Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/7/2019)

Getting closer to the core, Stephen Daldry's The Hours (2002) earned Nicole Kidman the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as Virginia Woolf in the throes of writing Mrs Dalloway, which had been adapted five years earlier by Dutch director Marleen Gorris. However, Simon Kaijser's BBC take on the Amanda Coe-scripted mini-series, Life in Squares (2015), was so coolly received that it drew unflattering comparisons with Sue Limb's BBC Radio Four comedy, Gloomsbury (2012-18). Chanya Button's Vita & Virginia also has its share of snigger-inducing miscalculations. But, this chronicle of the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West does its best to bring bohemian Bloomsbury to life and make it seem relevant and enticing to a millennial audience. 

While Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki) strides into her office at the Hogarth Press run by her husband, Leonard (Peter Ferdinando), Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and her diplomat spouse, Harold Nicolson (Rupert Penry-Jones), discuss modern marriage on the BBC. Vita's forthright views on female emancipation bring a slight smile to Virginia's lips. But they are not shared by her mother, Lady Sackville (Lady Sackville), who threatens to cut off Vita's allowance and take steps to protect sons Ben (Darren Dixon) and Nigel (Sam Hardy) from her bad influence, unless she abandons plans to publish an account of her passionate relationship with poet Violet Trefusis. 

While she is too cash strapped to defy her mother over the book, Vita insists on attending a Bloomsbury soirée being thrown by Vanessa Bell (Emerald Fennell), with the express intention of introducing herself to Virginia. Artists Clive Bell (Gethin Anthony) and Duncan Grant (Adam Gillen) tease Vita about her eagerness to meet Virginia, who catches her admiring eye across the dance floor. Finding themselves alone, the pair exchange compliments before Vita listens raptly to Virginia's post-party musings about capturing and keeping the thrill of a moment of shared intimacy. 

Neither husband encourages a close friendship and, consequently, Virginia turns down Vita's invitation to join her writers' club. However, she offers Hogarth her new manuscript and Virginia suggests that they could do with a bestseller, as her books and the poems of TS Eliot are hardly making them rich. While publishing assistant Ralph Partridge (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) frets over his mistreatment by Dora Carrington and Geoffrey Scott (Rory Fleck Byrne) chastises Vita for trying to write like Virginia, she is warned against becoming a Bloomsbury by Dorothy Wellesley (Karla Crome), when Vita tells her about the correspondence she has started with Mrs Woolf. 

However, Virginia maintains her enigmatic distance and dismisses Vita's suggestion that they should go travelling together. When they do meet in a Kew greenhouse, Virginia prefers to offer frank criticism of Vita's new novel, Seducers in Ecuador, and discuss the thrill of writing. She bustles home in time for Leonard to inform her that Mrs Dalloway is her best yet and she kisses him fervently, out of a mixture of relief and a need to drive out any nascent Sapphic emotions (which are epitomised by the flora she imagines springing up from between the floorboards). Yet, when Vita invites her to stay at Knole for the weekend over tea with the Bells, Virginia is powerless to resist and is somewhat put out to find Dorothy and Geoffrey in attendance, along with Lady Sackville. Over dinner, she counters the gossip they might have heard about her and is grateful to be swept away for a grand tour. Vita shows her the chapel in which she had been married and admits that she has never recovered from the disappointment of having to leave the one place she felt comfortable. Yet, despite baring her soul, she is rebuffed when she tries to kiss Virginia, who finds it difficult to cope with physical love. 

During a stay at Charleston, Vanessa and Grant suspect something is going on, while Nicolson reminds Vita that he has a reputation to uphold and she demands to know why it's okay for him to sleep with footman while she has to toe the line. He insists that she accompanies him on a posting to Teheran, however, and Dorothy goes to keep her company. She writes wittily about her trip to Egypt, but Virginia is so inconsolable during her absence after their first kiss in the hallway of the Woolfs' home that she becomes incoherent while speaking and begins to hallucinate that crows are swooping down to attack her.

Despairing of the doctor (Bryan Murray) who thinks that Virginia should stop writing for a while because women can't cope with two much strain on the grey matter, Leonard nurses his wife with Vanessa's help. But he recognises that Virginia would be better off staying at Sissinghurst with Vita, who has abandoned Nicolson to return home. They sleep together and Vita even suggests that Virginia leaves Leonard to live with her. However, while the vibrant Vita considers her conquest necessary to intensify their friendship, the more vulnerable Virginia feels it more deeply and raises the eyebrows of Grant and the Bells when she describes their coupling as the most perfectly physical thing she has ever experienced.

As fantasy and fear come closer to clashing, Vita feels slighted by Virginia's loyalty to Leonard, who provides her with the stability she needs to create. The couples meet to view an eclipse and Nicolson and Virginia discuss Vita while she and Leonard slumber in a train carriage. She wonders how Vita's biographers will view her and Nicolson avers that much will depend on how the current chapter ends. But it becomes clear from Virginia's letters and Vita's silent receipt of them that the latter is losing interest in the liaison and the former is crushed when Vita shows up at a showing of Vanessa and Grant's paintings with Mary Garman (Thalia Heffernan), the wife of South African poet, Roy Campbell.

Hastening to the water's edge at Greenwich, Virginia contemplates suicide. But the idea for her next novel, Orlando, rises from the Thames and she talks Vita into posing for photographs to include in the text about an 16th-century nobleman who is transformed into a woman. Vita is disconcerted by the project and feels exposed when Virginia quizzes her about the physical and emotional sensations she experiences during sex and romance. She is also frustrated by the fact that Virginia refuses to let her see the manuscript and decides to join Nicolson in Berlin in a bid to regain some control over the situation. 

The revolutionary biography is published and Lady Sackville is less than amused. But Vita is thrilled and dashes back to London to plead with Virginia to run away with her before the gossip starts. Much to Leonard's anguish, she agrees to go. However, she finds a note from Vita to Mary and realises that she will never be able to count on her fidelity. She strides into the grounds at Knole in her nightgown and Vita rushes after her. When she protests that Mary means nothing to her, Virginia explains that she has to let her go and has captured her as Orlando to showcase her many facets and express the love that must now be consigned to the past. 

