Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 23/72015)

Three candidates ran for office in the 1968 election: Republican Richard Nixon, Democrat Hubert Humphrey and independent, George Wallace. As NBC and CBS were already providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the party conventions, ABC decided to offer alternative programming during the sessions and recap the day's events in a 90-minute nightly highlights package. Someone then had the idea of pitting diametrically opposed commentators against each other to add a bit of spice to proceedings that had already been shrouded by the assassinations earlier in the year of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. But the genius of the concept lay in the selection of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. to occupy respectively the blue and the red corners.

Although best known as a novelist and playwright who guested frequently on talk shows hosted by the likes of Jack Paar and Dick Cavett, Vidal came from a proudly Protestant political family and had stood for the House of Representatives in 1960. Having also failed in his bid to become mayor of New York for the Conservative Party in 1965, the Roman Catholic Buckley was an equally prolific author, who espoused his views in the National Review magazine (which he had founded in 1955) and on the PBS chat show, Firing Line. Neither had much time for his opponent, yet each respected him enough to know that humiliating him on a national telecast would do much for his own reputation.

Consequently, the gloves were off from the moment that veteran anchor Howard K. Smith introduced his guests from the Miami Beach Convention Centre on 5 August 1968. In fact, the temporary ABC studio had collapsed earlier in the day and Vidal and Buckley provided a welcome distraction from the network's embarrassment, as they swopped insults and bon mots without paying much heed to Ronald Reagan's flawed bid to undermine Nixon. But the five Miami debates came to seem like pre-season friendly after the media circus upped sticks and descended on Chicago on 26 August.

Almost immediately, the encounters became more gladiatorial. Having recently enjoyed a scandalous success with Myra Breckinridge, Vidal was feeling particularly self-assured and, on the fourth night, he sensed that Buckley had been rattled by the clashes outside the International Amphitheatre between the city's riot police and those protesting against the war in Vietnam. Thus, when Buckley denounced the demonstrators as bullying fascists, Vidal hissed back that `the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself'. Incensed, Buckley let his guard down and snapped: `Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered.'

Dick Cavett's comment to camera neatly sums up the reaction of the nation at large. But the late Christopher Hitchens is also right to surmise that ABC had been waiting for something like this to happen from the moment it cast its adversaries and there must have been much fist-pumping behind the outward professions of shock that such an offensive slur could have been uttered live on air. Buckley was later forced to issue a public apology, but he was back in his chair the following night. Moreover, while he strained to be civil, he refused to retract his views on the anti-war movement and the pair bickered cheerfully for their allotted time.

Buckley continued to despise Vidal until he died in 2008. Vidal passed away four years later and their written recollections of the contretemps are read with droll precision by Kelsey Grammar and John Lithgow. Neil Buckley speaks up for his brother, but agrees with analyst John McWhorter that the air of patrician superiority that each man exudes seems to belong to a long bygone era rather than the tail end of the Swinging Sixties.

But Neville and Gordon cleverly contextualise the debates by including clips of Vidal schmoozing with Hugh Hefner on Playboy After Dark and Buckley striving valiantly to seem like one of the gang on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. There are also some fascinating scenes of Vidal touring the riot zone with Paul Newman and Arthur Miller. But it's the urbanely bitchy showdowns that makes this so compelling in its barbed nostalgia and trenchant digs at today's efforts to unashamedly partisan networks to make politics relevant to a TV audience with far more viewing options and a much shorter attention span than their forebears.

The characters played by Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton in Richard Loncraine's Ruth & Alex may have been too young and/or preoccupied to have bothered with the self-satisfied pronouncements of a pair of preening Ivy League snobs. But they met, dated and married in the world that had been shaped by the struggle for Civil Rights and the student protests against the Vietnam War. Yet, while Charlie Peters's adaptation of Jill Ciment's novel, Heroic Measures, occasionally flashes back to these tumultuous times, this cross between Ira Sachs's Love Is Strange and Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred is primarily concerned with the tensions and uncertainties being faced in the present by a couple reluctantly cognisant of their ever-diminishing future.

