Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/5/2019)

Although 49 year-old Icelandic choir director Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) uses a bow and arrow to bring down the electricity cable connected to the Rio Tinto-owned aluminium smelting plant, Spanish tourist Juan Camillo (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) is arrested by the police for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. With a helicopter scouring the rough terrain around the farm belonging to Sveinbjörn (Jóhann Sigurðarson), Halla confesses to her crime and the four other recent power outages in the hope that he will sympathise with her cause and hide her. When the chopper lands, he sends sheepdog Woman to bark at the cops and lends Halla an old Volvo to make her way back to town with an in-shot three-piece band comprised of pianist David Thor Jonsson, drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen and Sousaphonist Omar Gudjonsson serenading her on her way. 

Arriving at a choir rehearsal as though nothing has happened, Halla takes the time to copy some scores to report on her mission to Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson), an accomplice within the ministry who warns her that the government has asked for American satellite assistance to monitor the moors in order to protect the promised Chinese investment in the island. Concerned she will be captured before she has issued her manifesto, Halla agrees to consider rethinking her tactics. But she is too committed to back down entirely, as the future of the planet is at stake. 

Placing her mobile in the fridge so it can't be bugged, Halla begins doing Tai Chi exercises in front of portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, while flipping through the news reports about the latest attack by the notorious `Mountain Woman'. She is interrupted by a phone call informing her that her four-year wait to adopt a child is over and she is summoned to the agency where a woman (Charlotte Bøving) presents her with a photograph of Nika (Margaryta Hilska), a four year-old from Donetsk who has been orphaned during the civil strife in the Donbass region of Ukraine. Halla admits that much has changed since she and her identical twin sister, Ása (also Geirharðsdóttir) applied to become single parents, but she promises to give her decision about pursuing her application as soon as possible. As she cycles away from the building, a choir of three women in traditional Ukrainian costumes (Iryna Danyleiko, Galyna Goncharenko, Susanna Karpenko) starts singing a lament, which continues as Halla goes swimming in the sea to clear her mind. 

As Juan Camillo is released from prison and makes a crack about a nearby collection of huts being Reykjavik, Ása concludes a meditation session with her students. She seeks inner peace in the same way that Halla crusades for climate awareness, but has no idea that her sister is an eco terrorist. Overjoyed at the news that she is going to become an aunt, Ása urges Halla to go to Ukraine to meet Nika. However, she also tells Halla that she has been accepted to spend two years in an Indian ashram and will be in total seclusion for the duration. 

Stealing a typewriter from an antique shop by setting off an alarm clock to distract the owner, Halla produces a single-sheet declaration, which she photocopies in the choir office and disseminates from the rooftop of a city centre hotel. Some of the bypassers are more interested in posing for selfies with the paper than reading it. But Baldvin is appalled that Halla has gone public and joins his colleagues on a visit to the birthplace of Icelandic democracy in a brainstorming session on how to bury the bad news. He is relieved, therefore, when Halla announces to the choir that she is going to be a mother, as he hopes she will cease her activities. 

When they meet in the office, he shows her CCTV pictures of her disguised self entering the hotel and warns her that the Israeli secret service is now helping tighten security. Moreover, an internal investigation to find the mole has been launched and he admits to being terrified of being caught. As she walks home, wheeling her bike, Halla looks through the windows of the houses on the street and realises that every TV channel is talking about her crusade. She hopes that the viewers will see through the spin being put on her actions and support her aims. 

Meeting up with Ása at the swimming baths, Halla is amused to find a four year-old girl (Þórhildur Ingunn) hiding in her locker. She asks her mother about clothing sizes so she can prepare for Nika's arrival and is taken aback when Ása joins the woman in condemning the Mountain Woman attacks because they are going to hit ordinary people in the pocket. The sisters squabble about effective forms of individual action and Halla gets home to find the television is on (because the band had been watching it). She is infuriated by the smugness of a speech being given by the Prime Minister (Björn Thors), in which he announces that the Chinese investment has been recovered and that Rio Tinto plan to expand the aluminium plant. 

Gathering items hidden in secret places around her home, Halla uses a pram to smuggle them to the borrowed Volvo, which she uses to haul the gate off a protective grille. She then buys chicken manure with some plants at a garden centre and gets past a police checkpoint by claiming she is taking a floral birthday present to her cousin, Sveinbjörn. In fact, she merely leaves the car at his farm and heads into the wilderness to survive a night out in a tent and escape capture when the drone being used to survey the area alights upon Juan Camillo instead. 

While he is being arrested for a second time, Halla uses the Semtex she has stolen to bring down a power pylon. While cutting the tethering wires, she gashes her hand and has to use gaffer tape to staunch the bleeding. But she has the satisfaction of downing the drone with her bow and arrow (while wearing a Mandela mask to hide her face) and smashes it with a stone before making her way back to civilisation. Forced to hide under a rock, as a helicopter flies overhead, Halla uses the carcass of a dead ram to throw the snoopers off the trail and leaves it on the riverbank to attract the attention of sniffer dogs while she wades across a fast-flowing stream to the other side. 

As she staggers across the freezing moors in the dusk light, Halla is glad to see `alleged cousin' Sveinbjörn parked on the road waiting for her. He hides her in a trailer full of sheep and chews out the cops on the roadblock for having the temerity to stop and search him on his own land. Having bluffed his way through, Sveinbjörn carries Halla to some hot springs to warm her up and she floats on her back and gazes up at the sky with a mixture of satisfaction and relief. The next morning, Sveinbjörn drives her home and answers the door when she is in the shower. Having come to drop off some clothes for Nika, Ása takes seeing the stranger in her stride and smiles quietly as she leaves. 

Dropping Halla at the airport to fly to Ukraine, Sveinbjörn tells Halla not to be a stranger, as he is sure they are related. However, a forensic team has found a sport of Halla's blood near the pylon and the cops are conducting DNA tests on all passengers leaving Iceland. Holding herself together, Halla ponders her next move when she hears a news bulletin announcing that Ása has been detained as the Mountain Woman. As she teaches yoga, everyone in the queue thinks the arrests makes sense, but Halla feels sick and rushes out of the terminal to a taxi. She asks the driver to pull over so she can throw up and the luckless Juan Camillo comes over to ask if she is okay, as she hides Nika's photograph under a soft fold of moss. He is arrested for the third time, as a SWAT team swoops on Halla after the cabby calls in with her whereabouts.