Captions inform us that the 1928 novel outsold all of Virginia's previous outings and changed the course of her writing career. Moreover, their friendship survived their romance and lasted until her suicide at the age of 59 in 1941. But this hasty tying of the myriad loose ends proves as unsatisfactory as the film as a whole. The name-dropping storyline derives from a 1992 play based on the duo's letters that was written by Eileen Atkins, who went on to adapt Mrs Dalloway for Vanessa Redgrave (indeed, Elizabeth Debicki resembles a lost member of the Redgrave clan). Unfortunately, building a narrative around the correspondence of two such accomplished writers almost inevitably means that the concocted dialogue will sound mundanely derivative. Furthermore, lifting the odd bon mot from the page and putting in the characters' mouths can have excruciating consequences, as when Vita gushes, `I like you a fabulous lot.'

If she's not always well-served by the script (which she co-wrote), Button is lucky that Romola Garai and Eve Green had to withdraw from the project, as Debicki's Virginia is a remarkable creation and Gemma Arterton provides spirited support as the capriciously irrepressible Vita, whether in tandem or in isolation reciting the epistolary prose directly into an artfully gauzed camera lens. However, the spark between the pair feels forced in the same way it was between Keira Knightley and Dominic West in Wash Westmoreland's Colette (2018), which similarly sought to explore how a writer's life feeds into their art. 

Indeed, this biopic shares that picture's lush production values, thanks to Noam Piper's studied production design (which makes solid use of several Irish locations, in addition to Knole), Lorna Marie Mugan's determinedly chic costumes and Carlos de Carvalho's glossy photography. The special effects used to convey Virginia's shifting emotions and Isobel Waller-Bridge's score (which contains one hideously anachronistic electronica passage) are less effective, however. In addition, some of the support playing feels a little Sunday serial, while the decision to cast a black actor as Ralph Partridge seems self-consciously provocative  

Nevertheless, Button should be commended for attempting such an audacious sophomore project after debuting with the ashes-scattering road caper, Burn Burn Burn (2015). Woolf has eluded more experienced directors and, thanks to the compelling Debicki, she comes closer than most to capturing her interiority, intensity and instability. But the less nuanced depiction of Vita as a vivacious and voracious adventuress proves the picture's undoing.

Born in Berlin in 1914, Zdzislaw Jezioranski used the codename Jan Nowak during the Second World War and earned the nickname `The Messenger From Warsaw' for his courageous sorties between the Polish government in London exile and the Home Army fighting the Nazi occupation. Such is his domestic reputation that Wladyslaw Pasikowski's Kurier wastes little time in sketching in background that will be familiar to the majority of Polish viewers. In this regard, the film recalls Harald Zwart's tribute to Norway's most celebrated war hero, Jan Baalsrud, in The 12th Man (2017). But, while this is essentially an exercise in fist-pumping patriotism, Pasikowski and co-scenarist Sylwia Wilkos also examine the tensions between the Allies, as they jockey for position in a postwar world. 

As SS sadist Steiger (Martin Butzke) executes civilians on the streets of Warsaw in 1944, prime minister in exile Stanislaw Mikolajczyk (Slawomir Orzechowski) and courier Jan Nowak-Jezioranski (Philippe Tlokinski) are ordered against starting an uprising by Winston Churchill (Michael Terry) because Poland is now in the sphere of Soviet interest and he doesn't wish to upset Josef Stalin. However, despite breaking his arm during parachute training, Nowak is dispatched to inform Home Army commander General Tadeusz 'Bór' Komorowski (Grzegorz Malecki) to rally the capital against Steiger and his assistant, Witze (Nico Rogner). 

Not everyone approves of the plan, however, and, when General Stanislaw Tatar (Rafal Królikowski) blocks Nowak's departure, General Tadeusz Pelczynski (Miroslaw Baka) adds him to an inspection party flying to Brindisi in order to implore Bor to keep his powder dry. But Nowak's movements are being watched by American officer Tom Dunbar (Bradley James) and by Doris (Julie Engelbrecht), a Swedish woman he had rescued from the boorish Yank in the Savoy dining room. 

Landing near Tarnów, Nowak dismantles the cart sent to collect him to free the wheels of the Dakota aeroplane from sticky ground and hides out in a farmhouse while waiting for his connection. Witze is hot on his heels, however, and murders the widow grieving for her partisan son and torches her property, while Nowak is hiding in the attic. He manages to escape and swaps clothes with guard on a train to avoid detection during a document search. Travelling with Kazimierz Wolski (Tomasz Schuchardt), Nowak has to fight his way out of a railway station after they are cornered by a patrol and have to hide in a cattle cart full of corpses in a siding before beating a retreat. 

Steiger is furious with Witze for letting the duo slip through his fingers and orders him to find Bor and convince him that the Soviets pose a much greater threat to the Poles than the Nazis. They fly Doris in from London to track him down, while Home Army contact Marysia (Patricia Volny) billets him with her sister while she tries to convince her superiors that he's the awaited emissary. Waking from a nightmare in which he's executed as a spy, Nowak takes reckless risks to find Bor and has a couple of narrow scrapes when resistance units spring to his defence against prying German soldiers and quisling Poles. 

Eventually, however, he gets to meet Bor and deliver the microfilm hidden in the wooden handle of his shaving brush. Also present are Colonel Kazimierz Iranek Osmecki (Adam Woronowicz) and generals Tadeusz Pelczynski (Miroslaw Baka), Antoni Chrusciel  (Zbigniew Zamachowski) and Leopold Okulicki (Mariusz Bonaszewski), who hear Nowak breaks the news that Britain won't support an uprising in Warsaw because it's too far away to provide back-up and it has already agreed terms with Moscow about postwar areas of control. They feel betrayed, as Neville Chamberlain had declared war in 1939 to protect them after the 1 September invasion. But they are unable to finish their deliberations because Witze is closing in after being tipped off by Doris. 

As he leaves the safe house, Nowak bumps into Doris and helps her escape from the encircling patrols. She calls Gestapo headquarters while he is fetching her some bedding, as curfew is about to be declared, but the Home Army swoop first and take her away for questioning after he accuses her of being a spy while they danced. Steiger and Witze are lured to the address that Doris had supplied for Nowak's meeting with Bor, but it's Tuesday 1 August 1944 at 5pm and they are about to become the first victims of the Warsaw Uprising. Witze recognises Marysia after sparing her life in the opening scene, but she has no pity on him and nods at Nowak, as he advances with the Home Army to do or die for Poland.

Having just turned 60, Wladyslaw Pasikowski is probably best known in this country for co-scripting Andrzej Wajda's Katyn (2007). However, he has previously visited this period of Polish history as the co-author of Patryk Vega's Hans Kloss: More Than Death at Stake (2012), a treasure hunt that pitted an intelligence officer against a wily SS rival. This homage to Jan Nowak-Jeziorañski is closer in tone to the latter, although it also bears a similarity to Ole Christian Madsen's Flame & Citron (2008), which starred Thors Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelsen in a fictionalised account of the exploits of famed Danish resistance fighters Bent Faurschou Hviid and Jørgen Haagen Schmith. 

