Parky at the Pictures (DVD 11/6/2015)

Thirty year-old Ellen Dorrit Petersen had to give up teaching when she suddenly lost her sight because of a rare genetic condition. Now, she spends her days in her Oslo apartment coming to terms with her incapacity and struggling to process the visual memories she retains from her past. Architect husband Henrik Rafaelsen has spared no expense in providing Petersen with mod cons, from talking microwaves to a wand that declares the colour of everything it touches. However, she sometimes has the feeling that he stays home to watch her after he's supposedly gone to work. Moreover, she suspects that he may be betraying her with a lover online.

In order to pass the time, Petersen starts writing a story on her laptop that centres around Vera Vitali, a Swede who has remained in Norway because she has joint custody with ex-husband Jacob Young of their 10 year-old daughter, Stella Kvam Young. She knows few people in the city, but has attracted the attention of neighbour Marius Kolbenstvedt, who is addicted to depraved internet pornography and spies on Vitali at every opportunity.

As the line begins to blur between the world Petersen inhabits and the one she concocts, it transpires that Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt are old college pals who haven't seen each other in ages. They meet up and discuss the obscure 1970 portmanteau picture Days From 1000 Years, which contains vignettes directed by Anja Breien, Egil Kolstø and Espen Thorstenson. Such is the fluid nature of the narrative, however, that the backdrop to the conversation changes from a café to a bus and a subway train without the interlocutors pausing for breath.

One day, when Vitali is sitting in a café, she loses her sight. However, when she sleeps with Kolbenstvedt, she tells him that she was blinded by a piece of falling ice. He sneaks into her flat without her knowing and feigns surprise when they bump into each other in the lobby of their building and he tries to turn on the charm. But he is not the only man in Vitali's life, as her daughter has strangely turned into a son, Isak Nikolai Møller. Moreover, Rafaelsen is also interested in her and he invites her to a party to celebrate the completion of an important project.

Vitali wears a new dress to the function, but it turns into something inappropriately revealing before Rafaelsens eyes. What's more, Vitali transforms into Petersen and she burns with embarrassment as she sense the other guests pointing and laughing at her. As she tries to maintain her composure, the venue morphs into an abandoned building whose empty expanses only serve to further expose Petersen and her sense of inadequacy. However, she realises that she has reached her lowest ebb and, having faced up to her worst nightmares, she decides she is ready to venture outside again and rejoin the real world.

There is so much to admire in this remarkable film, which blurs narrative lines so frequently and adroitly that it is often impossible to gauge exactly where the action is taking place. But this is no Charlie Kaufman knock-off, as Vogl is not just interested in the creative process and how it reflects and impinges upon daily life. He is also intrigued by the challenge involved in overcoming incapacity and each item within the ever-shifting mise-en-scène is used so precisely in close-up and within the overall design of the confining interior to convey the limitations and frustrations of being disabled.

The opening sequences are superbly choreographed to familiarise the viewer with the layout of the apartment and the various obstacles that Petersen has to navigate during the course of a day. But, while she seems in control of her surroundings, the struggle to make a cup of tea becomes almost soul destroying and there is real anguish in the moment she strips naked and presses herself against the window, so that the world can see her, even if she can no longer see it.

Whether musing on Petersen's perceived handicap and creative methodology or lingering on Kolbenstvedt peeping through Vitali's window while watching the same TV programme and munching an identical snack, these set-pieces could easily seem tacky or trite. But Vogt works intelligently with Greek cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis to use close-ups to approximate Petersen's gaze, as she feels her way around Jørgen Stangebye Larsen's superbly designed interiors. Editor Jens Christian Fodstad and special effects supervisor Torgeir Busch also team well to make the inter- and intra-scene transitions as seamless as possible. They are aided by Gisle Tveito's evocative sound design and Henk Hofstede's brisk piano score, which help unite and distinguish the locals with impeccable craftsmanship.

The performances are also admirable, with Petersen inhabiting her character completely to suggest vulnerability (but never helplessness) and resourcefulness, as she explores the fictional milieu she has invented to help her regain her confidence in quotidian reality. Vitali is also suitably brittle as her alter ego, while Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt slip so easily into the roles that Petersen and Vogt demand of them that it's difficult to know which is the more despicable or misunderstood.