While Halla is awaiting trial, Ása comes to visit. Aware they are being watched, she tells her sister that she needs to spend her time in contemplation, while she goes to Ukraine to collect Nika, whose adoption has fortuitously been allocated to her. However, Ása has also arranged for Sveinbjörn to cause a power cut so they can change clothes while the surveillance camera is off and reassures Halla that she will be find in her maximum security ashram. Snapping into her new persona, Halla marches out of the cell and drives to the airport, past the musicians and singers who are waiting for her by the side of another road when she arrives at the orphanage to meet Mika. They bond while drawing flowers and the little girl happily links her fingers with her new mother, as they travel by bus to the airport. Floodwater causes them to abandon the vehicle, however, and Halla carries her daughter, as the band and chorus wade kneedeep behind her. 

Where to start in praising a film that is guaranteed a spot in the end of year Top 10? Why not begin with Bergsteinn Björgúlfsson's cinematography, because the way in which he captures the rugged beauty of the Icelandic countryside can't help but convince the audience of the rectitude of the cause for which Halla is prepared to go to such extremes? However, the use of long shots to reinforce her insignificance and the magnitude of her struggle is also astute, as is the manner in which Erlingsson places the musical and singing trios (which Halla never sees) on different shot planes at various times to add a touch of surreal soul to proceedings that never cease to provoke thought and/or smiles. But the contrasting styles devised for them by composer Davíð Þór Jónsson cannily reflects Halla's daredevil antics and her more contemplative moods. 

The support playing is also splendid, with Jóhann Sigurðarson bringing a sense of bearish compassion to Farmer Sveinbjörn that contrasts with the equally devoted, but skittish support provided by Jörundur Ragnarsson's nervous civil servant. Even Juan Camillo Roman Estrada adds a touch of continental eccentricity, as the Spaniard whose constant harassment reflects the suspicion of outsiders exacerbated by Iceland's insularity. Moreover, the exceptional Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir perfectly complements her own performance as Halla with her knowing (and nimbly integrated by editor David Alexander Corno) turn as Ása, the twin whose physical, if not psychological resemblance allows Erlingsson and co-scenarist Ólafur Egilsson to get away with what would otherwise have been a creakily contrived conclusion. 

As the Earth-hugging Halla, however, Geirharðsdóttir combines conscience and deception, ingenuity and naiveté, and resilience and resignation, as she exploits her status as a pillar of the community to undermine the socio-economic foundations on which it has been built in order to save her neighbours from themselves. It's an outstanding performance in a quirkily comical and sharply intelligent film that bears traces of both Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson and leaves one wondering what the thrillingly promising Erlingsson (who also directed the 2015 circus documentary, Show of Shows) will do next. 

Perilous ocean voyages have become something of a cinematic staple in recent times. In addition to the Donald Crowhurst duo of Simon Rumley's Crowhurst and James Marsh's The Mercy (both 2017), there has also been Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Kon Tiki (2012), JC Chandor's All Is Lost (2013) and Alex Holmes's Maiden (2018), which charted the round the world exploits of pioneering yachtswoman Tracy Edwards. Her spirit infuses Wolfgang Fischer's Styx, a migrant era variation on Homer's fable about Scylla and Charybdis that marks the Austrian director's long-awaited second feature after his 2009 debut, What You Don't See. 

Having revealed how thirtysomething doctor Rike (Susanne Wolff) and the Cologne emergency services speed to a traffic accident involving a single motorist, the action cuts to Gibraltar to show the Barbary apes enjoying the freedom of the Rock, while Rike loads up her boat, Asa Gray, for a trip of a lifetime to the sanctuary that Charles Darwin established on the South Atlantic island of Ascension. A skilled amateur sailor, Rike reads about the settlement after steering past the luxury and commercial craft in the harbour and hoisting her sails to catch the wind. She swims in the sea and delights in the warmth of the sun and the comparative tranquility of the conditions, as she makes good progress. 

However, she is warned by the radio operator aboard the passing Pulpca (Charlie Galea) that a storm is heading their way and she promises to keep in touch if she needs anything, as they are heading in vaguely the same direction. She survives a frantic night without too many alarms and wakes the next morning to see a trawler drifting in the channel between Cape Verde and Mauritania. Checking with binoculars, Rike spots dozens of people on the deck and surmises that they are migrants seeking to cross to Europe. Sending out an SOS, she is told by the coastguard (Felicity Babao) to maintain the 150m distance from the vessel, as her 12m yacht would not be able to cope if desperate people tried to get aboard. 

As a doctor, Rike feels duty bound to help the castaways and radios for urgent assistance. But, while the female coastguard reassures her that help is on the way, she also urges her not to intervene, as her presence will only give false hope. When she sees an African boy swimming towards her, however, Rike feels she has to ignore the advice and jumps into the water in order to haul the youth in the Cristiano Ronaldo Real Madrid shirt on to the deck. That said, she uses the engine to put a distance between herself and the bobbing boat before deciding what to do next.

Dragging the exhausted boy into the cabin, Rike spots a name tag on his wrist and hooks up Kingsley (Gedion Oduor Wekesa) to a drip before tending to some chemical burns on his back and legs. When a male coastguard (Simon Sansone) makes contact, she chastises him for allowing 10 hours to lapse without help arriving and he counters by criticising her for getting too close and causing people to drown in an effort to reach her. She promises to stay away, but the cries for help wafting across the water prompt her to refuse to leave until she has seen the survivors taken into care. 

When Kingsley wakes up, he pleads with Rike to return to the trawler so he can find his sister. She tries to explain that it would be dangerous and he seems to understand. But, when the Pulpca calls to check if Rike is okay, he grabs the receiver and calls for help. Rike echoes his words, but the radio operator regrets that it is company policy to steer cleer of migrant boats. Exasperated, but unsurprised, Rike feels helpless and tells Kingsley that they have to be patient. However, he pushes her overboard and starts the motor before having second thoughts. Clamberng back on to Asa Gray, Rike bawls at the boy in German and goes into the cabin to change. 

Having thrown his life jacket over the side, Kingsley notices that it has started to drift towards the trawler. So, he throws water bottles into the sea and puts a name on each one, in the hope it can save a life. Impressed by his ingenuity, but aware that he has diminished their own water supply, Rike calls the coastguard to report that Asa Gray is sinking, as she suspects they will be more likely to come to the aid of a European woman in distress than a boatload of Africans. A few hours later, a ship arrives and sends out dinghies to recover the corpses and the handful of survivors. Too traumatised to speak, Rike barely acknowledges the sailor who informs her that she is now part of an official inquiry. She just knows that she has followed her conscience. 