Despite sloppy details like bestowing a knighthood upon Churchill nine years early, this is a capably made reconstruction that benefits from solid craft contributions from production designer Wojciech Zogala, costumiers Malgorzata Braszka and Michal Koralewski, and cinematographer Magdalena Górka. But the storyline and the performances take precedent over the visuals, although those not au fait with the Home Army hierarchy might not recognise the many familiar names drinking soup with Philippe Tlokinski's Nowak. Similarly, the odd incident might strike outsiders as far-fetched, while moments of gentle comedy such as Nowak's tumble into haystack during an impromptu bike-riding lesson might seem a tad misplaced. But, even though the characterisation is wafer thin, Tlokinski strikes the right note of dutifulness and determination, as he confounds friend and foe alike to deliver his message, provide his assessment of the Nazi-Soviet situation and do his bit.

The film à clef has a long and largely undistinguished history. There has been the odd classic providing a fictionalised version of fact, including Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), which drew on the life and career of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, and Robert Rossen's Best Picture-winning All the King's Men (1949), which reimagined the dubious dealings of Louisiana governor Huey Long. In the majority of cases, however, screenwriters merely give the characters new names and pass off well-known events as their own invention. 

Returning to Germany after an ill-fated Hollywood sojourn that saw him team Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in The Tourist (2010), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has conceded that he took inspiration for Never Look Away from an article by reporter Jürgen Schreiber about the abstract and photorealist artist Gerhard Richter. However, while the writer-director insists that he took the painter into his confidence and read him the screenplay to reassure him that he was not making a biopic, Richter has accused Henckel von Donnersmarck of disregarding his views on a project that exploits the fact that his schizophrenic aunt, Marianne Schönfelder, was euthanised by the Nazis in a hospital controlled by his future father-in-law, Heinrich Eufinger. Wherever the line between fact and fiction lies in this instance, what is clear is that this three-hour epic is a sincere, if frustratingly conventional attempt to recreate the conditions the German people endured during the middle decades of the last century.

In 1937, Elisabeth May (Saskia Rosendahl) takes six year-old nephew Kurt Bartnert (Cai Cohrs) to Dresden to see the exhibition of Degenerate Art that the Dresden museum guide Heiner Kerstens (Lars Eidinger) mocks in a spiel designed to show patrons how the National Socialist Party is protecting them from the warped imaginings of painters influenced by such discredited ideologies as Communism. When they reach a picture by Wassily Kandinsky, Kurt is so embarrassed at being asked if he could produce anything better than he tells Elisabeth that he no longer wishes to be an artist. But she confides that she likes the image and, having been transported by the sound of five bus horns tooting in unison, she implores her nephew to paint in a way that recreates such a sense of joyous exhilaration.

The Barnerts have been forced to move out of the city to Großschönau because Kurt's father, Johann (Jörg Schüttauf), lost the apartment that went with his teaching job when he refused to join the Nazi Party. Mother Waltraut (Jeanette Hain) keeps hoping he will have a change of heart to improve their life and Elisabeth warns Kurt to be careful what he says around strangers. However, she isn't always able to control her own behaviour and, having been selected to hand a bunch of flowers to Adolf Hitler during a visit to Dresden, Elisabeth returns home to play the piano naked and tells Kurt that the A above Middle C on the family keyboard has secret powers. She urges him never to look away in order to see the truth and he continues to watch from behind his extended hand when Elisabeth is taken away after local doctor Franz Michaelis (Bastian Trost) took exception to her putting a negative slant on his body language in a family photograph on his surgery bookcase. 

The scene moves to Berlin in 1940, as gynaecology professor Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) listens intently to Burghart Kroll (Rainer Bock) congratulating the medical profession on reaching the target of 400,000 sterilisations. He explains that it has been decided that war casualties are more deserving of hospital beds than patients with mental health issues and that doctors are thenceforth required to put red crosses in the notes of those who serve no useful purpose to the state. Among those Seeband condemns to death is Elisabeth, who gets a peak at her notes during her consultation and becomes so distressed in pleading to be spared because she could easily be his own daughter that he seals her fate as casually and callously as he wipes the teardrop off his polished black shoe. 

When Kurt and his parents come to visit Elisabeth, with her mother, Malvine (Johanna Gastdorf), and soldier siblings, Ehrenfried (Jonas Dassler) and Günther (Florian Bartholomäi), they are informed that she has been transferred to an institution far to the east. Suddenly, the latter's suggestion that his uncle should say `drei liter' instead of `Heil, Hitler' doesn't sound so amusing. As they wait at reception, Kurt (who is wearing a Hitler Youth uniform) watches a photographer taking a picture of the nursing staff and raises his hand to gauge his perspective. 

On 13 February 1945, Kurt (Oscar Müller) hears Allied bombers flying overhead and comes out to see tin foil dropping like confetti from the sky. His mother explains that they use it to confuse the radio and radar signals and they look on with Malvine as the planes launch a fire attack on Dresden and Kurt imagines his best friend from the old neighbourhood perishing in the flames. Meanwhile, Ehrenfried and Günther are gunned down somewhere on the frozen Eastern Front, while Elisabeth is escorted into a gas chamber. 

In the days that follow the decimation of Dresden, Seeband is arrested by the Red Army and interrogated by NKWD Major Murawjow (Evgeniy Sidikhin), who cuffs him across the face when he insists on being called `professor'. As he denies any knowledge of Kroll and insists that the weak should be eradicated because they waste precious resources, Seeband is detained in the cells. But he hears Murawjow's wife (Juta Vanaga) crying out in pain during childbirth and is given a privileged position at the prison after saving her life and the baby. 

Six years after the war ends and Saxony becomes part of the German Democratic Republic, Kurt (Tom Schilling) has an epiphany while gazing across the countryside from the branches of a tree. He rushes home to tell his parents that everything is going to be okay because he has cracked the world's code. But, while Waltraut is concerned that he is exhibiting the same symptoms as his aunt, Johann reassures her that he is very much of sound mind because he has realised who he is and come to recognise his own potential. 

Kurt lands a job at a signwriting studio and arranges for his father to be hired as a cleaner, as he can't find any teaching work because he had joined the Nazi Party to please his wife. When his boss catches him sketching after hours, he chides Kurt for producing work that does nothing to boost the spirit of the working man. But he recommends his application to the city's art college, where Horst Grimma (Hans-Uwe Bauer) gives a lecture on Socialist Realism and the dangers of making the same egocentrically decadent decisions as a once-talented realist artist like Pablo Picasso. However, he says nothing when the students taunt the male model holding a giant hammer in a life class and extends his sympathy when Johann hangs himself because he can no longer stand being a third-class citizen.

