Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/3/2012)

Born in New York in 1947, Green quit what he now calls `Barbaria' to live in West Germany and Czechoslovakia before settling in Paris in 1969. Fluent in French, German, Czech and Catalan (and he's learning Basque), he devoted himself to the study of Baroque literature and began writing his own novels (many of which went unpublished) plays. In 1977, he founded the Théâtre de la Sapience to renew contemporary drama by rediscovering the modernity of the 17th-century aesthetic.

However, it took another two decades before Green was finally able to bring this distinctive sensibility to the screen. He made his debut with Toutes les nuits (2001), which starred Alexis Loret and Adrien Michaux in an reworking of Flaubert's A Sentimental Education that transferred the action from the revolutions of 1848 to the May Days of 1968 and drew heavily on the cinematic influence of Robert Bresson and Manoel De Oliveira. His follow-up couldn't have been more different, however, as Le Monde vivant (2003) cast a fairytale about knights, maidens, an ogre and a lion (that was really a Labrador Retriever) in blue jeans and stylised slang.

Green ventured back into reality for Les Pont des Arts (2004), which follows the contrasting fortunes of conflicted students Adrien Michauz and Camille Carraz and hesitant scholar Alexis Loret and his mezzo-soprano girlfriend Natacha Régnier, who is being courted by sinister impresario Denis Podalydès. This time, however, the customary nods to Bresson and De Oliveira were tempered by a provocative wit that recalled Raul Ruiz, while the music of Monteverdi reinforced the richness of dialogue worthy of Jacques Rivette or Eric Rohmer. And this compelling combination of art, artifice and asceticism recurs in The Portuguese Nun. Ravishingly photographed by Raphael O'Byrne in a mesmerising series of slow pans and abrupt close-ups, this paean to Lisbon is a billet doux to Lusitanic cinema, in which Green not only pays handsome homage to Manoel de Oliveira, but also tests the very limits of self-reflexivity.

French actress Leonor Baldaque checks into a hotel for the location shoot of Green's adaptation of Gabriel de Guilleragues's 17th-century epistolary novel, Letters of a Portuguese Nun. The desk clerk is anything but impressed and even Baldaque's make-up artist thinks the project is a pompous bore aimed solely at preening intellectuals. While acclimatising herself with the city, Baldaque befriends orphan Francisco Mozos, accepts a dinner date from lonely aristocrat Diogo Dória and becomes fascinated by the contemplative stillness of nun Ana Moreira, as she prays through the night in a nearby church. However, she is briefly distracted by a fling with handsome co-star Adrien Michaux, who lures her into bed with protestations that his marriage is a sham.

Sensing Baldaque's fragility after Michaux's departure, Green tries to cheer her up by taking her to a fado bar. But, as he disco dances alone, Baldaque slips back to the candlelit church to engage in an earnest theological debate with Moreira. Next day, she seeks out Mozos's hard-pressed foster mother, Beatriz Batarda, to ask if she would have any objection to her adopting the boy and they strike a deal that's mutually beneficial.

Strewn with long silences and even longer takes, this is an idiosyncratic reverie on love and faith, film and life. Yet it's also mischievously poetic and singularly moving. Searching for personal as well as professional fulfilment, the atheistic Baldaque exudes a wistful aura of psychological and spiritual inadequacy and her seemingly disparate encounters bring her inexorably closer to a deeper understanding of herself and her purpose. Some will bridle at the highly stylised minimalism, the cerebral chapter headings, the meta-cinematic friskiness, the surfeit of literary and filmic references and the extended fado interludes. But this is a deceptively passionate and poignant picture that will enchant those prepared to surrender to its deadpan charm.

Jean-Pierre Ameris's Romantics Anonymous is much less demanding, but there is a genuine sweetness about this misfit comedy that is only partially due to the fact it is set in a chocolate factory. Isabelle Carré and Benoît Poelvoorde make a charming pair, as they blush and stutter their way towards a wedding day denouement that recalls Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967). However, even though Améris himself suffers from anxiety attacks, he is never sure whether the story of a twosome separated by pathological shyness should be deliciously dark or quirkily quaint and, consequently, this affable confection always feels a touch arch.

