Parky at the Pictures (DVD 18/10/2012)

Despite the best efforts of tsars and dictators, the ancient Merjan culture has survived in the remote Volgan outpost of Neya, where paper mill manager Yuri Tsurilo lives with his younger wife Yuliya Aug and their frustrated writer friend Igor Sergeyev, who also works at the mill as a photographer. When Aug dies suddenly (and somewhat mysteriously), Sergeyev readily agrees to tell no one about her passing and help Tsurilo carry out the Finno-Ugric tribe's pagan funerary rites, which include tying threads to the deceased's pubic hair in an echo of a wedding night custom.

Unwilling to leave behind the pair of caged buntings that he has just purchased, Sergeyev packs them into the car along with Aug's blanketed body. As they drive across a suitably desolate wilderness, Tsurilo recalls bathing Aug in a tub of vodka, while Sergeyev reflects in a voiceover how local gossips were convinced that she had never really loved her husband and goes so far as to imply that he might once have been her lover. However, he is quickly distracted by memories of his own childhood confrontations with his tempestuous poet father, Viktor Sukhorukov, who once threw his typewriter into a frozen lake during one of his drunken rages.

On arriving on the banks of Lake Nero, where Aug and Tsurilo spent their honeymoon, the pals build a pyre and cremate the body so that Tsurilo can scatter his beloved's ashes on the water. En route back to Neya, however, they stop off in the once-thriving town of Molochai, where they pick up local girls Leisan Sitdikowa and Olga Dobrina for a meaningless fling. But, as they near home, the buntings escape their cage and the car careers off a bridge, leaving Tsurilo to scour the murky depths for Aug, while Sergeyev goes in search of his lost typewriter.

Tapping into a Merjan lore that was supposedly suppressed by the Slavs in the 16th century (and yet which is almost certainly the product of  be a figment of Osokin's  imagination), Fedorchenko exposes the near-totalitarian disregard of the current Kremlin regime for ethno-cultural diversity in broaching such age-old issues as passion, mortality, identity and loss. But, for all the gravity of its subtext and symbolism, this seems suffused with a Kaurismäkian sense of deadpan that makes one question the astonishing melancholic beauty of imagery that would not be out of place in a Tarkovsky picture.

Yet, while Sergeyev and Tsulio seem to be intent on outdoing each other in Dostoevskyan miserablism as they contemplate their traumatised pasts or dead-end futures, there is genuine poignancy in the confidences they share during the traditional Merjan `smoking' exchange of intimate details about Aug and her body. However, despite their fondness, these reminiscences could easily be seen as callously chauvinist and will be as hard to accept for many as the exploitative encounter with Sitdikowa and Dobrina. But this is a film where meticulous authenticity simply cannot be taken at face value and Fedorchenko is as likely to be castigating as celebrating accepted notions of Russian masculinity and the state's cynically imperialist attitude to minorities and majorities alike.

As Denmark's most established star, Mads Mikkelsen was the natural choice to headline Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair as German physician Johann Friedrich Struensee, who exploited his position treating mentally unstable 18th-century monarch Christian VII to seduce his dispirited British spouse, Queen Caroline Mathilde.

Opening in 1775, as Caroline Mathilde (Alicia Vikander) writes to her estranged children, Frederick and Louise Auguste, from her exile in Celle Castle in her brother George III's Hanoverian territories, the action flashes back nine years to the teenage princess's arrival from London to discover that not only is her suitor, Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), completely disinterested in her, but he is also psychologically fragile and utterly under the control of his manipulative stepmother, Dowager Queen Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (Trine Dyrholm), and his scheming tutor Ove Høegh-Guldberg.(David Dencik). Nevertheless, Caroline succeeds in producing an heir and tolerates the king's childish outbursts and the cold indifference of a court populated by self-seeking aristocrats who compete for favours while paying little heed to the plight of the serfs on their neglected estates.

In 1768, Christian embarks upon a year-long grand tour of Europe and progressive nobles Count Schack Carl Rantzau (Thomas Gabrielsson) and Enevold Brandt (Cyron Melville) dupe him into becoming reliant on Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mikkelsen), a doctor from the Danish-controlled town of Altona who has the medical skills to moderate Christian's moods and the personal charm to gain his confidence. Moreover, he also has an overweening ambition to put into practice the Rousseauian ideas that he has published in a series of anonymous tracts. Thus, he accompanies the entourage to Copenhagen, where he quickly makes an impression on the lonely Caroline, with whom he conspires to coax Christian into playing an acting game that involves him presenting reforms to his intransigent legislative council in the form of a prepared script.

Arcel and co-scenarist Rasmus Heisterberg exaggerate Caroline's role in the emancipation of the peasantry, the introduction of freedom of speech, the building of public hospitals, the abolition of censorship, torture and capital punishment for theft and the overhauling of the taxation system to ensure that both the nobility and the clergy became liable. Yet the sequences depicting this 10-month period when 1069 cabinet orders were issued (as the rate of three per day) are among the most exhilarating in the film, as Mikkelsen claims a seat on the council and becomes increasingly dictatorial in his attitude towards a monarch who, himself, may not have been quite the shill that history has suggested.

Somewhat inevitably, this unconventional triumvirate soon finds its enemies massing and Juliana and Guldberg make cynical use of the new powers of free expression to spread rumours about the nature of Struensee's relationship with the queen. Consequently, when she gives birth to a daughter, it is widely assumed that Christian is not the father and the reactionaries move quickly to secure a divorce and bypass the king to topple the now isolated Struensee, who was executed with Brandt for the usurpation of royal power on 28 April 1772.

Although it was the subject of Victor Saville's The Dictator (1935) - which starred such British stalwarts as Clive Brook as Struensee, Madeleine Carroll as Caroline, Emlyn Williams as Christian VII and Helen Haye as the Queen Mother - this seismic period had never previously been filmed in Denmark. Executive produced by Lars von Trier, it inspires an epic tale of infatuation, ideology, intrigue and vested interest that benefits from exceptional production design and costumes by Niels Sejer and Manon Rasmussen and lavish visuals by Rasmus Videnaek that are always more controlled than Gabriel Yared and Cyrille Aufort's sonorous score.

Arcel also directs steadily, without departing too far from the conventions of the heritage picture. His screenplay is occasionally declamatory and the bookending epistolary device emphasises too early for those unfamiliar with the saga the doomed nature of Caroline's Danish sojourn (she would die soon afterwards at the age of just 23). Nonetheless, the performances are admirable, with Vikander ably conveying the queen's trusting naiveté and Mikkelsen exuding a dynamic blend of Enlightenment decorum and megalomaniac zeal. However, the romantic spark isn't always evident, with the result that both Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (who won the Best Actor prize at the Berlin Film Festival) and Trine Dyrholm are frequently able to steal focus as the unpredictable king and his ferocious guardian.

In 1915, Norway witnessed one of the most infamous incidents in its penal history, when troops were called to a remote island in Oslofjord to suppress an uprising by the inmates of the Bastøy Boys Home. Now, after a decade of research, Marius Holst is able to reconstruct the events that culminated in shots being fired at civilians in The King of Devil's Island. Sombrely scripted by Dennis Magnusson and suffused with icily grey light by John Andreas Andersen, this is a steady rather than an engrossing account that has more in common with Norman Taurog's 1938 saga Boys Town than harder-hitting reformatory exposés like Alan Clarke's Scum (1979) or Florin Serban's If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (2010).