He dies on the same day that Kurt meets Elisabeth Seeband (Paula Beer), a fashion student who was giving out Western pencils when he made her an ashtray from the torn page of a glossy magazine. She agrees to go for a walk in the park and, as she reminds him so much of his late aunt, he asks if he can call her Ellie. This is her father's pet name and it's only when Kurt is forced to do a midnight flit via the tree next to Ellie's bedroom window that we discover that she is Seeband's daughter. Her mother, Martha (Ina Weisse), catches Kurt clambering through the branches and hands him the suit that Ellie had made for him and had hurled into the night before her father could come in to check she was asleep. 

As Seeband has been reappointed to his former position at the hospital, he moves back to Dresden from Chemnitz. But he is still forced to allow a dance school to use his spacious home and Ellie tips off Kurt that they need to take in a tenant. Martha recognises him when he comes to see the room and has no qualms about him staying. But Seeband takes an instant dislike to Kurt and is annoyed when he bumps into him on the landing after a late-night assignation with dance teacher Frau Hellthaler (Ulrike C. Tscharre). Nevertheless, he commissions Kurt to paint his portrait and poses in the very office in which he had condemned Aunt Elisabeth. Something about the room makes Kurt uneasy, as his gaze goes from the picture Ellie had drawn (and which Elisabeth had used in a desperate bid to appeal to Seeband's human side) to the corner in which she had cowered when the orderly came to take her away. But he has no option but to begin work, even after Seeband upsets him by comparing him to archetypal Socialist Realist, Willi Sitte. 

In 1956, Grimma informs Kurt that he has been selected to produce a mural entitled `The Unity of the Working Class' at the History Museum. Initially, he wants to turn down the project, but Ellie becomes pregnant and he needs the money to support her. She is touched when she sees that he has incorporated her into the pictures as a mother to be. But, when they break the news of their liaison to Seeband, he tells Kurt that Ellie's life could be in danger unless she has an abortion, which he performs in his own home before presiding over a family dinner, as if nothing untoward had happened. In bed that night, however, Ellie tells Kurt of her childhood memories of her father's pride in wearing his SS uniform and in treating the wives of Goering and Goebbels. She had always been scared of him and, now, she has realised that he doesn't put healing others before his own interests. 

Shortly after Seeband is decorated for his services to the state, Murawjow summons him to KGB headquarters to reveal that he has been recalled to Moscow and can no longer protect him from Stasi investigation. He recommends applying for an emigration permit, which he will grant as a last favour. But Seeband persists in denying that he ever knew Kroll and Kurt scoffs about his ability to land on his feet when Ellie receives a letter in which her father boasts of having landed a prestigious job in West Germany. 

Eventually, painting murals to glorify the state drives Kurt to the brink and he sells his car and canvases to college pal Max Seifert (Franz Pätzold) before catching a train to the West on 13 March 1961. As they travel, Ellie muses on how easy it is to leave East Germany, but her husband suggests that it won't be for much longer. They live in a hostel for a while and collect welfare. But they also get to see Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) at the pictures and have the freedom to go where they like. Indeed, Kurt applies to the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf when he hears it has a reputation for avant-gardism and he arrives to meet Professor Antonius van Verten (Oliver Masucci) as Grimma is tearfully supervising the whitewashing of his public murals, as he has become a Non-Person in the GDR.

He's given an open day guided tour by Harry Preusser (Hanno Koffler), who also introduces him to Adrian Finck (David Schütter), who uses the pseudonym `Schimmel' for the wallpaper designs that he hopes will show his rich family that he can make money, too. We see one female artist fire arrows into a canvas, while another uses a knife to slash crimson sheets. Two students paint themselves black and white, while other performance pieces are being performed in the corridors. They also meet Arendt Ivo (Jacob Matschenz), who has created a potato pendulum, before they pause to watch Van Verten caking a wall with grease and felt. Harry suggests he's past his past and more interesting because he never removes his hat. But he is taken by Kurt during their brief interview and he is offered a place for the new term. 

One of Van Verten's conditions for accepting Kurt is that he never shows him any of his work. But he is something of a showman himself, using a lecture to burn posters depicting rival party leaders Konrad Adenauer and Willy Brandt to implore his students to trust art rather than politics when it comes to expressing freedom. A montage follows, in which Kurt experiments with various styles under Harry's amused gaze. He is most impressed with a canvas that bleeds red paint from a plastic bag affixed to the easel. But this demonstration coincides with Ellie learning that her father damaged her womb during her abortion and she exhorts her husband to make his paintings their children. 

During a lecture in which he admits to having nothing to say, Van Verten invites contributions from his students. Kurt pipes up with the notion that winning lottery numbers have more glamour than other randomly chosen digits and Van Verten is suitably impressed to ask to see his work. He is disappointed with the efforts, but still has enough belief in Kurt to reveal that he became interested in grease and felt when they were applied to his skin by Crimean peasants to heal the burns incurred when his plane crashed during a raid. He lost the hair on his head and was severely scarred (hence the hat), but the experience taught him that grease and felt represented his personality and he urges Kurt to be himself in his art rather than who he thinks other people want him to be. 

While staying with Ellie's parents, Seeband shows them holiday snaps from their trips around Europe. He offers to find Kurt a job at the gynaecological hospital in Düsseldorf and he finds himself washing staircases like his father before him. Dispirited, he burns his existing art and sits for hours in front of a blank canvas awaiting inspiration. One afternoon, Seeband calls into his studio to invite him to supper and ask him to collect his new passport from Bonn. While they eat, a paper boy enters the restaurant with the news that Kroll has been arrested and Kurt is too preoccupied with his own woes to note the speed with which Seeband excuses himself and leaves. 

Taking home another diner's unwanted front pages, Kurt reverts to his signwriting style to paint the banner headline in bright red. But the grainy monochrome image of Kroll catches his eye and he creates a grid on a new canvas to duplicate the image in a photorealist style. He returns to home to make love to Ellie for the first time in ages and performs his mundane chores at the clinic with a new sense of acceptance, as he has finally found his purpose. Back in the studio, he converts a snapshot of his younger self with Aunt Elisabeth and follows it with a copy of the four mini-portraits that Seeband had given him for his passport application. Harry is unconvinced when he pops his head round the door, but his métier is repurposing objects by banging nails into them. 

