Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 23/5/2019)

As Marguerite Duras (Mélanie Thierry) explains in voiceover how she found the wartime journals she doesn't remember writing, we see her heading to the Gare d'Orsay in April 1945 in the hope that husband Robert Antelme (Emmanuel Bourdieu) is among those returning to Paris from concentration and detention camps. There's no sign of him, but she still imagines welcoming him home with relief at their cosy apartment, even though she is having an affair with Dionys Mascolo (Benjamin Biolay), who is in the same Resistance cell as Antelme and their mutual friend, François Mitterrand (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). 

As she thinks back to June 1944, Marguerite recalls the fear she felt when she first went to the Gestapo offices on the Rue de Saussure in the hope of finding where Antelme is being held so that she can send him a comfort parcel. Collaborator Pierre Rabier (Benoît Magimel) recognises Marguerite's name, as he likes to think he's a cultured man. In a bid to curry favour, he arranges for Antelme to be sent to Fresnes Prison so he can protect him and tries to impress Marguerite by ordering her wine and ham at a café. However, she resists his flattery and reports on the development at a clandestine meeting of her cadre. Mascolo thinks she has been foolish in consorting with a quisling. But Mitterand (who operates under the alias François Morland) feels they might be able to exploit the contact and urges her to keep seeing Rabier, while being vigilant at all times. 

They meet on a daily basis and Duras recalls how Rabier always called at the last minute to arrange their rendezvous. While writing at her desk, Duras sees Marguerite answer the phone and scurry off to keep an appointment. He takes her to the place where Antelme was arrested and mentions that he was betrayed by a comrade facing deportation. However, Marguerite refuses to show curiosity about either the identity of the traitor or the fact that one of her books was on the desk when her husband was captured. She knows Rabier is trying to get information, but prides herself that she is his intellectual superior and will be able to outfox him. Nevertheless, she feels disorientated as she walks along the street and the ambient sounds engulf her ears like waves. 

The image blurs as the depth of field is narrowed to convey Marguerite's struggle to retain her composure. But, even when Rabier shows her a photo of Mitterand and offers to cancel Antelme's deportation if she betrays him, Marguerite keeps her mask in place and chides Rabier for trying use emotional blackmail. However, she still accepts a permit to visit her husband and is aghast when she sees him being driven out of Fresnes in a convoy of trucks heading to Compiègne. 

Having consulted with Mascolo and Mitterand, Marguerite calls Rabier to meet her at Le Saint Georges. It's full of fellow travellers, who recognise Rabier and chat with him about the antics of the Free French and Marguerite wonders if they know how many of them will be killed in the ensuing weeks. Rabier claims to have no fear, as his conscience is clear after saving several Jewish families from arrest. Seeing Mascolo arrive with his oppos to case the café, Marguerite feels tipsy and asks Rabier to dance. She nestles into his shoulder, as he gently takes her hand and she looks at the musicians playing with painted faces and wonders how they will fare when the Allies liberate the city. 

At that moment, an air raid siren sounds and people start to evacuate the premises. Mascolo leaves, but Rabier persuades Marguerite to remain and she taunts him that the Third Reich is about to crumble. He urges her to join in him a nearby apartment, but she silences him by kissing him abruptly and cursing him for lying to her because he had made no attempt to protect her husband. Rabier shrugs, but he knows they will never meet again and drives off in his staff car, with Mascolo watching from a nearby doorway. As she cycles home, Marguerite sees German soldiers hurriedly vacating buildings and loading incriminating documents into the back of trucks. In voiceover, Duras reveals that the Liberation would begin a week later and she wishes Antelme had been able to see both the empty streets and squares after the sirens had sounded and the wild celebrations that had followed their deliverance. 

Opting to watch the celebrations through the slats of her shutters, Marguerite becomes accustomed to the sudden rush of news from the outside world after four years of occupation. She volunteers to take names of the men returning from the camps, but the Gaullist Free French have arrived from London and started to take credit for the freedom they are trying to claw back with their petty rules and impositions. Marguerite keeps hoping that Antelme will be among the bedraggled and the bewildered, but he never comes and her perspective on the d'Orsay scene begins to distort in her distress. 

Mascolo tries to sustain her spirits and she repeats his platitudes to her neighbour. Madame Bordes (Anne-Lise Heimburger), when she becomes convinced that her husband has been killed by the retreating Nazis. Marguerite confides in Mascolo that she fears Antelme will be shot in a last act of cowardly cruelty and it infuriates her that more tears were shed over the passing of President Roosevelt than have been for compatriots trapped in a German inferno with no means of defending themselves or getting out. She becomes delirious and Mascolo sends for a doctor, as she dreams of delivering a child and shaming her spouse after making such a display of waiting for him. 

Friends like Georges Beauchamp (Patrick Lizana) rally round and Marguerite invites Jewish widow Madame Katz (Shulamit Adar) to stay while she awaits news of her daughter, Dora. In April, however, the first survivors from the concentration camps start to return and Marguerite and Mascolo see the sunken faces staring out of the window of the bus bringing them to the registration depot. She is appalled by the sight of the blue-striped uniforms and the emptiness of the eyes that have witnessed horrors no one in France knew anything about. Two men who survived a winter in Buchenwald with Antelme give conflicting accounts about his safety after they saw him being beaten for trying to escape and Mascolo has to admonish her for losing hope, when they get home to find Madame Katz drying Dora's clothes in the hope she will soon be able to wear them again. 

The next morning, Madame Katz sings as she does her ironing. She has heard rumours that Adolf Hitler has committed suicide and she hopes that the war will soon be over. She reveals that Dora had a bad leg and Marguerite doesn't have the heart to tell her that the Nazis disposed of the infirm as soon as they arrived at the camps. When Madame Katz goes to the temple, Marguerite wanders through the neighbourhood in a stupor brought on by the conviction that Antelme is dead. Each passing day makes his safety less likely and she imagines his body lying in a mass grave and being invaded by insects. Yet, as she passes revellers celebrating the return of their loved ones, she bumps into Madame Bordes, who introduces Marguerite to her husband. 

Despite this positive sign, Marguerite calls on Mascolo and demands to know if he has been lying to her. He assures her that he has no conclusive news and dares to suggest that she is angry with him because she realises she has grown apart from Antelme in his absence. They sleep together, only to be disturbed by Mitterand, who has found Antelme in quarantine in Dachau. He orders Mascolo to drive to Munich and use the papers he will provide to get him home before his health fails. In a daze, Marguerite returns home and is airing her husband's suit when Madame Katz informs her that Dora had been gassed five months earlier. However, she hopes this is only a rumour and plans to return to Lyon to be home if her daughter ever returns. 

As she wonders what she has been waiting for all these months and whether she actually knows who she is any longer, Mascolo calls to warn her that Antelme is in bad shape and that she is to steel herself for a shock. Bursting into hysterical tears, Marguerite says she doesn't want to see him and slaps Mascolo when he accuses her of being selfish. However, she barely acknowledges him, as he is carried into the apartment on 7 May 1945 and there is little emotion in Duras's voiceover, as she reveals that she asked him for a divorces on a beach in Italy, while he convalesced. She had been going to leave him when he was captured and had spent two years hoping the man she no longer wanted would be safe. But, now, she wants to have Mascolo's child and devote herself to protecting a new life. 

Ever since Henri-Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau (1943), French film-makers have been reflecting upon the Occupation. Three directors have revisited the period on more than one occasion, with René Clément's The Battle of the Rails (1946) and Forbidden Games (1952), Jean-Pierre Melville's The Silence of the Sea (1949), Léon Morin, Priest (1961) and Army of Shadows (1969), and Louis Malle's Lacombe Lucien (1974) and Au Revoir les Enfants (1987) all being regarded as unflinching and insightful studies of a divisive time whose scars had yet to heal. 

Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped (1966). François Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980) and Jacques Audiard's A Self-Made Hero (1996) are also notable achievements, while Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Bon Voyage (2004), Claude Miller's A Secret (2007), Robert Guédiguian's Army of Crime (2009), Gilles Paquet-Brenner's Sarah's Key, Rose Bosch's The Round-Up, Franck Phelizon's Les Amours secrètes (all 2010), Claude Lelouch's What War May Bring, Ismaël Ferroukhi's Free Men (2011), Volker Schlondörff's Diplomacy (2014) and Christian Carion's The Evacuation (2015) all had an instructive sincerity that atoned for any stylistic or dramatic shortcomings. 

In many ways, this adaptation of Marguerite Duras's semi-autobiographical novel has most in common with Claude Berri's Lucie Aubrac (1997), in which Carole Bouquet starred as the true-life Libération-sud member who rescued her husband (played by Daniel Auteuil) from a Gestapo firing squad in Clermont-Ferrand in 1943. But, while Aubrac was an action woman, Duras was compelled to be more contemplative, with the agony of her wait being made all the more excruciating by the fact she already knew her marriage to Robert Antelme was over. This makes the contrast between her suffering and that of Mesdames Bordes and Katz all the more poignant, as their lives revolved around their respective spouse and daughter, while Duras's obsession was her writing. Nevertheless, she is still tormented by the thought that someone she loved was enduring hell and possibly facing death and Emmanuel Finkiel and cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine experiment with a shallow depth of field to capture something of Duras's conflicted emotions. 

