges the mood of the occasion and makes himself more unpopular with each utterance. All are concerned that Duez has not come with Wilson and he explains that they are currently living apart together. However, a few weeks later, when Abelanski invites them all to a posh restaurant to celebrate his business surviving its crisis, Wilson leaves the party to collect Duez from her hospital so that she doesn't miss out on this cosiest of occasions, which is made complete by Dubosc and Foresti's inevitable reunion .

Groaning under the weight of clichés and stereotypes, this too often feels like a bloated sitcom pilot. Rather than providing insights or acerbic asides, the narration serves merely to highlight the weaknesses in the plotting and the dialogue. Similarly, the performances are willing, but lacking in subtlety and the same accusation can be levelled at a screenplay that strives so hard to be accessible to everyone that it winds up appealing to no one. Some of François Hernandez's views of the verdant countryside are delightful, but Lavaine misses the chance to explore the psychology of ageing, the peculiarities of friendship and the ambience of France's second city.

Another remote getaway provides the setting for Leigh Janiak's low-budget debut, Honeymoon. Clearly owing much to such sci-fi Bs as Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Gene Fowler, Jr.'s I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958), this starts out by teasing the viewer into believing they are in for another ordeal by `found footage'. But this proves to be the last hint that either Janiak or co-scenarist Phil Graziadei possess a sense of humour, as the plot becomes increasingly preposterous and the British leads grow ever more uncomfortable with the mediocre dialogue and their shoddily bogus American accents.

Brooklyn newlyweds Rose Leslie and Harry Treadaway are so besotted with each other that they feel the need to record their slushy recollections of how they first met. Despite having very different opinions on Indian food, they married after a whirlwind courtship and are now honeymooning in a lakeside cabin belonging to Leslie's family that is so far off the beaten track that it has no phone and Internet connections, while their nearest neighbours are several miles away. However, as Leslie and Treadaway have no intention of doing anything other than making love, fishing and getting to know each other's quirks and habits, this detachment suits them just fine.

As Leslie is familiar with the area, she suggests the couple dine at a restaurant run by old school friend Ben Huber and his wife, Hanna Brown. Treadaway is reluctant, as he wants his new bride to himself. But they make their way to town, where Leslie is surprised by the chilliness of Huber's welcome. He perks up a bit when Leslie reminds him of their shared past, but the evening is made even more awkward by Brown urging Treadaway to take Leslie far away as quickly as possible.

Laughing off their odd reception, the pair return to their lodgings and hit the hay. However, as they doze in post-coital bliss, the room is filled with a bright light and Treadaway gets up to investigate. While he is away, a beam lands on Leslie and she gets up in a trance and wanders out into the woods. She is gone for some while and Treadaway is appalled when she returns naked and dirty. He asks Leslie if she sleepwalks on a regular basis, but she assures him everything is fine and they return to bed.

The following morning, however, Leslie appears to have forgotten how to make coffee and French toast and Treadaway is perplexed when he finds her torn nightgown spattered with a sticky substance in the woods. He suggests Leslie should see a doctor, especially as she has a couple of marks on her thigh. However, she insists they are nothing more than mosquito bites and starts devoting herself to writing in a notebook, as though she is trying to master the art of penmanship for the first time. She also starts giving objects around the cabin literal names. But, most disturbingly, she wants nothing to do with Treadaway sexually and starts secreting unpleasant fluids.

Convinced that Huber is somehow behind Leslie's erratic behaviour, Treadaway returns to the restaurant. But, while the place is deserted, he also finds it conveniently unlocked. He locates Huber's computer and watches footage of a brightly illuminated Brown shuffling into the nocturnal trees. Treadaway also finds some pages filled with scrawling similar to Leslie's and leaves convinced that something sinister is going on. As he walks down to the lake, he sees Brown sitting alone. She tells him that Huber has gone away for a few days, but Treadaway is far from convinced when he sees Huber's bloodied cap lying in the water.