Artist Alex Carver (Morgan Freeman) is walking back to the Brooklyn building where he has lived for several decades with his retired teacher wife, Ruth (Diane Keaton). He is disconcerted by the fact that they have agreed to seek new accommodation because the building does not have a lift and the five flights of stairs to their apartment are becoming too much for them and their 10 year-old terrier, Dorothy. He thinks back to when they first arrived as a young couple (Korey Jackson and Claire van der Boom) and sighs at how much he is going to miss the neighbourhood.

Estate agent niece Lily (Cynthia Nixon) has convinced Ruth that they could get $1 million dollars for the property and she chides Alex about the number of paintings lying around his studio that might put off prospective buyers during the open viewing arranged for the following day. However, he is distracted by a television news report that a fuel tanker has been abandoned on the Williamsburg Bridge. Moreover, he is concerned that Dorothy appears to be in some discomfort and they take her to the vet, where Dr Kramer (Maury Ginsberg) informs them that she has ruptured a disc in her spine and will have to be kept in overnight.

Ruth is dismayed when Alex reveals that he signed a non-resuscitation form and they argue in the car. As he works in his rooftop vegetable garden, he remembers how pleased she had been when he had bought the puppy as a present. So, when Kramer calls to say that the operation to cure Dorothy will cost $10,000, Alex consents immediately to please his wife, who is concerned about the fate of the petrol tanker driver, who remains at large, even though the police have confirmed that his vehicle is not a potential bomb.

By the morning, the reporters are convinced that the driver is a terrorist and Lily frets that the crisis might limit the number of people who will venture out to view the apartment. Kramer calls to tell Alex that Dorothy suffered a seizure coming out of the anaesthetic and promises to keep him informed. The first visitors are a lesbian couple (Maddie Corman and Miriam Shor) with a guide dog. But, while they seem sincere, the majority (like the sneering Jackie Hoffman) are merely snoopers and Ruth is less than impressed when one woman (Ilana Levine) asks to try out the bed. Her daughter, Zoe (Sterling Jerins), wanders into Alex's studio and he tells her that he met Ruth when he asked her to model for him. He claims that he chose her over more beautiful candidates because she seemed to real.

As evening draws in, Ruth and Alex go for a walk and wonder why they are contemplating a move neither of them really wants. She urges him to show some of his new paintings to his gallery-owning friend Larry (Michael Cristofer) and he harks back to a similar conversation in their past. However, as they dine with Larry and his son, Jackson (Josh Pais), Alex is stung by the latter's assertion that his pictures are old-fashioned and he is so touched by Ruth's stalwart defence of an artist's right to create for himself rather than pander to the audience that he reflects upon the sacrifice she made four decades earlier when her family expressed their distaste for her interracial marriage.

The following morning, Alex and Ruth visit Dorothy and discover she can't move her hind legs. They check the listings of apartments for sale and Alex pretends to like a Manhattan address that Ruth feels could work. He recollects being told that she couldn't have children and how he promised himself he would do anything to make her happy. Consequently, he agrees to put in an offer and arranges to drop off the deposit that evening. Lily is frustrated at not being kept in the loop, as she is certain that a bidding war is about to break out for the walk-up and Alex is glad to be able to slip away to collect the fully recovered Dorothy from the vet.

When they go to hand over the cheque, Alex gets a bad feeling about the occupying couple and is far from surprised when they withdraw their acceptance and announce that they wish to re-open the bidding. Lily loses her temper, but Alex is more concerned that the driver of the tanker has been caught and he opines that he is just a scared kid who has the misfortune to be an Uzbek in the wrong time and place. Out in the corridor, Alex persuades Ruth that they are better staying put and they wander home with Lily's fury still ringing in their ears. They smile as they see a young couple moving into their building and know they have made the right decision.

Every fan of Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) will surely cringe at the fact that a dog named Dorothy plays such a crucial part in a film whose message is `there's no place like home'. But this is the level of sophistication on show in this genial, but shamelessly manipulative melodrama. If the casting of Freeman and Keaton doesn't clue audiences into what to expect, the sound of his lilting narration will. Yet, even though every second of this polished picture is calculated for maximum emotional effect, it's difficult to avoid being carried along on its very gentle swell.