Even though it's a rule that no mention is ever made of an inmate's past, rumours start circulating as soon as 17 year-old Benjamin Helstad arrives at Bastøy that he has been detained for murder. Even Governor Stellan Skarsgård's young wife Ellen Dorrit Petersen is fascinated by the newcomer, who is placed in C-Block and entrusted to the care of its sadistic dormitory master Kristoffer Joner and its conscientious leader Trond Nilssen, who is soon to be released after spending six years on the island for stealing from a church collection box.

Having learned to stand up for himself as a harpooner on a whaling ship, Helstad quickly makes an impression when he beats bully Morten Lovstad for stealing a watch from fellow newbie Magnus Langlete. Moreover, he quickly realises that Joner has an ulterior motive in selecting Langlete for laundry duty rather than an outdoor detail and he is deeply disappointed with Nilssen for refusing to raise his suspicions of abuse with Skarsgård. However, Nilssen offers to read a letter from Helstad's sister and the bond is further strengthened when he starts writing down Helstad's memoirs of his time at sea.

Yet, despite seeming to settle down, Helstad is always looking for ways to escape. During a punishment expedition to the woods, he and Lovstad find some poisonous mushrooms and consume enough of them to land themselves in the sick bay, alongside Langlete, who has cut his hand with a knife in a bid to seek sanctuary away from the predatory Joner. However, when the midnight fugitives order Langlete back to bed, he reports them to his nemesis and Helstad winds up in solitary after he is eventually recaptured.

The taciturnly imposing Skarsgård blames Nilssen for the attempted flight and he is further made to feel as though he has abnegated his duty when Langlete fills his pockets with stones to drown himself in the sea. Even the members of a visiting welfare committee chide him for failing to keep a better eye on a classmate in distress. Thus, in order to salvage his own self-respect and the good opinion of his peers, Nilssen is stung into informing Skarsgård about Joner's crimes and the boys feel as though they have scored a significant victory when the detested master is seen heading for the ferry with his suitcases.

However, Joner knows all about Skarsgård's habit of embezzling charitable funds and it is not long before he returns to the staff. Helstad is enraged by this betrayal and is locked in a basement cage along with Lovstad after he attempts to impose his own two-fisted punishment. But he coaxes caretaker Frank-Thomas Andersen (who is himself a Bastøy alumnus) into helping them escape and, when Nilssen opts to confront Joner rather than walk free, a full-scale riot breaks out that sees the barn torched and Skarsgård forced to evacuate the island.

Complete with an infantry charge and a thwarted attempt to reach the mainland over the frozen Oslofjord, the climactic action is often excruciating. But there's a Dotheboys predictability about much of what comes before, as Holst and Magnusson expose the hypocrisy and cruelty of what is supposed to be a Christian regime.

Emphasising the use of numbers rather than names, the exploitative imposition of manual labour and the rigidity of the disciplinary code, Holst ably conveys the Bastøy atmosphere and the fact that the majority of its residents were underprivileged unfortunates rather than desperate delinquents. Yet, while he makes solid use of the Estonian locations, his characterisation is weak, with both Skarsgård and Joner being saddled with lifeless stereotypes and neither Helstad nor Nilssen having the presence to capitalise on their respectively decent displays of swagger and earnestness. Thus, while this is never less than accomplished, it is rarely compelling.

A couple of 15 year-olds discover the vagaries of the adult world in Bouli Lanners's The Giants, a summer rite of passage that seems like a mischievous exercise designed to meld such contrasting authors as Mark Twain and Stephen King or SE Hinton and Enid Blyton. However, Lanners and co-scenarist Elise Ancion (who also designed the costumes) are less gifted storytellers and, while this Belgian saga has its amusing and insightful moments, it frequently feels fragmented and too often strains for effect.

Left at their late grandfather's tumbledown country pile by a mother who periodically checks up on them by mobile phone, Martin Nissen and his 13 year-old brother Zacharie Chasseriaud are more bothered about being bored than running out of provisions. However, things take a turn for the better when they crash grandpa's car into the scooter-riding Paul Bartel, who is none the worse for the accident and eager to enlist his new pals in a scheme to escape from his thuggish brother (Karim Leklou) by running away to Spain.

The trio initially content themselves with a boat ride down river, which is followed by an expedition to an empty holiday home that results in them getting drunk and experimenting with the peroxide they find in the bathroom. Suitably emboldened, they decide to score some dope off local dealer Didier Toupy, who cuts an eccentric figure alongside girlfriend Gwen Berrou. But he is a shrewd operator and persuades Nissen and Chasseriaud to lease him their granddad's house for three months and they compound the error by selling off all of the furniture.

Realising they now have nowhere to stay, the siblings take refuge in a riverbank shack and are forced to break into another residence when it collapses around them. Kindly Marthe Keller, who has a Down Syndrome daughter, takes pity on them and invites them out of a downpour for tea. But, when the boys return home to collect Toupy's unpaid rent, they discover he has hired Leklou as his bodyguard and the ensuing showdown culminates in them fleeing by boat and Nissen tossing his ringing phone into the water as a defiant symbol of his new-found maturity and independence.

Departing slightly from the wry realism that informed his first two directorial outings, Ultranova (2004) and Eldorado (2008), Lanners intriguingly seeks to recast the traditional adolescent adventure in a very modern idiom. Thus, while Nissen, Chasseriaud and Bartel get themselves into some pretty harmless scrapes, they also steal, curse and dabble with drink and drugs in a way that Tom, Huck and the Famous Five would never have dared. Moreover, they discover that they can take care of themselves when threatened physically and one is left to wonder at the close how these essentially nice kids will turn out after such transformatory experiences.

Despite Leklou being irksomely one-note in his bruising villainy, the young cast is splendid, with Chasseriaud particularly impressing as the naive tag along responding to each new development with a charming mix of incredulity and acceptance. Jean-Paul De Zaeytijd's lustrous views of the verdant environs (which are actually in Luxembourg) and the score by the indie combo The Bony King of Nowhere are also noteworthy. But, while Lanners generates plenty of picaresque nostalgia in ruminating on the folly of youth, the boisterous storyline rings hollow too often for it entirely to convince.

Having revived the lost art of screen slapstick with Iceberg (2006) and Rumba (2008), the maverick trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy return with more inspired absurdity in The Fairy. More densely plotted and reliant on dialogue than their previous outings, this still very much belongs to the tradition of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati. But it also contains the merest whiff of socio-political comment and a dash of idiosyncratic romance to root the drollery in something approaching everyday life.

Dominique Abel is the night clerk at a backstreet hotel in the northern French city of Le Havre. Having arrived late for duty because the chain kept slipping on his bicycle, he is about to sit down to a sandwich when English tourist Philippe Martz requests a room and smuggles his little dog Mimi on to the premises in his bag. No sooner has Abel sat down and switched on Dinah Washington's recording of `What a Difference a Day Makes' than Fiona Gordon shows up in a scruffy tracksuit and announces that she is a fairy who can grant Abel three wishes.

Somewhat bemused, he asks for a scooter and a lifetime supply of free petrol. But he can't think of a third thing and rather peevishly ushers Gordon to her room so he can eat his supper. However, he nearly chokes on the cap of the ketchup bottle that had been buried in the filling and Gordon has to devise a head-butt variation on the Heimlich Manoeuvre to save him.

On waking next morning, Abel finds a scooter in reception and an invitation to a rendezvous that evening at the Love Is Blurred café. Gordon, meanwhile, has gone to find a new outfit in town and finds herself fleeing from shoe shop owner Emilie Horcholle and cops Ophélie Anfry and Olivier Parenty in a bizarre chase sequence that allows Gordon to apply make-up as she runs along.