Possessed, Kurt uses a dry brush to scuff the surface of the paintings to give them a reportagic look and he feels the liberating breeze blowing through the open window, as it flutters the other snaps he has left on his desk. As the shutters slam, a trick of the light causes the images of Aunt Elisabeth and Seeband to merge so that his six year-old self appears to be pointing an accusatory finger at his father-in-law. But, if the truth dawns on him, he keeps it to himself as he lies naked with Ellie to rediscover the intimacy they have lost since coming to the West. 

When Seeband visits the hospital, he snubs Kurt on the stairs. But, when he comes to the studio to explain his actions, he sees the composite image of himself, Kroll and Elisabeth and has a jarring flashback to the moment he consigned her to her fate. Struggling to retain his balance and his composure, Seeband beats a hasty retreat and Kurt and Harry exchange puzzled glances. He drags Arendt and Adrian along to the hospital to goof around on the staircase and their antics are intercut with shots of Kurt and Ellie rolling naked across their bed. One night, however, she greets him with the news that she is pregnant and he takes her to the clinic over the weekend to take a picture of her descending the staircase in the nude. 

This forms part of a gallery show that Adrian curates and Kurt has to endure an awkward press conference, as reporters try to fathom his art without an author. As he walks back to his hotel along the river, he passes the bus station. He asks one of the drivers if they would be willing to sound their horns in unison and, for a fleeting second, he experiences the sensation that had taken Aunt Elisabeth out of herself and the images freezes, as he smiles gently in the knowledge that he has now created art to match her feeling. 

It's intriguing, if faintly frustrating that a film about the freedom of artistic expression should take its visual cues from classical Hollywood rather than the Degenerate, Socialist Realist and Avant-Garde styles it scrutinises. To a degree, this makes sense, as Henckel von Donnersmarck is keen to show how life goes on regardless of who is in control. But there's nothing particularly revelatory about the fact that many of the people in positions of power in the GDR had also served the Reich with equally unquestioning loyalty and efficiency. Indeed, the picture's political point is somewhat blunted by the fact that Kurt never seems particularly taxed by the prevailing ideologies, while Seeband would be an unscrupulous brute under any regime. Nevertheless, the passage on the migrant's plight is quietly effective and contrasts strikingly with the Reich's attitude of intolerant austerity, which dictates that, in a time of crisis, a state can only afford to minister to its deserving own.

The superficiality of Henckel von Donnersmarck's themes extends to the Oscar-nominated photography of Caleb Deschanel, which so glossifies the totalitarian everyday that there's too little sense of emancipation once Kurt and Ellie reach the democratic West. Indeed, the differences are mostly made manifest in the artworks supervised by Robert Reblin, which form part of Silke Buhr's exemplary production design. Gabrielle Binder's costumes are also noteworthy, although nakedness plays a crucial role in Kurt's evolution as both an artist and a human being. Sadly, he is the only character to develop in any meaningful way, as the initially perky and creative Ellie becomes a passively symbolic link between Kurt's past and his future, while Seeband (who is played with dependable hissability by Sebastian Koch, who had been the victim of tyranny in The Lives of Others) is never anything other than a self-serving monster. 

In truth, Kurt remains something of a blank canvas himself, as Tom Schilling eschews overt emotion in following the excellent Saskia Rosendahl's exhortation never to look away. This may be due to Henckel von Donnersmarck's eagerness to avoid offending Gerhard Richter, but it makes Kurt a rather anodyne anti-hero whose passion for painting lacks an animating conviction. Maybe this is why Richter has distanced himself from the project (adding an ironic resonance to the German title, Werk ohne Autor), although nothing quite explains the need to disguise Joseph Beuys in the Düsseldorf sequences, which contain countless echoes of the Munich depicted by Edgar Reitz in Die Zweite Heimat (1992). Ultimately, such caution contributed to this lightweight and occasionally reductive epic failing to match its predecessor in converting its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. Yet, like Max Richter's score, it's undeniably polished and undemandingly engaging.

Many critics speak of Cinéma du look with a sneering sense of superiority. In their day, however, features like Luc Besson's Subway (1985), Jean-Jacques Beineix's Betty Blue and Leos Carax's Mauvais Sang (both 1986) were widely feted and it's good to see the style being given a referentially reverential airing in Yann Gonzalez's Knife + Heart, a knowing follow up to the gleefully deranged outsider study, You and the Night (2013), which also pays its nodding dues towards the gialli of Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava, 1970s gay pornography, and a clutch of specifically lurid American thrillers directed by Brian De Palma, William Friedkin and Ken Russell. 

As a masked killer uses a knife in the shape of a sex toy to slay a man picked up in gay club in 1979 Paris, porn producer Anne Parèze (Vanessa Paradis) finds a call box to make a 5am panic call to editor Loïs McKenna (Kate Moran) in the hope they can patch up their doomed relationship. At the studio next day, Anne spies on Loïs through a hole in her office wall and tries to catch her eye while supervising director Archibald Langevin (Nicolas Maury) on the set of her latest 16mm masterpiece. 

Bored with the kind of picture she's churning out, Anne decides to make ordinary blokes the stars of her next venture and offers labourer Nans (Khaled Alouach) a chance to make big money by fooling around in front of the camera. That night, however, Anne and Archie get a call from Inspectot Morcini (Yann Collette) informing them that former actot Jean-Marie Duvernet (Bastien Waultier) - who used the stage name of Karl - has been brutally murdered, Amused by her interrogation, Anne turns it into a camped up scene in her new movie, with Archie playing a transvestite version of herself being harangued by José (Noé Hernández) and Thierry (Félix Maritaud). However, the unit fluffer, Bouche d'or (Pierre Pirol), was close to Karl and is upset that Anne should be exploiting his death for profit.  

Dissatisfied with the way in which he thrusts against a typewriter in the cop scene, Anne fires Thierry, who seeks solace in heroin in an abandoned car parked beside a derelict building. While he is killed by the masked maniac with the dildo dagger piercing the back of this throat (while being watched by the same black bird that had witnessed the first crime), Anne watches in dismay as Loïs kisses her dreadlocked black lover, Moon (Ndoho Ange), on a nightclub dance floor. In her fury, she returns to the studio to scratch a reel of film in the editing suite. 

The next day, Nans is cast as the detective in place of Thierry and Loïs laughs at the split-screen money shot as he gets overexcited during a phone call with Archie's Anne D'Amboise. As the reel runs on, however, she sees footage of Thierry with the words `You Killed Me' etched into the celluloid. At that moment, there's a knock on the door and her assistant informs her that Thierry's body has been found. 