Jackson and Van der Boom are given too little to do, but Keaton and Freeman feel like they genuinely know each other backwards (most notably in the sequence in which they hum a tune together as they get ready for bed). Everyone else, however, seems to be trying too hard, particularly Cynthia Nixon in her latest bid to make people forget she was Miranda in Sex and the City. Considering how vital the ambience of the Brooklyn apartment is, Brian Morris's production design is disappointingly prosaic. Moreover, while Loncraine paces proceedings well enough, he struggles to integrate the subplots involving Dorothy and the hunted fugitive without them feeling overly schematic or symbolic. Thus, while this has its moments of whimsy and warmth, it lacks the wit and wisdom that could have rooted it in real life.

Another household comes under threat in very different circumstances in Henry Hobson's directorial bow, Maggie. Arnold Schwarzenegger ventures into the indie realm for the first time in this thoughtful bid to examine the process of zombification as a human tragedy rather than a horror staple. But it's Abigail Breslin's return to territory she previously explored in Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland (2009) that is most likely to capture the imagination, as it demonstrates just how much she has matured as a performer since she earned a Best Supporting Oscar nomination at the age of 10 for her work in Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine (2006).

As the world is infested with the Necroambulist virus, 16 year-old Abigail Breslin calls farmer father Arnold Schwarzenegger, from the big city to tell him she loves him. Concerned for her safety, Schwarzenegger comes looking for his daughter and finds that she has been taken to an isolation unit because she is exhibiting signs of infection. Pleading with doctor Jodie Moore, Schwarzenegger is given permission to take Breslin home, as she will have six to eight weeks of normal life to enjoy before she experiences `the turn'. But he gets an insight into what may be in store when he is forced to snap the spine of a zombie who menaces them outside a shop selling sunglasses.

Joely Richardson is scared that Breslin will harm step-siblings Aiden and Carsen Flowers and sends them to stay with her mother while she tries to feed Breslin and stop her from picking at the scar that has formed over the bite mark on her arm. But Breslin is under no illusions that she is in trouble when she cuts a finger and is so shocked by the dark liquid that oozes out that she severs the digit and churns it in the garbage disposal.

When not burning his crops to reduce the risk of contamination, Schwarzenegger seeks to spend some quality time with Breslin. But he is shaken by the need to take an axe to a zombie that trespasses on his land with his young daughter and the sheriff reminds him that he will have to dispatch Breslin with equal dispassion. However, Schwarzenegger becomes more conflicted than ever when Rachel Whitman Groves, the mother of the girl he slayed, comes to the farm and informs him that she withdrew the child from quarantine because the doctors were treating her like a test specimen rather than a human being.

Unsure what to do for the best, Schwarzenegger consults a doctor, who tells him that Breslin has three options: to be returned to the isolation unit; to be treated with a cocktail of drugs that would allow her to die at home in some pain; or to live as best she can until the moment she has to be terminated without sentiment. Settling on the latter course, Schwarzenegger chats to Breslin about her late mother and encourages her to spend time with her friends, Raeden Greer and Bryce Romero. Slipping away from a bonfire, Breslin and Romero kiss and she is distraught, a few days later, when he has to be taken away because he has turned.

As her eyes begin to lose their colour and her skin starts to go grey, Breslin confides in Richardson that she can smell food when no one is cooking. A short while later, she returns from the woods covered in blood after attacking a fox and Schwarzenegger has to put the creature out of its misery. Richardson suggests the time has come for Breslin to be put away, but Schwarzenegger resists the cops who come to check up on her and reassures them that he will have no qualms when the time comes. He shows Breslin the garden where her mother had grown white daisies and she is deeply moved.

Realising that the blackening of her eyes means that her time is near, Breslin comes downstairs to see Schwarzenegger dozing in a chair with his shotgun. She kisses him on the forehead and climbs on to the roof. As she steels herself to jump to her death, she has a vision of herself as a child playing with her mother and stooping to pick a daisy.

More likely to appeal to Twilighters than genre fanboys, this represents a decent start to film-making for a British graphic designer, who had created title sequences for pictures as diverse as Gideon Koppel's sleep furiously (2008), Gore Verbinski's Rango (2011) and Rupert Sanders's Snow White and the Huntsmen (2012), as well as the animated segments seen during this year's Academy Awards ceremony. Despite this visual prowess, Hobson resists the temptation to flaunt his wares and cinematographer Lukas Ettlin, production designer Gabor Norman Nagy and make-up artist Karri Farris demonstrate similarly admirable restraint in suggesting ravenous menace and hideous physical decline without losing sight of the storyline's core humanity.