Attended by hilariously short-sighted bartender Bruno Romy, Abel and Gordon have a delightful date that culminates in them skinny-dipping in the sea and sharing in an underwater dance routine that is all the more amusing for its jerky awkwardness and cut-price fantasy setting. Their antics are watched with puzzlement by illegal immigrants Willson Gomba, Destine M'Bikula Mayemba and Vladimir Zongo, who live in an abandoned car on the beach and steal Abel's clothes, so that he wakes naked in the surf next morning.

Reporting late for work, Abel gets so flustered that he cannot contact Gordon that he hurls Mimi down a storm drain. However, he is tipped off by flying messenger Didier Armbruster that Gordon has been captured and returned to the psychiatric hospital where she lives under the watchful eye of nurse Sandrine Morin. Undaunted, Abel poses as a fat man and conspires with fellow patients Christophe `René' Philippe and Alexandre Xenakis (who play poker with Gordon using pills as chips) to rescue the now-pregnant Gordon by hiding her under his coat, in a piece of ingenious lunacy that marries Keystone and Monty Python.

Back at the hotel, Gordon gives birth to baby Jimmy on the roof while Abel is having his finger bandaged after trapping it in a collapsing deckchair. But domestic bliss has to be postponed after Gordon talks Martz into smuggling the illegals across the Channel in his car and they accidentally cause an explosion at an oil refinery while siphoning off fuel for the trip. However, following an encounter with a female rugby team at Romy's café and a bizarre scooter bid to pluck the chortling Jimmy off the boot of Martz's speeding car, the cops finally catches up with the miscreants and the law takes its course. But, this being a comedy, all ends well for the oddball lovers, although the migrants remain stranded on the shore and one is left wondering why nobody has offered them three wishes.

The synopsis scarcely does justice to this charming picture's endless comic invention. The action may be less uproariously funny than in Rumba, but it still generates numerous smileworthy moments, including a balletic massage, a quirky self-service shopping spree, an instantaneous pregnancy and an all-night drinking session that's topped off with Les Dieselles rugby player Anaïs Lemarchand's rousing rendition of Kurt Weil's `Youkali'.

The second dance number on the hotel rooftop feels superfluous, while the plot drifts slightly in the later stages. But Claire Childeric's cinematography, Nicolas Girault's production design and Sandrine Deegan's editing are first rate, while Abel and Gordon are adorably deadpan as they just get on with surmounting problems whose gleeful peculiarity is never viewed as anything other than unblinkingly normal. But what makes this so appealing is the eschewal of cutting-edge visual gimmicks and the insistence on utilising trusted techniques to shoot, for example, a chase sequence with a fixed camera against a back-projection screen. Given the recent harking back to silent stylisation in The Artist, it would appear that French cinema is going through a nostalgic phase.

Having proved herself to be thematically and stylistically fearless in her first two pictures, the French actor-director Maïwenn resorts to solid, dependable social realism to tackle the provocative topic of child abuse in the hard-hitting, but not always sharply focused drama. Polisse. Closer in spirit to The Wire than classic policiers like Maurice Pialat's gritty Police (1985) and Bertrand Tavernier's masterly L.627 (1991), this examines the impact that investigating often unspeakable crimes has on the members of a Parisian protection unit, several of whom are enduring domestic crises of their own. But Maïwenn becomes distracted by the characters' personal problems and, thus, dissipates the power emanating from juvenile testimonies that are alternatively deeply harrowing and darkly hilarious.

Commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior to make a study of its everyday routine, bashful photographer Maïwenn quickly discovers that the Child Protection Unit in the working-class neighbourhood of Belleville has more than its share of problems. In addition to Romanian immigrants teaching their kids to pick pockets, there are also any number of Muslim fathers trying to force their underage daughters into arranged marriages, gym teachers obsessed with their students and confused tweenagers like Malonn Lévana, who can't understand why their fathers have suddenly become so interested in them. There is little wonder, therefore, that so many of the squad find it hard not to take their work home with them and nearly all are facing a domestic crisis of one sort or another.

Anguished by a messy divorce, Karin Viard has been told to watch what she eats and finds herself constantly being nagged by Marina Foïs, who is desperate to have a baby and is in deep denial about her own bulimia. Lesbian Emmanuelle Bercot is also struggling to come to terms with her real self, while Nicolas Duvauchelle and his pregnant partner Karole Rocher keep ignoring the fact that there is more to their relationship than camaraderie. And if chief Frédéric Pierrot didn't already have enough to worry about, he is also keeping an eye on Joeystarr, the team hothead, who is crashing on his sofa after a domestic incident.

As cases come and go, Maïwenn finds her becoming less of an outsider and her pictures start to capture the intimacy that the cops establish with the juvenile victims of abuse, exploitation and poverty. Some of the vignettes (the majority of which are based on actual records) are intended to be bleakly amusing, such as the teenager who resorts to fellatio to recover a stolen mobile phone. But most are dismaying and expose the differences and similarities between cultures and classes in the (mis)treatment of children.

The sequence in which Joeystarr becomes increasingly frustrated by his inability to find a shelter willing to take African mother Bine Sarambounou and her son Gaye Sarambounou is perhaps the most harrowing, especially as the mother ultimately decides to give the boy up so that he might have a better chance than she will ever be able to afford him. But the segment featuring the cameoing Sandrine Kiberlain and Louis-Do de Lenquessaing is equally potent, as he uses his business contacts to bury the case, even though he admits to having terrible thoughts about his eight year-old daughter, and Joeystarr winds up being carpeted by boss Wladimir Yordanoff for taking the law into his own hands.

Yet, Maïwenn always seems more interested in the problems of the CPU crew than the children they are trying to help. Thus, she drifts back to Viard and  Foïs, as their friendship strains to breaking point, and to Duvauchelle and Rocher as they finally admit their feelings for one another after he is wounded in action. Moreover, she is not averse to building up her own part, as she embarks upon an affair with Joeystarr after they kiss during a night out to celebrate the resolution of a particularly tricky case.

Keeping Pierre Aïm's digital camera in the thick of the action, Maïwenn elicits fine performances from a committed ensemble. However, she and co-scenarist Bercot disappointingly allow the picture to end on a melodramatic note that somewhat undermines its authenticity. What's more, the humour is occasionally misjudged and some of the slanging matches feel forced. A tighter narrative structure might have helped things seem less fragmented, although the climactic shopping mall and hospital scenes would still feel rushed. Nevertheless, despite the odd moment of ill-discipline and self-indulgence, Maïwenn continues to develop as a director and fully merits her place alongside such emerging talents as Mia Hansen-Løve, Céline Sciamma, Katell Quillévéré, Isabelle Czajka, Pascale Ferran, Eléonore Faucher and Karin Albou.

While France has a proud tradition of encouraging women film-makers, the Middle East has proved much more resistant to affording them freedom of expression. Things had improved in Iran before the Green Wave, while a handful of female artists have started to find their voices in the Maghreb since the Arab Spring. But Nadine Labaki pretty much stands alone in the Lebanon and with Where Do We Go Now? she builds steadily on the reputation forged with her excellent debut, Caramel (2007). Taking its inspiration from Aristophanes's comedy Lysistrata, Labaki once again suggests that the world would be a very different place if women had more of a say in how things were done. Yet, for all its bright spots, this offers few new perspectives and it's a shame that it has been released so close to Radu Mihaileanu's similarly themed, but markedly less attuned battle of the sexes, The Source.

In an unnamed village in a country that bears many similarities to Lebanon, the Muslim and Christian residents manage to remain civil to each other, in spite of the occasional flare up. As the story opens, a funeral procession weaves its way to the cemetery, only for the grieving women to divide into two columns, as they shuffle off to pay respects to their fallen heroes in a conflict that seems about to rear its head again, as a prankster has put chicken blood in the holy water font at the local church and allowed goats to invade the mosque.