Some will dismiss this as meta-slick, self-reflexive nonsense that spends more time admiring its own ingenuity than creating credible characters in plausible situations. Others will aver that a story that depends so heavily upon voice-over narration has failed as a film. But anyone who has experienced a period of enforced confinement will recognise how the mind works to compensate for physical restriction and how vital such thought processes are to accepting a new set of circumstances and finding ways to normalise them. Life may not always be so sensual, witty and touching, but cinema isn't usually this insightful, innovative or playful, either. And what better way could there be to pay tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy?

A very different response to a crisis dominates Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure, an aesthetically precise, dramatically taut psychological saga that is riven with dark humour to expose the fissures in an outwardly perfect Swedish family unit. Any study of domestic discord from the land of Ingmar Bergman is bound to invite comparison with Scenes From a Marriage (1973). But Östlund has already demonstrated a keen eye for human foible in his three previous outings - The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008) and Play (2011) - while his experience with ski documentaries comes in particularly handy in capturing the awesome majesty and potential lethality of a supposedly tamed wilderness.

As they pose for souvenir photographs on the first day of their holiday in an unnamed French Alpine ski resort, Johannes Bah Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli and children Clara and Vincent Wettergren look like something from an advertisement in a glossy magazine. However, as Kongsli tells fellow tourist Karin Myrenberg, her handsome husband is such a good provider that he is not always home as often as she would like and she is looking forward to spending some quality time together. Myrenberg smiles benevolently and surprises Kongsli by revealing that she has left her brood at home to have a tryst with her Italian toyboy, Brady Corbet.

Hiding her disapproval, Kongsli returns to her hotel room and inwardly hugs herself before bedtime as she and Kuhnke fool around in the bathroom mirror as they clean their teeth. During the night, various machines rumble across the slopes to ensure that the piste is pristine for the following day. But, as the family eat lunch outside, a controlled explosion on the peak opposite causes a sudden surge and Kuhnke grabs his gloves and phone from the table to take cover without a second thought for his wife and kids.

When he realises that the avalanche has only deposited some powder on to the terrace, Kuhnke returns to his seat and carries on as though nothing untoward has happened. The youngsters are the first to ask why he left them to fend for themselves, but Kuhnke denies doing anything wrong and Kongsli is so stung by both his cowardice and his arrogance that she tries to embarrass him by raising the subject over dinner with Myrenberg and Corbet. Much to her dismay, Kuhnke continues to stonewall, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence from his own camera. Anxious not to squabble in front of the Wettegrens, they hiss at each other in the hotel corridor and Kongsli begins to wonder whether she can continue living with a man who not only panics in the face of danger, but also refuses to own up to his lapse.

Things scarcely improve when Kuhnke's divorced Norwegian pal Kristofer Hivju joins them with his 20 year-old girlfriend, Fanni Metelius. Indeed, in trying to help Kuhnke and Kongsli patch things up, the newcomers begin bickering among themselves and Hivju endures a sleepless night as he ponders how he might have reacted in a similar situation. But Kuhnke eventually starts to feel the emotional strain and tries to get himself off the hook with a tearful confession of his failings. However, he quickly resorts to genuine self-pity and Kongsli and the children wind up having to console him. Moreover, the couple agree to concoct a version of events on which they can both agree.

But Kuhnke gets a chance to redeem himself on the final day when a fog descends and he goes on to the slopes to find Kongsli when she fails to return from her final run. His heroics do little to restore him to his wife's good books, however, and they are barely speaking as they pile on to the coach taking them to the airport. Halfway down the narrow winding road, Kongsli takes exception to driver Adrian Heinisch and demands to get off, as she accuses him of incompetence. The other passengers quickly come to share her misgivings and everybody disembarks. Willing to go along with his spouse without actively supporting her, Kuhnke scrounges a cigarette of casual acquaintance Michael Breitenberger, who is surprised to learn he smokes.

This throwaway revelation is a suitably Kaurismäkian note on which to end this deadpan dissertation on the unknowability of those closest to us. Initially shooting in detached, static takes that allow the action to unfold without hindrance, Östlund relies on body language as much as dialogue to convey the growing antipathy that the disillusioned Kongli feels towards the wretched Kuhnke. He also chooses some oblique vantage points from which to observe the fallout, whether he is peering down with the janitor on the pair chuntering in the corridor or catching sight of Kuhnke and the adorably togged up Wettergrens (who are real-life siblings) as Kongli passes over the trees on a ski-lift. But Fredrik Wenzel's camera does begin to move (albeit slightly) as Kongli and Kuhnke drift further apart.