Raised by promiscuous mother Christiane Millet, Isabelle Carré has always been bashful around men and has joined Romantics Anonymous to help her come to terms with her issues. Fellow members Jacques Boudet, Alice Pol, Céline Duhamel, Philippe Fretun, Grégoire Ludig, Philippe Gaulé, Joëlle Séchaud and Isabelle Gruault have problems of their own, which they share in group therapy sessions that are intended to provide mutual support. However, they become most intrigued by Carré's liaison with Benoît Poelvoorde, who poses as the martinet boss of the Chocolate Mill to keep staff Lorella Cravotta, Lise Lamétrie, Swann Arlaud and Pierre Niney on their toes. But, in fact, he is a nervous wreck who has inherited his father's panphobia and relies heavily on regular sessions with psychiatrist Stéphan Wojtowicz.

Such is Carré's timidity that she had spent the last few years making exquisite chocolate in secret for elderly mentor Claude Aufaure, who had spotted her talent despite her crippling coyness causing her to faint during a confectionery competition. However, with his recent death, Carré had been left without a job or references, even though everyone recognised that Aufaure's sweets were the finest in town. So, she applied to work at Poelvoorde's struggling factory and was appointed his new sales rep because he got so nervous during the interview that he forgot to ask her any questions that would have established that she was wholly unqualified for the post.

Nonetheless, Carré is happy to be back in the chocolate business and she throws herself into boosting orders. But the nature of her relationship with Poelvoorde keeps shifting, as he seeks to complete the simple tasks that Wojtowicz keeps setting him to increase his confidence. He invites her out to dinner, but overheats so badly through tension that he spends the entire evening shuttling to the gents to put on a new shirt from a supply stashed in a brief case. Then, when challenged to touch somebody, he becomes so embarrassed at shaking Carré's hand that he kisses her to cover his confusion.

Much to their mutual surprise, each likes the sensation and Carré goes off on her rounds kicking up her heels with happiness and singing `I Have Confidence' from The Sound of Music, as she breezes through a shopping mall having coaxed best customer Marie-Christine Demarest out of cancelling her standing order by convincing her that the company is about to launch a new range of chocolates. Carré intends making the bonbons herself, but is loathe to lose her anonymity as Aufaure's hermit chocolatier. However, an Anonymous Romantic friend rigs up a false webcam connection so she can teach the staff how to produce the new flavours using such eccentric ingredients as mint, porcini, paprika and green tea while making it seem as though she is merely a confidante of the reclusive master.

Having already surmised that love is in the air, Cravotta and Lamétrie see through the ruse. But the delighted Poelvoorde remains oblivious and accedes to Demarest's suggestion that they launch the new line at the prestigious Roanne festival. However, a mix-up at the hotel sees them booked into the same room and they take a long walk in the rain and linger over dinner to delay returning. But Poelvoorde's rendition of `Ochi Chernye' with the house band so enchants Carré that she jumps on him when he creeps back into the room after confiding his misgiving to duty clerk Jean-Yves Chatelais. But, no sooner have they made love than Carré starts planning their future together and Poelvoorde flees in panic and, by the time he rushes back to propose, she has departed in a taxi. All seems lost - until Cravotta and Lamétrie reveal Carré's true identity and coerce Poelvoorde into attending a meeting of Romantics Anonymous.

Full of smileworthy moments and the odd sentimental contrivance, this is an effortlessly enjoyable movie that makes a virtue of its frothiness. Poelvoorde reins in his instinct for broader comedy to play the tongue-tied, excessively perspiring swain with gauche gallantry, while Carré remains the epitome of mousy inhibition even when breaking into a song and dance routine in a crowded arcade. The ending may feel more than a little forced - although it's a vast improvement on co-scenarist Philippe Blasband's efforts in the execrable Irina Palm (2007) - but Pierre Adenot's jaunty score sustains the whimsical mood, while Philippe Bourgueil's meticulously timed editing ensures that a couple of the sight gags are laugh out loud funny.

Daniel Auteuil makes his directorial debut with The Well-Digger's Daughter, a remake of Marcel Pagnol's 1940 Provençal drama that was so well received in his native France that the veteran actor was commissioned to revisit the Marseilles trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and César (1936) that established the novelist-cum-playwright as a major force in sound cinema. Few seem better equipped for the job, as Auteuil became a star 25 years ago in Claude Berri's adaptations of Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (both 1986), which sparked a wave of heritage cinema across the Channel that also included Yves Robert's charming Pagnol duo of La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère (both 1990).

Reworking the script of the 170-minute original, as well taking a key role, Auteuil plays it rather safe in allowing cinematographer Jean-François Robin to bathe the southern countryside in a nostalgic glow that also taints Bernard Vezat's production design, Pierre-Yves Gayraud's costumes and Alexandre Desplat's score. Even the performances seem a touch too cosy, especially when compared to the coarser naturalism displayed by Raimu, Fernandel and Josette Day in the Pagnol version, which was made just as French fears of defeat by the invading Nazis became a terrible reality. Nevertheless, this is a workmanlike effort that should entice those pining for the heyday of Merchant Ivory.