Setting sail for paradise, but finding herself in a living hell on the high seas, Susanne Wolff symbolises the European liberal conscience in this harrowing, fact-based study of the chasm between the developed and the developing worlds. A model of professional proficiency when called to an emergency in her homeland, Wolff is literally cast adrift when she tries to summon aid for the Africans involved in a catastrophe that the coastguard and commercial shipping would prefer to ignore. Towering top shots show the two ships that passed in the night separated by a few metres in a vast ocean that confirms how alone Wolff is in her efforts to act upon her instinctive Hippocratic humanitarianism. 

Maintaining radio silence for long periods, Fischer and co-writer Ika Künzel rely on Benedict Neuenfels's photography and Uwe Dresch's sound design, as much as Wolff's performance, to convey both the exertions required to sail the yacht and the changeability of the conditions that make the task more difficult. However, while maintaining a documentary-like detachment that makes the denouement all the more potent, Fischer also coaxes a poignant performance from young Gedion Oduor Wekes, whose confusion, fury and desperate resourcefulness contrast with Wolff's readiness to abide by the maritime rulebook until its tenets no longer make any sense.

Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet demonstrated in his Sartrean feature bow, The Childhood of a Leader (2015), that he is not afraid to tackle big topics in a distinctively stylised manner. He continues to reflect on the malleability of the masses by a charismatic individual in Vox Lux, a pop parable whose preening grandiosity blithely ignores the fact that the lid was blown off this kind of backstage brouhaha by Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (1984). Feeling like Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010) has been rewritten by an obsessive fan of the ITV series Rock Follies (1976) and Todd Haynes in Velvet Goldmine (1999), this scores highly on the kitsch factor. But its aspiringly profound insights into the millennial American mentality are as glib as the trash culture chosen to express them. 

Following some wildly overwritten introductory remarks by narrator Willem Dafoe, `Prelude - 1999' takes us to the backwater town of New Brighton on Staten Island, where Celeste Montgomery (Raffey Cassidy) lives with her father (Matt Servitto), mother (Meg Gibson) and older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin). Returning to school for the new term, Celeste files into a music lesson being given by Ms Dwyer (Maria Dizzia). However, she is interrupted by Goth student Cullen Active (Logan Riley Bruner), who proceeds to gun her down before firing a machine gun to convince his classmates to stand at the back of the class. As his car blows up outside, Celeste tries to reason with the shooter and offers to pray with him before being wounded as a SWAT team storms the building.

As `ACT I; Genesis (2000-2001)' begins, Celeste is undergoing excruciating hospital rehabilitation for a spinal injury and Ellie (who feels guilty for not having protected her) vows to remain at her side. They write a song together and perform it at a memorial service. As the voiceover informs us, it goes viral and Celeste acquires a manager (Jude Law) and records some demo tracks in a New York studio. Josie, the record label publicist, warns her that the industry might not see a 14 year-old massacre survivor as a natural pop star. but promises to do all she can to help her succeed. However, overcoming the pain to master complex dance routines, she quickly becomes a sensation and the sisters are whisked off to Stockholm, where (the narrator informs us over a fast-forward montage that sketches in the socio-cultural history of Swedish pop music) she works with a legendary hit-making producer and gets her first insights into the temptations offered by night life. 

Frustrated at being lectured by her manager about betraying his trust, Celeste meets a rocker (Micheál Richardson) after a gig, who claims to love her music after she goes back to his hotel room. She confides that he plays the kind of stuff that tipped Cullen over the edge and describes the recurring dream in which she speeds through an endless tunnel after passing a corpse in the road. On returning to her own room, however, she is appalled to find Ellie and the manager in bed together and the narrator compares this loss of innocence with the nation's shock at witnessing the events of 9/11. This trauma is mentioned over footage of Celeste's first video for a song called `Hologram', in which everyone wear silver masks and she is shown zipping through a tunnel on the back of a motorbike. 

Thrusting forward to 2017, `Act II: Regenesis' opens with four terrorists wearing Hologram masks shooting people on a Croatian beach. The manager breaks the news to the now 31 year-old Celeste (Natalie Portman), who is about to launch a new album, Vox Lux. Josie urges her not to go into detail while sympathising with the victims at a press conference. But Celeste wants to spend some time with her daughter, Albertine (Raffey Cassidy), who lives with Ellie while her mother is on the road. They go to a nearby diner, where Albertine asks why she always has such a downer on Ellie and Celeste complains about the fact that the music business has changed so much that she has to voice video game characters pay her entourage, as she barely makes a cent out of touring and recording. 

Asking the waiter to serve her a white wine in a plain cup, Celeste gets teary when Albertine asks her about her latest romantic break-up. She also loses her patience with the diner manager when he asks for a selfie when she is clearly not in the mood. He threatens to call the cops when she gives him a mouthful and, as they walk back to the hotel with Albertine worried that her mother has fallen off the wagon, the narrator informs us that she was involved in a car crash in 2011 after having lost the sight in one eye after drinking cleaning products during an alcoholic binge. The media had turned the incident into a scandal after it was reported that Celeste had used racist language and she ended up having to pay substantial damages after an unsavoury court case .

Furious with Ellie for allowing Albertine to lose her virginity, Celeste accuses her of being jealous of her fame. But Ellie (who has had her own addiciton issues) rolls with the punches and promises to keep dedicating herself to her sister and her niece. At the press conference, Celeste fields questions with evasive ease until she suggests that religion is a thing of the past and that kids should believe in her, as she offers them something more tangible and pleasurable. Josie is aghast that she could have tossed off  something so controversial and fears a media firestorm. However, she wheels her into a round table, where one reporter (Christopher Abbott) quizzes her about the Croatian shootings, the crash and the significance of launching a stadium tour in New Brighton. He also asks about terrorists seeking celebrity and Celeste loses her temper with him and Josie bundles her away before she says anything else they might regret. 

Stumbling into her hotel room, Celeste asks Albertine to take some flowers and a scrawled apology to Ellie. She then proceeds to get wasted with her manager. While being driven to the venue in the back of a windowless people carrier, she insists on stopping so that she and Albertine can kneel on the seashore and gather their thoughts. But she can barely stand when she arrives and Josie threatens the backstage crew to ignore what they are seeing, as she ushers Celeste into her changing room. Seeing she needs a little reassurance, Ellie asks the manager to leave so she can remind her sister that her fans adore her and that tonight will be the best of their young lives. 

