Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/9/2011)

On leaving Greece around 530 BC, Pythagoras took up residence in the Calabrian colony of Croton and the countryside surrounding the picturesque villages of Caulonia and Alessandria del Carretto provides the backdrop to this dissertation on the indivisibility of animal, vegetable and mineral matter. It opens with smoke billowing out of a traditional scarazzo charcoal mound and drifts on to the verdant hillsides before alighting upon an old goatherd (Giusepper Fuda), as he guides his flock over the rough terrain with his faithful dog.

Each night before he goes to bed, the veteran mixes some grey powder into a glass of water to counteract a niggling cough. However, he is running low and, next morning, ventures to the local church where the housekeeper (Iolanda Manno) exchanges a sachet of church dust for a bottle of milk. As the herder returns to his humble home, the priest (Isadoro Chiera) arrives in the road outside to rehearse the woman playing Veronica in the forthcoming re-enactment of the Stations of the Cross. But the wizened peasant has no time to stand and watch, as he has to take his goats to pasture and he passes the afternoon in gathering snails, which he places in a large pot on his kitchen table with the lid weighed down with a stone.

Sustained by his nightly dose of dust, the herdsman makes his milk deliveries the next day, as the charcoal seller parks his truck in the adjoining street. However, in answering a call of nature out on the slopes, he drops his medicine and ants swarm over the magazine page in which it is wrapped with a freneticism that contrasts with the slow progress made by the snails that have escaped from the pan and slithered across the table top.

At bedtime, the old man realises he has lost his tonic and hastens to the church to procure some more. But nobody answers his knocking in the dead of night and the scene shifts to a small truck pulling up outside his cottage the next morning and three charcoal burners dressed as Roman soldiers get out. Veronica arrives soon afterwards on the back of a scooter and the air is filled with the sound of trumpets and drums as the procession passes, followed by a small crowd of worshippers.

Aware that his master is ailing, the goatherd's dog desperately tries to attract attention by barking at the milling throng. But he is chased away by one of the soldiers and hides in the hedgerow until they have gone. Charging back up the dusty road, the dog corners a straggling altar boy (Cesare Ritorto), who throws stones in order to facilitate his getaway. But the creature refuses to give up and pulls away the stone stopping the truck from rolling down the hill, sending it crashing into the paddock gate. The goats disperse, with one getting into the kitchen to knock over the pot of snails, while others congregate in their owner's bedroom, as he takes his last breaths.

The funeral is not as well attended as the procession. But, in the true spirit of Pythagorean transmigration, the sealing of the wall tomb is match cut with the birth of a white kid, who bleats plaintively as it struggles to its feet under its mother's gentle encouragement. As weeks pass, it becomes more confident and frolics around the empty pen with an inquisitive mischievousness that leads it to scare its companions by knocking over a broom and compete for hegemony in a game of `king of the castle' on an upturned tank.

However, when it is finally allowed to join the grown-ups in the great outdoors (after having its nose tied with string), the kid gets stuck in a shallow trench and the rest of the flock has long gone by the time it manages to clamber free. Bleating piteously, it roams the woods and bounds through the tall grass before finally finding shelter for the night beneath a large fir tree.

Having rigorously avoided anthropomorphism, Frammartino refuses to clarify whether the kid is sleeping or deceased in the ensuing dawn shot and cross-cuts to the tree standing proudly in both the winter snow and the spring breeze. But it is also part of the endless cycle and it is cut down to be carried into the nearby village and shaped into a totem to be scaled by competitors at a well-attended festival. However, the pole has yet another purpose and it is chopped into logs which form part of the scarazzo constructed by three carbonari (Nazareno and Bruno Timpano and Artemio Vellone), who cover the intricate wooden framework with straw and earth that they compact with a patting of spades that rings out like a heartbeat across the locality, as the wisps from the fire smouldering at the centre of the pyre are carried away on the wind.

In the closing scene, the charcoal truck passes the goatherd's seemingly abandoned premises as it makes its way into the village. Smoke curls from a chimney over the red rooftops and disseminates the particles that will doubtlessly gather as dust on the church floor. Life does, indeed, go on. Adopting a quasi-documentary approach that enables him to meld observation with imagination, Frammartino captures the essence of a tightly knit community, while also coaxing the viewer into musing upon faith, folklore, nature, ritual and tradition. Each composition is a pastoral masterpiece, with cinematographer Andrea Locatelli particularly excelling during the Tatiesque Good Friday sequence, which was shot in a meticulously staged single take. However, Daniel Irribarren's sound design is equally impressive, as it combines the noises of nature with silences that suggest both isolation and peace.