As the Phoney War drags on and France waits for its German neighbour to make a move, well-digger Pascal Amoretti (Daniel Auteuil) prepares to celebrate the 18th birthday of his daughter Patricia (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), who has returned from being educated in Paris to help him and older sister Amanda (Emilie Cazenave) raise their younger siblings Isabelle (Coline Bosso), Marie (Chloé Malarde), Léonore (Brune Coustellier) and Roberta (Illona Porte). Pascal's underling, Félipe Rambert (Kad Merad) has a crush on Patricia and asks his boss for permission to court her by taking her to the nearby air show in his new car. However, Patricia has literally been swept off her feet by pilot Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who had carried her across the stream as she brought her father his lunch in the hills outside Salon.

Jacques is the son of shopkeeper André Mazel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and his wife Marie (Sabine Azéma), who frets in a gushingly maternal manner about the danger her little boy will be in once the fighting starts. However, Jacques appears fearless as he loops his plane over the cheering crowds at the aerodrome and then lures Patricia back to his room after she has mendaciously told Félipe that she is going to visit an estranged aunt. She resists his clumsy attempts at seduction, but, when the now tipsy Félipe's car fails to start, she succumbs to Jacques's advances as he takes her home though moonlit backroads on his motorbike.

When Jacques fails to keep an assignation at a remote chapel - and Marie decides against delivering the note he had hastily written explaining that he had been called back to his squadron - Patricia is forced to conceal the fact she is pregnant from her highly conservative father. However, when she eventually breaks the news, he dismisses Félipe's offer to marry her and packs her off to stay with her Aunt Nathalie (Marie-Anne Chazel) after the Mazels decline to have anything to do with her and accuse the crude labourer of trying to blackmail their respectable family.

Félipe also goes off to war, only to return with a minor wound and the news that Jacques has been presumed killed in action. Already dismayed by the capitulation of his country, Pascal is determined to uphold his principles and continues to shun Patricia and her new-born son. But the prospect of giving the child the Amoretti name prompts him to travel by bus to the neighbouring valley and invite Patricia and his grandson to return home.

This rather chauvinist strain runs throughout the film, with Jacques treating Patricia as a plaything, his parents considering her a gold-digging strumpet and Pascal regarding her as a possession to be disposed of as he sees fit. Only Félipe shows her any respect and even he is more interested in her housekeeping skills than her hopes and dreams. Back in 1940, this emphasis on the status of the French male would have been highly emotive, as the nation had just suffered a humiliating defeat. But Auteuil removes this aspect from the story (along with the famous sequence in which the villagers gather around the radio to listen to Marshal Pétain urging the vanquished to co-operate with the victors) and, consequently, it runs the risk of condoning outmoded attitudes and alienating a sizeable proportion of the potential audience.

Similarly, Auteuil tones down the bantering byplay between Pascal and Félipe, as he seemed to realise there was no way he and Murad could compete with the brilliance of Raimu and Fernandel. Indeed, for those familiar with the Pagnol picture, it seems to keep intruding upon proceedings and demanding comparison. Those new to the story should be swept along by it, however, especially towards the droll denouement when Jacques returns unexpectedly and Pascal mounts a last bid to preserve the Amoretti name before all ends happily - or as happily as anything can at the start of what will be nearly five years of occupation.

Despite the impressive cast, this is less an ensemble piece than it first appears. Darrousin and Azéma are somewhat marginalised - although his downplaying makes an amusing contrast with her showier turn - and even Merad and Bergès-Frisbey often seem like foils to Auteuil's tour de force. But this is never a vanity piece and he shares the close-ups around with laudable generosity. Moreover, he imbues a potentially melodramatic situation with an authenticity and humanity that captures the spirit of French cinema in the poetic realist era and whets the appetite for the forthcoming waterfront triptych.

In 1985, Nanni Moretti won the Special Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for The Mass Is Ended. Despite being an avowed atheist, he also starred in this wry satire on contemporary Italian attitudes to morality and faith as a newly ordained priest who returns to his home village to be appalled by the absence of religious principle in the lives of friends and family members who profess to being practising Catholics. But, whereas the clerics in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1950) and Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1961) suffered unendurable existential crises in striving to guide their flocks, Moretti's curate decides to abandon his neighbours to their sins and pursue his vocation in a distant parish.