Returning home, Treadaway decides to keep vigil through the night. But, while he sees the bright light, he cannot find its source and closes the door more confused than ever. But things are about to get a whole lot worse, as Leslie locks herself in the bathroom following a row and, when Treadaway finally barges his way inside, he sees his spouse stabbing repeatedly between her legs. He ties her to the bed and she begs him to remove the foul entity that is growing inside her. Scarcely able to comprehend what is happening, Treadaway delivers a large worm-like creature and Leslie explains that she was impregnated by silhouetted figures when she first ventured out into the light. She insists that they are slowly removing the remains of her human self and begs Treadaway to let her protect him from their wrath.

Unwisely, Treadaway unties Leslie and is knocked unconscious for his trouble. When he comes to, he is trussed on the floor of a rowing boat and he is tossed over the side as Leslie promises that she is merely hiding him underwater from the shadow figures. That night, Leslie sits alone, with her skin mottling as flakes peel away. Looking equally distressed, Brown comes to fetch her and they stumble into the forest, where their spectral masters await them and they are bathed in rejuvenating light.

Effectively photographed by Kyle Klutz and evocatively designed by Chris Trujillo, this has the potential to be deeply disturbing. It also has a provocative body horror subtext that exploits the average male's ignorance of the workings of the female body. But, while Treadaway's growing repugnance at Leslie's transformation represents a sly aside on the process of partners becoming accustomed to one another after they start living together, the action is largely devoid of depth, while the characters are little more then pawns being moved between increasingly far-fetched set-pieces. Of course, noirish sci-fi doesn't have to adhere to the rules of social realism. But the conversations are stilted long before Leslie begins speaking English as an alien language and it takes a special kind of stupidity not to surmise that something may be amiss with one's spouse when the evidence is stacked to the ceiling.

Nuptials also have a key part to play in Manu Payet's first feature, Relationship Status: It's Complicated, which he has co-directed with Rodolphe Lauga. This hasn't been a good year for French comedy, but this formulaic nonsense makes Alexandre Castagnetti's Love Is in the Air and Pascal Chaumeil's A Perfect Plan look like Agnès Jaoui's The Taste of Others (2000) or, er, Pascal Chaumeil's Heartbreaker (2010). A noted stand-up who found wider fame on the sketch show Kaamelott, Payet made an impression in Romain Lévy's Radiostars (2012). But, in teaming with Lévy and Nicolas Peufaillit on this screenplay, he has created for himself a smug chauvinist whose dalliances are more resistible than the schtick in a Paul Rudd or Seth Rogan movie.

The great shame, however, lies in the fact that two fine actresses have wasted their talent on such an unworthy vehicle. Former Canadian child star Emmanuelle Chriqui has made a fair few moderate choices since she graduated to grown-up roles in Chris Koch's Snow Day and Michael Davis's 100 Girls (both 2000), while Anaïs Demoustier has kept threatening to become a major star since earning César nominations for Best Newcomer in Anna Novion's Les Grandes personnes (2008) and Isabelle Czajka's Living on Love Alone (2010), in which she respectively forged a charming father-daughter partnership with Jean-Pierre Darrousin and a dangerous liaison with Pio Marmaï. Each works hard here to make the most of insultingly stereotypical roles. But the few who do make the pilgrimage to the Ciné Lumière in London to check out this lacklustre romcom will almost certainly see Chriqui and Demoustier's faces in future projects and hold this gross miscalculation against them.

Thirty year-old Parisian wedding videographer Manu Payet is struggling to cope with the pressure of his forthcoming wedding in Biarritz. Fiancée Anaïs Demoustier is obsessed with every minor detail of her big day, while future father-in-law Philippe Duquesne is driving him mad by showing him highly inappropriate paintings and complaining about his temperamental new lover (who remains a hovering presence, despite never being seen). Best man Jean-Charles Clichet tries to lend some support, but Payet seems set to sleepwalk up the aisle like a man condemned.

Then, he bumps into Jean François Cayrey in a bar, who remembers an old school promise to hook Payet up with the girl of his dreams. The following day, Payet gets a call to meet Cayrey at his swimming club, where he is reunited with Emmanuelle Chriqui, who is back in France after a lengthy spell in the United States. She doesn't remember him in the slightest, but needs help opening her new restaurant and asks Payet to make a promotional video to attract customers.