While drinking that night with Archie, cameraman François Tabou (Bertrand Mandico) and his actor lover, Rabah (Jules Ritmanic), Anne decides to call the film Homocidal. They are interrupted by Archie's old buddy, Martin (Thibault Servière), who is now a trans hooker named Misia. They introduce their friends, Patou (Rémi Lauby), Farida (Naëlle Dariya) and Dominique (Simon Thiébaut), who laugh at the hourly rate that Anne offers them to appear in her flick. But she imagines them all in the seedy denouement, in which it's revealed that the serial killer is the box-office clerk at the porn cinema that screens D'Amboise's work. Jumping up at the end of the take after being unmasked as the culprit, Anne triumphantly calls cut and seems very pleased with the way the project is going - even though some of the cast and crew think she's being incredibly callous in using the deaths of their friends for her plotline.

Nevertheless, they all turn up to the wrap picnic, which Anne attends having been turned off by a grotesque cabaret in a lesbian bar, in which a woman is torn apart by a bear. Misia tells Anne's fortune and urges her to keep hold of her dreams. As they speak, Loïs arrives and (after the black bird descends on to her shoulder) ushers Anne into the trees when a storm suddenly blows up. They kiss, but Loïs instantly regrets her action, even though she concedes that she still loves Anne. While the others seek shelter, Misia is left alone in a clearing, where they are stabbed in the back by the black-masked killer, who kisses the dying victim before charging off through the woods. Anne follows Loïs to her rendezvous and pushes her against a wall in the driving rain, as she insists that she still belongs to her. But (unaware they are being watched by the masked man), Loïs breaks free and reminds Anne that they are finished. 

Troubled by a negative image dream of a burning building and furious that Morcini isn't doing more to find the killer, Anne learns from his assistant () that dead gay men are never a priority. He also gives her a black feather found at the scene of the last crime and she takes it to an ornithologist (Agnès Berthon) and her aide, Pierre (Thomas Ducasse), identifies it as belonging to a Chaladre Grackle, a blind bird that has been extinct since the 18th century. He explains that it had lived in a forest to which people had taken the dying in the hope of a miracle. She is shocked when he reveals a clawed hand and his accomplice explains that he has a rare genetic disorder that will cause him to mutate into a bird. 

Dozing off on the train to the Chaladre Forest, Anne again experiences the negative dream. As she sits on the platform, she reads a letter from Loïs asking her to leave her alone, as she cannot forgive the post-picnic humiliation that has ruined her happy memories of their decade together. Innkeeper Vannier (Jacques Nolot) collects Anne from the station and his daughter, Cathy (Romane Bohringer), acts as her guide the next morning. Insisting on entering the woods alone, Anne finds a small cemetery and sits by the grave of Guy Favre (Jonathan Genet), whose mother (Elina Löwensohn) asks her to keep an eye out for her son in the big city, as he's had no luck and needs protecting. As Cathy drives them back to the inn, she explains how Guy and his friend, Hitcham (Teymour El Attar), perished in a fire. However, only the latter's body was found and rumours spread that Guy had murdered Hitcham and started the blaze to mask his disappearance. 

Calling Archie to dig out an old script, Anne offers triple pay to attract actors to start shooting Hex-Rated, as she hopes to lure Guy out of hiding. As the cameras roll, however, Loïs notices a shadowy figure behind Anne in the footage of the Homocidal finale and realises she is being stalked. She calls Moon to collect her and gets a fright when rats chew through the wires and cause a power cut. The lights also go out at the studio and Guy is able to strike at José, who is acting in a quirky torture scene with Archie. Realising that Guy is on the set, Anne calls to him to surrender. But he lunges at her and Loïs is stabbed through the heart when she leaps to her former lover's defence. She dies in Anne's arms.

Heartbroken, Anne drowns her sorrows before going to see Homocidal at the Far West porn cinema. Nans also drops in to see his debut and is mistaken by an audience member for one of Anne's former stars, Fouad. She drops off on the front row and sees Loïs is her place as the dead killer at the end of the movie and looks round to see the undead corpses of Guy's victims in the seats behind her. 

Waking with a start, she sees Nans leaving the auditorium, but stays to watch the trailer for one of her older films in which a father catches his teenage son and his boyfriend in a shack and burns it to the ground. Suddenly, she recognises the similarity between Nans, Fouad and Hicham and rushes to the upstairs hook-up room, to which Nans has been followed by Guy. She calls out to warn Nans as Guy approaches him and he bolts down the staircase into the cinema. Brandishing his knife, he threatens the patrons. But they band together to disarm him and a fresh-faced young man (Nicolas Dax) grabs the blade and plunges it into his belly. Anne looks on in horror, as Guy shoots her a look before collapsing to the floor. 

The film ends with Anne's whispered narration of a reconstruction of Guy and Hicham's romance, as art (or, rather, porn) has to go on, as well as life. As the main credit crawl starts to roll, we see Anne directing Archie in a bacchanalian orgy sequence. However, she wanders past the camera crew when she sees Loïs standing in a pool of bright light. They embrace and smile at one another before François coaxes Anne back to the set and her beloved fades into the white glare. Rather than mourn her passing, however, Anne looks across at Archie (who is dressed as a faun) and beams a gap-toothed smile. 

Proudly brandishing its queer credentials, while also banishing the homophobic undercurrents from such thrillers as William Friedkin's Cruising (1980) and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991), this would make for a fine double bill with Laurent Achard's Last Screening (2011), in which projectionist Pascal Cervo goes on a killing spree sparked by his mother's ambition for him to become a child star. Playfully camping up the 70s porn tropes, while celebrating the sense of community within Anne's studio, this also echoes Robin Campillo's RPM: 120 Beats Per Minute (2017) in highlighting how wider society abandoned gay men and intravenous drug users to their fate in the early days of the AIDS crisis.

Supposedly basing Anne on a real director who fell in love with her editor, Gonzalez otherwise parks authenticity in the wings and allows production designer Sidney Dubois and cinematographer Simon Beaufils free rein to indulge their inner giallista. Brother Anthony Gonzalez's M83 also pay fond tribute to the music of Goblin that has adorned many an Argento picture. However, this magpies images and ideas from a range of Eurosploitation directors, including Jesús Franco, Jean Rollin and José Bénazéraf. Yet, while the slayings are reasonably graphic, Gonzalez is charmingly coy about the erotic content of Anne's movies, which couldn't be more softcore if they had been directed by Charles Hawtrey. 