Strutting towards the stage at the outset of `Finale: XXI', Celeste gives a powerhouse performance and draws cheers from the crowd when she reveals that she has been called all sorts of names in her life, but has refused to let them stop her. As Ellie and Albertine watch on, the narrator discloses that Celeste had met the Devil after being shot at school and had forged a pact with him that he would provide her with killer songs and allow her to become the voice of a generation in return for her soul. He concluded the deal with a bowdlerisation of the opening lines from `Blue Suede Shoes' that ends with him exhorting her to follow him. 

Despite its arthouse aesthetic and the earnest zeitgeistiness of its themes, this is melodramatic hokum of the first water. As both writer and director, Brady Corbet wants the audience to take him deadly seriously. But he also sprinkles the action with enough tongue-in-cheek flourishes to suggest that he is well aware that his canny recycling of every cliché from John Lennon's `Bigger Than Jesus' claim to Katy Perry's championing of `purposeful pop' means that the picture could easily have been entitled, A Star Is Reborn. 

Essentially reinventing All About Eve's Margot Channing as a pop princess, Natalie Portman has great fun channelling her inner Madonna, Lady Gaga and any other pop diva of the last two decades you would care to mention. It's also surely no coincidence that her daughter shares a name with the guitarist of the pioneering British punk band, The Slits, as Celeste struts around like Miley Cyrus doing a Joan Jett impression while warbling pastiche ditties composed by Australian multi-hyphenate, Sia Furler, that are catchy enough, but nowhere near as accomplished as the late Scott Walker's lowering score, which has a feel of Bernard Herrmann's work on Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964). The choreography, by the way, is by Portman's husband, Benjamin Millepied, who also worked on Black Swan and was also the subject of Thierry Demaizière and Alban Teurlai's documentary, Reset (2015).

Amusingly brandishing a Staten accent that would have been news to her high-school self, Portman has to compete for the spotlight with Raffey Cassidy's extraordinary dual display, as the younger Celeste and the mirror-image daughter, who feels closer to the aunt who raised her than the mother who decided to keep her after an underage one-night stand in Stockholm. It's a shame that Corbet rather forgets about Eleanor, as Stacy Martin makes her as intriguing a character as Jude Law's manager and Jennifer Ehle's publicist. But, for all Corbet's efforts to examine the influence of disposable culture on impressionable minds it is all too easy to capture through social media, the film is at its most compelling when it focuses on Celeste's dysfunctional side - although far too much pertinent information is consigned to Willem Dafoe's dry narration, which feels as if it has been dubbed in from a Euro art movie. 

Salopian cinematographer Lol Crawley proves once again that he is one of the best in the business, as he switches deftly between breathless follow shots and meticulously composed 35mm still lifes, although mention should be made of Martin Hannam's nimble editing and Keri Langerman's voguish costumes, which allow Portman to morph like a female Ziggy Stardust. Sam Lisenco's production design also does much to reinforce the sense that Celeste's world is primarily made up of shiny surfaces that lock in the superficiality of a milieu that has sought to harness the outrage and outpourings prompted by the Bataclan and Manchester Arena atrocities in a bid to create a new pop protest movement. But, as Celeste's slickly choreographed show confirms, popular music works best when offering an escape from the world's troubles rather than an explanation of them.

Way back when dissociative identity disorder was more commonly known as multiple personality disorder, film-makers seized upon the condition to give stars a chance to show off their acting chops. Among the more restrained vehicles saw Joanne Woodward win the Academy Award for Best Actress for in Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve (1957), while director Frank Perry and his screenwriting wife Eleanor were both nominated for David and Lisa (1962), which featured sensitive performances by Keir Dullea and Janet Margolin. However, since Fredric March won the Oscar for Best Actor in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1932), the condition has been exploited for horrific and comic purposes, with Anthony Perkins and Michael Caine exhibiting psychotic tendencies in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Brian De Palma's Dressed to Kill (1980), while Jerry Lewis and Eddie Murphy downed character-altering potions in the 1963 and 1996 versions of The Nutty Professor.

Perhaps the most famous recent example is David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). But the discretion required to make the story work and avoid giving offence to those with dissociative identity disorder and those who care for them is sadly lacking in Rupert, Rupert & Rupert, the latest offering from the Tunbridge Wells father-and-son duo of director Tom and writer Mick Sands, whose previous outings, Nazi Vengeance (2014) and The Holly Kane Experiment (2017), passed largely under the radar. 

On medication that he seems to take with some reluctance, Rupert Lindsay (Sandy Batchelor) is struggling to make ends meet as an actor in London. He slips between accents with aplomb while tending the wing of an injured pigeon he finds on the pavement. But, the moment he begins to audition, he either drones monotonously or raves with a wild-eyed fury that alienates casting directors and prompts his agent, Dolores (Melanie Gayle), to fire him over the phone. 

Seeking inspiration from the hand-drawn portraits of Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole that hang on the punch-pocked wall of his poky flat, Rupert calls psychiatrist Angus McFadden (Adam Astill), who soon discovers that his patient suffers bouts of amnesia caused by his switch into the contrasting personalities of a dyspeptic Scotsman and a louche toff. But Rupert's determination to seek a cure for his woes is deflected when he gets an unexpected call from his agent informing him of an 11th hour audition for a stage production of a recently discovered play by Christopher Marlowe. As The Fatal Blasphemy of Jeremiah Ulysses's Boundless Rage features a fuliminating Puritan preacher, she thinks Rupert might have a shot and he tosses his pills out of the window and allows his Scottish alter ego to take control, as he does a line reading with director Geoffrey Morton (Ben Porter) and his assistant, Trudy (Jan Goodman). 

Producer Oliver Stockholm (Tom Knight) has misgivings about hiring Rupert. But they only have 10 days to press night and his last two films have tanked (as Trudy callously reminds him). So, when Geoffrey (a Footlights and BBC alumnus) becomes convinced - over a lunch at which Rupert seethes with disdainful hostility - that he can channel his bile, he offers Rupert the part in return for £30,000 and a promise to show him little more respect, as the director of the acclaimed movie, Queen of the Commons. 

Given the weekend to learn his lines, Rupert has another session with Angus, who avoids answering questions about his own troubled existence and gets an earful of Glaswegian invective. On returning to the flat, Rupert finds his alcoholic father (Clifford Barry) waiting for him and he congratulates him on the roll with an insincere Scottish burr that explains much about his son's condition. He promises to pop round to celebrate later in the week with a bottle of champagne, but it's left ambiguous whether he is really present or a mere figment of Rupert's imagination.