Deciding not to mention Demoustier, Payet starts seeing Chriqui on the quiet and has to keep handy alibis ready in case either woman discovers the deceit. Eager to enjoy herself rather than organise every minute of his day, Chriqui seems too good to be true, as one moment she is sweeping him across the city to goof around in front of the paintings at the Petit Palais and the next she is suggesting that they watch online porn together when he forgets his keys and has to sleep over.

The best that Demoustier can manage in mitigation is endless nagging about to do lists and catering arrangements. But even those with the most basic knowledge of modern romantic comedy will know from the outset how this tiresomely trite and flatly photographed farrago will turn out. Naturally, Payet gets caught in flagrante on Chriqui's opening night (when Demoustier is supposed to be on a hen weekend with man-eating pal Manon Kneusé in Croatia) and has to worm his way back into Demoustier's affections. But the fact that he succeeds in doing so on his own terms, with a browbeating speech in Demoustier's place of work, and without demonstrating the slightest wit, charisma or sincerity makes this laddish romp all the more resistible.

A couple of the supporting characters might have been further developed, particularly the good-natured, if hopeless Cayrey. But Duquesne is employed solely as an irritation who keeps popping up whenever Payet wants to be alone with Chriqui, while Alexandre Steiger is utterly superfluous as Demoustier's louche boss,, who keeps reading saucy passages from Henry Miller on her Facebook page. As for objects of Payet's egotistical affectionns, Chriqui rarely gets to strut her sassy Entourage stuff, while poor old Demoustier struggles with a role that is every bit as thankless as the student prostitute she played in Malgorzata Szumowska's Elles (2011).

Payet clearly fancies himself as the next Romain Duris. But, while he displays a certain savoir faire in juggling his trysts, he lacks the je ne sais quoi to convince the audience he's the kind of loveable rogue who would find himself breaking into an impromptu dance in a busy Parisian street to Harry Belafonte's `Jump in the Line'. There are a couple of neat directorial flourishes, most notably when Payet and Chriqui turn into their teenage selves (Johan Seknadje and Ilona Hattab) when they kiss for the first time. But the closing sequence, in which Payet urges a nervous kid to ask a pretty girl to dance at Cayrey and Kneusé's wedding, sums up the sham romanticism of a resistibly simplistic exercise in boorish wish-fulfilment.

Changing tack completely, the sinister methods of totalitarianism are explored by Pawel Pawlikowski in Ida, which sees the UK-based director return to his Polish homeland in the company of playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz for a story set in the 1960s. Representing a marked improvement on The Woman in the Fifth (2011), this is a sombre examination of the relationship between the Communist Party and the Catholic Church and the role that each played in playing down the role that Poles played in the Holocaust and the lingering legacy of anti-Semitism that inspired it. Many other films have considered the related themes of guilt, shame, conspiracy and silence. But Pawlikowski succeeds in capturing the look, as well as the mood of a country that seemed content to wallow in the self-pitying delusion of totalitarian victimhood.

Having been raised in a convent, 18 year-old Agata Trzebuchowska is eager to take her vows and become a nun. However, mother superior Halina Skoczynska insists that she has a final meeting with her last known relative, her aunt Agata Kulesza, who turns out to be a high-powered judge, who plays jazz in her spacious apartment as she calmly informs Trzebuchowska that she is a Jewish orphan who was rescued during the war. She shows her a photograph of her mother holding a baby and abruptly terminates the visit, as she has to preside over the prosecution of some supposed enemies of the state.

Feeling guilty at leaving Trzebuchowska to process such momentous news, Kulesza collects her from Lodz bus station and shows her more family snaps. She also offers to drive the demure teenager to her home town of Piaski, but warns her there will be few traces of her past and no grave to mourn beside. Although fearful that the revelation will shake her faith in God, Trzebuchowska agrees to the journey and suppresses a smile when her aunt asks if she ever has impure thoughts and teases her that she wouldn't be making much of a sacrifice if she did not.