Sporting a blonde bob that recalls Kathleen Turner in Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion (1984), Vanessa Paradis holds the consciously shaky scenario together. But the fact that so few of the characters beside Nicolas Maury's Archie are anything more than winking ciphers prevents Gonzalez from generating much suspense. Indeed, bafflement is the prevailing sensation, as the nightmares, reveries, flashbacks and film clips jumble together in the minds of both Anne and the leather-faced killer to keep the viewer guessing what's going on until the big reveal comes from out of nowhere. Ultimately, this is closer in tone to Jean-Marc Barr and Pascal Arnold's American Translation and Gaël Morel's Our Paradise (both 2011) than Alain Guiraudie's Stranger By the Lake (2013). But, while this is essentially a parodic homage, Gonzalez is very much his own man and there's an endearing level of compassion beneath the kinky content and compositional kitsch.

Ignorance is bliss because it gives you the excuse to learn. While the pseuds and academics who populate BBC art programmes will kid you into believing that they know everything about everybody who has ever wielded a pen, a brush or a camera, they will have gaps in their knowledge like the rest of us. Fortunately, there are directors like Richard Kovitch, who are able to fill in some of those cerebral chasms with profiles like Penny Slinger: Out of the Shadows, which offers a compelling and cogent insight into the life and mind of a versatile and largely overlooked British artist. 

According to writer Michael Bracewell, Penny Slinger's work had the vagueness and precision of a dream, while her imagination was a deeply disquieting and claustrophobic place that was haunted by sadness and `fingerprinted by surrealism'. Film-makers Jack Bond and Peter Whitehead, lecturer Maxa Zoller, photographer Antony Penrose and curators Anke Kempkes, Maria and Tim Blum, Tot Taylor, and Jane and Louise Wilson all agree she was a pioneering talent, whether making pictures, sculptures, collage, photographs or films. Yet, while she was at the peak of her powers, she opted to drop out and disappear. 

Born in London in 1947 with a club foot and a speech impediment, Penny Slinger was raised in Streatham by parents who so nurtured her talent for art and rebellion that they allowed her to sketch them naked when she was four. She was expelled from her convent school at the age of nine for waving a sanitary towel out of a bus window after a swimming lesson. When the family moved to Farnham, Slinger felt more constrained and began spending hours alone drawing to discover her inner self. We see early items like `Self-Portrait', `Death and the Maiden' and `A Summer's Day' (all 1964), which reflected her leap from monochrome austerity into the colourful possibilities of the 1960s. 

Despite attending Farnham Art School, Slinger was keen to move back to London and she fully embraced the art scene around the Royal College of Art in Chelsea. Over clips from Bond and Jane Arden's Separation (1965) and Whitehead's Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967), the film-makers suggests that the Sixties only really swung for a privileged few and Slinger concurs that she was too busy making films like Stairs, Tunnels and Mirrors and Masks and Mouths (both 1969) and assemblages like `Head Boxes' (1968-69) to indulge in the wilder frivolities. 

She was also part of the debate about the need to find a new purpose for art, which she captured in such films as 1969 Exhibit and The Rhythm of Two Figures and the sculptures `Column Lifecast' and `Mummy Case' (all 1969), which she was able to complete for her graduation show with the help of technician Stan Cook and future effects make-up specialist, Christopher Tucker. As Zoller avers, Slinger was eager to avoid being pigeonholed and films like The Bride in the Bath (1969) gave her the chance to flip the conventional dynamic of a male artist being inspired by a female muse by combining the roles. She enjoyed film because she could warp time and defy linearity in using reflections and confined spaces and the influence is clear of such avant-garde offerings as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien andalou (1928), Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Don Levy's Herostratus (1967), as well as the entire oeuvre of Jean Cocteau.

When she came to do her thesis, Robert Erskine introduced her to Roland Penrose (a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art) while she was making the short, Max Ernst (1969). Through Penrose, Slinger got to meet Ernst in Paris and he confirmed the insights in her film in what felt like a surrealist blessing. But she wanted to explore Surrealism from a feminist perspective in collages like `Leda' (1968), `I Was the Third Party Witness', `Mummy Case' and `Renaissance' (all 1969), which are feted by Zoller and Kempkes for entering what was considered an out-dated and largely male-dominated form of expression.

Around this time, she became friends with fellow artist Suzanka Fraey and they collaborated on the 1971 volume, 50% Visible Woman, which was intended to force readers to see beneath the superficial. Critic Laura Mulvey (who had coined the term `the male gaze') celebrated the tome's `feminist phantasy' in the Women's Liberation magazine, Spare Rib. But Slinger admits that she employed shock tactics in this period because she wanted people to take another look at women's bodies in a phallocentric society. Kempkes suggests the mix of text and collage foreshadowed punk and designer Linder Sterling (who produced the sleeve image for the Buzzcocks single, `Orgasm Addict') had a copy on her shelves. 

Roland Penrose was so impressed with Slinger that he and Michael Kustow included her work in The ICA's `Young & Fantastic' show, which led to her meeting Liverpudlian film-maker, Peter Whitehead. He was making films like Wholly Communion (1965), Charlie Is My Darling (1966) and The Fall (1969) and they moved into a turret flat in Carlisle Street. However, their shared fascination with falconry (from her fixation with Ancient Egypt) led them to working at Lilford Hall in Northamptonshire, which had been the home of Thomas Powys, 4th Baron Lilford, who was a keen ornithologist. They began making Lilford Hall (1969) with Fraey, which combined prowling tracking shots with Slinger and Fraey adopting stylised poses. There's something of the collaborations of Maya Deren and Alexander Hackenschmied about the footage. But they couldn't make it coalesce, even though Slinger believes the best art is a collision between intention and accident. 

She had more control over her collage work and we see `The Upper Hand', an image from her magnum opus, An Exorcism (1970-77), which used photographs taken at Lilford with Fraey and Whitehead. Slinger and the latter moved to the country together, where he focused on falconry and she studied taxidermy to create works like the assemblage, `Requiem For a Dead Falcon' (1970). Around this time, she also put together a solo show at the Angela Flowers Gallery in Soho in 1971, which included items like `Homage to Amanda Fielding' (1970-71). Kempkes claims she became the `It Girl' of contemporary art and she was profiled on the BBC's Tonight in 1975. 

Penrose and wife Lee Miller became her patrons and she spent many weekends at Farley Farm, which was the unofficial headquarters of British surrealism. Antony Penrose recalls some of the famous names who stayed in the house and admits to finding Slinger sexy. When Penrose translated Pablo Picasso's play, The Four Little Girls, she took and role and made a cube with four masks of her face on the outside. She also joined the Women's Theatre Group and, as Kempkes denies that Slinger was ever a passive muse for Whitehead, Zoller claims that she insisted on making their relationship political in order to produce political art. 

