All four of this week's minor releases set out to challenge the complacent viewer. However, only two are more than even partially successful. Be With Me is Singaporean Eric Khoo's fourth feature. It's an ambitious ensemble piece that attempts to interweave three fictional vignettes with a life-affirming slice of actuality, involving Theresa Chan, a remarkable, blind-deaf crafts teacher, whose zest for life and passion for contact contrasts strikingly with ageing shopkeeper Chiew Sung-ching's struggle to cope with his wife's illness, texting teenager Samantha Tan's lesbian infatuation with flighty classmate Ezann Lee, and obese security guard Seet Keng-yew's unspoken obsession with a statuesque yuppie in his office block.

This may be less openly critical of the Lion City than Khoo's previous outings. But it's still a poignant study of the breakdown of communication in the modern metropolis and, while it leaves some loose ends, its simple, subtle and assured insights into insularity make for bittersweet viewing.

Swedish maverick Lukas Moodysson's Container, on the other hand, makes no such concession, as it assails the viewer with a stream-of-consciousness voiceover that frequently feels utterly detached from the stylised monochrome visuals. Yet, if you stick with Jena Malone's breathless, girlie observations and the eccentric cavortings of the bear-like Peter Lorentzon and the elfin Mariha Aberg, a cockeyed logic begins to emerge that delivers this defiantly difficult film from any accusations of avant-garde navel gazing.

Moodysson never makes it clear how (or even if) the audiovisual elements are connected. Thus, you're free to impose your own understanding on the Lorentzon-Aberg relationship - which could be a bizarre coupling, a twisted fantasy or a would-be transsexual's unrealistic vision of their new self. The monologue is equally ambiguous, as while Malone at one point identifies herself, her ramblings on celebrity, collecting, Chernobyl and Christ's virgin birth could only emanate from a fevered brain - even though there are moments of eloquence that mirror the surprising poetry of the grungy images.

But, while Container will confuse as much as it will alienate, The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael can only appal - not because it depicts a hideous rape sequence, but because its 26-year-old debuting director, Thomas Clay, has the arrogance to think that he can justify such gratuitous shock tactics because he has something profoundly original to say (which he doesn't). He's definitely a film-maker to keep an eye on, however, as his pacing and use of distance and location is often exceptional (although the great Greek cinematographer Yorgos Arvanitis must take some of this credit). Moreover, Clay captures the banality of teenage existence with a fidelity that is done scant justice by his largely unpersuasive cast.

But his thesis that we have all become so inured to the horror of violence that we can no longer be shocked by its depiction is facile. It's one thing to lay the groundwork for his Clockwork Orange finale by name-dropping such studies of brutal inhumanity as Elem Klimov's Come and See, but it's quite another to hope to convince audiences with such blatant symbolism and shoddy performances. The recurring news clips contrasting events in Iraq with the murder of a celebrity chef and his wife by a trio of doped up youths from a sleepy seaside town is equally clumsy - as are the sequences showing the supposedly sensitive eponymous cellist masturbating over the works of the Marquis de Sade and the suggestion that lads like these once helped defeat fascism.

Mercifully, Serge Le Peron shows how past conflicts can reflect our own troubled times in I Saw Ben Barka Get Killed. A lynchpin in the 1960s post-colonial movement, revolutionary Mehdi Ben Barka disappeared shortly before a major conference on Third World action. His body was never found and no one ever claimed responsibility for the crime. But, in this highly credible suppositional thriller, Le Peron indicts an unholy alliance of the CIA, the Moroccan secret service, the French underworld and an opportunistic old lag-turned-film producer.

Yet, this isn't a complex conspiracy thriller. Instead, it's a lively, often darkly comic period mood piece that centres on the fanciful dealings of Georges Figon (Charles Berling), who agreed to betray Ben Barka (Simon Abkarian) during negotiations for a radical documentary with Left Bank writer Marguerite Duras (Josiane Balasko) and acclaimed director Georges Franju (Jean-Pierre Laud). Consequently, this is subtly staged, knowingly played and utterly engrossing.