Still uncertain whether his new lead is a Method disciple like co-star Tamsin Hollonby (Pandora Clifford), Geoffrey begins intensive rehearsals on Monday morning. Make-up artist Stevie (Daisy Keeping) is shocked to find that Tamsin is so immersed in her role that she has given herself real whip welts on her back. But she is pleased to see Rupert again, as she had developed a bit of a crush on him when they worked together on a commercial. He has no recollection of her, but her mention of his good lucks brings him up as a short as Angus's remark about the difficulty of finding love when no one likes him. 

Indeed, he momentarily slips out of character when he notices her at the back of the auditorium. Yet, when he alludes to her during his next session with Angus, he does so in the guise of the rakish Rupert, who leers at Olga (Bibi Lucille) the au pair, when she barges into the consulting room in her bra. However, when Alex asks about his first sexual encounter, he explodes back into McRupert at the suggestion that he found it difficult to attract girls and only falls silent when Angus wonders why he feels he has to compete all the time and inquires who dented his confidence by calling him a freak. 

At the next rehearsal, Rupert is put out when another woman does his make-up that afternoon and she takes umbrage at his snide innuendo. On stage, the alternate Ruperts cross wires and begin ad libbing lascivious lines in a Scottish accent to the confused Tamsin. When Geoffrey tells him to focus, Rupert gives a blinding reading of the scene that leaves Tamsin so distraught that she has to confide in Stevie (albeit while still in character) in the make-up room. However, when Rupert sits in the chair, his Scottish persona rips into Stevie so ferociously that the rational Rupert pleads with Alex at their next session to help him get rid of his angry side before he drives Stevie away. As Alex points out, however, Rupert needs the tumult so he can act, while he also needs to be in touch with his vulnerable side in order to be loveable. 

Adopting the suave persona he adopted while treating the injured bird, Rupert calls Stevie to apologise and invites her for a drink in Camden Lock. She thinks he seems different and is surprised when he begins nuzzling her neck. Coming to his senses, he feels ashamed and rushes to the bathroom to compose himself. But, while Stevie thinks he's a tad eccentric, she likes him enough to invite him to a Sunday barbecue with her parents. Moreover, she kisses him on the cheek at the Tube station and Rupert feels so elated that he releases the pigeon into a full moon sky with a childlike grin on his face. 

It's now Wednesday and there are only five days until the press show. Rupert wakes to launch a Scottish tirade after stubbing his toe and throws the offending coffee table out of the window after smashing it to pieces. Returning to his normal self, he sees the wood in the courtyard and tuts at the senseless vandalism. But. while he fails to notice the dead pigeon lying on the cobbles, he is disturbed by a story he reads in the paper and seems to go into a daze. Rather than dwelling on this development, however, we a thrust into a montage to speed us through a couple more rehearsal sessions to show Stevie becoming increasingly fond of Rupert and his anger dissipating to the extent that he resorts to milquetoast type when he is supposed to be at fever pitch. 

Tamsin is puzzled, but Geoffrey puts it down to Rupert's habit of experimenting and wishes him an enjoyable Sunday before they resume work before Monday's press launch. However, he has another session with Angus to negotiate and McRupert is goaded into revealing that his father is responsible for his low self-esteem before Rupert storms out of the room, only to regain his sang froid and leave with a look of vague understanding on his face. 

While showering before the barbecue, Rupert is taken over by his wolfish side and he sets off for Stevie's in a pink vest and a tight pair of white shorts. En route, he imagines a woman he passes in an alley is stark naked and the perspective shifts to a point-of-view shot, as Stevie takes him into the garden and introduces him to her man-mad mum (Janette Edisford) and well-hung and evidently bisexual dad (Hudson Lister). As Rupert whimpers in panic, as he scoffs a hot dog while trying to retain his composure, Stevie whisks him off to her bedroom. However, her gyrating to some music tips him over the edge and he, fighting down both alter egos, he dashes to the bathroom. Staring into the mirror, he spots some magazines about child bodybuilding and accuses his host of being a paedophile before storming out. 

Getting home, Rupert lays out his pills with the intention of committing suicide. But his father knocks on the door and asks if he can borrow some money and knocks the needle back into the angry side of the spectrum. Just as he is about to explode, however, Dolores calls and informs him that the media buzz is growing because he is co-starring with Tamsin and he breaks the fourth wall in admitting to being terrified and no longer knowing what to do next. 

Waking next morning, he whips himself into a frenzy by recalling how his disapproving farmer father had been so turned on by belting his bare buttocks that he had raped him over a bale of hay in the cowshed. Cursing this god-fearing hypocrite, Rupert storms into the theatre unaware that Geoffrey is feeling fragile because his own father had died during the night. He maintains his levels of wrath through the first act. But, as the interval approaches, Rupert catches sight of Stevie in the aisles (after she had refused to do his make-up) and he slips into lustful mode to deliver the last lines of the scene. A baffled audience (which contains Dolores, Trudy and Alex) manages a smattering of applause, but Geoffrey and Oliver are aghast that he has made such a hash of things. 

Luckily, someone treads on Rupert's foot backstage and he returns in a fit of pique. But, as he delivers the closing speech on the prow of a ship doomed to be wrecked, he allows his own pain to colour the words and Geoffrey is overwhelmed that he manages to invert his own interpretation of the text and vastly improve it by suggesting that God has not abandoned humanity and that there can be redemption after all. Now as moved as they had previously been perplexed, the audience bursts into spontaneous applause and doesn't seem to mind that Rupert's moustache is drooping off because of the tears and mucus he has shed during the speech. Moreover, Stevie realises the anguish he has endured and hurries out of the auditorium.

Nevertheless, when he runs after her and asks if she can accept him for who he is, she says he is too weird and urges her taxi driver to take her home. Confused by her accusation that he is a Method actor, Rupert despairs - but not as much as Geoffrey and Oliver, who read the damning reviews (which appear to have been printed in the time it took for Stevie to reach the car park) with the realisation that they could lose their homes, as well as their reputation for a production of a lost Marlowe that should have remained in the bin into which it had surely been discarded. As the film ends, Alex smiles at the Ruperts sitting before him in three separate chairs. 

Like so much else in this tonally awkward offering, the closing shot is a misjudgement that could easily have been avoided (along with the decision to award copyright to Rupert Lindsay). Yet, while all around him often teeters on the brink of risibility, Sandy Batchelor succeeds in delivering a brave, bold performance that even survives a variation on his natural Scottish accent that sometimes sounds like Trainspotting's Renton doing an impression of Billy Connolly.  