The non-professional cast is supremely natural on camera. But it's the goats who steal focus, as Frammartino presents the hircine recalcitrance of their perspective in contrast to the docile humility of the eponymous donkey in Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (1966). But, as in György Pálfi's Hukkle (2002), there is also plenty of gentle humour in this captivating hybrid of rural realism and poetic purity that succeeds brilliantly in making complex philosophical concepts seem accessible, while also lauding life and drawing death's sting.

A keen appreciation of the sights and sounds of the countryside are also key to Semih Kaplanoglu's Yusuf Trilogy - Egg (2007), Milk (2008) and Honey (2009) - which starts with the protagonist's adulthood and reverts to his youth.

Lovingly photographed by Özgür Eken, Egg opens with thirtysomething poet Nejat Isler leaving his Istanbul bookshop to attend mother Semra Kaplanoglu's funeral in the hometown of Tire he has not seen for many years. He is surprised on entering Kaplanoglu's dilapidated cottage to discover that she had been cared for during her last five years by Saadet Isil Aksoy, a distant teenage cousin Isler had no idea existed. She explains that Kaplanoglu had requested that Isler sacrifice a ram on her behalf and he agrees to perform the rite with some reluctance.

Unnerved by how much he is moved by the small-town rhythms that had done much to drive him away, Isler is relieved to escape the admonitory ghosts of former friends and lovers and set off with Aksoy to the distant saint's shrine for the ceremony. However, they fail to find the herd from which the animal is to be chosen and he books them into a hotel on the banks of a volcanic lake. That evening, Isler and Aksoy are invited to join a wedding party and they find themselves becoming drawn closer.

Made and played with aching sincerity, this minimalist anti-drama has been heavily influenced by Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu and Satyajit Ray. But many will be frustrated by the fact that Aksoy has no idea why Kaplanoglu set such store by the ritual, while others will raise an eyebrow at Isler being prevented from leaving for home by a slobbering dog. Clearly, Kaplanoglu wishes to leave the viewer wondering whether Isler will become a better man as a result of his experiences. But this oblique metaphysical saga often seems intent on excluding the audience from its action and meaning.

Reminiscent of Satyajit Ray's Apu triptych, which similarly dissected Bengali life in the 1950s, and imbued with a pronounced Tarkovskyian mysticism, Milk also occasionally risks lapsing into self-importance. But this is an intense exploration of the dramatic social, economic and cultural changes that have affected Turkey's rural communities in recent times. Moreover, the mother-son relationship is endlessly fascinating and the small-town Anatolian ambience is beautifully maintained.

Approaching middle age, Basak Köklükaya ekes a living selling diary produce at the local market. Defying the shift towards mechanisation that is affecting so much of her environs, she continues to use trusted methods. However, with son Melih Selcuk preparing to fly the nest, she becomes enamoured of stationmaster Serif Erol, whose young daughter is in need of a mother. Uncertain whether to resent what he sees as Köklükaya's betrayal of his late father, Selcuk gets his draft papers and has his virility further called into question when he fails the medical. As a result, he misses a date with Saadet Isil Aksoy, the trendy girl he met in a bookshop and who was impressed that he had published a poem in a prestigious magazine. However, wounded by the wider world, Selcuk seems indolently content to be going home.

From the opening scene, in which a shaman exorcises a snake from a woman's body by suspending her from a tree over a pan of boiling milk, it's clear that this is a densely symbolic film that moves with its own logic and at its own pace. Clashes between tradition and progress abound, with Selcuk variously paying a visit to a fellow poet who works in a dehumanised coal mine and pursuing a hunter through some riverbank reeds prior to catching a giant catfish with his bare hands. Even Selcuk's ride on a shiny new motorbike is curtailed by a mysterious seizure that sends him crashing to the tarmac. Yet these instances of compromised machismo only tell half the story, as Kaplanoglu is equally intrigued by the hesitant revival of Köklükaya's femininity, as she ponders whether to satisfy her still-patent maternal instinct.

The concluding (or rather opening) instalment is set in the wooded mountains of the north-eastern province of Rize. Despite Baris Ozbicer taking over from Özgür Eken behind the camera, Honey is every bit as visually striking as its predecessors. It's also marginally more conventional in its narrative. But even though the film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Kaplanoglu remains an intractable, controlling and often obscurantist minimalist, whose predilection for terse dialogue and lingering contemplative shots will make this a challenge for anyone not already attuned to his style.