While avoiding too much expository clutter, first-time screenwriter John Scott 3 also keeps mawkishness at bay, as does composer David Wingo. But what makes this so affecting is Breslin's nuanced performance, as she tries to remain calm in the face of a death sentence. The interlude with Romero risks being twee, but her cosy chats with her father have a palpable sense of sadness that brings out a side of Schwarzenegger that few viewers could have suspected existed. His thick Austrian accent feels somewhat implausible for a Midwestern farmer, but he ably conveys both the helplessness he feels at watching his daughter deteriorate and the growing dread that he will be the one to spare her further suffering. In this regard, the denouement is a bit of a cop-out. But it also means that this thoughtfully ominous drama ends with a selfless act of poignant nobility.

By contrast, Robert Carlyle makes a decidedly undistinguished directorial debut with The Legend of Barney Thomson, a grim comedy of murderous manners that has been adapted from Douglas Lindsay's 1999 novel, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson. This was the first in a seven-strong series about the eponymous Glaswegian barber, but the chances of Carlyle being allowed to make a sequel look slim after this pantomimically macabre misfire. Scripted by Richard Cowan and Colin McClaren, it feels like an Irvine Welsh assault on the Ealing comedy format, although Carlyle borrows liberally from the playbooks of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, David Lynch and the Coen brothers in trying to give this boorish Sweeney Todd revamp a little offbeat inveiglement.

Fiftysomething Robert Carlyle has spent his life working as a barber in the Bridgeton district of East End Glasgow. Efficient, but charmless, he eschews the banal chit-chat that is synonymous with his trade and, as a consequence, he has slipped to third chair behind boss Stephen McCole and cocky newcomer, Martin Compston. McCole compares Carlyle to a haunted tree in urging him to up his game, but he succeeds only in getting himself fired after abusing a trio of waiting customers. Lingering after hours, Carlyle pleads with McCole to reconsider and accidentally stabs him with a pair of scissors during a struggle. In blind panic, Carlyle wraps the body in a bin bag and bumps into eccentric pal Brian Pettifer while loading it into the boot of his car.

Uncertain what to do next, Carlyle consults his blowsy, bingo-playing mother, Emma Thompson, who calmly cuts the corpse into neatly labelled pieces that she stores in her chest freezer. Struggling to retain his composure, Carlyle goes to the work and tells McCole's father, James Cosmo, that he hasn't seen his son since he left to go shopping the night before. Cosmo accepts the lie. But Inspector Ray Winstone is less convinced. Hating every second of his secondment to Scotland, the Cockney copper is under pressure from superior Tom Courtenay and ambitious colleague Ashley Jensen to track down a serial killer, who sends body parts through the post to the victim's loved ones. Yet, while he confides in Sergeant Kevin Guthrie that he is certain Carlyle is hiding something, he doesn't have any proof.

As they tidy up at the end of the day, Compston also voices his suspicion that Carlyle knows more than he is letting on about McCole's disappearance after Pettifer drops some unsubtle hints while demanding a free haircut. But he also winds up in the boot of Carlyle's motor after being offed with a broom handle. Yet, when he arrives at Barrowland to seek Thompson's assistance, he learns she is off on a coach trip with her pals and he is left to dispose of the cadaver himself. As he clears a space in the kitchen freezer, however, he finds lots of other body parts and realises that Thompson has been bumping off lonelyhearts contacts and using her bingo club awaydays to mail their bits and pieces from places as distant as Arbroath and Montrose.

Desperate to protect himself and his mum, Carlyle buys a train ticket to London and heads for Compston's flat with a bag of incriminating evidence. However, he is appalled to discover that his fridge only has a tiny freezer compartment and he is contemplating how to salvage his cunning plan when Winstone and Guthrie kick in the door. Luckily, Carlyle is able to hide on the balcony before slipping away and he seems to be in the clear when Jensen informs Courtenay that Compston is the `postal butcher'. But Winstone is unconvinced and he decides to keep tabs on Carlyle.