Production designer Pascal Le Guellec, editor Sylvie Lager and the sound team also plays a significant part in helping Finkiel achieve an audiovisual approximation of Duras's peerless prose. However, there is an over-reliance on voiceover, even though it is sometimes accompanied by teasing shots of Duras watching Marguerite, as she looks back on her ordeal and seeks to reconnect with the thoughts and feelings she had confided to her diary. Reuniting with Finkiel after A Decent Man (2015), Mélanie Thierry is utterly compelling as the devastated, yet detached Duras, while Benoît Magimel and Benjamin Biolay offer sturdy support as the chip-shouldered Rabier and the plain-speaking Mascolo. However, Thierry's most effective encounters are with Shulamit Adar, who follows her poignant performance in Finkiel's César-winning debut, Voyages (1999), with another demonstration of the soul-crushing impact of the Holocaust that Duras once claimed was `a crime committed by everyone'.

Sci-fi cinema is full of misfiring space missions and Claire Denis somewhat surprisingly opts to venture into the heavens in making her English-language debut with High Life. Yet, while it contains echoes of Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (both 1972) and Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), this interstellar existential saga is not the radical departure it first appears, as it revisits a number of themes that have recurred throughout the 72 year-old's career, including marginalisation, confinement, colonisation, the relationship between parents and children, the perils of desire and the beauty and treacherous fragility of the human body.

Monte (Robert Pattinson) and his infant daughter, Willow (Scarlette Lindsey), are the sole survivors of a space mission dispatched to investigate scientist Roger Penrose's theory that energy can be tapped from the periphery of a black hole. Having dropped a spanner while conducting running repairs to the outside of the spacecraft and jettisoned the cryogenically preserved corpses of his erstwhile crewmates, Monte dotes on Willow and reminds her that consuming one's own recycled body waste is a taboo. He also tends the ship's garden, sends the daily reports required to keep the life-support systems functioning and attempts to deal with the memories from his past and the daunting prospects of the future. 

The ship had blasted off under the command of Chandra (Lars Eidinger) with a crew of prison inmates who has committed a range of crimes. Dr Dibs (Juliette Binoche) had murdered her husband and children, while Monte (Mikolaj Gruss) had attacked the childhood friend who had killed his dog. His closest companion on the trip is Tcherny (André Benjamin), who is participating with Chandra and Ettore (Ewan Mitchell) in donating sperm to Dibs, who is reminded by Nansen (Agata Busek) about the rules against reproduction in case she has any ideas of artificially inseminating the crew's younger women, Boyse (Mia Goth), Mink (Claire Tran) and Elektra (Gloria Obianyo).

As the authorities recognise the problems that lust can cause in a confined community, they have installed a soundproofed pleasure chamber known as `The Box' that is fitted with devices to help relieve tension. However. Monte has decided to become celibate and refuses to participate in Dibs's experiments. When Elektra dies after delivering a premature baby that falls victim to the lethal levels of radiation, and Chandra succumbs to leukaemia (with a little euthanising help from Dibs), the mood aboard the ship begins to deteriorate, as they are still four years away from their destination. Tcherny begins sleeping in the garden, while Ettore is beaten up by Monte after he tries to rape Boyse in the night. But, while Monte stops short of killing Ettore, Mink has no such compunction. 

In order to pacify the crew, Dibs increases the amount of sedative she puts into the air supply and, one night, she mounts the sleeping Monte and uses his sperm to impregnate Boyse. He has no idea that he is Willow's father and Boyse deeply resents being used as a breeding guinea pig by Dibs (whose belly bears the scars of the failed bid to kill herself after stabbing her family). Shortly afterwards, therefore, she is tipped over the edge by the futility of her breasts lactating and bludgeons Nansen to death with a shovel and takes her place in the pod being launched towards the black hole. 

Such is the gravitational force, however, that Boyse is spaghettified and Dibs is so overwhelmed by her demise that she wanders through the bay door into open space after telling Monte that Willow is his daughter. Furthermore, depressed by the fact that the mission has not brought the glory that he had promised his wife would redeem him, Tcherny buries himself in the garden and Monte decides to clear the cryochamber rather than be reminded of the tragedies that have befallen his crewmates. 

Years pass and Willow (Jessie Ross) reaches adolescence. Spaceship 7 passes an identical craft with a Number Six on its undercarriage. Monte enters to discover it is full of dogs and Willow is disappointed when he refuses to bring one of the puppies back to their ship. As the canines have been left to their own devices, they have survived by devouring carcasses and Monte feels it would be unwise to risk contamination by bringing an unclean creature into their environment. Willow accuses him of cruelty and he is curious to know how she has learned of the concept, having never experienced it. 

Some time later. he is also amused to see her praying while watching highlights of a Scotland rugby match, as she had seen footage in the image bank and wanted to know what it felt like. Eventually, they get closer to the black hole and Willow convinces Monte to take the pod to investigate. We see shots of the empty spacecraft, as father and daughter suit up and launch into the unknown. As they approach the bright yellow light source, they hold hands and the screen whites out. 

Making few concessions to the conventional sci-fi screen constituency, Claire Denis plumps for the philosophical over the spectacular in this intense, intriguing and melancholic. if sometimes inert and rarely wholly involving space odyssey. There are whiffs of Kubrick along the way, as Denis and co-scenarist Jean-Pol Fargeau consider the themes of prohibition and transgression, and the need to strike a balance between authority and liberty in promulgating workable laws to regulate communal existence. But the lack of backstory for the majority of the crew members makes it difficult to invest in their feelings and fates, with even Robert Pattinson's dutiful loner and Juliette Binoche's exploitative medic seeming more like ciphers than fully fleshed characters. 

Despite being unnamed, the spacecraft is more of a character than a locale, with production designer François-Renaud Labarthe eschewing fetishistic futurism to present the kind of scuffed, low-tech interiors one might expect of a prison ship some distance into its voyage. Yet, sound editor Andreas Hildebrandt resists making its metalwork creak, while its engines and computers all seem to operate in complete silence, just as the garden thrives without the intervention of a single insect. But they are markedly more convincing than the starscapes, which would have looked cheap and uninspired in a 1970s TV show like Blake's Seven.

One would like to think that The Box was a tongue-in-cheek homage to the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973). But Denis isn't particularly renowned for her sense of humour and the scene in which Binoche avails herself of the facilities is rather pompously constructed by editor Guy Lecorne from Yorick Le Saux's blush-inducingly jerky handheld imagery. More effective is the score composed by Denis's regular collaborator, Stuart A. Staples, although the closing ditty sung by Pattinson with the backing of Tindersticks is a tad coy.

Having made a deep impression on debut with Thursday Till Sunday (2012), Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor bounces back from the disappointing Mar (2014) with Too Late to Die Young, which draws on her own experiences of growing up in the alternative ecological community of Peñalolén in the foothills of the Andes. Arriving here on the back of Sotomayor becoming the first female winner of the Golden Leopard at the prestigious Locarno Film Festival, this not only offers a child's eye view of adult behaviour, but also a perceptive insight into the national psyche, as Chile returns to democracy following the constitutional toppling of General Augusto Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship. 

It's Christmas 1990 at a nascent woodland commune near the town of Ñuñoa. Ten year-old Clara (Magdalena Tótoro) has recently moved in with her parents, Carmen (Mercedes Mujica) and Jaime (Eyal Meyer), and she is concerned that their Bernese Mountain dog, Frida, has disappeared after following the car giving her a lift to school. Sixteen year-old Lucas (Antar Machado) is more bothered by the fact that Sofia (Demian Hernández) keeps sloping off with Ignacio (Matías Oviedo), an older man who regularly visits the camp and recently saw her musician mother playing at a local venue. She has promised to come home for the annual New Year party, but her surly luthier father, Roberto (Andrés Aliaga), is as dead set against her moving to Ñuñoa with her mother, Antonia, as he is about installing a generator so the community can enjoy such benefits of electricity as a washing machine. 

Clara staples notices to trees around the camp and tries to ignore rumours that a horse had been killed and left in the river upstream by a ravenous cur. She is also surprised when Ignacio shows her the hole in his front door made by burglars, who have stolen his camera. While he goes to town to report the theft, he bumps into Sofia, who is learning to drive and has taken Roberto's car. Ignacio accepts a lift home and kisses Sofia when she stalls the engine and she tells him that it's all set for her to move in with her mother after the holidays. 