Determined to prevent the situation escalating, widowed Christian café owner Nadine Labaki summons her neighbours and they agree that they must do everything possible to distract their trigger-happy menfolk from ramping up the tension. With the surrounding fields being pocked with landmines and a broken bridge over the only road already restricting access to the outside world, the women sabotage television and radio connections to prevent any contentious news from getting through. They even hire a troupe of Ukrainian dancers from the nearby Paradise Palace to pretend that they are lost and need somewhere to stay until they can be rescued.

All seems to be going well, with mayor Khalil Bou Khalil's wife Yvonne Maalouf even claiming a miraculous vision of the Virgin Mary to defuse a potential flashpoint. Indeed, Labaki even has time to slip away for a furtive rendezvous with tattooed Muslim handyman Julien Farhat. But the temperature rises again when shoes are stolen from outside the mosque and Claude Baz Moussawbaa has to hide her distress when son Kevin Abboud is killed in the crossfire while collecting provisions on his motorbike and keep the peace by informing visitors that he has highly contagious mumps and must remain in quarantine.

Yet still the accusations and rumours fly and priest Samir Awad and sheik Ziad Abou Absi begin to lose control over their factions. Consequently, the women resort to lacing a banquet with hashish and sedatives to keep their husbands, sons and brothers doped long enough for them to concoct a plan.

Despite the lively performances, a couple of adroitly choreographed musical sequences (composed by Labaki's husband Khaled Mouzanar) and a splendid sense of place achieved by art director Cynthia Zahar and cinematographer Christophe Offenstein, this genial fable never quite strikes the right balance between wry wit and distressing tragedy. Playing overly on the audience's emotions rather than challenging their preconceptions, Labaki too often settles for caricature in the depiction of the male inhabitants. Moreover, she lets too many subplots drift and fails to prevent the dialogue in the closing sequences taking on a moralising tone.

What makes this all the more disappointing is that Thomas Bidegain, who wrote Jacques Audiard's acclaimed prison drama A Prophet (2009, is among Labaki's fellow scenarists. Yet this remains an easy film to like and its message of cross-faith co-existence can never be stressed often enough.

Tactfully opened out from a stage play by Évelyne de la Chenelière, Philippe Falardeau's French-Canadian Oscar nominee, Monsieur Lazhar is a potent mix of coming-of-age saga, bereavement melodrama and political parable that could so easily have been unbearably mawkish. Yet, while not avoiding platitudes altogether, Falardeau has succeeded in producing a touching human story whose insights into such complex issues as ethnicity, duty, violence, communication and integration are both shrewd and deceptively provocative.

It seems to be just another morning at a Montreal middle school, as sixth grader Émilien Néron fetches the recess milk and heads towards his classroom. However, as he reaches the door, he sees his beloved teacher Héléna Laliberté hanging from a pipe and the camera remains fixed as he runs off in blind panic to find someone to come and help her. There is nothing to be done, however, and Néron and best friend Sophie Nélisse are crushed both by the nature of the discovery and the loss of one of the few grown-ups not to treat them as children.

Principal Danielle Proulx is keen to play down the tragedy and keep it out of the press. She also wishes to spare the students undue distress and is, therefore, relieved when 55 year-old Algerian Mohamed Saïd Fellag applies to be the supply teacher. Even though the rest of the staff is exclusively female, Proulx thinks it would do the kids good to have a man about the place, especially one whose otherness would provide a welcome distraction.

Despite claiming to have some two decades of experience in his homeland, Fellag has a very different approach to education and his new charges are more than a little bemused by his accent and eccentric locutions. Moreover, they are totally flummoxed when he suggests they do a dictation from Balzac. However, he is sensitive to the atmosphere and swiftly switches to the fables of La Fontaine and sets the pupils the task of creating their own. He particularly hopes that the exercise will help Néron deal with emotions that his parents, Proulx and an outside psychologist are anxious to suppress.

But Fellag refuses to buy into the theory that Laliberté is a pitiable victim and upsets several of his new colleagues by condemning her for selfishly choosing her classroom as a place to end her life in the knowledge that her corpse would most likely be found by a child. Moreover, not everyone approves of his tactile methods. Yet, in talking to Néron, he uncovers the real reason for the boy's distress and finds the right words to console him because he has endured a trauma of his own.

Back in Algeria, Fellag had been a civil servant before opening a restaurant. But business had not been good and he decided to try his luck as an illegal exile in Canada, while his teacher wife remained at home with their two children. However, she was a vocal opponent of the government's reconciliation policy and, on the night before she was due to join Fellag in Quebec, she was murdered in an arson attack provoked by a controversial book she had recently published. But there is no guarantee that the revelation of either Fellag's political persecution or Néron's guilty secret will bring them both the peace they crave.

Some may find the denouement overly contrived, but Falardeau and De la Chenelière (who cameos as Nélisse's mother) largely prevent the drama from becoming excessively maudlin. However, much depends on the naturalism of the teaching sequences - which owe much more to Laurent Cantet's The Class (2008) than Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society (1989) - and the beautifully judged performances of Fellag, Néron and Nélisse, who rapport is entirely believable. Ronald Plante's discrete camerawork is also key, but Falardeau retains the original emphasis on words and the discussion of so many tricky topics related to the treatment of children by both parents and teachers is both cogent and quietly forceful.

Ultimately, this was never going to pip Asghar Farhadi's A Separation for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. But it is well worth seeing, if only for its unfussy dismissal of nannying correctness and its willingness to trust in the intelligence and integrity of youth.

Portmanteau pictures are notorious for their inconsistency and 7 Days in Havana particularly disappoints considering the talents behind the camera. Despite being co-ordinated by Cuban writer Leonardo Padura and his wife Lucia Lopez Coll, the screenplay lack a unifying thesis and concentrates on local colour and seductive rhythms rather than the pressing socio-political issues that have arisen from five decades of socialist revolution. Consequently, this is more an upbeat travelogue than a serious attempt to capture the mood of the city and the state of the nation it dominates.

Setting each story on a different day of the week, the anthology opens on a Monday with actor Benecio Del Toro's directorial bow, `El Yuma', which takes its title from the local slang for an American. In the city for a week-long film school seminar, Josh Hutcherson is shown the sites by cabby Vladimir Cruz, who takes him back to his humble home for a meal of fried bananas cooked by his testy mother.

Following a misunderstanding with a flirtatious sister, Hutcherson hits the capital's nightspots with Cruz and his girlfriend and, as he becomes more intoxicated, he grows increasingly desperate to hook up with a local beauty. Unfortunately, his choice turns out to be transvestite Andros Perugorría, who nearly gets him into trouble with security at his hotel.

Another visitor strays from the tourist path in Pablo Trapero's `Jam Session', which opens with a striking one-take tracking shot that follows Serbian director Emir Kusturica from the bowels of a seedy bar into the back of Alexander Abreu's taxi and out on to the ocean terrace of the Hotel Nacional. Reluctantly in Havana as the honoured guest of a film festival, Kusturica seems intent on getting plastered after a stressful phone call with his wife back home and throws up backstage before accepting his accolade.

Refusing to attend the official dinner, he sticks with Abreu when he goes to play trumpet at a jazz club and is so moved by the music that he promises to hire him to score his next picture. As he bids farewell to the driver and his young daughter at the airport, Kusturica forgets his award and Abreu suspects that he won't be hearing from him any time soon.