Editor Jacob Secher Schulsinger also makes canny use of the spaces between the characters, while the snatches of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (one snippet from `Summer' being amusingly played on an accordion) heighten the mood. But, while the craft credits are impeccable - Wenzel's mountainscapes are sublime, while the melding of green-screen action, CGI snow and archive footage of an avalanche in British Columbia is inspired - it's the surreal naturalism of Kuhnke and Kongli's performances that draw the audience into a story that consistently comes close to mocking its principals while presenting their plight with the utmost gravity. In truth, Östlund over-extends the agony and he doesn't quite succeed in integrating the secondary characters. The sequences in which Kuhnke finds himself in a bar with a group of drunkenly dishevelled males and he and Hivju have an uncomfortable encounter with some young women by the hotel pool also feel a little shoehorned. But this is bound to provoke discussion and should definitely be avoided by couples going through a rough patch.

Snow also proves crucial to David and Nathan Zellner's Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, in which the siblings ruminate upon the lonely death of Takako Konishi, a young Japanese woman who was found in a frozen field in Minnesota in 2001 while supposedly searching for the loot buried by Steve Buscemi's character in Joel and Ethan Coen's deadpan police procedural, Fargo (1996). Paul Berczeller went some way to debunking this myth in his excellent Channel 4 documentary, This Is a True Story (2003). But director David and his co-scripting sibling treat the story with a wry earnestness that is worthy of the Coens themselves and, as a consequence, this highly distinctive road movie acquires a quirky charm as it exposes the perils of believing everything you see on screen.

Bullied by her boss and snubbed by her well-heeled colleagues, Tokyo office lady Rinko Kikuchi hates her dead-end job and deeply resents being reminded by mother Yumiko Hioki that she is 29 years old and still hasn't got a boyfriend, let alone any children. Her only friend in the world is her pet rabbit, Bunzo, but she also spends hours poring over a VHS copy of Fargo, which she found in a cave after being guided to a beach by a mysterious treasure map. As she watches the film, she makes meticulous notes and, because it purports to be a `true story', she becomes more convinced with each viewing that the suitcase full of cash buried near a fence by Carl Showalter (Buscemi) still has to be there, as he was killed before he could reclaim it.

After a while, Kikuchi hatches a plan to fly to the United States and find the field. She goes to the local library and is caught trying to steal a detailed map of Minnesota by security guard Ichi Kyokaku. However, she manages to tear out the page she needs and revisits the film to plot her next move. Unfortunately, her video recorder chews up the tape and she is distraught. But she learns that Fargo is also available on DVD and she buys a player that gives her a much clearer view of the snow-covered terrain she will have to negotiate. Now sure that she can locate the spot, Kikuchi bids a tearful farewell to Bunzo at an underground station, steals her boss's credit card and takes a flight to Minneapolis.

Suddenly feeling a long way from home, as she hardly speaks a word of English, Kikuchi hops on a bus and heads north. She is treated to some Midwestern hospitality by Shirley Venard, an elderly widow who gives her a room for the night and offers her a copy of James Clavell's doorstop novel, Shogun, as it might remind her of home. Somewhat reluctantly, Venard points Kikuchi in the vague direction of North Dakota, but she soon gets herself lost again and is rescued by sheriff David Zellner, who (much to his embarrassment) drops her off at a Chinese restaurant in need of a translator. He also helps her find a better map and convinces her to accept a gift of some climate-appropriate clothing. Yet, against all the odds, Kikuchi not only manages to discover the spot, but also digs up her quarry before beaming and - in a moment that will leave some to surmise that she has only succeeded in mission in her death throes - calling to the nearby Bunzo that it's time to head home.