As if to prove that he is less mature than Sofia, we see Lucas showing Clara a chicken named Survive, which he keeps in his treehouse. He invites Sofia to spend the night there after the party, but she says it depends on whether her mother comes. Despite calling her from the gas station, however, Sofia isn't sure Antonia is going to show up and she fears being stuck in the commune with Roberto and her younger brother, José (Pablo Giesen). Thus, while everyone else rehearses the songs they are going to sing at the party being thrown by Lucas's parents, Elena (Antonia Zegers) and Carlos (Alejandro Goic), Sofia mopes around and has a cigarette in the bath, with her head so low in the water that drifting wisps of smoke and steam become inseparable. 

One of the neighbours, Raúl (Michael Silva), has spotted a dog that looks like Frida in a house on the edge of town and he shows Carmen and Clara the way. The woman insists that her daughter named the dog Cindy, but she is too poor to refuse the money Carmen offers her and they bundle the dog into the back of the car. However, Clara soon discovers that the animal responds to `Cindy' and has to be tied up to stop it from either running away or clambering over Jaime, who has a fever after eating food cooked with water that has been polluted by an unseen hand blocking a pipe bringing water from the river. 

Meanwhile, Sofia makes supper and shows her brother how to use hair gel. But there's still no sign of her mother and Roberto scoffs at the idea that she will let Sofia move to Ñuñoa, as she has shacked up with her bassist and has already shown she has no desire to be a parent. Sofia complains that her father is too preoccupied making musical instruments to spend time with them, but he shrugs grumpily, as if to suggests she doesn't know how lucky she is.

Lucas and his band play at the party and proud parents watch their kids trying to be cool on stage. Sofia is too distracted to watch them and lets Clara have a drag on her cigarette. Her mood is not improved by the fact Ignacio has turned up with some friends and rumours spread that they are snorting cocaine in their VW van. As midnight strikes, however, he kisses Sofia under the envious gaze of Lucas, who gets teased by his pals for mooning over her. At one point, the power fails and the lights go out and the music stops. But the crank of a handle restores the merriment (with one small boy strutting his stuff with a delightful lack of self-consciousness), even though Sofia has realised by now that her mother has let her down again. 

When the time comes for her song, she plays the accordion for `Eternal Flame', The Bangles hit she sings in hesitant English. Elena gets cross with Carlos when he laughs at her sentimental anecdote about Lucas getting tipsy as a baby. He's also embarrassed and struts off to find Sofia. But she has gone into the woods with Ignacio and they make out, while Lucas cadges a lift into town and gets into a fight with a couple of older youths who steal his bottle of wine. His pal gets cut on the arm and Lucas has to drive back to the commune. 

As people begin waking the next morning, Clara and her friends spot a fire spreading in the bush and rush home to tell the grown-ups. Lucas finds Sofia, who has rubbed the skin off her wrist to punish herself for trusting her mother and Ignacio, who had left her to sleep alone in the wild. He urges her to forget about Ignacio and threatens to stop speaking to her, but she wanders off to the stream and bathes in a cascade of cold water. 

With the milky morning light becoming smokier, Roberto goes looking for his daughter. Everyone else is busy dousing the fire, although Carmen has gone to search for Clara and her friend, Laura (Millantú Hilbert), who have gone off with the dog and are standing in a deep pool to keep themselves safe from the flames. As they return to the commune, where firefighters have joined the residents in tackling the blaze, Clara realises that Cindy isn't her dog and removes her collar, so she can run home (in a mirror image of the opening scene of Frida chasing after the retreating car). 

Feeling akin to a Chilean Chekhov chamber drama, this is a fascinating, sensorial, languid and enigmatic study of innocence and experience that equates the coming of age of the teenage members of an idealised eco-community with the wider country stumbling towards its own new beginning. Good intentions abound, as the city dwellers strive to get back to the land. But Edenic Nature refuses to bend to their whim, as the water supply becomes contaminated and a fire burns out of control. Moreover, the mystery of Frida/Cindy and Antonia's refusal to conform to maternal type proves that it's not always possible to impose one's will upon free spirits.  

In conjunction with cinematographer Inti Briones and production designer Estefania Larrain, Sotomayor captures the ambience of the settlement and its relationship to the surrounding countryside in a manner that suggests a certain timelessness. But it's Catalina Marin Duarte's editing that conveys the bustle of everyday existence, as she flits between snippet scenes that focus on a small detail before alighting on the next. Content to downplay exposition and plot in order to focus on atmosphere. interaction and contradiction, Soyomayor prioritises the perspective of the often uncomprehending juveniles. She is ably served by Magdalena Tótoro, Antar Machado and Demian Hernández - a trans actor who deftly limns Sofia's capriciousness and vulnerability - as well as by experienced performers like Antonia Zegers and Alejandro Goic, who will be familiar from the films of the former's husband, Pablo Larrain.

For many, the finest animated football match in film history will forever be the Royal Cup clash between the Dirty Yellows and the True Blues in Robert Stevenson's Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). It might only last around eight minutes, but there are more thrills and smiles packed into its bijou running time than either Juan José Campanella's Underdogs (2013) or Nick Park's Early Man (2018). It's very much to the credit of Trevor Hardy's Strike, therefore, that it comes from nowhere to finish in the runners-up spot. Produced by the Lancing-based GiggleFish Animation Studio, this charming stop-motion took three years to produce using needle-felt characters to give it a hand-crafted look. For anyone looking for something to keep their footie-mad tinies happy over the bank holiday, this is something of an open goal. 

Although he dreams of playing football for England, young mole Mungo Morrison (Lizzie Waterworth-Santo) is about to start work at the Diddington village mine alongside his proud father, Garth (Tom Turner). Mother Jenny (Alex Kelly) accompanies Mungo on his first day, but he would much rather be spending time with his badger inventor friend Hedy (Kelly) than joining mole pal Ryan (Naomi McDonald) and his dad, Doug (Dave Mounfield), digging for gold. By contrast, while the ever-hungry Ryan would like to join Jenny at the diner where she works, he is thrilled to be teaming up with Maggie (Waterworth-Santo), the rabbit explosives expert he adores from afar. 

At the mine gates, the workers are met by Xenia (Beth Chalmers) and Lewie (Jordan Long), the ovine and bovine sidekicks dispatched to present another ultimatum from The Boss (Ken Stott), who has designs on the land. But Garth refuses to take them seriously and introduces Mungo to the excitement of toiling below ground with lots of cool machinery, a keen community spirit and the rousing accompaniment of the three-strong choir. Over lunch, however, a wise old rat named Control (Nigel Anthony) realises that Mungo is more interested in listening to porcine England manager Ron Hubble (Daniel Barker) than he is with mining. 

While repairing his grandfather's outsize tin helmet, Hedy also has an idea how to help her friend play the game he loves under bright lights and tells him to pop over to her workshop that evening. In the meantime, she repairs the broken vending machine, so that Ryan can tuck into the goodies on display. But all is not well at the goldface, as one of the drone robots goes on the rampage before Garth stops it. Moreover, some of Maggie's dynamite is stolen and Garth confides in the confusable Doug that he suspects a saboteur might have infiltrated the mine so that it goes out of business and can be taken over by the rival Ravencorps organisation. As there hasn't been a worthwhile gold strike for five years, the pair fear the worst and the eavesdropping Mungo, Ryan and Hedy wonder what they can do to help. 

When Garth hits a rich seam of the shiny stuff, however, Control reveals himself to be the mole (or rat) by causing a gas explosion that not only seals off the mine, but also kills Garth, who had gone to his office to rescue him. Mungo feels awful because they had just had a row about his ambition to become a footballer, even though his nocturnal experiment with a pair of 20/20 vision goggles that Hedy had perfected hadn't gone particularly well. But the shock of losing his father has put him off football, even though the World Cup in Russia is just around the corner and England is strongly tipped to beat Germany in the final. 

The Boss has placed a large bet on England losing and sends Xenia and Lewie to pose as chefs to give the team's four in-form strikers explosive tummy troubles. He also sends them to Diddington, as the bank foreclosure deadline approaches, so he can speak to the villagers via a video link that reveals him to be a fluffy white cat stroking a mouse. However, Mungo refuses to be intimidated by his threats and open cast plans and, even though he has just discovered that Hedy's goggles work and that he has a sixth sense for a goal, he vows to find the gold that can keep Garth's beloved mine out of Ravencorps's clutches. 

Using the goggles, Mungo is able to see the gold seam through the rubble. However, while Ryan was filming their expedition, he happens to catch Mungo kicking his helmet across the mine to jam the cogs on the lift that is hurtling Maggie to her doom. The footage goes viral online and even TV football presenter Danny Bradshaw (Neil James) is impressed. Consequently, Ron Hubble invites Mungo for a trial and, after the slimy Kevin Slater (Tim Dunn), steals his goggles, he gets to show what he can do when team captain, Jay MacKenzie (Jacob Scipio), orders the preening lizard to give them back and Mungo dribbles rings around everyone and slams dozens of goals past elephant goalie, Darren Biggins (James). 