Six year-old Bora Altas lives in the forest with beekeeping father Erdal Besikçioglu and tea-picking mother Tülin Özen. As he stutters and has difficulty reading in public, Altas has come to dislike school because of the teasing of his classmates and he lives for accompanying Besikçioglu on his rounds, so he can learn about the flora and fauna and perfect his bird and animal calls. But when Besikçioglu leaves to search for new colonies further afield, Altas is left to his own devices and he quickly retreats into his shell when his father fails to return.

The viewer has been warned about the dangers Besikçioglu faces as he fixes his hives in the topmost reaches of the trees. Yet it still comes as a shock to see the branch snap and watch this strapping fellow hanging from a rope above the ground. And it's this knowledge of Besikçioglu's fate that makes Altas's bid to conjure his return all the more poignant. Even though he can't stand the stuff, he drinks milk to please his mother and he even makes more of an effort to read aloud in class, as he comes to appreciate poetry. He remains mischievous, however, and gets a buddy into trouble by refusing to take the blame for his own actions and spends an evening using his bucket to catch the moon's reflection in a pond.

But, while Altas delivers a delightful performance - whether he's whispering with total conspiratorial trust with Besikçioglu, gazing longingly at the jar of reward ribbons in the corner of the classroom or joining his grandmother for a Koran reading to mark the holy night of Mi'Raj - Kaplanoglu's refusal to allow us any insights into what the boy is thinking or feeling is deeply frustrating. Nevertheless, his use of sound to convey the timeless sanctity and beauty of the forest (for all its perils) is masterly and it will be fascinating to see what Kaplanoglu decides to tackle now that Yusuf's odyssey is complete.

The prolific Christophe Honoré's latest outing, Man at Bath, was originally devised as a short for a project sponsored by director Olivier Assayas and a local theatre company to showcase the Gennevilliers district of North-West Paris. Unfortunately, it often feels like a scenario that had been padded to feature length and is likely to disappoint the many admirers of Dans Paris (2006), Les Chansons d'amour (2007) and La Belle personne (2008).

Film-maker Omar Ben Sellem lives with hustler François Sagat, even though they have little in common outside the bedroom. Ben Sellem is about to go to New York to promote his latest picture, Making Plans for Lena, with its star, Chiara Mastroianni. But Sagat is jealous and he rapes Ben Sellem in frustration and is ordered to move out.

As Ben Sellem finds solace with Canadian film student Dustin Segura-Suarez, Sagat draws his likeness on the apartment wall and embarks upon a series of meaningless encounters with American art expert Dennis Cooper and his toyboy Rabah Zahi, Ben Sellem lookalike Sebastian D'Azeglio (whose face he covers with yellow gaffer tape to leave only his moustache showing) and actress Kate Moran and her fiancé Sébastien Pouderoux, with whom he has an awkward ménage after a wincingly twee guitar rendition of `The Man With the Child in His Eyes'.

Taking its inspiration from a painting by Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte, the works of Georges Bataille and JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey, this passes cursory comment on such issues as intellectual incompatibility, physical longing and the nature of the gaze. But Honoré dwells overlong on the sex scenes (which include a threesome with black and Arab partners Ronald Piwele and Lahcen el Mazouzi), with porn star Sagat often being subjected to the kind of leering that the script questions.

That said, the Gennevilliers sequences are more intriguing than those set in Manhattan, which have been shot in HD shakicam with erratic sound and seem designed to justify the casting of Mastroianni, as she meets the press and throws a hissy fit after addressing a class of bored students. Ben Sellem's fling with Segura-Suarez is no more necessary (although the latter's tattooed torso is also lingered over by Stéphane Vallée's camera) and the action rather fizzles out to the echo of Cooper's cutting remarks about bad art.

The tone changes markedly for Michele Placido's Angels of Evil, which draws on two volumes of autobiography for its uncompromising account of the murderous 1970s career of Milanese mobster Renato Vallanzasca. Reuniting with Romanzo Criminale (2005) star Kim Rossi Stuart, Placido has produced an often frantic chronicle that recalls Jean-François Richet's Mesrine duology. But no film with eight credited screenwriters can be wholly immune from issues with structure and characterisation.

Raised by respectable middle-class parents (Gerardo Amato and Adriana De Guilmi), Vallanzasca first fell foul of the law when he freed a circus tiger as a boy. However, following a stint in borstal and the violent death of his older brother, he began selling stolen goods and embarked upon a life of armed robbery after knocking over a supermarket as a 21 year-old.

Dandily dressed and quick with a quip for the press, Vallanzasca always insisted that he adhered to a gentlemanly code in committing his subsequent heists, kidnappings and killings. However, the families of the cops he dispatched tried to prevent Placido's picture from being made and it's easy to see why they would have objected to what is essentially the glamorisation of a brute into a charming rogue.