Promises of overseas celebrity also inform Julio Medem's `Cecilia's Temptation', as Spanish producer Daniel Brühl tries to persuade singer Melvis Estevez to sign a contract and return with him to Europe. Aware of his crush on her, she comes back to his hotel room and slips into the shower while he makes phone calls on the balcony. However, she has misgivings on hearing Brühl joke with a colleague that he hasn't slept with her yet and she returns to the cramped apartment she shares with Leonardo Benitez, a baseball player who once passed up the chance of a lucrative contract in Puerto Rico to stay with her.

He tells her to forget Spain and says he has lined them up a raft to sail to Miami. They make love vigorously before Benitez leaves for his game, but Estevez is still tempted by Brühl's offer and is all set to take a cab back to his room when Benitez attacks them in the street. Packing angrily as Benitez slugs rum in a chair, Estevez has every intention of leaving the next morning. But, instead, she follows her heart rather than her head and meekly lies beside Benitez on the bed.

If this episode feels like a telenovela, Elia Suleiman's `Diary of a Beginner' has all the hallmarks of a wry arthouse satire. Unable to find his room in a labyrinthine hotel, Suleiman has to ask directions from a black female cleaner. Waiting for a car to take him to the Palestinian embassy, he watches a photographer snapping a pretty girl on the back seat of a vehicle that refuses to start. His own journey proves frustrating, however, as the diplomat he is meeting has problems making an appointment for him over the phone. Retaining his deadpan expression, Suleiman visits a bar once frequented by Hemingway and ignores the enticements of a hooker at the bar to take a photo of a drunken tourist and his unenamoured escort posing in front of the writer's statue.

Heading to the waterfront, Suleiman watches three women of different ages looking out to sea. Two rendezvous with friends, but the oldest continues to gaze into the distance as some youths dance to a car radio nearby. Still getting nowhere at the embassy and bored by the TV coverage of one of Fidel Castro's famously rambling speeches, Suleiman himself scans the horizon and perhaps compares Cuba and Palestine as places waiting for something to happen after decades of empty reassurance by charismatic leaders like Castro and Yasser Arafat.

There is every possibility that black schoolgirl Cristela De La Caridad Herrera is among the kids seen partying on the beach and Gaspar Noé 's `Ritual' shows her becoming so lost in the music that she kisses a white girl and takes her home. However, she is found spooning with her lover the next morning by her disapproving parents and her father takes her to a `palero' priest for a santería exorcism.

While a drum maintains a steady beat in the half-light, the priest cuts Herrera's clothing with a sharp blade and performs a series of rites before stripping and dunking her in the swamp to cleanse her of any wicked thoughts. Wrapping her in a towel, he returns Herrera to her mother, who dresses her in a clean white garment to symbolise her purification.

Across the city, Saturday arrives and Mirta Ibarra and Jorge Perugorría are woken by an alarm clock at the start of Juan Carlos Tabío's `Dulce Amargo'. Ibarra has a catering order to complete and sends her husband (who used to be somebody in the army before he started drinking) to fetch the ingredients, while she chats to soap-obsessed daughter Beatriz Dorta. Ibarra is also the mother of Melvis Estevez, who comes to collect some things and wants to let both Ibarra and her stepfather know that she loves them. Connecting the family into another storyline, Andros Perugorría pops in from the bakery to drop off some flower and try on Ibarra's new black wig.

Despite the chaos, everything seems to be running to schedule. However, a sudden power cut ruins Ibarra's meringues and she sends her spouse to find some more eggs (which seem to be in short supply in spite of a radio announcement boasting about record production by Cuban hens). Eventually, everything is ready and Ibarra takes a shower before dashing off to her second job as a behavioural psychologist on a TV show. But, while she is out, Perugorría gets a call from Estevez as she readies to set sail on a raft with Leo Benitez. Having stood by the sea wall crying in the moonlight, Ibarra lies still when the alarm goes off on Sunday morning. However, we never discover if she has died of a broken heart or simply lost the will to carry on the struggle.

The conclusion of Laurent Cantet's `The Fountain' is equally ambiguous, as elderly Nathalia Amore thinks back with quiet satisfaction on a remarkable Sunday. It started with her having a vision in which the Virgin Mary orders her to create a shrine in the corner of her tenement room. Never doubting her word for a second, Othello Rensoli and his fellow neighbours start demolishing a wall, while one group makes for a nearby building site to steal bricks and cement while another heads for the docks to bribe a warehouse manager into letting them have some cheap paint.

While an old lady sews the yellow dress that Amore has ordered, she bosses everybody around and complains about the size of the pool she wants to surround her cherished statue. But her chivvying gets results and, as Rensoli finishes the brickwork, youths go scampering to the sea to bring back buckets of water to fill the fountain. They even toss in a few fish and Amore looks on admiringly as Ibarra's food arrives and everyone gathers to sing hymns. Pleased to have brought everybody together and temporarily relieved the strain of their arduous existence, Amore sits alone and dips a hand into the water. But has she merely fallen asleep as her fingers suddenly fall still?

As a cartoon recaps highlights from the seven segments in an insert alongside the closing credits, one is left to wonder quite what this portmanteau was supposed to achieve. For the most part, Havana is presented as a vibrant city that is full of beautiful buildings, friendly people and sublime music. But fleeting allusions are also made to the poverty, intolerance, superstition, restriction and incompetence that undermine the Marxist idyll, as well as to the decadence of the foreigners whose lifestyle is supposedly so envied by some that they would risk everything to sample it.

With its hackneyed plotline, glossy visuals and melodramatic tone, Julio Medem's contribution is easily the weakest. But Benicio Del Toro's opener is little more than a shaggy dog story, while both Juan Carlos Tabío and Laurent Cantet's bustling domestic sagas feel a touch contrived in their efforts to meld Castro and Capra. Similarly, Gaspar Noé seems more intent on experimenting with avant-garde sensuality than examining Cuban life, leaving only Pablo Trapero and Elia Suleiman to reflect on the country's place in the wider world and the attitude of its citizens to endless promises of better tomorrows.

The performances are solid enough, as is the camerawork of Daniel Aranyo (who shot four of the episodes), Diego Bussel (who teamed with Trapero and Cantet) and Gaspar Noé, who produced his own chiarascuro close-ups. And, as one might expect, the music is splendid. Yet this always feels more like a promotional exercise than anything more concerted or captious.

Jonathan Canzual Burley's The Soul of Flies is a coming-of-age odyssey that deflates its deep philosophical ponderings with plenty of absurdist humour and offbeat music. At times, it's almost as if Luis García Berlanga and Aki Kaurismäki had joined forces on Samuel Beckett's reworking of The Wizard of Oz. But, while this may sometimes feel excessively eccentric, it makes evocative use of the parched thoroughfares of Salamanca's La Armuña region and raises enough issues and smiles to delight devotees of so-called `slow cinema'.

Shot in sepia and using an album of old photographs to turn back time, a prologue narrated by the director recalls the racy life and peccadilloes of Castilian roué Feliz Cenzual, who was born during a carnival firework display and never knew the meaning of the word `fear'. He threw away the stamp collection he had been given at the age of 10, as he didn't think it was fair to keep such well-travelled items trapped. However, he kept one to remind him never to succumb to the same fate and, in crossing the globe 35 times, he made love and mistakes in equal measure.

Now, on his death bed, Cenzual writes to sons Javier Sáez (who lives in South America) and Andrea Calabrese (who hails from Italy) to invite them to his funeral. Neither was previously aware of the other's existence and they meet for the first time at a railway halt in the middle of nowhere that they only learn has long been abandoned from passing motorist, Luis Cenzual.  He offers them a lift in his beaten up car and Sáez calls ahead to San Felix to let grandmother Francisca Lucas know they are going to be late.