Passing echoes of Gareth Tunley's directorial debut, The Ghoul (2016), reverberate around Mick Sands's script, although this isn't anywhere near the same calibre, as son Tom's stylistic decisions lurch between functionality and flamboyance. Cinematographer Haydn West switches format a couple of times to convey Rupert's disorientation, most notably during the cringe-inducing barbecue sequence, which must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But the direction often feels as self-conscious as the satirical digs at directors, producers, actors (Pandora Clifford's idea of Method intensity is amusingly hammy) and critics, who have the Mark Twain quote about degraded trades lobbed at them. 

Perhaps the weakest link, however, are the encounters between Batchelor and Adam Astill's smugly insecure shrink, which not only suggest that the latter is out of his depth, but also that he is professionally negligent in seeking to handle the case himself rather than refer it to a better qualified specialist. Maybe that's the point, although its not always clear whether the Sands are being serious or satirical. Whatever the intention, one has to question the dubious decision to exploit dissociative identity disorder for melodrama and/or farce.

It's long been a source of frustration for many that the National Film Theatre rather hoards its treasures at BFI Southbank rather than sending them on tour around the country. Doubtless many in far-flung regions (and Oxford, for that matter) will let out a deep sigh of regret on seeing the titles on offer in Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: Weimar Cinema, 1919-33. 

Running until the end of June, this typically excellent season is divided into three strands. Among the delights in Imagination, Innovation, Spectacle are Robert Reinert's Opium, Ernst Lubitsch's Madame Dubarry (both 1919), Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, the Gambler (1921) and Metropolis (1926), E.A. Dupont's Variety. Arthur von Gerlach's The Chronicle of the Grey House (both 1925), Mario Bonnard and Nunzio Malsomma's The Fight for the Matterhorn, and Richard Eichberg's Song (1928), which stars the inimitable Anna May Wong. 

The pictures are a tad more predictable in the Weimar Gothic selection, with Robert Wiene's Expressionist landmark, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, being joined by Paul Wegener's The Golem (both 1920), F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), Paul Leni's Waxworks (1924) and Henrik Galeen's The Student of Prague (1926). However, the most intriguing selection has been gathered under the heading `Last Laughs'. In addition to Lubitsch's I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918) and The Oyster Princess (1919), Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924), Joe May's Her Majesty, Love (1931) and Paul Martin's A Blonde Dream (1932), there is also a rare chance to see Alfred Schirokauer's Heaven on Earth (1927), a sparkling comedy adapted from Wilhelm Jacobi and Arthur Lippschütz's stage hit, Der Doppelmenschdi, which stars wonderful Reinhold Schünzel as a Weimar Wooster. 

Man about town Traugott Bellmann (Reinhold Schünzel) rehearses the speech he is about to give to the council, while taking a taxi to the city hall where he is scheduled to marry Juliette (Charlotte Ander), in the presence of her wealthy father, Louis Martiny (Otto Wallburg), and prim mother (Ida Perry). Rushing to the chamber, Bellmann loses his speech and has to stumble through his opening remarks before warming to his theme: the evils of alcohol. While he is feted by like-minded councillors, however, Martiny is furious with Bellmann and gives him 24 hours to change his views or he will refuse to let his daughter have anything further to do with him. 

Just as he is reeling from this news. Bellmann receives a letter to inform him that his brother has died and bequeathed him 500,000 marks, along with the infamous Heaven on Earth nightclub. However, he will only be entitled to the inheritance if he spends every night at the club and is seen by the patrons. Bellmann gets home in a state of shock, only for his limping valet, Johann (Carl Geppert), to reveal that the president of the Morality League (Adele Sandrock) and her colleague are waiting for him in the drawing room. 

They demand that he does something about Heaven on Earth and he is earnestly reassuring them that he will attend to the matter at his earliest convenience when the club's all-black jazz band arrives and promptly begins to play in the next room. Struggling to think up an excuse, as the music gets into full swing (and the drummer starts wiggling his ears, while the tuba player huffs and puffs for all he's worth), Bellmann blurts out something about a wedding and the worthies leave sufficiently mollified, after wishing him well over the cacophony of the band. 

No sooner has Bellmann ushered the band off the premises than Martiny turns up, after being given a lecture on the art of forgiveness by his wife, who reminds him that she will never forgive him if he ruins their daughter's big day. As they chat, the Morality League glee singers ring the doorbell and Johann decides to put them in the next room, where they start singing a sentimental tune, as Martiny escorts Bellmann to his wedding breakfast. 

Aware of the need to sneak away to the club to satisfy the terms of the will, Bellmann keeps checking his watch during an interminable speech. Eventually, he jumps in to urge the speaker on to a toast before complaining of feeling unwell, so that he can smuggle Juliette home and arrive at the nightclub before 10pm. Should he forfeit, the property would pass to Kippel (Paul Morgan) and his wife (Ellen Plessow), who prowl around the entrance step with bated breath.

Having coaxed the bashful Juliette into her boudoir and left her sitting on the bed, clutching her bouquet after a couple of chaste kisses, Bellmann hurtles round to Heaven on Earth to be denied admittance by the liveried bouncers refusing unless he pays the entrance fee. As there's a long line of top-hatted toffs waiting to go inside, Bellmann barges his way up the stairs and knocks Keppel over in the process. Arriving in the foyer, he is spotted by the manager (Szöke Szakall) and led through the curtains bearing Adam and Eve standing either side of the Tree of Knowledge and into the main hall. 

The band is playing up a storm and a line of chorus girls skips down the steps to perform a routine that very much meets Bellmann's approval. The manager introduces him to some of the guests and the new owner tries to look inconspicuous as he mingles. When Elli (Maria Kamradeck) is pestered by two members of the Morality League, however, she demands to see the man in charge. Reluctantly, Bellmann comes over and puts on a stern face to shame the hypocrites, who insist that they are merely on a watching brief on behalf of the president. But Bellmann tells them to sling their hooks, although not before they have paid for a bottle of champagne. 

Elli is suitably grateful and asks Bellmann to dance. He tries to decline, but the manager suggests it would be rude to so and he valiantly attempts a Charleston, while Elli cuts a rug to the rocking band. Eventually, Bellmann gets home and tip-toes by torchlight with his shoes off. He watches Juliette sleeping before creeping into his own room to grab some shut eye. 