He, however, has a new problem to solve, as Thompson has returned from her trip and succumbed to a seizure on a rubbish tip after telling Carlyle that he was an accident from the time she was working as a prostitute. Dumping Thompson at her flat, he drives Compston out to Loch Lubnaig and sends him to the bottom with a breeze block tied to his leg. But Winstone persists in believing that Carlyle is the killer and that Thompson is his willing accomplice. He lures the hapless barber back to the loch on with an anonymous phone call, only to perish himself in a Mexican stand-off with Guthrie, Jensen and her sergeant, Samuel Robertson. Suddenly a free man, Carlyle returns to the shop and with Pettifer spreading rumours of his dastardly exploits, he becomes a local celebrity.

One doesn't need the desultory out-takes embedded in the closing credits to realises that everyone involved in the making of this ghoulish little picture had a ball. However, the audience isn't always in on the joke and, as a result, this is never as bleak or amusing as it might have been. It would be tempting to blame Carlyle, as his direction lacks personality and precision, while he allows his own performance to border on the muggingly hysterical. Winstone and Jensen similarly strain for effect and they are as effortlessly upstaged by Courtenay's laconically cynical police chief as Carlyle is by Thompson's chip-chomping, fag-dragging harridan. Clad in leopard print costumes designed by Sharon Long and deftly aged by Oscar-winning make-up artist Mark Coulier (she is only two years older than Carlyle), Thompson stops just short of caricature in portraying a working-class woman determined to enjoy herself after a lifetime of struggle and disappointment. Indeed, she even manages a touch of pathos before keeling off a discarded sofa in the shadow of her soulless tower block.

Along with the barbershop interior created by Ross Dempster, such sombre settings help cinematographer Fabian Wagner capture the ambience of the story world. But Carlyle never remotely seems in imminent danger of apprehension and this lack of suspense, coupled with the half-hearted attempts at ghoulishness, proves fatally enervating to the plot's pulp fictional aspects. Carlyle might have done more to emphasise the current Anglo-Scottish tensions by playing up the mutual loathing between Winstone and Jensen. But Cowan and McClaren settle for having them bellow insults and curses at one another without bothering to make them scabrously or satirically witty. If only they had been as courageous as composers Antony Genn and Martin Slattery, who atone for the blatantly Lynchian use of Roy Orbison's `Blue Bayou' by studding their score with a Link Wray-style guitar rendition of Acker Bilk's clarinet classic, `Stranger on the Shore'.

An even quirkier song about unlikely ways to die concludes James Kibbey's first feature, The Last Sparks of Sundown. This is the writer-director's second collaboration with the American improv duo, The Pajama Men, after the 2012 short, House Cocktail. But, while that two-minute gem captured the distinctive flavour of Shenoah Allen and Mark Chavez's offbeat humour, this full-length picture often feels streakily sketchy, as though a New Mexican variation on Abbott and Costello had landed in a latterday Launder and Gilliat comedy.

Things are not going well for actor brothers Mark Chavez and Shenoah Allen. The former owes $100,000 to the short-fused Kayvan Novak, while the latter is finding it hard to come to terms with being dumped by his childhood sweetheart. They are glad of the distraction, therefore, when they learn that their English actor grandfather, Geoffrey Palmer, has passed away and left them a house in the country.

Arriving at Southend Airport, they are greeted by talent agent Miles Jupp, who is worried that his pregnant wife is cheating on him. He promises to find the pair some work, while they travel north to arrange the sale of their bequest. On arriving, they are surprised to see a light burning in the window of an upstairs room and Chavez gets knocked to the floor when he ventures inside. Allen manages to avoid a thumping, but still finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle being held by Emily Bevan, who claims to be the housekeeper and explains that Palmer agreed that she and grandmother Sara Kestelman could stay in the house until they found alternative accommodation.

Chavez suspects that Bevan and Kestelman are up to no good and spies on them with binoculars. Allen, however, takes a shine to Bevan after fantasising about her cleaning the outdoor swimming pool and is unconcerned when no one replies to the small ad she has placed on their behalf in the local paper. Chavez tolerates the fact that Bevan keeps sleepwalking in the garden, but finally loses his patience when he discovers that she has used a bogus phone number in the advert so she can stay in situ a little longer.