The Zellners are no strangers to eccentricity. In their debut collaboration, Plastic Utopia (1997), their hero was a mime bent on exposing the ugliness of society, while much of David Zellner's sci-fi opus, Frontier (2001), was spoken in the imaginary language of Bulbovian. Subsequently, Goliath (2008) followed a man intent on avenging the murder of his cat, while Kid-Thing (2012) centred on a 10 year-old tomboy trying to decide what to do about the woman's voice coming from a deep hole in the woods. So, accompanying a dotty Japanese woman on a fool's errand to the other side of the world seems almost normal by comparison.

The presence of Alexander Payne among the executive producers has prompted many to detect similarities between this odyssey and his Oscar-nominated saga, Nebraska (2013). However, the Zellners have been trying to realise this project for several years and their artless indie spirit meanders through it with an irresistibly shambolic charm. Resisting the temptation to mock either Kikuchi or the people she encounters en route, the action has a fairytale feel that more than justifies the decision to plump for a happy ending, which is somehow entirely respectful to Takako Konishi's less propitious fate. Indeed, there is something deeply moving about Kikuchi's melancholic solemnity, whether she is eating noodles alone and gazing through rain-streaked windows, spitting in her boss's tea, standing in the middle of nowhere wondering what to do next or dragging her makeshift quilt cloak through the snow in a last desperate effort to complete her quest.

Yet, while the picture relies heavily on its dolefully credulous heroine and her oddball charm, the supporting performances are as nicely judged as the Octopus Project score, which amusingly weaves in motifs from Carter Burwell's original soundtrack. Cinematographer Sean Porter similarly makes astute use of the crowded confines of the big city and the vast expanses of the weather-beaten plains to make Kikuchi look lost and alone in each locale. Such iconography could strike some as derivative, while the depiction of the secondary characters could be considered condescending. But, if taken as a whimsical dissertation on the lesson Akira Kurosawa taught in Rashomon (1950) about the camera sometimes being an unreliable witness, this has heart, humour and a sprinkling of magically tragic ambiguity.

Although the tone and setting could not be more starkly contrasting, a death proves equally pivotal to Zeresenay Berhane Mehari's Difret. Executive produced by Angelina Jolie, this fact-based drama exposes the iniquities of the ancient practice of `telefa', a form of marriage through abduction that is dismayingly common in the remote areas of Ethiopia. As only the fourth feature to be filmed in this country on 35mm, Mehari's debut represents something of a landmark production. But, for all its laudable intentions, it lacks the finesse to give its important message sufficient dramatic potentcy.

Walking from school to her family farm, Tizita Hagere is abducted by seven men on horseback dispatched by Girma Teshome, an older man who has decided to force the 14 year-old into marriage. Having endured a brutal rape, however, she manages to escape and shoots Teshome with a stolen rifle. Embarrassed by the incident, police chief Moges Yohannes and assistant district attorney Brook Sheferaw plot a quick trial that will result in the killer being executed and buried with her victim. But lawyer Meron Getnet hears about the incident on the radio and arrives from Addis Ababa to defend Hagere on behalf of the Andinet Women Lawyers Association.

Securing bail, Getnet exploits the decision of the elders to exile Hagere and finds her a safe haven in an orphanage. However, the teenager is so unaccustomed to life outside her family home that every new sight and sound terrifies her. Meanwhile, Getnet seeks to persuade some of the villagers to give evidence on her client's behalf, but they are either scared of Yohannes or see nothing wrong with `telefa', which has been a local custom for centuries. Indeed, Hagere's sister had been similarly coerced into marriage and, despite the pair being threatened by misogynist vigilantes, Getnet decides that her only option is to risk her career by challenging the Minister of Justice in the hope of securing a ruling that will change the law pertaining to women who kill in self-defence.

`Difret' means both `courage' and `daring' in the Amharic language and Getnet and Hagere demonstrate plenty of both as they prepare for their day in court. However, the word can also translate as `rape' and, despite the fact that she draws on a celebrated 1996 case for her storyline, Mehari never manages to convey the brutality of the tradition and the awful consequences for its victims. As a result, this never quite absorbs or appals as much as it should and Mehari might have been better advised to have made a social justice documentary profiling Meaza Ashenafi, the founder of the Andinet Women Lawyers Association, rather than have her played in such a larger-than-life manner by the ebullient Getnet.