Trzebuchowska kneels at a memorial on the edge of the village before they call at the farm the family owned before they were dispossessed. A peasant woman asks the novice to bless her baby and informs them that the menfolk will be home later in the day. As Trzebuchowska prays in the local church, Kulesza seeks out Mariusz Jakus's bar and asks if he remembers her family. He shakes his head hurriedly, but old patron Marek Kasprzyk laments that the thriving Jewish community was wiped out during the war.

On returning to the farm, tenant Adam Szyszkowski claim to know nothing about the previous owners. But the outraged Kulesza barges past them into the house and threatens to destroy him unless he reveals what happened back in the 1940s. Out in the barn, Trzebuchowska strokes a cow and notices the pieces of stained glass that have been used to repair holes in the wall. Szyszkowski threatens to call the police, but Kulesza refuses to be intimidated and makes sure that officer Artur Janusiak knows how important she is when she swerves off the road and has to have her car towed by horses.

With Kulesza in the cells for a night, Trzebuchowska finds sanctuary with priest Jan Wociech Poradowski. He also denies knowing the family and she spends an uncomfortable night on a camp bed listening to the chimes of the church clock. The following morning, she meets up with her aunt for breakfast and Kulesza confides that she had once been a high-powered prosecutor who had condemned people to death during the purges of the early 1950s. She claims she is no longer scared of anyone and will force Trela into confessing what happened to Trzebuchowska's mother and where she has been buried.

As they drive to Szytlow, Kulesza picks up hitch-hiker Dawid Ogrodnik, who is a saxophone player with the jazz player booked to play in the hotel where they are staying. The women watch the musicians rehearse and Kulesza ribs Trzebuchowska about getting a crush on the handsome stranger. She asks at the bar for directions to the house occupied by Szyszkowski's father, Jerzy Trela, but discover he is in hospital. So, she suggests they enjoy themselves and dance the night away to Ogrodnik's band. However, Trzebuchowska thinks it is disrespectful to party when they are searching for her mother and she stays in her room and reads, while Kulesza thrills to Joanna Kulig's singing and cuts a rug with an amorous middle-aged man in a sharp suit.

She curses her luck that she missed out on some loving because she is sharing a room with her niece and urges Trzebuchowska not to throw her life away on a vocation that may be rooted more in a need for security rather than genuine religious conviction. When she tuts, Kulesza acknowledges that she may be a slut, but she reminds Trzebuchowska that Jesus liked spirited women like Mary Magdalene and makes a grab for her bible in taunting her for being a saint.

Trzebuchowska flees the room and follows the sound of music coming from the ballroom. She listens as Ogrodnik plays John Coltrane's `Naima' and applauds his talent. As they chat, she tells him that she was raised in an orphanage and has just discovered her true heritage. He reassures her that he has a Gypsy spirit and she returns to the room to pray, without putting on her veil.

The next morning, they go to the hospital to find Trela. He tells Kulesza that he had liked her sister and had hidden her in the woods, along with her husband, their baby and another young boy when the Nazis tried to round-up the Jews. Kulesza asks if the boy was scared when he died and Trela looks away in shame. She breaks down and reveals that he was her son and that she had entrusted him to her sister while she went and fought with the partisans. Her heroism had helped her become an important person in the new regime, but she had never been able to forget the child she barely knew.

Back at the hotel, Trzebuchowska tucks Kulesza into bed. They are disturbed in the night by a knock at the door and Szyszkowski enters to ask if they would be willing to sign over the deeds to the farm in return for knowing where their relatives are buried. Trzebuchowska agrees and wanders downstairs to listen to the band playing. Ogrodnik spots her and comes to sit beside her. She tells him that she has decided to take her vows and he reveals that he plans to avoid his national service. As she smiles sadly, he asks if she has any idea of the effect her beauty has on him and she returns to her room to let down her long red hair as she stands before the mirror.