Having made the squad, Mungo gives a rousing farewell speech to urge the villagers to find the gold and hugs his tearful mother before heading to Moscow. Commentators Harry Mosney (Dann) and Terry Grenville (Kerry Shale) call the opening game, as a brisk montage shows Mungo scoring goals for fun to take England into the semi-finals, while Doug supervises a super-non-human effort at the mine and The Boss becomes more irate about the prospect of losing his bet and the mine in the same week. He gets Xenia to seduce a health and safety rodent and the mine is closed down for a fortnight. Moreover, he kidnaps Jenny, Ryan, Hedy and Maggie when they fly out to Russia to see England play Germany on the final after winning a penalty shootout. 

Ducking out of the first half, Mungo gets to The Boss's lair in time to see Control admit his guilt and be fed to some piranha. He also manages to escape from a recumbent monster hamster and rescue Jenny, while Hedy, Maggie and Ryan find the wherewithal to make a swift getaway and blow The Boss's HQ to smithereens. Naturally, they also get to the stadium in time, as England come out for the second half 0-3 down. The result is never in doubt, even after The Boss and Xenia fly over the ground in an airship with a giant magnet to pluck the goggles off Mungo's face. Dashing on to the pitch, Hedy reminds him that he doesn't need the lenses because his talent is within him and all ends happily with a party back in Diddington to mark the grand re-opening of the mine. 

Stick around after the credits roll for a message from The Boss that will the grown-ups of Dr Evil in the Austin Powers movies. But borrowings abound in this lively affair, with the villain's hideaway recalling James Mason's base on Mount Rushmore in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest (1959). The fact that The Boss is a white cat stroking a pet mouse will also amuse those familiar with Blofeld's iconic scene in Lewis Gilbert's 1967 Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. But there are plenty of original gags to enjoy, including nobody being able to understand The Boss's convoluted explanations or follow his simple instructions. Equally droll is the sequence with the video screen that takes so long to rise from the boot of Lewie's car that a pregnant bunny gives birth to several children and a pair of elderly onlookers turn into skeletons.

The presence of a ferocious hamster and a bemused Russian taxi driver also add to the fun of the finale. But one has to wonder why the makers felt the need to include so many smutty double entendres, as they not only lower the tone, but they may also have a deleterious effect on the picture's word of mouth prospects. Let's hope not, as this rattles along engagingly enough, as writers Neil James and Mark Holloway just about keep the parallel plotlines in sync, while dotting the action with Aardmanesque wisecracks like Ron's `comments, comments, comments' remark. Indeed, there's much to enjoy with the vocal work, with Ken Stott's Thatcherite fat cat, Dave Mounfield's low-wattage mole and Alex Kelly's deadpan badger being the standouts (naming an inventor after Hedy Lamarr is also a nice touch). Some of the backdrops look as homemade as they probably are. But the puppets are a delight and, while it isn't always possible work out who is supposed to be what animal, they will bring back happy memories for fans of Fuzzy Felt and TV favourites like The Clangers and Button Moon. 

Tennis's greatest screen moment comes when Jacques Tati winds up to unleash his fiendish serve in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953). So, it's fitting that France should also provide the setting for Julien Faraut's John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, a documentary that seeks to prove that Superbrat was less a short-fused kid with a tinderbox flirting with a spark than a cunning tactician who was so completely in control of his situation on court that he could be likened to a director calling the shots on a film set. Delving much more deeply below the surface than Janus Metz's Borg McEnroe (2018), this intriguing meld of sports psychology and film theory makes inspired use of the 16mm footage amassed by Gil de Kermadec during his tenure as technical director of the French Tennis Federation to confirm Jean-Luc Godard's famous contention in L'Equipe that `Cinema lies, sport doesn't.'

Narrator Mathieu Amalric explains that De Kermadec began producing instructional films to analyse a tennis player's movements in 1966 and sought permission to film during the French Open at Roland Garros in 1969. It soon became clear that match play bore little resemblance to the posed shot demonstrations captured in 16mm monochrome. But Amalric insists that instructional films retains their validity, as they belong to the cinematic canon as much as Westerns or musicals, as they employs similar techniques in their production. 

Recognising the shortcomings of placing paper arrows on court to help aspiring players recreate the footwork of their idols, De Kermadec started making in-depth profiles of the great tennis stars. The last was released in 1985 and focused on John McEnroe, the reigning World No1, who was enjoying the best season of his career. But Faraut sees much more in the footage than a record of a fine physical specimen at the peak of his powers. He insists that the material kept in the archive of the Institut National du Sport et de l'Education Physique (INSEP) - where Faraut is based - also reveals a great deal about the McEnroe psyche. 

De Kermadec's film, Roland Garros 1985 With John McEnroe, uses a blue animated stick figure to break down the American's distinctive left-handed service style. It also keeps the cameras trained on him throughout his matches during the tournament, in much the same way that Helmuth Costard had followed George Best during a Manchester United game against Coventry City for his landmark documentary, Football As Never Before (1971). While making Gil de Kermadec: The Story of a Filmmaker Tennisman (2013), cameraman Nicolas Thibault took his former boss to the archive to find their film reels. He also coaxed him back to Court Philippe Chatrier to reveal how the camera crews photographed McEnroe in action and how sound man Jacques Pernod served as a human clapperboard by holding up numbers between points from a seat behind the No1 seed's chair. 

As they review the images, it becomes clear that they not only showcase McEnroe's unique playing style, but also provide detailed information about the physical exertion and tactical acuity required to win a point. Yet, while De Kermadec discusses the unpredictable nature McEnroe's shot selection and the variety he employs in making drop shots, Faraut doubts whether he was particularly interested in tennis as a sport. He relates an anecdote about the French Tennis Federation asking him to give up his cherished spot on court in order to accommodate television cameras, whose footage he could use for his own films. De Kermadec explains that he's not interested in conveying the tension of live sport, but in capturing the body in motion. 

It's apt, therefore, that Stade Roland Garros should have built on La Station Physiologique du Parc des Princes, where Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demenÿ took their pioneering fin-de-siècle chronophotographic studies of movement. Faraut superimposes some of their sequence images over slow-motion footage of McEnroe serving. But he inserts a faux break in the film (complete with splendid pastiche interval muzak) to show how McEnroe used gamesmanship to turn matches to his advantage. In one rally (which he won), a bad bounce provokes a complaint about the surface of the court, which prompts an extended delay in play, as a gesticulating member of the ground staff inspects the offending spot and shrugs as if to suggest that the temperamental American is crackers. 

When normal service is resumed, Faraut quotes film critic-cum-tennis correspondent Serge Daney's piece on a tennis player exploiting moments in a game to seize the initiative and impose themselves upon their opponent. We cut away to the 1978 animation, Some Tennis Rules, which explains the structure of a typical match. But Amalric reminds us that things rarely go according to plan, with the 2014 match between Jarkko Nieminen and Bernard Tomic in Miami lasting 28 minutes and 20 seconds (the length of an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents...), while you could watch all three parts of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy (1972-90), with an hour-long break between each one, and Nicolas Mahut and John Isner would only just be reaching the end of their epic 2010 Wimbledon encounter, which sprawled over eight hours and 11 minutes.

One of the things Daney loved most about cinema was its ability to invent time. According to Faraut, McEnroe does much the same thing, as he dictates the pace and length of a rally and, like a film-maker, decides when to call cut with a winning shot. Even when a point doesn't go his way, he attempts to persuade the umpire that they need a retake and is prepared to endure catcalls from the crowd in the hope of getting his own way. In this instance, McEnroe claims a point should be replayed because the return he put into the net was invalid because his own service was out. When he fails to sway the course of events, he trudges back to the baseline like a spoilt child and prepares to resume the match. In the interim, however, he has got a careless shot out of his system and denied his opponent the momentum he might have derived from picking up a cheap point. 

Documentarists can either pretend a camera is not altering the behaviour of those appearing before it or accept that their presence is helping shape the reality they are recording. Faraut demonstrates by showing McEnroe catching the eye of a camera while preparing to serve and he uses the break between games to ask the umpire to have certain photographers removed from the court, as they are distracting him. Amusingly, Pernod is sitting behind him with his boom mike, which he taps with the number of the next shot, as McEnroe leaves his chair. At one changeover, he threatens to hit Pernod in the mouth with his racket before demanding his removal. But, while the umpire stands firm, Thibault admits that the 16mm Arriflex camera and its High Speed equivalent made  lot of noise and he didn't blame McEnroe from coming to the courtside pit in which they were working and remonstrating with them. 