Having relisted the property in the paper, Chavez and Allen open the door to prospective buyers in a series of cod-English characterisations. But the only person prepared to meet their asking price is limping toff Christian McKay, who plays on Chavez's vanity in order to ensure a quick sale. Spooked by the fact that Jupp has been in phone contact with Novak, Chavez is keen to disappear as soon as possible. However, Kestelman warns him about leaping before he looks over a game of Scrabble, while Allen and Bevan get to know each other while sitting on a bridge over the nearby stream.

Shortly after they host a birthday party for Kestelman (who tells a rambling story about the love of her life and his red tricycle), the siblings follow Bevan to the garden shed in the middle of the night and freak out when they hear her starting up a chainsaw. She tries to explain, but Chavez orders her to leave and Allen breaks the news they have gone the following morning during a subtitled underwater conversation in the pool. Venturing into the shed, Chavez finds a newspaper story about Bevan and Kestelman being involved in a farmhouse fire and he convinces Allen that they are better off without them.

Meanwhile, Jupp finds Chavez an acting job and they travel together to a studio, where Chavez is made up like an antelope. As he reads the paper, he spots an article about McKay being a ruthless property developer and he orders Jupp to drive back to the house to stop the sale. Returning from a rendezvous with Bevan, in which she reveals that Kestelman is in hospital and that Palmer had been her long-lost love, Allen frustrates McKay by insisting on reading the lengthy contract before signing. As he pores over the small print, Novak lands in Southend and hires a motorbike to settle his score with Chavez.

As luck would have it, however, Jupp knocks Novak off his bike at a roadblock and they bundle his seemingly dead body in the boot before speeding towards the house. Chavez bursts in just as Allen completes his signature and McKay reveals that his walking stick is really a gun. He cackles as he holds Chavez, Allen and Bevan prisoner and even survives an inept kung-fu assault by Jupp. But he succumbs to a samurai sword wielded by the resuscitated Novak, who has received such a blow to the head that he no longer recognises Chavez and he cycles around the grounds on the red tricycle, as Allen, Chavez, Bevan and the recovered Kestelman have tea on the lawn.

Unlike most double acts, there is no obvious straight man in The Pajama Men. Chavez tends to be stern and Allen flighty, but they share the gags and their slickly timed banter has a pleasing left-fieldness to it, whether they are cooped up in a car on the motorway or Allen is trying to have a bath while Chavez uses the lavatory. However, one suspects they are much funnier on stage than they are within the confines of a film narrative, where set pieces like the doorstep welcome montage lack the spontaneity one would expect from their live act.

They are not helped by the flimsiness of the plot, which has to be held together by Palmer's droll, but decidedly intrusive voiceover. The subplots also slot awkwardly into place, with Jupp's wacky marital woes being of no interest whatsoever and the flashbacks to Novak dousing Chavez in a bowl of water lacking any sort of menace. McKay makes more of an impression as the suave villain, but Kestelman is mostly asked to scowl silently, while Bevan is required to be adorably ditzy, as their backstory lurches from one convenient contrivance to another. Yet, for all its slightness and inconsistency, this is eminently watchable and affably old-fashioned.

Ever since Al Jolson declared you ain't heard nothin' yet' in Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), cinema has leant a sympathetic ear to musicians striving to get audiences to appreciate their sound. The first generation of film-makers lionised the pioneers of ragtime, swing and bebop before they became the squares who didn't dig rock`n'roll. Subsequently, glam rockers, punks and rappers have all berated the establishment while waiting for the kids to catch on to their brand of music and Mia Hansen-Løve turns the focus on to techno in Eden, which she has co-scripted with her brother Sven, who has drawn heavily on his time as a club DJ in the 1990s.

As with her earlier offerings, All Is Forgiven (2007), The Father of My Children (2009) and Goodbye First Love (2011), Hansen-Løve is preoccupied with the notion that life rarely turns out the way we would like it to do. But, in chronicling the first two decades of electronica, she also considers how long an artist should hold on to a dream in the face of changing tastes and examines how the pursuit of an ideal impacts upon those who have to deal with the fallout from failure.