Next morning, Frau Martiny comes to see her daughter and is horrified that she has spent her wedding night alone. She chides Bellmann when he emerges the worse for wear and wrapped in a tiger skin rug and rushes home to tell her husband about the scoundrel he has allowed to marry her baby. With the reprimand still ringing in his ears, Martiny pays a call on the newlyweds and is surprised to find Juliette in good spirits. Consequently, he leaves reassured, just as the new maid arrives. 

Of course, she's Elli and Johann takes an instant shine to her. Juliette is also pleased with the newcomer and they are discussing Elli's new beau when Bellmann pops his head around the door. Recognising Elli, he tries to cover his face with shaving cream. But, while Juliette thinks her husband has gone mad, Elli winks that his guilty secret is safe with her. While Juliette shows Elli to her room, a stern matron (Emmy Wyda) and a gaggle of uniformed schoolgirls arrive and Johann shows them into the study. The woman claims they are suitable for Heaven on Earth and the girls remove their coats to reveal skimpy outfits underneath. Under her coat, the teacher sports a short skirt and stockings and she proceeds to produce a saxophone from a case and stomps out the rhythm for the girls to perform a Can-Can routine. 

Initially climbing the walls with embarrassment, Bellmann begins to enjoy what he sees and he is tapping along to the beat when Juliette enters, just as the girls turn away, bend and peer back at Bellmann for applause through splayed legs. Thinking quickly, he tells his wife that the troupe has come to give a demonstration of the kind of debauched dancing that he is keen to clamp down upon. He snaps into disapproval mode and orders the women to leave and Juliette commends him for laying down the law. 

She makes herself scarce, however, when a man comes to the door with a chimpanzee in a tuxedo named Tarzan XXVII. Bellmann bundles him out before he can make his pitch and sinks into a chair. Elli brings tea and he tells her that she has to leave. But she refuses to believe that he is the kind to dance with a girl and ditch her and swoons over him so that that Bellmann has to pretend to be examining her tonsils when Juliette comes in. Shoving Elli out of the room, he scuttles off to keep an appointment with lawyer Dresdner (Erich Kaiser-Titz), in the hope of selling Heaven on Earth and resuming his quiet life. When the club manager arrives with an envelope full of cash, therefore, Juliette has no idea what's going on. She presents the package to her husband on his return and lights a cigarette to watch him open it and conceal its contents in his jacket pocket with evidence discomfort. 

That night, Martiny comes to the club to confront Bellmann. He manages to give him the slip, however, and climbs out of the window of the chorines' dressing room. Martiny is buffeted by the girls, as they shuffle out to perform, giving Bellmann the chance to climb a ladder into a neighbouring dressing-room. Descending into the courtyard, Martiny is chased by guard dogs before being snarled at by Tarzan when he blunders into his room. Cutting his losses, he allows himself to be escorted through the nightclub and reaches the backstage corridor just as Bellmann emerges in drag disguise. with a long train on his dress. 

Naturally, Martiny is instantly smitten with the beguiling stranger and introduces himself Meyer as he squires Bellman to a table. Appalled at having to flirt with his father-in-law, Bellmann hides his face behind a feather fan. But Martiny insists on dancing and Bellmann has lots of trouble with his train and his partner's wandering hands. Eager to get to the bottom of the shilly-shallying, Juliette arrives at the club. The manager shows her to a table, where she is joined by three mashers, who attempt to chat her up. 

While Bellmann tries not to laugh, as Martiny stroke his hand and whispers sweet nothings, he is dismayed to see Juliette on the dance floor and, when her partner gets fresh, he jumps up to intervene. Pushing the fellow to the floor, Bellmann removes his wig so that Juliette recognises him. She is horrified and asks her shamefaced father to escort her home. At that moment, however, Dresdner arrives to inform Bellmann that he has sold the club and Juliette is so relieved that she joins her husband on the dance floor and they kiss as the scene irises out. 

Born in Hamburg in 1888, Reinhold Schünzel emerged as a major figure in Weimar cinema after joining Richard Oswald's stock company and appearing alongside Conrad Veidt in the pioneering gay drama, Different From the Others (1919). In all, he would rack up around 150 screen credits, notably playing Choiseul in Lubitsch's aforementioned Madame Dubarry and the King of Naples in Oswald's Lady Hamilton (1921). These arch historical dramedies echoed his own efforts in Count Cagliostro and Catherine the Great (both 1920). On joining UFA in 1926, however, Schünzel abandoned the kind of roles that had prompted one critic to declare him to be `sin incarnate' and began to specialise in situation slapsticks like Halloh - Caesar! (1926), Hercules Maier and Heaven on Earth (both 1927). 

While Schünzel was a jack of all trades, Alfred Schirokauer was more of a writer than a director and he seems to have been content to let the star call most of the shots on this sparkling comedy. Indeed, Schirokauer was best known as an historical novelist for much of his career, with Abel Gance notably filming his stage play about Lucrezia Borgia in 1935. He started writing screenplays for Joe May in 1913 and collaborated with such directors as Franz Seitz and brothers Franz Osten and Ottmar Ostermayr before leaving Munich for Berlin after the Great War. Although he worked with the likes of Georg Jacoby, Max Mack and Erich Waschneck, his most profitable partnership was with Schünzel, although the Jewish Schirokauer fled the Third Reich and found sanctuary in Holland before dying in Vienna in 1934. 

Having played Tiger Brown in GW Pabst's The Threepenny Opera (1931), the half-Jewish Schünzel was allowed to continue directing such gems as Viktor und Viktoria, Cairo Season (1933), Amphitryon (1935) and The Girl Irene (1936). Eventually, he relocated to Hollywood, where he attempted to resume his directorial career with such unworthy MGM assignments as Rich Man, Poor Girl (1938), The Ice Follies of 1939, Balalaika (both 1939) and The Great Awakening (1941). He was more in demand to play Nazis in such wartime propaganda pieces as Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! (1943) and John Farrow's The Hitler Gang (1944). 

Indeed, he continued to appear as diverse Germanic types in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck, Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (both 1946), Mitchell Leisen's Golden Earrings (1947) and Jacques Tourneur's Berlin Express (1948). Yet, prior to returning to West Germany in 1951, Schünzel never managed became a beloved character player like his Hungarian co-star Szöke Szakall, who reinvented himself as S.Z, `Cuddles' Sakall and became a twinkling Warners stalwart in pictures like Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941), Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942), Peter Godfrey's Christmas in Connecticut (1945), Vincente Minnelli's In the Good Old Summertime and John M. Stahl's Oh, You Beautifu Doll (both 1949).