Faraut is fascinated by McEnroe's self-image and uses rare footage of him on a practice court with his younger brother, Patrick, to suggest that he was only at ease in match play situations, when his senses were fully alive. He hated training, as it felt as false as the photo sessions he had to endure. A neat sequence shows McEnroe arguing with his opponent and his voice being replaced by that of Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980). Shots show Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura in the crowd, as Faraut tries to discern the extent to which McEnroe was an actor playing a part. He is intrigued to discover that Tom Hulce prepared to play Mozart in Miloš Forman's Amadeus (1984) by studying McEnroe's antics on court. We hear `Piano Concerto No21 in C Major, K 467' over clips of McEnroe arguing with umpires and see extracts from the Oscar-winning film in which Mozart uses the beauty of his music to excuse the fact he's a vulgar, spoilt brat. 

Psychologist Cédric Quignon-Fleuret examines the nature of McEnroe's confrontations with officials, photographers and crowd members and finds it fascinating that emotions that would deflect others help him to focus. As a perfectionist who invests everything in a game, he is appalled that others can settle for lower standards and admits in an interview that he just wants people to do their jobs. If they performed to the best of their ability, he wouldn't have to complain so much. In another audio snippet, however, he suggests that he trains for such moments, as they help him gain an advantage and he needs to know how best to exploit the situations when they arise. 

Daney concurs that he exploits the hostility towards him to motivate himself. McEnroe likes to give the impression that he is forever playing with his back against the wall, but he isn't. He is generating the forces he needs to feed upon to succeed. In  his 1985 commentary, De Kermadec calls it an art of camouflage that uses rage to deflect attention away from his true emotions during the course of a match. However, he also describes it as an art of sensitivity, as he knows exactly when to deploy different aspects of his personal and playing temperaments to gain the greatest advantage. 

Quignon-Fleuret believes he acquired such tactical nous in his childhood, when he realised he was most rewarded by corporate lawyer father John Patrick McEnroe and surgical nurse mother Kay when he gave his best. Fabled Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi believed victory often went to the team that thought it would win and McEnroe has embraced this mindset because he has concluded that nice guys don't win when there is status and millions of dollars at stake. An unidentified American commentator claims that McEnroe's `win at all costs' approach was a reflection of his times and that people didn't like his attitude because it hit too close to home in a dog-eat-dog society. 

Being a winner made McEnroe a perfectionist and that's why his defeat to Ivan Lendl in the French Open final on 10 June 1984 hurt so much, as it dropped his showdown win percentage for the season down to 96.5%. However, he tried everything in his power to win on his own terms. At the end of the first game, he asked the umpire to send a ball boy to speak to a photographer who was putting him off. Yet, as he closed in on taking the first set, Lendl asked the umpire if he was afraid of McEnroe, as he seems to be allowing him to dictate the conduct of the match. 

After an hour and 11 minutes, McEnroe is two sets up and the commentators are struggling to remember anyone playing more commanding tennis in a Grand Slam final. But, with the crowd firmly in his corner, the Czechoslovakian fought back to take the third set and the cameras pick up McEnroe's frustration at his dip in intensity, as he doesn't seem to know why it has happened or how he can arrest the slide. Having missed chances in the fourth, McEnroe sits with his shirt off during the changeover after Lendl had gone in front for the first time after three hours and seven minutes of play. 

An hour later, he puts a volley into the red clay tramlines off his own service and stands in disbelief at the net. Shaking hands with Lendl and the umpire, he sinks into his chair before lashing out at a TV crew that dares to get too close. He sits with his head in his hands, as the chaos of celebration surges around Lendl. As we see jerky footage of McEnroe collection his runner-up prize, Amalric quotes his admission that he still gets sleepless nights thinking about this loss and sometimes finds commentating at Roland Garros a trial because he is haunted by thoughts of what might have been if he had won. 

Interestingly, Faraut jettisons his air of detached curiosity and uses clock captions to ratchet up the suspense of his coverage of the final. He is suddenly making a sports film rather than a psychological profile. Perhaps Godard had it right after all. But, while it may end in traditional James Erskine territory, this comes closer to Costard's Best study and Douglas Gordon's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), as the outcome of the match matters less than the subject's physical and emotional exertion in striving to win it. 

Superbly edited by Andreï Bogdanov, the footage is made all the more atmospheric by Léon Rousseau's acute sound design and a brilliant score by Serge Teyssot-Gay, which wittily evokes sports show theme tunes, sci-fi electronica and the twanging strings of a Spaghetti Western showdown under a broiling sun. Although sparingly used, Mathieu Amalric's voiceover is also on the button, as Faraut pays tribute to both McEnroe and De Kermadec, whose contrasting approached to their common sport gives this engaging and revealing film a cogency to match its elegance.

In the days before reality television, it would have been sufficient for a documentarist to have chronicled a bid to swim the perilous Oceans Seven marathon. Nowadays, however, actuality subjects are not allowed merely to have a goal. They also have to go on a journey. But, as Stefan Stuckert discovered during the making of Against the Tides, it's not always possible to dictate the direction of travel and, as a consequence, this profile of British endurance athlete Beth French ends up nowhere near its intended destination. 

On 16 July 2016, French announced her bid to become the first person to swim the Oceans Seven in a single year. At home in the water since she was a child, she knows the challenges presented by each stretch will test her to the limits. But she is determined to take the risk and, during a training swim off the South Coast, lead support Martin James explains the conditions under which she must perform, which include wearing a standard issue swimsuit and avoiding all contact with the pilot boat and its crew while she is competing. 

Back in the Somerset village of Milverton, French home schools her eight year-old son, Dylan, and explains that she is doing the Oceans Seven to show him what can be achieved if you set your mind to something. However, French's own mother, Suzey, disapproves of a single parent attempting such a potentially dangerous undertaking, as one mistake can leave Dylan to fend for himself. But French is undaunted and decides to take Dylan with her so they can share the experience.

The first leg takes French to Northern Ireland for the 21-mile North Channel. She is warned in advance that there are more jellyfish in the sea than usual and that a couple of swimmers were forced to give up after being stung. Moreover, she can expect the water temperature to be as low as 12°, while the waves will often be choppy. Assistant and sports scientist Ella Howton is excited about getting the bid underway, but six days of stormy seas cause the team to call it quits, as they can't afford to stay any longer. 

As a self-employed masseuse working three days a week, French needs to find £83,000 to bankroll her bid and she is helped out by a local band playing for free in the village hall. Despite her concerns about funding, she arrives in Los Angeles to attempt the 21-mile Catalina Channel, with its strong winds, cold currents and sharks. Leaving Dylan with the support team, French opts to start at 11:30pm because it's more morale-boosting to swim into the light. However, conditions slow down her stroke speed and, at one point, the support vessel skipper considers intervening. But, despite vomiting in the water, French completes the swim in 19 hours and five minutes  

Two months later, she travels to Hawaii to tackle the Molokai Channel, a 28-mile stretch with heavy swells, brisk winds, heavy currents and sharks. She has fond memories of these waters, which she had never dared dream to see when she was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis after seven years of mystery ailments that had confined her to a wheelchair. When a specialist informed her that her condition was her own fault, she found the fury that enabled her to push beyond her limitations and she felt at home in the Hawaiian water. 

The discussion about sharks disturbs Dylan, however, who becomes sullen in the days before the swim, which has been arranged around French's menstrual cycle in order to avoid attracting predators. She sets off at 3:30pm and runs into a tiger shark some time after darkness falls. It swims under the support kayak and takes a look at French before disappearing. But the air of controlled panic on the pilot boat is entirely understandable and there's huge relief when she completes the crossing in 17 hours and 58 minutes. Moreover, while in the water, French becomes aware of the need to spend more time with Dylan to reassure him that she is going to be safe and that she can't fulfil her dream without him. 

Back in Somerset, French reveals that Dylan has suffered from social and educational issues and that he begged her to withdraw him from school because if was sheer torment. She is told that he is on the autistic spectrum and hopes that her way of parenting can help him overcome his psychological problems in the same way she conquered her physical constraints. We also meet French's father and sister, John and Amber, who follow her progress in New Zealand online, as she prepares to take on the Cook Strait.

She checks in via Skype after being forced to abandon a first attempt after eight hours because the conditions were too severe and Dylan lets everyone back home know that his mum had left him sleeping with a note to which he had replied with a drawing of a sad face. Ten days later, however, French tries again to cross the 16 miles of strong tidal flows, 16° temperatures and yet more sharks. The current plays havoc with her trajectory, but she makes land after nine hours and 11 minutes. In ignoring James's instructions, however, she generates a friction that prompts him to resign from the project and return to his home in Southend. 

While recovering from her exertions and managing the grumblings from her body, French explains that the strain of having to combine private lives with the challenge drove her and James apart. But Dylan is also beginning to tire of the adventure and, during her three-month recuperation period, he announces that he is now against his mother doing the final four swims. Nevertheless, French sets off to Spain to traverse the Strait of Gibraltar and, with Howton missing because of her brother's wedding, French relies on policeman Toby Hatchard to mind Dylan. She also puts herself in the hands of the boatman to feed her during the crossing. 