In his dealings with childhood friend Antonella D'Agostino (Paz Vega) and Banda della Comasina confederates Enzo (Filippo Timi) and Sergio (Moritz Bleibtreu), Vallanzasca is maverickly magnanimous. He even forgives Consuelo (Valeria Solarino), the mother of his son, for deserting him for a respectable businessman during his first jail term. But he regards rival crook Francis Turatello (Francesco Scianna) as fair game and muscles on to his territory with a cockiness that is frequently fuelled by narcissism, cruelty and cocaine.

He also shows little pity to confederates who let him down, including Nunzio (Lino Guanciale) who kills a cop after being caught using Vallanzasca's driving licence at a roadblock. Yet he forges an unexpected alliance with Turatello after they find themselves sharing the same prison. Indeed, the latter even serves as best man when Vallanzasca marries one of his many female admirers (Federica Vincenti) in a ceremony designed as a show of strength to their rivals .

But Turatello perishes in a wave of vendetta killings that also accounts for Enzo, who paid for his collaboration with the police and even more cowardly intimidation of of Vallanzasca's parents in the hope of finding his stashed loot. Yet Vallanzasca survives and makes an audacious escape from a ferry during a transfer. Having fallen in love with Antonella during her increasingly frequent prison visits, he hides out with her before falling asleep in his car beside a phone box after arguing with a caller who had objected to his interview with a Roman radio station.

The freakish nature of Vallanzasca's downfall contrasts starkly with the hideous deaths of Beppe and Fausto - who were respectively crushed by a reversing getaway car and gunned down by the cops when a plan to rob the main tax office was rumbled before it could even begin - and the prison assassinations carried out with ruthless efficiency by an unnamed associate (Lorenzo Gleijeses). Yet in flashing back from a 1980s maximum security cell, Placido merely strings events together rather than delving into Vallanzasca's psyche or placing his reign in its socio-political context.

The story is undoubtedly compelling and Rossi Stuart is dangerously genial. But the tickbox linearity and sketchiness of the secondary characters imposes a superficiality that is exacerbated by the perfunctory staging of the blags, shootouts and gaolbreaks and the bombast of the Negramaro score. Arnaldo Catinari's harsh imagery adds a veneer of authenticity, while Consuelo Catucci's sharp editing bolsters the propulsive pacing. But this is slick instead of steely and in thrall instead of enthralling.

A very different kind of crime is examined in I Killed My Mother, the first feature by 20 year-old Quebecois wunderkind Xavier Dolan, who also stars as the 16 year-old whose drift apart from once-adored mother Anne Dorval makes life in their garishly furnished Montreal home almost unbearable. When not berating the lower-middle-class Dorval in one of his frequent tantrums, Dolan takes solace in sympathetic teacher Suzanne Clément and classmate François Arnaud. However, when the latter's mother, Patricia Tulasne, accidentally lets slip that the boys are lovers, Dorval sends Dolan to a boarding school to teach him some morals and manners.

Considering Dolan's youth, he can be excused a certain flamboyance in directing this lively and disarmingly frank study of teenage petulance. He flits between styles with a precocity that irritates as much as it impresses, while his dialogue veers between the scabrously realistic and the pseudo-poetic. Yet, while the allusions to Arthur Rimbaud and Antonin Artaud are wince-inducingly gauche, there are moments of excruciatingly bleak comedy, particularly when a speed-tripping Dolan gives vent to his latest peeve against the hapless, but by no means uncaring Dorval. However, the rants do become repetitive and a few more tranquil sequences, like the one in which the lovers paint the office, might not have gone amiss. The fantasy interludes and monochrome confessional inserts are also nicely judged. But, whatever its shortcoming, this is clearly a debut to note.

The baleful force is far from obviously visible in Fernando Barreda Luna's Atrocious, which switches between ominous interiors and malign boscage in chronicling the encounter between a Spanish family holidaying in Garraf Woods outside Sitges and a girl named Melinda who mysteriously disappeared on 2 October 1940. Heavily reliant on Ferrán Castera Mosquera's handheld point-of-view and night vision photography, this is the latest picture to exploit the `found footage' gambit that has become more than a little clichéd in recent times.

Opening with caption averring that the mind is like a labyrinth in which it's easy to get lost, Luna crash cuts into camcorder footage of an unspeakable act that rewinds to a police warning notice. The scene then shifts to 30 March 2010, as siblings Cristian Valencia and Clara Moraleda discuss the Melinda myth while trying out the camera they have borrowed from friend Sammy Gad Gonzalez so they have one each on their vacation.