Szakall is very much second banana in Heaven on Earth, however, as Schünzel delivers a masterclass in silent mumming. There's a look of a chubbier Harry Langdon about his guileless visage. But he shifts between excruciating embarrassment, bashful bemusement and incandescent incredulity with a practised ease that is also evident in his physical shtick, as he dances an ungainly Charleston and struggles to fend off his father-in-law's unwanted attentions. 

He doesn't hog the limelight, however, as he shares the laughs around, with Carl Geppert making the most of the butler's limp, which becomes more exaggerated the more trepidatiously he approach's his master front door. Moreover, Emmy Wyda contributes a hilarious cameo as the prim bluestocking who turns out to be a red hot mamma, which sits much more comfortably with modern audiences than the gurning of the black jazz band. 

Interestingly for a 1927 feature, Edgar S. Ziesemer's camerawork is surprisingly static. There's a tracking shot that runs parallel to Schünzel, as he hurries towards city hall in a flurry of self-importance, and there's also a forward dolly between the tables towards the bride and groom at the wedding breakfast. But the other movements are purely functional, as Ziesemer takes us through the Garden of Eden curtain into the heart of Oscar Werndorff's chic sets. The nightclub sequences appear to owe much to the canvases of Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Max Beckmann, although it should be noted that one of the revellers sports a bob two years before Louise Brooks caused a fashion sensation with the same look in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929). Pabst would, of course, continue to direct throughout the Nazi era and beyond, although one suspects that the BFI would never devote a season to the pictures produced while Joseph Goebbels oversaw the German film industry.

There's something about the personal documentary that unsettles. Perfect strangers proffer their most intimate details and invite viewers to form opinions about their habits, choices, actions and emotions. Social media and reality television are responsible for the fact that sharing has become so commonplace that it has almost become a form of rudeness to look away. No doubt film like Emma Davie and Morag McKinnon's I Am Breathing (2013), Karen Guthrie's The Closer We Get (2015). Orlando von Einsiedel's Evelyn and Jason Barker's A Deal With the Universe (both 2018) have a cathartic value for their makers and/or subjects and offer solace to those who have endured similar situations. But the critical reluctance to pry and evaluate should also be respected, even in the case of a project as affecting and as unassumingly accomplished as Iain Cunningham's Irene's Ghost (which will screen at Curzon Oxford on 19 June). 

As a relatively new father, Cunningham kept wondering what it would be like for daughter Isla if he disappeared. This had been his own experience, as his mother, Irene, had died before he turned three and his Scottish father, Don, had banned all talk of her after marrying Judith, who had raised Cunningham as her own. Given that Don had presented his son with a box of Irene's keepsakes on his 18th birthday and that this had lain in the attic for much of the next 25 years, it would appear as though Cunningham had done as much emotional suppressing as his father. But his determination to learn more about the mother whose presence he had always felt in the moon, passing cats and floating thistle seeds leads Cunningham to lots of estranged friends and relations, as well as to the truth about the illness that claimed Irene at the age of 28. 

Armed with his own baby book and some old photographs, Cunningham returns to his hometown of Nuneaton and tracks down cousin Marie Lapworth, who was a bridesmaid at Don and Irene's wedding with her best friend Lynn Jones and next-door neighbour Susan Booton, whose brother, Russell Hogben, remembers Irene as being a quiet girl. Her brother, Ray Bellamy, explains that the three siblings had any spirit beaten out of them by their cruel father. But Jones has fond memories of their nights out and the holidays they took together, while mother and daughter Norma Baker and Lesley Gardner recall working together as tights straighteners at the local hosiery factory. 

Although Don has given the project his blessing, he claims to have only vague recollections of Irene's decline after her son was born. Jones remembers her telling her that she was `Irene's ghost' because she had changed so much after a difficult birth. Former neighbour Pat Swaine reflects with Don on the fact that Irene had started suffering from postnatal depression within a fortnight of the delivery and had gone into a catatonic stupor after being admitted to hospital. However, Jones has no memory of this and Don's brother, Tom, and his wife, Sue, reveal that Irene had never been in a coma at all. 

This prompts Cunningham to consult one of the doctors who had treated his mother, Alain Gregoire, who looks at the scribbles that Irene had made in her infant's baby book and declares that she appears to have been convinced that her child was God. He identifies her condition as postpartum psychosis and explains that one in 500 new mothers are afflicted by it. Aunt Sue mentions the electro-shock therapy that Irene was given and commends Don for holding things together at a hugely difficult time. 

Dr Gregoire also detects from snapshots of Cunningham that he lacks the newborn glint in his eye and was probably aware of his mother's absence at a time when humans undergo a crucial phase of emotional development. While Cunningham wonders whether this sense of abandonment contributed to childhood nightmares, godmother Pauline Goodman assures him that he was much loved by his paternal grandmother and that he spent a lot of time with her own and Pat Swaine's kids. 

They also reveal that Irene returned home after making something of a recovery and that she doted on him for the short time they were together, often taking him on long walks to her favourite places. However, she had a relapse in 1978 and succumbed to a heart attack after being given medication to calm her down and help her sleep. Nothing is said about whether Irene would have had a better chance now that more is known about her condition, but the implication hovers, as Cunningham welcomes guests to a party to celebrate his mother's short life. 

In essence, this is akin to an episode of Who Do You Think You Are with a non-celebrity subject, with Cunningham finding out more about his mother than the majority of us will ever know about our parents in the years before we were born and became the primary focus of their attention. There is something undeniably heartwarming about the way in which everyone is so ready to talk about Irene to help Cunningham gain a positive impression of her. But he gives away little about himself, although it does occasionally feel (before the final on-camera embrace) as though he resents his father for airbrushing Irene out of his life for so long. 

In addition to integrating soulful animated sequences by Ellie Land, Cunningham also includes a touching sequence, in which he holds up fading photos in the places where they were originally taken. What is striking is how few images remain and this notion is reinforced when Cunningham scours county archive footage after learning that Irene had been crowned carnival queen. Back in the 1960s, few people could afford home movie cameras, while many found the cost of developing photographs to be prohibitive. Nowadays, of course, it's second nature for people to record the most inconsequential incidents on their phones. Yet, one is left to wonder how many of the clips and images currently residing on storage clouds that are having a deleterious impact on the environment will be lost to future generations researching their family histories because of digital obsolescence?