Having said her goodbyes to Ogrodnik in the foyer, Trzebuchowska accompanies Kulesza to the farm. Szyszkowski leads them into the forest and starts digging as they sit and watch. Eventually, he produces a skull, which Kulesza wraps in her scarf and wanders away to be alone. Trzebuchowska asks Szyszkowski why she was spared and he admits that he didn't have the heart to harm her because she was so tiny. He gave her to the local priest so that no one would know she was Jewish and he hopes that she can forgive him.

Gathering up the remainder of the bones, Trzebuchowska leaves Szyszkowski with his guilt and returns to the car. They place the remains in the boot and Kulesza promises to bury them in the family grave in Lublin. When Trzebuchowska suggests that they find a priest, Kulesza reminds her what they really need is a rabbi and she promises to sober up on the long drive to the cemetery. When they arrive, the plot is overgrown and it takes a while to find the family stone. They bury the remains using broken tools and Trzebuchowska makes the sign of the Cross, as she prays.

As they arrive back at the convent, Kulesza tells Trzebuchowska that she won't come to witness her vows. But she knows her parents would be proud of her and she promises to drink to her health on the big day. However, on the day before the ceremony, Trzebuchowska agonises about her identity, her faith and the feelings she still has for Ogrodnik. She apologises to a picture of the Sacred Heart and looks on as the others become nuns without her.

In Lodz, Kulesza leafs through a photograph album and goes to a bar to get drunk. She asks a Artur Majewski to drive her home and curses that Trzebuchowska hides her beautiful hair away. Waking to find herself alone in bed, Kulesza has breakfast and a bath. She puts Mozart's `Jupiter Symphony' on the record player, throws open a window and buttons up her coat before jumping to her death.

Standing alone in the apartment, Trzebuchowska plays the same piece of music and falls asleep on her aunt's bed. She wakes in the night and puts on one of Kulesza's dresses and teeters in a pair of her heels. She even smokes a cigarette in the mirror and knocks back a glass of vodka before dancing to the music. As she spins, she becomes tangled in the net curtains and falls over.

At the funeral, Trzebuchowska hears Kulesza being hailed a heroine of the state who will live forever in the collective memory. She is not wearing her habit and notices Ogrodnik leaning against a tree. That night, she comes to the bar where he is playing and her hair cascades over one of Kulesza's dresses. After everyone else has left, Ogrodnik puts on a record and they dance across the check-tiled floor. Trzebuchowska stands on tiptoe to kiss him. As she lies beside him in the darkness of his apartment, he asks if she would like to come to Gdansk with the band. He suggests they should get married and have children and a dog. But she isn't sure she shares his definition of a normal life. So, when she wakes the next morning, she puts on her habit and veil and leaves him to sleep. However, as she walks back along the long road to the convent, it remains uncertain whether she now has a sacrifice to make her vows worthwhile or whether she is returning to tell the mother superior of her decision to leave.

Sombrely photographed by Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski in a austere monochrome entirely suited to its time and setting, this is a provocative treatise on Polish anti-Semitism and the stance taken by the Catholic Church during and after the Second World War. The boxy Academy ratio frame, the hard edges of the lighting (which takes on a more Vermeeresque glow during some of the later close-ups of Trzebuchowska) and Marcel Slawinski and Katarzyna Sobanska-Strzalkowska bleakly authentic production design combine to suggest a state in the grip of regret, recrimination and repression. And this sense of being bereft of life and hope seeps into Kulesza's excellent performance, as the self-loathing apparatchik worn down by the Party's brutal methods of enforcing an ideology in which she no longer believes.

But, while she is never less than angelically inscrutable, Trzebuchowska (a student with little acting experience) proves less convincing as the innocent whose spiritual certainty is more readily undermined by a handsome stranger than the shocking discovery of her heritage. Nevertheless, she blossoms under Kulesza's tutelage. Similarly, in making a smooth transition from the stage to the screen, the debuting Lenkiewicz joins with Pawlikowski in deftly exploiting the conventions of the road movie and the detective story to explore how calamitous events over the previous quarter century had impacted upon the role of women in Polish society. They don't quite succeed in keeping melodrama at bay during the latter stages, but this is still a thoughtful, cinematic and wholly relevant picture that consistently echoes the work of Andrzejs Wajda and Munk.

