Being Cast Out of Eden

Opening with a woman in her late twenties committing suicide by jumping from a rooftop, the action flashes back to Shabnam Tolouei being admonished by fundamentalist brother Bijan Daneshmand for listening to the radio news and defying his command to marry a man she deems unsuitable. Tolouei's neighbour, Pegah Ferydoni, claims to empathise with her plight. But she is much more interested in impressing Daneshmand, in the hope he will propose. However, when she hears the recently interred Tolouei calling to her from a shallow grave in the family courtyard, Ferydoni helps exhume her and watches with astonishment as her spectral friend wanders away.

Meanwhile, taciturn prostitute Orsi Tóth is so disturbed by the sight of a client's face disappearing before her eyes that she runs away naked from the brutal brothel run by Shahrnush Parsipur and violently scrubs herself in the local baths. Across the city, army officer's wife Arita Shahrzad encounters an old flame and thinks back fondly to the time when she was considered an elegant and erudite hostess. Abandoning her martinet spouse, she finds a rundown mansion in the wilderness and announces her intention to start a literary salon.

She is eventually joined by Tolouei, Tóth and Ferydoni, who has since been raped while out alone. The women find solace in an Edenic forest to the rear of the property. But, on the night of Shahrzad's gathering, the military descends and the country's contradictions muscle in through the gates with bluff general Tahmoures Tehrani and his men.

Impeccably photographed by the seemingly ubiquitous Martin Gschlacht and with a haunting score by Ryuichi Sakamoto, this is a frustrating feature on both an aesthetic and a political level. The allegorical allusions to the suppression of a popular democratic movement are extremely powerful, but they prevent the full resonance of the story's feminist aspects. This is doubly a shame, as the confident Shahrzad and the painfully emaciated, but mesmeric Tóth deliver poignant performances. However, much of the staging is stiff and the dialogue often pretentious. Thus, while this won the Silver Lion at Venice, the bestowal seems to owe more to reputation and philanthropy than genuine cinematic merit.

The CIA engineered the Shah's return to protect America's oil interests. But the US's major fuel supplier is now much closer to home, thanks to the NAFTA trade agreement and the Alberta Tar Sands. Some may think it's ironic that the Obama administration has decided to take a stance against BP for the spoliation of the southern coastline when it hasn't raised the slightest objection to the utter devastation of a Canadian wilderness the size of England. But that is the harsh reality of petro-politik, as Shannon Walsh discovers in H2Oil.

The third film on this emotive subject in quick succession, this adds little to the thesis expounded in Dirty Oil and Petropolis, besides some rather unconvincing animated sequences. Clearly, the desecration of a pristine landscape is a scandal worthy of denunciation and the First Nation tribal leaders of Fort Chipewyan prove as passionate in their criticism of the shameless oil companies as environmentalists Kevin Timoney and Tony Clarke, and Dr John O'Connor, whose revelations about carcinogenic pollution and disease among the local population have been blithely disregarded by industrial and political bigwigs alike.

There's no doubt that new mayor Allan Adam's crusade to bring about a change in fuel policy is laudable in the extreme. But the failure to make executives at Suncor and Syncrude face up to their responsibilities in either closed sessions or public meetings becomes unedifyingly repetitive. Moreover, we scarcely get to know residents like Horace Adam, George Poitras, Pat Marcel and Aaron and Cathy Mathers (who have their spring water business ruined by contamination) any better than demonised opponents like Governor Rob Renner or Suncor manager Christine Burton. Thus, while Alan Kohl's aerial views of the scarred Athabasca River region are exceptional, Walsh spends too much time vacillating between half-hearted human interest stories and hard-hitting eco-activism.

Finally, a community closer to home stands on the verge of crisis in Jez Lewis's Shed Your Tears and Walk Away, which follows the first-time documentarist on a series of trips back to his home town of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire to attend the funerals of contemporaries who have either overdosed or committed suicide. However, the plan to discover why so many promising people have died young gets sidetracked when Lewis opts to focus on the struggle of best friend Graeme `Cass' Cassidy to quit drinking and put his life back on track.

Despite having been given two years to live unless he reforms, the 41 year-old Cass spends his time in the park with pals like Michael `Silly' Silcock, a once exceptional sportsman, who has never recovered from the traumas he suffered while serving in Africa with the French Foreign Legion. Adored by his stepchildren, Cass has a kind word for every grieving member of his sorry circle. But his latest attempt at detoxing lasts only a few days and he's soon back among the drunks and addicts, who cling to each other for strength and drag each other down in the process.

There are mitigating circumstances. Hebden was inundated with middle-class hippies in the 1970s and their partying culture became somewhat ingrained. Moreover, many of the victims grew up without fathers and the prospects of remaining in their own neighbourhoods are being irrevocably diminished by galloping gentrification. But Lewis is less interested in the socio-political causes of the problem than in the plight of his mates - hence his decision not to speak to civic leaders or representatives of any medical or charity groups.

Yet, in seeking to highlight their situation, Lewis lays himself open to accusations of exploitation, particularly in the more emotionally fraught sequences. The role of the director has always been problematic in cinéma vérité, as participating in (and sometimes even shaping) the action is part of the remit. But, while it's understandable that Lewis would escort Cass to a London rehab centre (from which he will also resume his education), it's harder to fathom his reluctance to offer him a bed after he relapses during an unexpected visit home.

Ultimately, he billets Cass with Silly and his long-suffering fiancée Di, whose non-wedding day Lewis also records with the same disconcerting sense of compassionate voyeurism as he filmed Silly's earlier confession about his military experiences. The implicit trust that these dejected Hebdenites place in Lewis clearly owes much to his undoubted humanity. But something about this rough, raw, intimate and laudably non-judgemental snapshot leaves a lingering feeling of unease.