En route, the vehicle is pelted with watermelons by Mirian Montero, the driver's artist daughter, who is trying to brighten up the dusty yellow landscape with dollops of splattered pink flesh (as though she is, somehow oblivious to the field of scarlet poppies bobbing gently in the breeze). However, the engine packs up soon afterwards and the pair are left munching on melon as they wait for a bus in the tiny village of Berzos.

Eventually realising they are waiting for nothing, Sáez and Calabrese strike out across the countryside, at one point resting on a red sofa that has been conveniently stationed at the side of the road, where they hungrily discuss their ideal meal. The narrator comments on their progress and wonders whether they are being guided through the fields their father knew as a boy by his spectral memory. Perhaps he also influences Calabrese's dream of a serenading a beautiful girl (Diana Pintado) as she gathers sunflowers and he wakes his half-sibling to ask about his wife back home. Sáez waxes lyrical about her taste and smell and the bachelor Calabrese becomes more determined than ever to find love for himself.

Further along the road, Calabrese plays with a stray dog and claims to be able to gauge its personality by gazing into its eyes. Sáez is sceptical, however, and they speculate about whether dogs have souls. But, while Calabrese is prepared to believe his new canine companion does, he concludes that the flies buzzing around them are too small to house one.

Their conversation is halted, however, by Norberto Gutierrez, who is about to jeopardise his own soul by hanging himself from a tree. The strangers approach him and he explains that he suffers from narcolepsy and is so prone to sleeping fits that he has long since stopped changing out of his pyjamas. After a brief discussion, Sáez and Calabrese agree to cut him down and, as they wander back towards his village, he reveals that he wanted to end it all because his wife had left him and his waking existence is made a misery by bully Eduardo Hernandez, who had stolen his moped.

The siblings track him down to Antonio en Alcalde's bar, where Hernandez proceeds to mock Gutierrez and taunt them. Resuming their journey, they stumble upon their tormentor relieving himself by the side of the road and steal back the bike, which a grateful Gutierrez insists they keep. However, it soon runs out of petrol and Sáez and Calabrese find themselves being haunted by their father's ghost, which urges them to work as a team even though they may not like each other.

Vanishing after revealing that flies have souls after all, Cenzual leaves his sons to settle their differences. Following a short, rather pathetic fight, they lie on the desiccated soil and Sáez confesses that his wife no longer understands him and wants a divorce, while Calabrese frets that he will never find the girl of his dreams. Deciding not to bother with the funeral, the pair wait outside the cemetery, where Calabrese tells a long anecdote about a neighbour who smelt so strongly of flowers that the dead rose to sample his odour and he was driven away by his frightened friends and left to die in a ditch.

Trudging on, they pass Pintado picking sunflowers in a field and Calabrese is smitten at first sight. However, they are waylaid by a band of thieving troubadours who only decided against robbing them when they learn they are going to their father's funeral. Indeed, they persuade the pair not to miss the ceremony, or they will regret it for the rest of their lives. This sentiment is reinforced by Calabrese's campfire dream, in which he gathers papers scattered by Pintado only to discover that they are blank and he realises that life is worth living because it creates the memories that serve as a solace in old age.

Next morning, Sáez and Calabrese arrive in San Felix to be greeted by priest Innocenco Di Lisi. He ushers them into the church, where they sit behind the coffin of the father they never knew. Having paid their respects, they set off to put into practice the lesson he had taught them on the road, with Calabrese going in search of Pintado and the happiness he has always craved.

Shot on a shoestring with a crew of seven and vibrantly played by a non-professional cast (only Sáez is a full-time actor), this is a highly engaging picaresque that effortlessly blends neo- and magic realism in exploring a range of existential quandaries. The largely percussive score and quirky songs by Tim Walters and Andrea Calabrese are equally effective. But it's Cenzual Burley's eye for a telling detail and assured sense of pace that makes this so consistently arresting and so delightfully idiosyncratic.

South Korean Kim Ki-duk makes a striking return to film-making with Arirang. Kim has been out of the limelight since suffering a nervous breakdown after blaming himself for an actress's near-death during the making of Dreams in 2008. In some ways resembling Jafar Panahi's This Is Not a Movie in allowing access to a director's home and mindset, this distinctive comeback is the ultimate work of auteurist cinema, as Kim is solely responsible for every aspect of its action on screen and behind the scenes. Sometimes almost unbearable to watch because of its seemingly genuine self-lacerating honesty, but at others feeling more like a slickly cynical in-joke, this is strictly for fans of the prolific maverick. Yet its insights into the artistic and emotional anguish of making films and having them judged by rivals, critics and audiences are intriguing.

Living inside a tent in a shack on a remote hillside, Kim and his feline companion seem to be  hiding from the world. As records of days in the life go, this one shifts from mundane to manic remarkably quickly. Kim shows himself doing everyday chores while camping out on a mountainside like chopping wood and making a meal. We are even treated to the sight of his relieving himself in the snow and reminiscing about unfulfilled projects such as the story he was discussing with Willem Dafoe about a Korean War veteran who returns to find the body of the woman he killed and winds up confronting her spirit through a shaman.

Putting his hair into a pony tail, Kim begins to interrogate himself through cross-cutting and explains why he had to withdraw after the Dreams incident and has to work out what to do next as making films is his sole reason for existence. Suddenly, he starts slugging back the Korean hooch known as soju and begins to unburden himself torrentially as he launches into a diatribe against the colleagues who have betrayed him, the money men who have failed to back him, the governing politicians who feted him for mostly self-serving reasons (especially as several of his films present South Korea in such a dim light) and the reviewers who have pronounced on his work without either having seen his canon in its entirety or understood what he was trying to achieve in any given picture.

Kim also blames himself, however, particularly for the accident that saw Lee Na-young nearly suffocate while filming a hanging suicide sequence and left Kim sufficiently traumatised to quit cinema for three years. But this is more an accusatory than a confessional work, with Kim acting as his own inquisitor and audience as he pieces together snippets of footage to deconstruct both the interviewing and film-making processes. He even seems to involve his shadow in the questioning and the ingenuity of his imagery leads one to suspect that, even if this wasn't meticulously scripted, it was certainly premeditatedly planned so that every expletive-strewn outburst is shot from just the right angle to make the most audiovisual impact.

Given Kim's past genius for controversy, it's almost surprising that this isn't more outlandish and defamatory in denouncing such erstwhile collaborators as Jang Hoon and the actors specialising in playing villains, whom Kim insists are so convincing because they are actually evil. He seems to let genuine emotions slip out while singing the folk lament `Arirang' and watching his 2003 masterpiece Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring on DVD. But the suspicion that this is less a confessional exercise than a piece of mischief making start to be aroused when Kim faces questioning by his own shadow and keeps being disturbed by mysterious knocks at the door.

However, the authenticity of the enterprise is only conclusively thrown into doubt when Kim draws on his former career as a machinist to fashion a gun out of spare pieces of metal and leaves his hideaway declaring that he is going to mow down his betrayers. Climbing into his car, he drives to Seoul where three shots are heard at different locations before Kim is shown using wires to pull the trigger on himself. So have we just witnessed the painfully frank outpourings of a soul in personal and professional torment or another gleeful gesture of defiance by a director who simply refuses to play by the rules?

On revisiting his homeland for the first time in a decade, Midi Z was asked by his mother what he had been eating. Such small, but poignant details recur throughout the semi-autobiographical Return to Burma, which represents a small piece of screen history, as it is the first feature to be made in this notoriously insular country since the imposition of military rule. Filmed (often furtively) using a single camera, this circumvents much of the strict media censorship that enables the generals to retain control. However, Midi captures Burma (or Myanmar, as it is officially called) at a crossroads, as the regime takes the first tentative steps towards democracy.