A quarter of a century later, Moretti has returned to the theme of ecclesiastical duty. But rather than focusing on the doubts of a humble priest, he speculates in We Have a Pope on what might happen if a cardinal had his moment of doubt in the moments after being elected pontiff and takes off into the streets of Rome to reconnect with a world he would be renouncing forever in the hope that it would reassure him that he had the abilities that God had seemingly detected in him in entrusting him with the stewardship of His Church.

Following the funeral of Pope John Paul II, the college of cardinals assembles in the Sistine Chapel for the conclave to select his successor. As spectacularly inept TV news reporter Enrico Iannello thrusts out his microphone in the hope of getting a sound bite, Vatican press officer Jerzy Stuhr reminds him that he is an a holy place and that the sanctity and dignity of the occasion must to be maintained. However, it soon becomes clear from the ensuing shots that the process of choosing a pope is a lengthy and tedious one and whispered prayers before each count suggest that nobody actually wants to assume the Throne of St Peter.

Eventually, after several ballots in which the favourites with the bookmakers were closely tied, elderly French cardinal Michel Piccoli emerges as the compromise candidate and his colleagues turn to applaud as the votes are counted and he acknowledges with a quiet smile that seems to signal pious modesty. But, as the camerlengo appears on the balcony to deliver the words `habemus papem' to the crowd in St Peter's Square, the serene Piccoli suddenly gives out a scream and declares he cannot be pope and rushes back into the chapel to be alone.

As the watching faithful wonder why the new pope has not appeared, senior cardinal Renato Scarpa sits beside Piccoli and tries to coax him into accepting the mantle by reassuring him that everyone has trials to face and that he will be fully supported by his fellow princes of the church. But Piccoli refuses to be cajoled and retires to his apartments, while Stuhr stalls the media with an announcement that the Holy Father is communing with God in an act of deep humility before making himself known.

Such is the conviction that Piccoli is simply suffering from a psychological rather than a spiritual block, Stuhr hires leading Roman psychiatrist Nanni Moretti to examine him. Unsurprisingly, however, Piccoli is reluctant to discuss personal issues in the presence of the curia and Moretti finds himself subjected to the same rules of sequestration as the cardinals, who retire to their rooms to play patience, do jigsaws and listen to Piccoli's anguished cries, as he wrestles with his conscience.

The next morning, Moretti suggests that ex-wife Margherita Buy might be able to discern Piccoli's problem and he agrees to consult her incognito. However, his feels guilty spinning a story that he is an actor who feels unsuited to his next role and gives Stuhr the slip and disappears into the city centre to think things through. Determined to prevent anyone from discovering his blunder, after Piccoli calls to say he needs some time to himself, Stuhr instals Swiss guardsman Gianluca Gobbi in the papal suite and orders him to pace before the curtained windows and give the impression that Piccoli is in residence.

As Moretti discusses health issues with the cardinals and complains about Buy's insistence she is a superior therapist, Piccoli attaches himself to an acting troupe staying in the hotel where he finds a bed for the night. Having witnessed highly strung star Dario Cantarelli suffer a breakdown while dashing distractedly down the staircase while delivering lines from Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, Piccoli goes to the theatre and sits in on rehearsals. He is even invited to supper and sees the news coverage of the Vatican crisis on the television. But he remains reluctant to return, even after hearing priest Salvatore Miscio delivering a sermon about accepting obligation, and calls Stuhr to ask if there is any way he can rescue him from his ghastly dilemma.

Interrupting the volleyball tournament that Moretti has organised between the cardinals, Stuhr and Scarpa hit upon a plan to bring Piccoli home. But it backfires with potentially calamitous consequences for the papacy and the tradition and authority on which the entire Roman Catholic Church is founded.

Such is the shattering nature of the final sequence that it's easy to overlook the fact that Moretti gives the Church a pretty easy ride here. The cardinals are presented as fallible human beings who pray to be passed over for preferment and throw themselves into the distraction of volleyball with the enthusiasm of boisterous seminarians. Indeed, as played by Franco Graziosi, Camillo Milli, Roberto Nobile and Ulrich von Dobschütz, they seem more like kindly old uncles than out-of-touch conservatives refusing to acknowledge problems with child abuse, the connection between condoms and AIDS or the role of religion in a time of crippling social injustice and faith-inspired terror.

Only Piccoli seems cognisant of the colossal challenge facing Catholicism and his flight seems to owe as much to an understanding of how much needs to be changed as to an awareness of his own inadequacy for the task. But, such is the soul-shaking enormity of the sudden realisation that God has chosen him that it's not always easy to gauge what is going on behind an expression of preoccupied bemusement from only the Chekhovian troupe can arouse him. Thus, this is a performance of intense impassivity, as though Piccoli is waiting for divine intervention to rectify a celestial error and bestow the Triregnum on somebody else.