This is a busy shipping lane and, while it's only eight miles across, the Strait is also affected by high winds and strong currents. For once, however, the Jaws factor can be forgotten and French completes the course in four hours and 24 minutes. She is glad to have ticked off another leg of the septet, as she is aware of the growing need to keep Dylan onboard, as the travel and the changes of personnel around him are having a dislocatory effect. Suzey is particularly concerned, as she has noticed changes in his behaviour on the days she schools him. 

Yet Dylan flies with French, Howton and Hatchard to Japan to take a tilt at the Tsugaru Strait. Unfortunately, he has little freedom in the hotel and begins acting out. Moreover, his anxiety causes him to make cruel remarks that hurt French when she is trying to psych herself up for a difficult swim over 12 miles, with difficult currents, cold water and `hostile marine life'. But she's on the starting line at 3:30am and is going well when she has an epiphany that her son has to come first. As Howton tries to talk her through the consequences of her decision, French announces that she has proved it's possible to complete the Oceans Seven in a calendar year, but that this isn't as important to her as salvaging the relationship with her son before it's irreparably damaged. 

Back on land, Howton is clearly frustrated and points out that French isn't alone in the project and that lots of other people have made sacrifices to help her realise her aim. It does seem an odd time to reach such a momentous conclusion, as the final two legs of the challenge were much closer to home in the Northern Channel and the English Channel. But the fact that Dylan had tried to hide her swimsuit to stop her going convinced her that she was harming the person who matters most to her and there could only be one outcome. 

As the travel across Japan by train, French claims that the journey mattered more than the record before a caption reveals that Dylan was diagnosed with autism five months later. In February 2018, he joined his mother in a charity swim and we see a phone clip of Dylan thanking people for the sum raised. A closing note reveals that French continues to swim, but we aren't told in what capacity. 

Similar in many ways to Maiden (2018), Alex Holmes's portrait of the round the world yachtswoman Tracey Edwards, this is a difficult film to watch and identify with. While its focus is French and her bid to make history, it has an inspirational undercurrent that sweeps it along. But, while the flashbacks to French's harrowing childhood help explain her drive, they don't examine any of the residual issues that spill over into relationships with her parents and her son. Similarly, French's decision to quit in mid-swim without taking any of her long-suffering support team into her confidence feels insufficiently explored. 

It's one thing to make no mention of Dylan's father, as the subject of a documentary is entitled to some privacy. But it's difficult to know whether Stuckert is exercising laudably noble discretion or a ruinous lack of curiosity in accepting at face value a judgement that dashes his documentary against the rocks. Thus, while it's possible to admire French for both her athletic and moral courage in quitting while she feels she's ahead, it's also easy to empathise with Howton and her sense that she has been robbed of the chance to play a pivotal (and probably life-defining part) in an unprecedented achievement. 

One also has to feel for Stuckert, who is left with editors Becky Way and Paul Carlin to cobble an ending that is very different to the one he must have envisaged. Despite a few too many scenes feeling staged, he and cinematographer Damian Daniel Paul can be justifiably proud of the aerial and underwater images that capture French's heroic efforts. But Stuckert leaves two questions unanswered: why did it take so long to diagnose the conditions affecting both mother and son and would French have continued if she had understood the root cause of Dylan's distress?

It's true what they say about oak trees and acorns. Take the case of Kartemquin Films, the Chicago-based documentary outfit responsible for such landmark Steve James pictures as Hoop Dreams (1994), The Interrupters (2010) and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016), as well as Bing Liu's skateboarding memoir, Minding the Gap (2018). Kartemquin was launched in the mid-1960s with items like Gordon Quinn and Jerry Temaner's The Inquiring Nuns (1968), a blend of cinéma vérité and vox pop that took its cues from Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer (1963) in sending twentysomething Adrian Dominican sisters Marie Arné and Mary Campion on to the streets of the Windy City to ask people a single, simple question: `Are you happy?' 

Reissued in cinemas 51 years later, this 16mm monochrome featurette not only offers a fascinating snapshot of American society at the end of the Swinging Sixties, but it also provides a welcome corrective to the kneejerk offence-taking and unfiltered bile-spewing that has become the millennial norm, thanks to social media.

Filmed in a car driving into the city towards the end of 1967, the opening coda sees the nuns consult the unseen Quinn and Temaner about the best way to approach complete strangers and how to explain the presence of the filming equipment. Sister Arné is the more garrulous and nervous about the assignment, while Sister Campion takes in the advice and demonstrates a steadier hand in holding the microphone. However, they get off to a confident start in chatting to a couple of young musicians on Wabash Street, who feel happy, but worry about the war in Vietnam. One calls President Lyndon B. Johnson `a crook and a phony' and makes the sisters laugh nervously when he reveals that their band's name is The Bubblegum Orgy. However, he claws things back by claiming that music is an expression of love and he urges people to accept modern artists like Pablo Picasso because the world is changing. 

After meeting an elderly black woman who is thankful that no one in her family is dependent upon her, a nervous musician on his way to an audition wishes people would take more time to understand each other instead of jumping to prejudicial conclusions without knowing the facts. He suspects Jesus wouldn't like what he saw if he returned to Earth and hopes for peace and more acceptance. The sisters enjoy talking to him and are moved by a middle-aged man who tentatively confides that he enjoys Sundays because going to church brings back happy memories of his mother. By contrast, a blonde woman is gurgling with excitement, as her college football team had won the previous evening and she had shaken hands with entertainer Jimmy Durante. Her tongue-tied husband can't think of an answer to the question off the top of his head, but we don't see his wife's reaction to his response. 

Another name from Hollywood's heyday crops up when the nuns are introduced to Lincoln Perry, who was better known as Stepin Fetchit, the first African-American movie star whose comic antics have since fallen into disrepute. He shows them pictures of him posing with Shirley Temple, Will Rogers and Robert Gourlay and insists they keep hold of them, while explaining that daily Communion makes him happy. His companion is J. Maloy Roach, who wrote `One Little Candle', the theme song used by Fr James Keller in the TV series about the religious group, The Christophers. When Perry declares that he is 76 years old and has no regrets about blowing a $7 million fortune because the sacraments console him, Roach recites a poem entitled, `God Is More Than Gold', and the slightly overwhelmed sisters thank them for their time, despite not being entirely sure who they are. 

Approaching the largely black congregation at the St Columbanus Church on East 71st Street, the sisters hear coded messages about identity and self-worth from a young couple and a woman who echoes their views on close family ties before lamenting that people in their confused world don't seem to be able to live side by side in love and brotherhood. An older man is grateful that his children have graduated and found a niche, but he despairs that broken homes mean that many people don't have such advantages. A mother is similarly aware of her good fortune in having money and a nice home and wishes that there was less inequality. No one openly mentions Civil Rights or racial prejudice, but a man in sunglasses refers to urban poverty and responds to being asked about what could make him happier by hoping for a magical answer to the war and the social ills blighting the nation. 

A well-heeled couple discuss the principles they have taught their children in the hope that they will work hard and bounce back from setbacks, while a young man in a snazzy flat cap claims to be doing okay because he always tries to look on the bright side. He raises a smile by suggesting that thinking happy thoughts helps bring about happiness, while the last woman interviewed at this location believes that life would improve if the war ended and the boys fighting it came home. One is left to wonder whether the chirpy fellow was drafted and made it through his tour of duty in one piece.

Moving on to the Museum of Science and Industry, Campion and Arné pose their question to the people looking around a mathematical exhibition. One woman puts her happiness down to her marriage, although the man with her (whom one presumes is her husband) claims that you'd have to be half crazy to be happy all of the time. While they are rather monosyllabic, a British mathematician is more eloquent and admits that there are aspects of American life that trouble him and opines that it's clear from the nightly news broadcasts that there is much to be unhappy about. 

An Eastern European man is delighted to be in the US because it's democratic, although a Frenchman and his companions condemn egotism and opine that life could be improved by not having ideas forced upon one down the barrel of a gun. A young couple discuss loneliness and the fear that prevents one from making consistent decisions, while the woman regrets the poverty and shabbiness she sees around the city. She shrugs because individuals are powerless to change things on this scale, while a middle-aged man ends this segment by claiming that everyone would be much happier without Jesus Christ. 

Sounding like something from an Open University programme, the organ score by the debuting Philip Glass plays over the junction into the second sequence of interviews. The question remains the same, but the setting has shifted to a Co-op supermarket, where the first subject is a Caucasian family man who believes that having a purpose makes life worthwhile. An African-American lawman insists he is always happy, but doesn't always find people easy to get along with. When asked if that makes doing his job difficult, he claims things would be less stressful if there was less evil in the world. A young woman in sunglasses and a headscarf admits to being unhappy because other people are so unpredictable and this makes it difficult to be content in one's work, social and sex lives. Instead, she takes pleasure from little things, such as sleeping late. 