More damagingly, thr USC-trained Mehari frequently employs a heavy directorial hand and bafflingly, on a couple of occasions, cuts away from tense sequences before they can reach their conclusion. She also opts too often for long-winded speeches that explain procedures rather than dramatising them,while a case involving a woman battered by her alcoholic husband is dropped almost as soon as it is mentioned. Similarly, the threatened attack by some vigilantes seems avoided with infeasible ease. Nevertheless, Hagere is touchingly vulnerable as she adapts to city life, while Getnet fizzes with indignant tenacity. Indeed, the experienced film and television actress completely overshadows their clumsy caricatured and rather poorly played adversaries. But cinematographer Monika Lenczewska evocatively contrasts the town and country locales, while David Schommer and David Eggar's score neatly amalgamates indigenous and imported styles.

Finally, Israeli documentarist Nadav Schirman finds it difficult to strike a balance between his materials in The Green Prince. Adapted from Mosab Hassan Yousef's book, Son of Hamas, this is Schirman's third feature, following The Champagne Spy (2007), in which Oded Lotz reflects on his father Wolfgang's double life as a Mossad agent, and In the Dark Room (2012), which examines the relationship between Carlos the Jackal and his wife Magdalena and their daughter, Rosa. But, whereas he has previously been able to juxtapose archive clips and talking heads to potent effect, Schirman struggles here to incorporate reconstructed footage that has clearly been manufactured to atone for the fact that so few of the revelations made by Youssef and his Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben-Yitzhak, can be illustrated with authentic material. Consequently, the fabricated drone shots (complete with faux crosshairs) quickly become tiresome and one is left wondering whether this compelling saga might not have been better of being left on the page.

Born in Ramallah in 1978, Mosab Hassan Yousef is the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a leading figure in the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement. As he states to camera, Hamas was tantamount to the family business and Mosab was first arrested at the age of 10 for throwing rocks at Israeli settlers. With his father frequently being jailed, Mosab was seen as his heir apparent and often took part in clandestine operations. However, he was arrested while gun running in 1996 and was offered the chance to spy for the Shin Bet security service in return for his freedom.

Mosab refused and was sent to prison. But, while he loathed the torture methods employed by the Israelis, he was even more shocked by the brutality of his fellow Hamas inmates, who regularly punished those suspected of being informers. Having always been uncomfortable with the way in which the organisation exploited the suffering of ordinary Palestinians to achieve its aims, Mosab finally lost faith in its tactics when he was raped and, shortly afterwards, he agreed to spy for Shin Bet.

His handler was Gonen Ben-Yitzhak, an experienced agent (seven years Mosab's senior) with a degree in psychology who had worked in Judea and Samaria before coming to the Occupied Territories. He received information about planned suicide bombings and other terrorist missions, while also seeking to protect Mosab from both his own superiors (who regularly subjected Mosab to polygraph tests) and the Hamas hierarchy by ensuring that he remains deep undercover. As a consequence, Mosab (who was codenamed `The Green Prince') remained operational and took advantage of his contacts to have his father arrested to prevent him from being assassinated.

As Mosab states at one point, turning traitor was deemed `more shameful than raping your mother'. Yet, such was his disillusion with Hamas and his idealistic belief that he could covertly temper its excesses that he was willing to betray the cause of Palestinian autonomy (in which he fundamentally never lost faith) and risk his own life over the course of a decade. But when Ben-Yitzak was accused of becoming too friendly with his contact and was discharged, Mosab refused all further co-operation and fled to the United States, where he has since converted to Christianity and fought a protracted battle for political asylum.

This could have been an invaluable companion piece to The Gatekeepers (2012), Dror Moreh's insider history of the Shin Bet. But Schirman's framing of Mosab and Ben-Yitzak in medium or close shot is deadeningly uncinematic, while his use of ancillary material is disappointingly unimaginative. It scarcely helps that Mosab is so hesitantly inarticulate in his second language and, thus, the decision to shoot in English in order to reach a wider audience has to be deemed a miscalculation.

The ominous score by Max Richter (the British composer who also worked on Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, 2008) also outstays its welcome. Much more problematic, however, is the lack of impartiality, as while Schirman avoids the nakedly propagandist, he condemns Hamas with far greater trenchancy than the equally brutal Israelis, while offering few insights into the wider historico-political context. As a consequence, this fails to do justice to either a tragic situation or the sacrifices made (rightly or wrongly) by both Mosab and Ben-Yitzak.