Although himself sorely troubled, Moretti gives a much breezier performance and his glib discussion of faith with Scarpa during the round robin games adds a some much-needed causticity to proceedings. Yet this is never as scathing in its satirical assessment of the Church as The Caiman (2006) was about Italian politics in general and Silvio Berlusconi in particular. However, it's playful and gently provocative and there are several charming moments, including a seeming homage to The Shawshank Redemption when Gobbi turns on the stereo to relieve the boredom of being cooped up alone and the upbeat song is relayed by speakers throughout the Vatican and the cardinals begin clapping along just as Piccoli encounters buskers playing the same tune.

The use of Arvo Pärt's `Miserere' over the closing credits provides another musical highlight to match the majesty of the sets Paola Bizzarri designed for the Cinecittà soundstage and the lustre of Alessandro Pesci's photography. But, while this is engaging and amusing, it becomes a touch pretentious in the theatrical sequences and the digression involving Buy and her bickering kids seems typifies the rather dead end nature of the psychoanalytical sub-plot.

Mimi Branescu is equally unhappy with his lot in Tuesday, After Christmas, which sees Radu Muntean follow up Boogie (2008) with another intense drama that relies on naturalistic dialogue to tell its deceptively simple story. Shot mostly in long takes that make concentrated use of the widescreen space, this is essentially a domestic saga that explores universal themes. But Muntean also offers some astute insights into the new Romanian class system and its consumerist mentality.

Despite being married to Mirela Oprisor for a decade, bourgeois Mimi Branescu has fallen heavily for Maria Popistasu, the dentist who is fitting his daughter, Sasa Paul-Szel, with braces. Despite only being together for five months, there is a playful cosiness about their post-coital chatter in the opening sequence. But they are about to be parted for the Christmas holidays, as Popistasu is leaving Bucharest to stay with her widowed mother.

Branescu leaves his mistress's bed to go shopping with Oprisor and his relationship with her is just as easily familiar, as they search for a snowboard for Paul-Szel and later tease old friend Dragos Bucur about his penchant for trophy girlfriends. However, Branescu's two loves meet head on the following day when Oprisor insists on coming to Popistasu's surgery to discuss the necessity of Paul-Szel's painful treatment and the younger woman is so livid at being placed in an invidious position that she heads home without returning Branescu's calls.

The next day, he invents a business meeting to apologise to Popistasu in person and receives a frosty reception from her protective mother. However, he succeeds in coaxing Popistasu round and promises to tell his wife about their affair - even though he would much prefer to maintain the status quo - and he breaks the news in an excruciating scene, in which Oprisor devastatingly slips between shocked incomprehension, overwrought recrimination and steely decisiveness, as the hapless Branescu tries to assure her that he never meant to hurt her.

Muntean subjects the viewer to one last harrowing sequence, as Branescu attempts to pretend that everything is normal during Christmas Day with his parents. Indeed, the way in which he and Oprisor use the distraction of some carol singers at the front door to slip the presents under the tree without Paul-Szel noticing is perhaps the most poignant moment of the entire film, as it's clear that he has thrown away an enviable home life for an uncertain future.

Impeccably choreographing Tudor Lucaciu's camera movements to prevent the lengthy dialogue passages from seeming stagy, Muntean forces the audience to share every emotion in this superbly acted ménage. Oprisor and Popistasu are outstanding and while Branescu's character is perhaps too slightly drawn to explain why he could attract two such vibrant women, his dichotomy allows the acerbic socio-political comment that simmers in the background and suggests that Romania is still a nation caught between two worlds.

In many ways, Tuesday, After Christmas finds a curious companion piece in Terence Davies's adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 chamber drama, The Deep Blue Sea, as it also centres on a spouse being awoken to enticing possibilities by a new love. In this case, it's Rachel Weisz who proves powerless in the face of ex-RAF pilot Tom Hiddleston's boyish charm and she willingly walks away from a life of luxury to surrender to her desire in the shabby cosiness of a Ladbroke Grove rooming house.

Written in response to the suicide of Rattigan's former lover, Kenneth Morgan, the play was filmed in 1955 for Alexander Korda's London Films by Russian-born director Anatole Litvak. Vivien Leigh played the straying spouse, while the triangle was completed by Kenneth More, as the free-spirited flyboy, and Emlyn Williams, as the high court judge whose earnest offer of affection, status and security counts for nothing beside the passion, mundanity and risk that the fling provides. The same year saw Edward Dmytryk bring to the screen Graham Greene's similarly themed 1951 novel, The End of the Affair, in which the unhappy couple were essayed by Deborak Kerr and Peter Cushing and the seductive interloper by Van Johnson. This feature was remade with mixed results by Neil Jordan in 1999 and Davies's revision (which coincides with Rattigan's centenary) is equally mottled with moments of inspiration and imprudence.