Ethnic Chinese Wang Xinghong has been living in Taipei for 12 years. Life seems tough, as he works long hours for meagre reward. But he soon realises how lucky he is in comparison with his family and neighbours when he returns to his home village of Lashio with the ashes of a buddy who was killed in a construction site accident. Indeed, everyone he meets seems to be struggling to get by on a pittance and they regard the wages he commands as a royal ransom.

Wang's parents are pleased to see him, but his younger brother is clearly restless and is keen to make his way to Malaysia to make some real money. Undecided about whether to return to Taiwan and stay with his folks, Wang potters around Lashio and engages in endless conversations about the local economy. He discusses business with a tuk-tuk driver and even looks into the profitability of smuggling black market goods from China. Eventually, his sibling departs and Wang is left to contemplate the consequences of his own decision. But he is far from convinced that reform is going to make a great deal of difference in a society where time seems to have been standing still.

Full of wry observations and played to a soundtrack of seemingly ubiquitous, government-sponsored,  pro-democracy pop songs, this is as much a prodigal documentary as a domestic drama. Midi Z allows the camera to linger on the environs, but is more interested in the people and their attitude to their political and economic situations. The endless discussion of money and the willingness of young men to leave and accept the most arduous manual labour to get it says much about the lack of opportunity in Burma. But this is never a pitying or particularly critical snapshot of a nation in hopeful transition. Indeed, Midi seems to admire his compatriots for their indomitability in the face of oppression and poverty. Nonetheless, an air of despondency does pervade some of the longer silences.

The scene passes from one covert world to another in Pole Jan Komasa's Suicide Room, which uses pioneering 3-D animation to recreate the virtual reality site to which a troubled teenager retreats after a humiliating experience at school. Given that it was selected by Andrzej Zulawski (the director of such important films as The Third Part of the Night, 1971 and Possession, 1981) for the 10x10x10 strand, this clearly comes highly rated. But while it is considerably more visually impressive than Hideo Nakata's Chatroom (2010), this is scarcely more dramatically sophisticated, either in its depiction of the emo sub-culture or in the satirical jibes at the nouveau riche in contemporary Poland.

The son of weak-willed politician Krzysztof Pieczynski and domineering advertising executive Agata Kulesza, Jakub Gierszal has struggled to make an impact during his school career. So, when he is dared to snog Bartosz Gelner at their prom ball, he readily agrees. However, the prank backfires, as cell-phone clips of the clench find their way online and classmates turn on Gierszal as Gelner claims he has to be gay because he became aroused during their kiss.

With his parents merely irritated that he allowed himself to be duped, Gierszal barricades himself into his room and seeks solace in a website about self-harming. While browsing, he encounters Roma Gasiorowska who informs him about the Suicide Room and he checks in to discover that she is its queen. Finding much in common with the anonymous visitors, Gierszal spends the next 10 days becoming increasingly besotted with Gasiorowska, who is taken by his fealty. However, she also has an ulterior motive and Pieczynski and Kulesza seem to play into her hands when they encourage the psychiatrists called in to treat Gierszal to prescribe some pills and tell him to pull himself together.

Apparently inspired by Virginia Woolf's 1922 novel Jacob's Room (although it contains more than its share of references to Hamlet), this is a bold bid to take Polish cinema in a new hi-tec direction. Unfortunately, despite the efforts of production designer Adam Torczynski and the animation team, the problem of making web content seem cinematic remains unsolved. However, even with its images of mutilation and decapitation, Gierszal's online odyssey will struggle to hold the attention of those capable of resisting in life the allure of a CGI avatar. And, besides, the entire premise is far less intriguing than the opening segments on physical and cyber bullying and domestic dysfunction among the haute bourgeoisie.

Having previously produced the `Warsaw' segment of the portmanteau picture Ode to Joy (2005), Komasa clearly has talent. But this treatise on the small things that can tilt a life off keel is a false dawn.

Finally, the animated flights of fancy are more benignly fabulist in Michel Ocelot's Tales of the Night. As he proved with Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) and Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest (2006), few produce pictures as consistently ravishing and there is a timeless magic to the newly minted fairytales in a sextet that owes much to the artistry perfected in the 1920s by the German silhouettist Lotte Reiniger. Brimming with princesses, sorcerers, mythical beasts and sumptuously coloured backdrops, this is a glorious demonstration of sublime craftsmanship. But, as with many portmanteaux, the vignettes are of variable quality and the device linking them is quirky to the point of being irksome.

The six tales are concocted by an unnamed man and woman working in conjunction with Théo, an elderly theatre technician who maintains an ingenious machine that can create the costumes designed by the young pair before they go behind a curtain that opens each time onto a wonderland of vibrant hues and textures against that provide the setting for their enchanted shadow plays.

Staged some time in the past, `The Werewolf' opens with a betrothal ceremony. However, once the couple are alone, Yann reveals to his new fiancée that he turns into a wolf whenever there is a full moon. Undaunted, she demands to witness his transformation and he explains how he can only revert to his human form by placing a golden chain around his neck. No sooner has Yann become a lycanthrope than his beloved steals the chain and tosses it down the deepest well in her father's chateau.

Feigning tears, she then rushes to tell everyone that Yann has been devoured by a beast in the woods. But her younger sister refuses to accept her account and ventures into the woods, where she is attacked by a bear. However, a wolf comes to her rescue and, as she rides on its back, she reveals how she had pawned her jewellery to feed Yann while he was in prison and given him a fur discarded by her sister to keep him warm.

The wolf realises he has become engaged to the wrong sibling and hides in the garden as the younger girl explains to her father that she thinks Yann is the wolf who saved her. Her sister mocks the story and betrays that she knows the secret and the whereabouts of the gold chain and she is furious when it is recovered and Yann is returned to his human form to pledge his life to her sister, who loves him no matter what his physical appearance.

This rather Aesopian fable is followed by `Ti-Jean and Beauty Not Known', a saga with a Caribbean flavour that begins with Ti-Jean disappearing through a hole in a cave and emerging in the Land of the Dead. An old man walking on his hands informs him that, as the only living being in the realm, he can claim the hand of the king's daughter. However, he will have to get past a giant bee, a monstrous mongoose and a gigantic iguana and the old man provides Ti-Jean with datura leaves, venomous manchineel apples and a spiked piece of meat to kill each in turn.

As he approaches the palace, Ti-Jean encounters the bee. But, instead of harming it, he gives it a hibiscus plant full of pollen and is allowed to proceed. Similarly, he presents the mongoose with a dish of his mother's feroce stew, while the iguana is delighted to receive some guava and bananas from his aunt and father's gardens. Seeing as though nobody had ever survived these ordeals before, the king is surprised to see Ti-Jean and throws him in jail after telling him that he will only be allowed to marry Beauty Not Known if he passes three tests.

Unfazed by the prospect of being diced by the king's chopping machine, Ti-Jean wonders how he is going to retrieve the 11 golden-shelled turtles lost by the youngest princess when he is confined to his cell. But the mongoose comes to thank him for the feroce and goes in search of the missing turtles to repay the favour. The iguana likewise recovers the blue diamond that the youngest princess dropped while swimming in the sea.

But even Ti-Jean wonders how he is going to identify Beauty Not Known among the king's three identical daughters. However, the bee (who has now shrunk down to normal size) promises to land on Beauty's nose. Yet, despite being offered half the kingdom, Ti-Jean chuckles that he would rather be alive than dead and leaves to find his girlfriend.