Finally, this week comes The Last Impresario, Gracie Otto's starstruck profile of Michael White, the producer who not only enjoyed a string of hit plays in the West End, but who also did much to revitalise the performing arts in Britain in the 1960s The Australian model-cum-actress first met White at Cannes in 2011 and was so taken by the fact that he seemed to know absolutely everybody that she asked if she could make a documentary about him. Despite the fact that Otto (who hails from a famous acting dynasty) had no previous directorial experience, White agreed to let her tag along as he prepared for a sale of some of his correspondence and memorabilia at Sotheby's. However, the combination of Otto's unwillingness to ask awkward questions and White's readiness to hide behind the debilitating effects of three strokes means that this is rarely more than a whistlestop celebration of celebrity.

According to actress Greta Scacchi, Michael `Chalky' White is the most famous person no one has ever heard of. Yet, as Otto quickly discovers, the great and the good of the arts and entertainment worlds are more willing to enthuse about White than say anything particularly revealing about him. However, White's eldest son Joshua confides that his maternal grandparents came to Britain from Russia and that the Glasgow-born Michael was sent to a Swiss boarding school at the age of seven to help him cope with his chronic asthma. As he explains in a clip from Desert Island Discs, he often felt very lonely. But he learned to speak several languages fluently and, moreover, the experience taught him to be open minded and culturally curious.

Director Jim Sharman concurs that White's education made him an internationalist, although he first became aware of world theatre while working for Lucille Lortel and Pete Daubeny at the White Barn Theatre in Connecticut. He returned to London in 1961 and caused a minor scandal with his first independent production, a play about drug addicts entitled, The Collection. Spike Milligan kept him in the headlines by ad-libbing in front of the Queen in Oblomov (1964) and White continued to fight a running battle with the Lord Chamberlain until his role of theatrical censor was abolished in 1968.

Critic Michael Billington dubs White `the Diaghilev of the Permissive Society', while John Cleese and Bill Oddie proclaim him the champion of alternative comedy, as he brought their Cambridge Footlights show to the West End in 1963. Yoko Ono also admires his willingness to take a chance, as he discovered her at the Indica Gallery and curated her `Music of the Mind' show. Rupert and Lucinda Lycett Green, Jean-Jacques Lebel and first wife Sarah Hillsdon join the chorus of approval and credit White with promoting Swinging London's first `happening', which was closed down by the police after a solitary performance.

But White was also prepared to push the envelope in other fields and, in addition to inviting the Comédie Française, the Moscow Art Theatre and the Berliner Ensemble to London, he also introduced UK audiences to dancer-choreographers Merce Cunningham, Gracelia Martinez, Yvonne Rainer and Pina Bausch and composer John Cage. Legendary Vogue editor Anna Wintour declares that White had a genius for leaking the fringe into the mainstream and he agrees that he delighted in mixing the serious and the frivolous and taking risks with new material and artists.

Following a montage of monochrome photographs from some of the more notable successes among his 250+ shows, Otto accompanies White to his Notting Hill apartment, where he is in the process of selecting items for the auction. Second wife Louise has a sizeable collection at her house and White shows Otto some of the 30,000 pictures he has snapped with an ever-handy camera. He keeps them in 40-odd albums and Wintour, Alan Finkelstein, Naomi Watts and Alan Yentob gush that White is a man of few words who anticipated selfie culture without cheapening the images or insulting their subjects by publishing them. Long-standing friends Lyndall Hobbs, Gael Boglione and Rachel Ward purr about the easy rapport that White had with the likes of John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson, David Bowie and Roman Polanski, as well as Princess Margaret and Prince Charles. But what was most amazing, according to Sabrina Guinness, is the fact that he managed to comingle high society and celebrity without press too much press intrusion.