Essentially lifted from Litvak, the opening sequence is one of the more memorable, as Florian Hoffmeister glides on a crane from the bomb damage of a c.1950 London street to the window where Rachel Weisz is about to swallow a handful of pills and turn on the gas because lover Tom Hiddleston has failed to return in time from a golfing weekend to celebrate her birthday. It seems a trivial reason for suicide. But, in a blatant nod to David Lean's choice of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No,2 for Brief Encounter (1945), Davies makes it seem almost operatic by using Samuel Barber's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 14 to choreograph Weisz's measured preparations and the attendant flashbacks to dull nights at home with husband Simon Russell Beale and the first flirtation with her dashing beau at Sunningdale.

Indeed, this sense of dramatic intensity pervades the entire picture and recalls not only Litvak's Hollywood output, but also the so-called `woman's pictures' of Edmund Goulding, Irving Rapper and Douglas Sirk. Yet Davies also references his own recollections of postwar Liverpool, Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992), particularly in staging sing-songs in the local boozer, which suggest the continuation into the Austerity era of the wartime spirit that Weisz had sampled with Russell Beale on the Aldwych tube station during the Blitz, only with the subtle change that old standards like `Molly Malone' have now been replaced by pop songs like Jo Stafford's `You Belong to Me'.

Davies brilliantly uses this latter sequence to highlight the social and cultural chasm that exists between Weisz and Hiddleston, for, just as he was completely out of his depth at the art gallery (where she had patronisingly dismissed his feeble joke about `bric-a-Braque'), so she is the fish out of water in the pub, as she doesn't know the words to the latest hits - but does succumb to their tacky sentimentality and she melts into Hiddleston as they dance together and Stafford's rendition takes over on the soundtrack.

However, Davies is less successful in adding a new episode involving Russell Beale's disapproving mother, Barbara Jefford. With its scathing quips and arch civility, this smacks of poor pastiche, as does the scene in which Weisz first kisses Hiddleston in an empty pub after he calls her `old fruit, old darling'. The bellowed conversation in the street that service buddy Harry Hadden-Paton tries to referee after Hiddleston decides to leave Weisz after finding her suicide note is equally overdone. Yet, there is genuine poignancy in the inserted exchange between Weisz and landlady Ann Mitchell, who had saved her tenant from herself and now urges her to not to mistake an erotic crush with the real love she is showing her husband in helping him maintain his dignity as he lies on his deathbed.

Sadly, the story is less consistently compelling, especially as the pacing is so self-consciously sluggish. Morever, even though he is portraying a shallow cad, Hiddleston is disappointingly one-dimensional, while Weisz often struggles to convey the inner (almost masochistic) turmoil of a cultivated, if largely unsympathetic woman enslaved by carnal yearning. Even stage star Russell Beale occasionally seems a little mannered, as the decent cuckold prepared to forgive his wife's indiscretion as much out of enduring fondness than any consideration for his own career.

For all its minor shortcomings, however, this is obviously the work of a master film-maker. Davies's eye for detail is evident in James Merifield's production design and Ruth Myers's costumes, while his understanding of the camera is clear from Hoffmeister's exemplary use of key lights, golden tints and gliding travelling shots. His willingness to heighten emotion and refusal to pander to audience sensibility by modernising contemporary mores is also admirable. But it's Davies's undying faith in the enchantment of cinema that makes this compelling enough to rank alongside such Anthony Asquith's collaborations with Rattigan as The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951) and Delbert Mann's Oscar-winning 1958 take on Separate Tables.

Published in 1847, Emily Brontë's sole novel, Wuthering Heights, was criticised in its day for the stark depiction of physical and psychological cruelty. Subsequent adaptations, however, have chosen to focus on the romantic nature of the doomed liaison between Heathcliff and Cathy, with AV Bramble (1920), William Wyler (1939), Luis Buñuel (1954), Robert Fuest (1970), Jacques Rivette (1985), Yoshishige Yoshida (1988) and Peter Kosminsky (1992) among those to attempt big-screen variations. But, in stripping the text to its bare essentials (for example, dispensing with the book's first narrator Lockwood and ignoring Heathcliff's dealings with Cathy's children), Andrea Arnold has restored the emphasis on the pain endured by the foundling and the farmer's daughter as prejudice and circumstance conspire to keep them apart.