They use the cameras next day to film the passing landscape as they travel to the Catalan coast with parents Xavi Doz and Chus Pereiro, younger brother Sergi Martin and faithful dog Robin. They also accompany them as they push through a locked gate to explore the hedge maze that abuts the property where Pereiro grew up and which the family has avoided for the past decade. Even when Doz's old pal Jose Masegosa drops in for a kick about, the lens captures every detail.

Valencia and Moraleda inform Masegosa they are making a documentary about Melinda and he agrees to be interviewed. He tells them there are many versions of the legend, but warns against being enticed by the sound of her crying and turning one's back on her. Inevitably, however, they fail to heed his words after becoming distracted by the discovery of a television and some Bruce Lee videos. Consequently, they wander back into the maze without a care in the world and Valencia larks around the well in which Melinda is supposed to have drowned.

However, he suspects they were not alone on their ramble and searches his footage for evidence of an obtruder. But the realisation that Robin has gone missing after spending the night barking at the gate deflects his purpose and they defy Pereiro to search for him. They find his body at the bottom of the well and agree not to tell Martin the distressing news. But he vanishes in the night and Valencia and Moraleda follow their distraught mother into the pitch blackness in the hope of finding him.

It's very much to the credit of Luna, Mosquera and sound recordist Óscar Grau that the lengthy ensuing passage of green-tinged PoV footage proves so suspenseful. Valencia and Moraleda become separated and the boy becomes increasingly afraid after someone or something makes a grab at him. Eventually, he finds his sister tied to the pillars of the folly at the centre of the maze and they stagger back to the house after she steps on a nail sticking up from a stray piece of wood.

The whimpering sounds of dread coupled with the disorienting visuals are unnervingly effective. But things spiral out of control once the kids return indoors. Moreover, the credibility of the `found footage' conceit is stretched to breaking point as Valencia keeps shooting even as he rushes to the kitchen to find a cloth for Moraleda to wipe away the blood and then hides her away in a cupboard after the power cuts and an alarm rings out above the suddenly cacophonous banging. However, it is the final revelation that will exasperate the majority of viewers, as Valencia emerges from his barricaded room before dawn to find his sister gone and a telltale tape about schizophrenia playing in the basement. The abrupt switch to news footage of the discovery of the carnage and an extract from Masegosa's hysterical phone call to the cops is equally irksome, although nothing tops the rewinding of the action prior to the creeping entrance of the killer and the close-up of their confused face.

The shifts between everyday and alternative reality are more pronounced in Gilles Marchand's Black Heaven. But in luring its protagonist into the world of an online computer game, this tricksy thriller strains credibility at every turn by taking contrivance to excess. The CGI segments are slick, if slightly quaint in comparison with their Hollywood counterparts. But Marchand allows a promising premise to slip out of his grasp and this never comes close to matching his previous collaborations with co-writer Dominik Moll on his own debut, Who Killed Bambi? (2003), and Moll's much-admired Harry, He's Here to Help (2000) and Lemming (2005).

Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Pauline Etienne are holidaying in the Bouches-du-Rhône when they find a mobile phone at the beach. Curious to discover the identity of its owner, they follow the directions given in a series of messages and arrive in time to pull Louise Bourgoin from the fume-filled car in which she had planned to commit suicide with her friend Swann Arlaud.

Having pocketed a video camera he found in the dashboard, Leprince-Ringuet is instantly smitten with the striking blonde and ignores Etienne's misgivings by accepting Bourgoin's invitation to join the webworld of Black Hole. Convinced he is too clever to be ensnared in a virtual realm, he exploits his anonymity and attempts to seduce Bourgoin's avatar. However, he hadn't counted on the machinations of her seemingly concerned brother, Melvil Poupaud, and he is drawn deeper into a sinister trap.

Borrowing liberally from movies as diverse as Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986), this is a confident piece of film-making. The switches between Céline Bozon's widescreen vistas and Djibril Glissant's animations are particularly polished. However, the performances are also accomplished, with Bourgoin's confused sensuality and Leprince-Ringuet's naive libidinousness being well matched by Poupaud's cool scheming and Etienne's gentle despair as she watches her beau slip away from her.

But the storyline loses its way in the mid-section, as the fixation with cyber existence and life after death becomes increasingly far-fetched. Consequently, the twists only serve to expose the implausibilities rather than draw the viewer into the dark autre monde and, while Marchand should be applauded for attempting such bold stylisation on a moderate Gallic budget, it's the script not the effects that prove the picture's ultimate undoing.