The scene shifts to the Mexico of the Aztecs for `The Chosen One of the Golden City', which sees a stranger arrive in a magnificent metropolis and notice that everyone is happy. He spots a young woman between the Pyramids of Gold and asks why the mood is so bleak. She explains that each feast day, the Great Shepherd selects the five prettiest girls and they are presented at the Esplanade of Sacrifice to a dragon known as Our Benefactor, as he provides the citizens with riches in return for a maiden to devour.

On learning that the woman has been selected for the ritual, the visitor promises to protect her. Suddenly, the Great Shepherd urges everyone to start the chant known as the Revelation of the Chosen and the beast opts for the traveller's friend. He shouts out in protest and the Great Shepherd insists that the ceremony continue with the Triumph of the Chosen cantata, as he had lost his own daughter and doesn't see what alternative there is to satiating the monster's hideous appetite.

But the foreigner is adamant and he distracts Our Benefactor, who chases him across the city. All seems lost when he swallows his adversary whole. But he uses his sword to slaughter the creature from the inside and everyone starts to rejoice. The celebrations are short-lived, as the Great Shepherd's prediction that the golden edifice would crumble if tradition was not upheld comes true. However, the newcomer rallies them by explaining the benefits of work and the pleasure of leisure and he is proclaimed the new leader with the spared victim as his bride.

Harsh lessons also have to be learned in `The Tom-Tom Boy', an African yarn about a boy who annoys everyone in his village by drumming when he should be learning how to cook, hunt, farm or defend the tribe from its enemies. Moreover, he is told off for disturbing the king, who has succumbed to a mysterious ailment that has even baffled the wise, but temperamental witch doctor.

Going into the savannah to sulk, Tom-Tom Boy pelts a menacing monster with boabab fruit and earns the gratitude of the imperilled Keeper of the Magic Tom-Tom. As a reward, he offers to teach Tom-Tom Boy the art of drumming and he sticks to his task even though his hands are sore from all the practicing. Eventually, he is permitted to try his new skills on a passing porcupine, which begins to dance as though a spell had been cast over it.

En route to his village, Tom-Tom Boy sees the king's daughter and she stops gathering herbs needed for her father's medicine and begins to dance. She is amazed by his music and he soon has everyone dancing with uncontrollable joy. However, the witch doctor says it is unseemly to dance while the king is sick. But the princess takes Tom-Tom Boy into his chamber and he is soon leaping around like the rest of his subjects.

The king's recovery, however, coincides with a raid by a rival tribe. But Tom-Tom Boy quickly sends them into jigging retreat and the people are mightily relieved. However, the witch doctor is jealous of Tom-Tom Boy's new power and he steals the Magic Drum and starts to play. When his rhythms have no effect, the princess realises that the magic lies in Tom-Tom Boy's hands and the king kills the witch doctor and vanquishes the encroaching foe and everyone lives happily ever after to the beat of Tom-Tom Boy's drum.

Tibet provides the setting for `The Boy Who Never Lied', as a king pays a visit to his cousin to show off his talking stallion Melonghi. The host is unimpressed, however, as his princess daughter possesses a singing mare named Somaki. But the first king thinks he can top this wonder, as the stable boy who tends Melonghi is so honest that he has never fibbed in his entire life and the other monarch wagers half his kingdom if he can induce mendacity.

The princess disguises herself as a weary traveller and reaches the mountain top retreat where the boy keeps Melonghi. He has never seen anyone so beautiful and instantly becomes besotted with his guest and shows her the astonishing vistas visible from the surrounding peaks. The woman seems taken with the boy and wishes she could stay here forever. But she suddenly falls ill and declares that the only thing that can cure her is a dish made from Melonghi's heart.

Distraught, the boy wanders into the field with an axe, but he cannot kill the horse and crumples with unhappiness. Melonghi asks what is wrong and tells the boy to fetch Somaki, as she can help him find a solution to the problem. Next morning, the boy finds Melonghi dead after eating poisonous grass and he prepares a meal for his ailing beloved with tears in his eyes. But she disappears as soon as he presents her with the bowl and he realises he has been tricked.

Crestfallen, the boys tries to invent a lie that will convince the king that he did no wrong. But he is too honest and confesses everything. However, the princess and her father are ashamed at having tested such a noble youth and brought about Melonghi's death. But the story ends well, as the princess consents to marry him and share her kingdom, while Somaki announces that she is pregnant with Melonghi's foal, who will grow up to become the new prince's inseparable friend.

The final fable, `The Girl Doe and the Architect's Son', takes place in medieval France, where Maud and Thibault are deeply in love. But, just as they are about to kiss, her sorcerer guardian Zakariak unleashes a ferocious beast that forces the boy back and a huge spider descends from an unseen web to pluck Maud off the ground and deposit her in the uppermost room of a mountain-top fortress.

Ignoring the advice of his own mentor, Thibault boasts that he learned to climb while helping his father build the nearby cathedral and he scales the heights without the slightest difficulty. He reaches Maud's window and urges her to accept the wicked Zakariak's marriage proposal, as he has a cunning plan. So, on the day of the nuptials, Thibault opens a trapdoor in the high altar and catches Maud as she falls through and whisks her along the network of tunnels that his father had constructed.

They ride off into the forest on waiting horses. But Zakariak refuses to be beaten and fires a terrible spell from a turret high in his citadel and Thibault suddenly finds himself alone. He is convinced that Maud has been turned into a timid doe, when a crow descends and frightens it away, Thibault is worried that, because all the deer look alike, he will never recognise her again.

His guardian suggests that they seek out the Fairy of Caresses, who lives in a hideout built by his father in Hollow Cliff. They are followed by the pesky crow who manages to slip inside the secret entrance to a fabulous hall that glitters with green and blue gems. However, Thibault is grateful for the bird's assistance when it perches on a lever that opens a portcullis and then taps open the egg in which the Fairy is sleeping after the shell proves too tough for his sword.

The Fairy tells Thibault that he has to caress the doe for it to turn back into Maud, but she cannot help him identify her. She notices that the crow seems to know the truth and tells him to visit her cousin, the Blue Fairy, on Bird Island, who will be able to translate its cawing. Thibault strokes the crow and asks if it would be willing to make the journey and the bird turns into Maud, who had been following in the hope that she could earn his kindly touch. As the credits roll, the Fairy of Caresses laughs at Thibault's guardian for wondering if there is a scientific explanation for love and slyly hints that she may well have been so willing to help the boy find his true love because she is his mother.

No other 3-D animation would take its inspiration from Tibetan thangkas, the paintings of Nicholas Roerich, the architecture of  Eugène Viollet-le-duc and the illuminated Gothic manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. But Michel Ocelot has never been one to patronise his audience (no matter what its age) or shy away from confronting it with the less palatable aspects of human nature. Nor has he stinted on the sumptuous detail that make the backgrounds to his ombres chinoises so exquisite.

Here, though, the interludes are a vexatious mix of prattle and pretension, as the young couple bicker over the look and content of the tales (with the woman rightly arguing that several of her characters are eminently resistible). Moreover, it's never made clear who this trio are or how they have access to such atmospheric facilities. Ultimately, this shouldn't matter. But, as they neither comment on the moral of the stories nor suggest their relevance to modern living, they feel like an excuse to show off the learning involved in the creation of the sumptuous artwork.

For once, one might have forgiven a dubbed voice track rather than subtitles, as the vast amount of text draws the eye away from the glorious visuals. Moreover, English dialogue might have tempted a few more grown-ups into selecting this as a half-term treat for children tired of Hollywood's increasingly soulless CGI animations. Nevertheless, those who do see it will marvel at the expressiveness of the shadow puppets' eyes and those who have to miss out at the cinema can always check out Ocelot's 2000 compilation, Princes and Princesses (which adopts much the same format and style) or the BFI's superb collection of Lotte Reiniger fairy tales.