On a grey day on the Yorkshire Moors, Mr Earnshaw (Paul Hilton) returns from a trip to Liverpool with a companion, a young black boy whom he names Heathcliff (Solomon Glave). His son Hindley (Lee Shaw) is scowlingly unimpressed by the newcomer, while his daughter Catherine (Shannon Beer) spits in his face before he is taken away to be bathed. However, she comes to fetch him next morning to explore the farm and they soon become inseparable, despite Earnshaw's frequent complaints about her wickedness and Hindley's insistence that Heathcliff has to work for his keep. But he remains a member of the family and the pair enjoy untold freedom after Hindley is sent away to complete his education. Their intimacy also grows, with Cathy licking the blood from a wound on Heathcliff's back after a particularly brutal beating.

But the situation changes when Earnshaw dies and the returning Hindley sends his adoptive brother to sleep in the stables and places him in the care of Joseph (Steve Evets), a no-nonsense farmhand who keeps his nose to the grindstone. Hindley's wife, Frances (Amy Wren), bears him a son, but she dies soon afterwards and he turns his wrath on Heathcliff, who can no longer count on Cathy's unwavering support, as she has been much changed by a short stay with the neighbouring Linton family. Indeed, she now prefers the company of Edgar Linton (Jonny Powell) and mocks Heathcliff's dishevelled appearance and uncouth manners.

As time passes, Cathy (Kaya Scodelario) decides to marry Edgar (James Northcote) and Heathcliff overhears her explaining to Ellen the trusted housekeeper (Simone Jackson) that she doesn't really love him, but knows that society would never approve of her union with Heathcliff. However, he fails to hear her promise to use her new status to help improve his position and he runs away vowing vengeance on those who had wronged him.

By the time he returns a wealthy man, three years later, Heathcliff is appalled to learn that Cathy is married and he seeks to exploit the affection of her sister-in-law Isabella (Nichola Burley) to make Cathy jealous and humiliate Edgar. He also becomes the now dissolute Hindley's tenant and eventually purchases the farm and installs his new bride as the mistress of Wuthering Heights. But he soon discovers that Cathy is gravely ill and is distraught when she dies, leaving him to curse the fates and the intolerance that prevented them from fulfilling their desire.

Much has been made of Arnold casting black actors Solomon Glave and James Howson as Heathcliff and suggesting that he was the son of a slave rather than a gypsy. However, this is something of a dramatic side issue, as the male Earnshaws are similarly bigoted to outsiders of any race or class. What is more pertinent is the social realist approach to the story and the decision to have the largely non-professional cast deliver the pared down dialogue with the minimum of inflection. While it brings a certain grim authenticity to proceedings, it does little to make the characters empathetic and the self-consciously slow pacing means that this is often a film of withering lows rather than wuthering heights.

Scripting in collaboration with Olivia Hetreed, Arnold inherited the project from Peter Webber after he had taken it over from John Maybury. It's tempting to speculate how the respective directors of Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) and The Edge of Love (2008) might have handled the adaptation, especially as rumours abounded they were considering such actresses as Natalie Portman, Abbie Cornish and Gemma Arterton to play Cathy. But one thing is likely, they would probably not have adhered to rigorously to the naturalism that made Red Road (2006) and Fish Tank (2009) so convincing and compelling.

There is much to admire about the production, however. Robbie Ryan's handheld and autumnally hued Academy Ratio views of the windswept terrain, Helen Scott and Christopher Wyatt's contrasting interiors and Nicholas Becker's sound design all enhance the sense of time and place, while the absence of music (beside the occasional snatch of diegetic song) reinforces the notion of observing life as it is being lived. But the hesitancy of the performances depletes the emotional intensity of the plot and introduces a modernity that sits awkwardly with the period trappings. The insertion of some decidedly unBrontëan curse words also feels forced and wholly unnecessary. Nonetheless, Arnold does restore the emphasis on the harshness of country life in the mid-19th century and the clash between civilisation and the untamed. In addition to a sheep being slaughtered and a couple of dogs being hung up by their collars to stop them yapping, Heathcliff is also thrashed and he even bites into Isabella's lip during their first kiss, in what is actually the only tangible evidence of the seething fury and rampaging passion that prompts his retaliatory return to moors.