Although Slinger had been to feminist meetings, she didn't connect with the Germaine Greer end of the spectrum, as she was less interested in equality with men than in having female traits and talents taken equally seriously. Consequently, she accepted Jane Arden's invitation to collaborate in a group called Holocaust with Fraey, Liz Danziger, Sheila Allen and Sally Minford on a project called A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches. As Arden's partner, Bond produced the play and found a house for workshopping the material and theatres in Edinburgh and London for performances. But the sextet were responsible for the content and, despite the odd contretemps, they succeeded in summoning ideas and emotions from their psyches and channelling them into sketches and tableaux. 

Slinger and Arden also teamed on The Other Side of the Underneath (1972), which was based on the stage production and filmed in a derelict pub near a colliery in Wales. Bond recalls there being tensions with the locals, as many lives had been lost in the pit and Slinger admits that an erotic scene she had to do with Bond put a strain on her relationship with Whitehead. At one point, Arden staged faux therapy sessions with the cast members on acid and cellist Sally Minford's husband, Martin, was so disturbed by the picture that he self-immolated in Holland Park and died of his injuries. Bond had to identify the body and Slinger remembers being shaken by some of the issues that had been dredged up during filming that had not been fully resolved when they were shared. 

The experience also prevented her from breaking up with Whitehead, even though she knew their time was over. They went to France to stay in Mick and Bianca Jagger's house and tried to work on a film idea, as well as Peter Brook's Orghast at Persepolis. But he was still angry with her for what had happened during the shoot, while the fatality had made her concerned that something similar might happen. Eventually, Whitehead teamed with Niki de Saint Phalle on Daddy (1973), while Slinger began work on the photo series that would eventually be collected in An Exorcism. 

One of the first avenues she explored in this project was body image and the way society tried to starve women's minds. In the `Opening' show in 1972, she created lots of mouthpieces and table tops around a central concept of brides and wedding cakes One series of images depicted Slinger as a giant cake, as she sought to expose the flaws in the ownership aspect of matrimony that flies against her belief in romance and union. Looking back, she admits she was trying to push buttons, but Kempkes claims the work as a significant influence on such Young British Artists as Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas. 

She had a grant from the British Film Institute to do a film around food and sensuality, but it was never made as the Angela Flowers Gallery felt that her work was becoming too incendiary after she did some erotic articles for Knave. As this was a pornographic magazine, the spreads drew howls of protests from feminists. However, Slinger insists that she was more interested in the liberation of the feminine and threatened to burn the exhibits in protest once the show closed. A caption states that they ended up in the collection of Madame George Marci Monet in Gstaad in Switzerland, but Slinger felt the wind had been taken out of her sails and her inability to mount happenings around her exhibitions prompted her to reassess her place within the London scene. 

While confronting her demons, Slinger participated in Arden and Bond's Vibration (1974). She explains that she felt her life was her art and the pieces that she created are merely tokens and emblems of her experiences. Bracewell comments on doll house assemblages like `Bird House' (1976-77), `The Red House' and `The Exorcism House' (both 1977), which he considers essential to understanding Slinger's mindset and art during the decade and the Wilsons concur that these interiors reflect her inner self.   

While working on her seven-year photo project, Slinger prepared a screenplay for a film called An Exorcism in 1975. As we see pages from the completed text, she explains that the book was a journey through her life, as well as a detective story. Bracewell links it back to the Neo-Romantics in its bid to subvert the notion of the country house as a place of transformation. Whitehead features in numerous pictures and he acknowledges the darkness of some of the sexual images, but Kempkes and Penrose hail her courage for exposing herself in every conceivable way as part of the rite of passage that would enable her to emerge from the shadows and step forward into a brighter future. 

By the time the book was published, Slinger had moved on and was involved with a new partner, Nik Douglas (with whom she explored a range of Tantric themes). But she remained unhappy with the London art scene and removed her show from Patrick Seale's gallery in 1977 because she felt he was a misogynist and hired her own space to show the work. She was no happier with the way she was treated during the Visions of Ecstasy show in New York in 1982 and was glad to withdraw to the Caribbean island of Anguilla following the publication of Mountain Ecstasy (1978) and Sexual Secrets (1979), which she co-wrote with Douglas (who isn't mentioned anywhere by name). During this period, Slinger created a number of works inspired by the culture of the indigenous Arawak Indians. 

In 1994, Slinger relocated to Boulder Creek, California with microbiologist Christopher Hills (the co-discoverer of spirulina, who is also overlooked) and largely dropped out of the artistic rat race. The various talking heads make their closing remarks about how scandalous it is that academic critics have neglected Slinger and how she deserves to be recognised as an important voice as both an artist and as a woman. The 2009 Angels of Anarchy exhibition in Manchester did much to reignite interest, as did The Dark Monarch show at Tate St Ives later the same year. She has no regrets about anything and is pleased her route has allowed her to skirt slipping between fads and fashions, as she has always done her  own thing in her own way and never been beholden to any group or movement. 

Arriving in cinemas just days after the sad death of Peter Whitehead, this unflinching portrait suggests that Penny Slinger has had the last word on their liaison, for while she has been feted in the media as `Lady Picasso', he barely merited a mention outside the broadsheet obituary columns, even though his modish documentaries had their finger on the pulse of mid-60s poetry, pop and politics. It should also be said, however, that none of the memorials mentioned Slinger, either. 

Inspired by mysticism, fetishism, sexual politics, the body and death, she is clearly the more revolutionary artist, although that is true of almost all of her peers in countercultural Britain. Indeed, she almost feels ahead of her time five decades later. Frank in her appraisal of her own oeuvre and in her assessment of the society that spawned it, Slinger proves so erudite and insightful that Kovitch might have been better off dispensing with some of the peacockish experts corralled to sing her praises. That said, Kovitch might also have included the odd querying remark in the interests of balance, as this does sometimes feel like sanctioned hagiography. 

Nevertheless, he ably captures Slinger's unerring self-confidence and conviction, while editor Zoe Rixon wisely allows viewers time to take in the numerous artefacts on show, which are deftly counterpointed by the score provided by Jonny Maybury and Paul Snowdon's Psychological Strategy Board. Since Kovitch wrapped, Slinger has apparently produced a stop-motion animation inspired by An Exorcism. How nice it would be if this could be included on the DVD release or on a BFI-sponsored collection of her film works.