Producer Robert Fox concurs that White knew how to party and kept his office well stocked with drugs and pretty girls. But he also worked hard and Tracy Tynan remembers the gamble he took in backing her critic father Kenneth's erotic revue, Oh! Calcutta!, which opened at The Roundhouse in 1970 and ran for seven years in London and 13 in New York. Producer Barnaby Thompson revels in the fact that the avant-garde nudity in the infamous show irked the moral majority. But, while he scored further hits with Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth and Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Joseph & The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (both 1970), White let the odd gem slip through his fingers.

He is most clearly hurt by the loss of The Rocky Horror Show, which he found at the 60-seat Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court in 1973 and transferred to a disused cinema in the King's Road for a seven-year run. Jim Sharman, Richard O'Brien, Nell Campbell and Patricia Quinn reminisce about the thrill of turning cult kitsch into a behemoth. But White still feels cheated by American producer Lou Adler, who wanted to premiere the musical at the Roxy in Sunset Boulevard. Caught between smiles and tears, White concedes that he over-indulged in drugs while in Los Angeles, but feels that sharp practices were employed to deprive him of his cut of the stage and screen glory.

Back in the present, White joins with daughter Liberty and assistant Miriam Haleyi as they prepare for his day at Sotheby's. Gabriel Heaton waxes lyrical about the lots, but White feels melancholic at parting with his past. He also feels aggrieved at the way he was treated by Barry Humphries after he backed the London production of Edna Everage Housewife Superstar in the mid-1970s and took something of a bath when the show flopped in New York. According to White, Humphries promised to repay his faith by allowing him to back his next outing. But the pair fell out in the interim and Humphries rather fudges his explanation why White was not involved with the award-winning A Night With Dame Edna (1979).

White could certainly have done with a box-office success around this period, as rising costs and falling attendances meant that crowd-pleasers like A Chorus Line (1976) and Annie (1978) were becoming rarer. Consequently, he decided to try his luck in cinema and John Cleese (Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975), John Waters (Polyester, 1981), Wallace Shawn and André Gregory (My Dinner With André, 1981), Greta Scacchi (White Mischief, 1985) and Julian Sands (The Turn of the Screw, 1992) all have reasons to be grateful for his intervention. Waters and Robert Shaye recall with some glee the effect of the Odorama scratch`n'sniff cards on the audience at Cannes. But White's greatest screen success was probably The Comic Strip Presents..., and Peter Richardson and Nigel Planer applaud his subversive attitude to the zeitgeist.

Despite returning to the boards with Crazy for You in 1993, White realised that much had changed and that making money now mattered more than taking artistic chances. He was disappointed by the commercial failure of the critically lauded She Loves Me (1994) and he found solace in his playboy image and betting on horses. Yet, while Kate Moss, Miranda Darling and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels coo about White knowing every soul in every nightclub, Fox avers that White made too many poor decisions while on drugs. O'Brien and Richardson also lament that the high life caught up with White before he ever had the chance to grow up.

But, while Jack Nicholson helped save White's life by getting him the best care after his first stroke, Jessica De Rothschild reveals that it left his memory seriously impaired. A subsequent episodes left White unconscious for six days and he became convinced that he had come back from the dead Even more remarkably, he beat odds of 1/100 to survive an aortic rupture. Yet, while he recuperated quietly with Leonie Van Ness, White remained addicted to nightlife and youth and Sarah and Joshua shake their heads as they discuss his determination to rage against age. Sarah suggests that his inability to express his feelings and his aversion to isolation are rooted in his childhood.

However, by acknowledging White's reluctance to talk about the bad things that have befallen him, Otto highlights the central weakness of her otherwise slick and enjoyable film. To an extent, Mike Myers was faced with the same problem in profiling Shep Gordon in Supermensch. But the anecdotes here are much less amusingly outrageous and the talking heads are a lot duller because the majority can't bring themselves to consider White's flaws as an impresario and as a human being.

Alan Yentob typifies the non-judgemental loyalty as he explains how close friends have kept an eye on White as he struggled with his health and a downturn in his financial affairs. But, while it's impossible to doubt the sincerity of the good wishes, they don't always make for compelling viewing and one is often left wondering how different the picture might have been had Otto managed to coax such celeb pals as Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Bowie, Jagger, Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Michael Douglas and Johnny Depp in front of her camera.