James Howson has had his troubles since the film was released and Chris Langham has also had to endure his share of lurid headlines in recent years. However, he displays laudable self-deprecation, as well as considerable chutzpah, in electing to make his return to the big screen in Black Pond, a bleak comedy about a sordid scandal. However, his rehabilitation and the presence of a debuting Simon Amstell are more likely to garner attention than the fact that Cambridge Footlights alumni Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley make a decent directorial bow with this offbeat mocku-sitcom. It may never quite be as quirky or controlled as Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace (2009), but it's rarely wide of the mark with its pot shots at the public's grimly insatiable appetite for lurid stories and the media's propensity for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick and beating about the bush with it.

Langham plays the paterfamilias in an unremarkable middle-class family. Daughters Anna O'Grady and Helen Cripps have moved away and Langham and wife Amanda Hadingue often struggle to find things to talk about now they're left to their own devices. However, while out walking his three-legged dog, Langham encounters derelict Colin Hurley, who readily accepts his invitation to tea. Only the stay extends well beyond the afternoon and Langham and Hadingue are soon at a loss what to do with their limpet-like guest.

Things change, however, when their pet mysteriously drowns in the eponymous pond and O'Grady and Cripps return home for the funeral with their adoring Japanese friend, Will Sharpe. They are bemused by Hurley, but even more astonished when he dies at the table and their parents decide to honour his last wish and bury him in the woods.

Nothing more would have been said of the matter. But Sharpe confesses all during a session with shrink Simon Amstell and the press has soon branded `The Family of Killers' and they are forced into going on the PR offensive in order to salvage their reputation.

Nobody likes a bit of bourgeois dysfunction more than the Brits - well, apart from the French and maybe Wes Anderson - and Sharpe and Kingsley have created a scenario worthy of Chris Morris. But it is too slight to accommodate the constant switching between flashbacks, animated segments and speeches to camera. Moreover, the calculated stylistic fussiness occasionally makes the plotline seem ridiculous rather than audacious and often leaves the female characters with too little to do, as Langham revisits the bumbling mannerisms that earned him a BAFTA for The Thick of It and Amstell tries too hard to prove he has made the transition from Buzzcocks to the boards.

Musician Johnny Daukes also deserves credit for attempting something different in his debut as writer-director. Despite inaccurate claims to be the first script specifically written for the screen in verse, Acts of Godfrey is a laudably ambitious bid to familiarise a new audience with the ingenuity and versatility of the rhyming couplet. It's just a shame, therefore, that what is essentially doggerel occasionally lapses into what one might call `versiflage' and not even a splendidly sporting cast hamming it up for all its worth can disguise the shortcomings in the storyline and characterisation.

The scene is set by Simon Callow, a celestial (and possibly deific) being with licence to act as both Greek chorus and extra, who introduces the delegates attending a conference on power selling given by Demetri Goritsas at a country hotel. The last to arrive is Iain Robertson, a Scottish alarm salesman, who is expecting a phone call and is keen for receptionist Max Digby to summon a mechanic to repair his clapped-out car. He blunders into the seminar room where estate agents Doon Mackichan and Myfanwy Waring, undertaker's assistant Shobu Kapoor, boy band manager Michael Wildman, medical suppliers Jay Simpson and Ian Burfield, and small businessman Harry Enfield are already seated.

During the course of the first session, it transpires that Enfield is really a con man, who has already duped widow Celia Imrie out of a small fortune and brought about the death of a mixed-race boy while trying to fleece his Essex mother, Sadie Pickering. Moreover, he has tricked Kapoor into supplying him with details of vulnerable mourners and she is as determined to sever the link as Mackichan and Waring are keen to win a bet respectively to seduce Wildman and Robertson before the weekend is over.

Over dinner and drinks that evening, further revelations connect Simpson and Burfield with gangster Michael McKell, who was sold his Costa del Crime villa by Mackichan, while it becomes clear that Wildman has long been seeking Enfield to exact his revenge for an unsolved crime. Still distracted by his phone call and car, Robertson fails to join the dots or realise that Waring is flirting with him. However, even he has caught up by the time DCI Simon Greenall arrives next morning to slap on the handcuffs - although the final revelation still comes as something of a surprise!

Indulging himself with the odd visual flourish to complement the verbal pyrotechnics, Daukes overcomes a shaky start to cross-cut confidently between confessional flashbacks in the central section. However, the need to tie up the loose ends tempts him into caricature and contrivance and even the willing Callow, Enfield and Mackichan eventually struggle to sock over the increasingly strained rhymes. The makers' suggestion that this is a `modern twist on Shakespeare' is hyperbolically wide of the mark, but it's a fun romp with a sheen of Agatha Christiesque pastiche papering over the misfiring wisecracks.