A recent graduate concurs that there can never be perfect happiness in explaining that his business is booming, while his private life is in the doldrums. As a young mother wishes that the war could end and that the people she sees from her window could be better off, Sister Marie replaces the bobble hat that has slipped off the head of the interviewee's baby, who is sitting happily in a shopping trolley. Given that the woman reckons that happiness lies in being useful, she must clearly appreciate the simple gesture that is very much in keeping with the affable manner in which the sisters approach their task. 

An older woman has no doubt that people are the key to happiness, as she reassures the nuns that she likes them, even though she's a non-Catholic. A grinning youth declares that school makes him unhappy, while a man in a kagool challenges the relevance of the question, as he doesn't feel that happiness across the different aspects of his life can be bundled conveniently into a single sentiment. He admits to deriving satisfaction from his job, but wishes the war would end. Sister Mary clearly takes a shine to this man with a moustache and beams at him, as he ponders the deeper meaning of existence and concludes that he is possibly not seeking happiness because it's so hard to define. 

A couple under an umbrella claim that raspberries make them happy, while pettiness grinds their gears. They are particularly peeved with a staff member at the Co-op, who was rude to them. Yet, when the sisters ask if people have a prominent part to play in happiness, the husband (who is a teacher and jokes that he has to like people professionally) rather scoffs at the question and exhibits a bit of the niggardliness he had just condemned. A female sociologist is more upbeat, as she reveals that the majority of respondents to the surveys she conducts claim to be content. She decries government policy in Vietnam, but accepts that it would be impossible to be happy about everything and cites boredom and not having things go well as reasons not to be cheerful. 

Next stop, it's the Chicago Art Institute, where the first interviewees are some sailors on leave from boot camp. They are enjoying being free and not having to take orders, but they are too bashful to go into any detail, unlike the next speaker, who has no hesitation in declaring himself to be happy and avers that he would cut his throat if he ever doubted that contentment was within his grasp. When asked whether the vast majority of people are happy, he suggests that global societal, cultural and economic variants would make this unlikely, but also deduces that differing levels of expectation would impact upon people's estimation of what happiness actually is. However, he ventures a guess that so many people are economically deprived and/or socially humiliated that it's unlikely that everyone has a similar sense of well-being. 

The sisters move directly on to a father and son, who both agree that they are pretty happy. Dad is proud of his wife and three boys and enjoys the problems that parenting and his profession throw up. However, the lack of peace in the world and justice at home trouble him profoundly and he hopes that the situation can improve. He asks why they are interviewing people, but the wimpled duo prove evasive before heading off in pursuit of their next target. The way in which he looks round into the camera suggests that he has either been watching the nuns at work or that the encounter has been somewhat stage-managed. Either way, he claims to be unhappy and, when they press him after reassuring him in unison that they are happy, he qualifies his remark by claiming that joy is such a rare commodity that it would be unrealistic to experience it all the time. 

Having asked a man to translate the answers of three foreign visitors, the pair find another nun, who puts her happiness down to finding Christ and being accepted for who she is. They pass on to an elegant couple who come from contrasting backgrounds. She was raised in a large family and learned how to love and seize the moment in order to achieve `constant sense of self-involvement', while he was separated from his parents during the war in Europe and has been alone for much of his life. He freely admits that he would be unhappy without his girlfriend, but can't guarantee how long that happiness might last. As they walk away and start chatting together, one wishes there was another crew following them to eavesdrop on their reaction to being interviewed and discern the effect that the encounter has had on them.

However, we are whisked on to the next subject, who is a middle-aged female musician. She concedes that she isn't as happy as she might be and suggests that the introspective nature of her art makes it difficult to find true happiness. When she turns the question back on the sisters and they quickly affirm that they are fine, the woman hints that she's the kind of person who needs someone to take care of and wonders whether she might feel better if she didn't only have herself to worry about. 

Driving home, the nuns reflect on their experience. Sister Campion was impressed by how open people were and how readily they gave their opinions, while Sister Arné notes that the more interested they were in the answers, the more revealing a subject tended to be. They admit to having enjoyed the task and are intrigued by the power of communication and the diversity of the views they elicited. How interesting it would be to reunite them today to show how much the world has or hasn't changed. 

Chosen at random from the sisters as the St Denis Church in Chicago's Southwest Side, Sisters Marie Arné and Mary Campion quit the order some time later. The former became Kathleen Westling and raised a family with Chicago Tribune sports writer Gary Reinmuth while working as a counsellor in the city's poorer districts. She now resides in New Buffalo, Michigan, but has remained friends with Catherine Rock, who also juggled being a wife and mother with her duties as a school superintendent in Florida. Jerry Temaner also appears to have abandoned his vocation, as he doesn't seem to have any credits after 1970. But Gordon Quinn continues to direct and produce and has over 30 titles to his credit.

Made for Chicago's Catholic Adult Education Centre at a cost of around $16,000, the film was never intended for general release. However, it has acquired a cult cachet and should pull in a decent audience at Curzon Oxford on 28 May. While its debt to Rouch's pioneering actuality is acknowledged during the film itself, it's worth noting that documentarists had been using vox pops since the 1930s. Indeed, the format was somewhat in vogue in the 1960s, having also been employed by Pier Paolo Pasolini on Love Meetings (1964) and Vilgot Sjöman on I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), which tackled the more contentious issues of gay rights and sexual freedom. Swiss film-maker Kristina Konrad similarly made use of vox pops recorded in the run-up to Uruguay's 1989 amnesty referendum in One or Two Questions (2018), while New Zealander Florian Habicht canvassed the opinions of strangers to guide the action in his ingenious 2011 romcom, Love Story. 

But, half a century on, one could be forgiven for thinking that this had been filmed during the Eisenhowerian 1950s rather than the winter after the Summer of Love. For cineastes, the highlight will undoubtedly be the meeting with Stepin Fetchit, whose eagerness to be recognised is tempered by a genuine humility and a sincere spirituality. It's instructive, however, to see how reticent people are to say anything too contentious and one can only wonder what sort of reception two nuns wielding a microphone could expect today. Any volunteers?

News moves so quickly that film-makers learned long ago that there was little to be gained by chasing the headlines. Documentarists often have smaller windows of opportunity and multimedia artist Tim Travers Hawkins clearly felt the time was right to rush release XY Chelsea. Unfortunately, the agenda has moved on since the closing captions were hurriedly amended and this profile of whistleblower Chelsea Manning now feels as superannuated as it is gnomic. 

According to the opening screed, the number of documents classified as secret by the United States government increased after 9/11, with 92 million a year being withheld from public scrutiny. Yet, some four million people had access to the files and, in January 2010, an Iraq War analyst published a cache on WikiLeaks to create the biggest leak of state secrets in history. As we see Chelsea Manning waiting to be interviewed by Tim Travers Hawkins, we hear her state in voiceover that she likes coming-of-age stories. She also claims to have a right to tell her tale because she isn't the person people think she is.

A cut takes us back to 17 January 2017, as lawyer Nancy Hollander gets a call about President Barack Obama's office commuting Manning's 35-year sentence for publishing classified information on WikiLeaks. Hollander and transgender rights activist Chase Stangio speak on Manning on the phone from Fort Leavenworth, where she complains that she feels institutionalised after seven years behind bars. She also calls best friend Lisa Rein and they discuss outfits in Elle magazine, while Hollander consults with ex-military appeals lawyer Vince Ward about a clemency suit. He opines that it takes a mix of optimism, courage, ignorance and self-centredness to become a whistleblower. But, in Manning's case, he is certain that the overriding motivation had been to right a wrong.

A camera accompanies Hollander and Stangio, as they go to collect Manning. On the soundtrack, we hear radio hosts and callers voicing diametrically opposed views on Manning's release. amidst speculation that several failed suicide bids during her transitioning might have played a part in the decision. We see Manning board a plane and sit in shocked relief before reaching a safe house in May 2017, where she informs Stangio that her first task is to learn `how to be' again.

While applying red lipstick in a mirror, Manning reflects upon an Oklahoma childhood (as Bradley Manning) with an abusive alcoholic father, whose second wife threw her out of the house for being gay. Her Welsh mother also drank heavily and, when her parents split when she was 13, Manning had a crisis of identity and felt the best way to resolve it was to join the military, as the US was at war with Iraq following 9/11. 

Enjoying her freedom and keen to connect with the wider world while finding her feet, Manning joins Twitter. She jokes about whether her photo reveals too much cleavage before disclosing the fact that her lawyer had advised against her coming out during her court-martial in case it was deemed a stunt. Such was her mental state, however, that she felt it was imperative. In a telling aside, Manning also mentions being judged for her body in prison, with guards, inmates and visitors looking her up and down, while she was made to feel highly uncomfortable during strip searches. 

Harking back to 2010, Private First Class Bradley E. Manning came home on leave and felt so disturbed by the lack of awareness of what was going on in the war that he decided to pass documents to WikiLeaks. Using a rewritable disc with `Lady Gaga' scrawled on it, Manning uploaded 750,000 items between February and May 2010. Among them was a video showing American soldiers killing 12 Iraqi civilians (including two Reuters journalists) in Baghdad. At the time of the incident, the victims had been labelled `enemy combatants' to justify the attack. But, as the footage went viral, WikiLeaks branded the action `Collateral Murder' and pressure mounted on the Obama administration to act.