In 1992, university student Félix de Givry neglects his studies to attend illegal raves across Paris with his buddies Hugo Conzelmann, Vincent Macaigne and Roman Kolinka. Mother Arsinée Khanjian implores him not to fritter away his future, but De Givry becomes so hooked on the sounds being generated by such DJs as Frankie Knuckles, Marc Kinchen and Larry Levan that he persuades Conzelmann to form their own garage duo, Cheers. However, as they and friendly rivals Paul Spera and Laurent Cazanave (who use the name Respect) start to make a name for themselves across the city, Vincent Lacoste and Arnaud Azoulay form Daft Punk and go stratospheric when `Da Funk' becomes a dance floor anthem.

Dropping out of college, De Givry is so into his music that he is quite content for Cheers to remain a local phenomenon, especially as spinning discs earns him the affection of aspiring American author Greta Gerwig, party animal Laura Smet and vivacious tomboy Pauline Etienne. He dates Gerwig for a while, but is always aware that Etienne holds a candle for him and they become an item after a late-night kiss in a taxi. Gerwig drifts off the scene and De Givry comes to crave Etienne's approval. But, as Cheers start to play better venues, he also develops a taste for drugs that becomes more addictive after they are offered a residency at MOMA PS1 in New York.

Conzelmann goes along for the ride, but poster artist Kolinka becomes increasingly morose and commits suicide. Moreover, Etienne grows tired of De Givry's cocaine-induced mood swings and they have a blazing row on a pavement in Queens. However, she only abandons him after they relocate to Chicago and Etienne becomes jealous when they bump into a pregnant Gerwig, who is married to Brady Corbet and is genuinely surprised that De Givry has not grown up in the slightest.

Losing focus and inspiration without his muse, De Givry returns to Paris and accepts any nightclub gigs he is offered. But, by 2006, Cheers are considered has-beens who can no longer pull in the numbers and De Givry and Conzelmann decide to go their separate ways on New Year's Eve. Feted by socialite Golshifteh Farahani, he begins playing private parties. But he cannot control his drug use and he suffers a nervous breakdown after an overdose and has to admit to Khanjian that he is an addict and broke. It takes until 2013 for De Givry to get back on his feet. He finds a job with a company that makes vacuum cleaners and enrols in a writing workshop, where he is befriended by fellow student, Olivia Ross. She gives him a copy of Robert Creeley's poem, `The Rhythm', and, as he sits on his bed to read it, he is touched by its relevance to his own experiences.

Capturing the excitement and energy of a packed dance floor has confounded many a director and, even with Denis Lenoir weaving his camera through the revellers, Hansen-Løve only partially succeeds in conveying the good time being had by her modishly dressed and kinetically photogenic extras. She is also faced with the added difficulty that, while there is plenty to look at as a jazz or rock band struts its stuff on a stage, there is nothing visually exciting about a disc jockey clasping a hand to his headphones as he scratches a platter on a turntable. Consequently, only techno aficionados are going to appreciate the club sequences to the full, as they will recognise the subtle evolution of the music that will pass casual viewers by. But it's hard to see how they are going to be captivated by an impressively sprawling, but disappointingly formulaic narrative that varies little in its lurches between despair and triumph, romance and ruination from the countless musical biopics and films à clef that have been made produced everywhere from Rio to Delhi over the last eight decades.

The contrasting fates of Crisis and Daft Punk has led many critics to compare Eden with Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), as its folk-singing anti-hero couldn't compete with Bob Dylan. However, the similarities with Joel and Ethan Coen's engaging dramedy scarcely extend beyond the skilful evocation of a period and the respectful appreciation of the character traits it takes to turn talent into art. Hansen-Løve is too coolly detached from her material to find much humour in it and sometimes even struggles to invest it with much dramatic potency. Yet her use of fashions and gadgets to signify the passage of time is exquisitely restained, while she allots as much time to De Givry's excruciatingly addled decline as she does to his hard-grafted ascent.

With the exception of the usually dependable Gerwig (who feels a little out of place), the performances are solid throughout. De Givry is better at wide-eyed ambition than heavy-lidded ennui. But, considering he is essentially Sven Hansen-Løve's alter ego, he holds the picture together with some aplomb, particularly when he is agonising over his mixes. He is upstaged, however, by Etienne, but this is hardly surprising as Mia Hansen-Løve has made a habit of presenting her male protagonists from the viewpoint of a perceptive and/or adoring female companion. Consequently, this very much feels part of an increasingly impressive oeuvre. But this will mean most to those who partied hard through the decades either side of the Millennium.