Following footage of the massacre, we see computer text from 2010, as Manning wonders whether they are being heroic or naive in leaking the material. The answer is provided by news clips of Manning under military escort and then in close-up, as a sentence of 35 years is handed down, We hear an audio recording of Manning apologising if her actions have hurt anyone or harmed the United States. She also considers why she felt she had it in her power to change the world for the better. 

Now free, Chelsea Manning is coming to terms with being trans, as well as being a traitor in the eyes of many right-leaning Americans. She insists she doesn't feel guilty about anything. But Hollander is worried that she is fragile and that the stress of being a 15-minute wonder who may well be forgotten afterwards will have a negative impact upon her. Nevertheless Manning heads for New York and reflects on the odd feeling that she's in a time warp because so much has changed in the seven years she has lost. 

We flashback to a year before Manning's release to hear her telling Rein over the phone about drawing up the maps that had been used to conduct aerial raids. Despite never actually pulling a trigger, helping the gunners target the victims made her feel guilty, as she knows the strikes are never as surgical as the brass hats would have people back in America believe. 

Back in 2010, Rein reveals that she had never met Manning in the flesh before she was jailed and had only sparked their friendship by sending a supportive letter. She regards setting Manning free to be her life's work and the camera records their first encounter in a New York hotel, as they make awkward small talk about the effect that the hormones Manning has been taking have had on her appearance. 

Another flashback rewinds us 10 months to when Manning had tried to kill herself. Ward confides that he has never seen her happy, as captions reveal that she was kept in an all-male facility after identifying as female. Moreover, the authorities continued to give Manning male haircuts, in spite of the fact that she had won the legal right to begin transitioning in 2014. She tells the camera how she had started implementing defence mechanisms as a teenager and is finally sure that she can get through this period of pressure and uncertainty and start living as the woman she knows herself to be.

A day before her first press interviews in New York, Manning meets publicist Christina Dipasquale, who runs her through some of the questions she might expect to be asked. We accompany her to the New York Times office to sit in on a session with journalist Matthew Shaer, in which Manning avers that she was going to go public before her arrest, but feared that her trans status would be used against her. 

As we see images of Manning snoozing on the Subway, we hear radio chatter supporting her actions because a nation should not keep its people in the dark in order to act in possibly shameful secret. The screen fills with drone footage that eerily resembles something from a combat video game. as Manning types to her handlers at WikiLeaks that she couldn't let these crimes stay hidden within the system or inside her head. A caption reveals that Manning also exposed cases of detainee abuse that the authorities had neglected to investigate, as well as 15,000 unreported civilian deaths. 

Cutting away from Manning staring at herself on a Time Square billboard, we go to Wales to meet her mother, Susan, who is recovering from a stroke. She had visited her child in prison, but Manning had prevented her from returning. Susan admits that she still finds it hard to stop thinking of her child as Bradley and fondly recalls him whizzing on a wheeled chair between the three computers he had dotted around his bedroom and wishes that she could give Chelsea a hug.

Back with Team Manning, Ward suggests she has a long journey of self-discovery ahead of her and it's clear from the abuse she receives on Twitter that she's in for a bumpy ride. As her hair grows longer, Manning does a swimsuit shoot for Vogue. However, she also appears before a live audience for an interview with Larissa MacFarquhar of The New Yorker. This is much a tougher interrogation, as Manning is asked about Julian Assange's refusal to redact names from the leaked documents and putting lives at risk. Manning disputes the government claim that informers suffered, but MacFarquhar keeps pressing and Manning looks decidedly ill at ease as she swears that she was familiar with the documents and didn't simply leak them blindly. She also stresses that she wanted damning evidence to be seen and chose WikiLeaks because she felt that Assange had the tools to handle the information and needed to make a quick decision, as she was due to report back for duty in Iraq. 

Away from the spotlight, Manning admits it's going to be tough to process everything she's been through. We hear audio of her pre-court martial recording in which she admits to having been scared when she was arrested. A caption explains that she spent 60 days in solitary in Kuwait before doing 112 days in the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia. In 2012, the UN Torture Envoy described her treatment as `cruel, inhuman and degrading'. Manning wishes she could forget, but keeps having to go over what she has endured. She wishes someone could rescue America from its nightmare, but knows no one is coming and, consequently, she will have to be the one to come out of her corner fighting. 

We read Donald Trump's tweet banning trans people from the military and hear some of the threats that Manning has been receiving on Twitter (her #XYChelsea handle giving the film its name). She feels she is living in an occupied country again, with the government employing suppression tactics to silence any opposition. During a call to Rein, Manning reveals that she's had to install security cameras and we see her taking pictures in a room to check it hasn't been bugged. However, she refuses to let the alt-right intimidate her and speaks at various rallies. Moreover, she announces her intention to run for the Senate against Maryland's Democratic incumbent Ben Cardin. 

With her judgement clouded as her campaign gathers momentum, Manning decides to use her connection with former supporter Cassandra Fairbanks to infiltrate an alt-right meeting. Images of the event appear online and the gambit spectacularly backfires, as Manning is accused of partying with white supremacists when she insists that she had been risking her neck to gather intelligence. She argues with media adviser Janus Rose and campaign manager Kelly Wright about her tactics and the backlash. Eventually, Manning admits she got it wrong and leaves Washington. 

On the drive, she confesses that she is still feeling her way and will make mistakes. Hawkins asks about contact with her parents, as it's clear she is very much alone. But Manning dismisses the prospect of getting in touch with her father because he's in denial over her being trans and doesn't really know who she is. She apologises on Twitter for her error of judgement and CCTV footage shows the Montgomery County Police team conducting a forcible `Wellness Check' on her apartment within three hours of the message going live. Manning wasn't home, but the cops in shot have their guns drawn and she circulates the footage to let the public know how she is being treated. 

We see Manning listening to a statement that has been scripted by one of her aides about her plan to withdraw from public life to heal physically and psychologically. She says she will always identify with those hurting most because she was unwanted and unloved as a child. Hollander laments that Manning will always be looking over her shoulder, as once someone is branded an enemy of the state, the tag almost always sticks. Hawkins cuts to a news report about Manning being arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify to a Grand Jury investigating WikiLeaks. First Amendment lawyer Moira Meltzer-Cohen informs the waiting media that Manning is being strong. But Hollander worries that she can be kept in solitary for 18 months and then put through the mill all over again. 

Following footage of Assange being arrested by British police from the Ecuadorian Embassy, captions reveal that Manning is refusing to co-operate with the inquiry on the principle of transparency. However, as the film ends with a close-up of Manning's face as she declares, `it's never going to stop until we stop them', the majority of the audience will know that she has since been released (on 9 May) and immediately served with a new subpoena prior to being jailed again on 17 May 2019. Regardless of what the next step by either side might be, it's plain that Chelsea Manning's ordeal is far from over.

Given that she's at such a crucial crossroads in her life, it's hardly surprising that Manning should be so guarded in this intimate profile. Becoming accustomed to her new identity and her newly restored freedom seems to overwhelm her - which leaves one wondering why she agreed to give Hawkins such extensive access at a time when a better option might have been to gather one's thoughts in quiet isolation. But much about Chelsea Manning appears to be contradictory and it's frustrating that Hawkins opts against delving too deeply into her personality and psyche. She is clearly reticent about her relationship with Assange and the ethical and political aspects of her actions. Yet no concerted attempt is made to fathom her motives or her understanding of the consequences the leaks have had on the ground and in government circles. Perhaps being given an easy passage was one of the conditions to which Hawkins had to agree in order to ensure such close proximity? 

Whatever the circumstances, this is nowhere near as hard hitting as Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets (2013), which did probe Manning's ties with both Assange and Adrian Lamo, the hacker-confidante who betrayed her to the FBI (and who isn't even mentioned here). It's perhaps not surprising that the style errs instead towards that employed by executive producer Laura Poitras on her respective portraits of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, Citizenfour (2014) and Risk (2016). But what disappoints so consistently here (beside the emotive score by Johnny Hostile and Jehnny Beth) is the passivity of Hawkins's fly on the wall approach, as he settles for tastefully posed soft-focus images of introspection when what's required is a little judicious interrogation. Indeed, the director's lack of journalistic rigour extends to dates, facts and statistics, like the 5.7% of the vote that Manning received in the Senate race when Cardin polled over 80%. 

It's highly likely that Manning will be sought after by documentarists for the rest of her life. One can only hope that, by then, she will have enjoyed extended periods of liberty and stability, as the 31 year-old emerges from this wishy-washy summation of the story so far as a confused and vulnerable soul who needs to be surrounded by people she can instinctively trust without having to play a role other than herself.