Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/7/2013)

First seen stripping to the waist and wrapping a thorny cilice around her midriff before flagellating herself beore the crucifix in her bedroom, middle-aged Mary Hofstaetter probably wishes she lived in medieval times when such acts of abasement were considered godly. Now, she and her cohorts in the Legion of the Sacred Heart meet in her apartment to lament the state of the modern world and the fact that so many Austrian Catholics have lapsed. Thus, she embarks upon a mission to save souls by lugging a two-foot statue of the Virgin Mary around the city's residential streets in the hope of pricking the odd conscience or making the occasional conversion. Despite her sincerity, however, Hofstaetter finds few sympathetic hearers. The majority dismiss her on the doorstep, but Dieter and Trude Masur (who, in their guest's eyes, are living in sin) are keen to debate the issues and revel in countering Hofstaetter's arguments and allowing her to contradict herself or argue herself into a corner. By contrast, obese orphan Rene Rupnik (the sex-obsessed, mother-loving maths teacher who was the subject of Seidl's 1997 documentary, The Bosom Friend) has dubious motives for craving her company, while depressed alcoholic Russian prostitute Natalija Baranova grows frustrated with Hofstaetter's urgings to repent and turns unexpectedly violent.

While she is frustrated by her failure to save souls, Hofstaetter takes solace in the sanctuary of her home, where she spends hours deep in prayer and shuffles around on her knees to atone for misdeeds like masturbating with one of her many crucifixes. However, her greatest test comes when Muslim husband Nabil Saleh returns out of the blue after presumably lodging with his family in Egypt following the accident, two years earlier, that left him paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair and which sparked his wife's religious mania. Initially, Saleh simply wishes to be allowed to return to the marital home and Hofstaetter accepts that it is her spousal duty to take care of him. But he soon starts insisting on sharing her bed and grows increasingly irate with her after she witnesses a nocturnal orgy in a nearby park and becomes more disgusted than ever with all things sexual.

In revenge, Saleh starts persecuting Rolli and using his stick to knock Hofstaetter's religious paraphernalia off the walls and she retaliates by confiscating and hiding his wheelchair, leaving him to crawl around in a grotesque parody of her obeisant genuflection. As the domestic situation deteriorates, Saleh makes a clumsy attempt to force Hofstaetter into sleeping with him and she is so distressed that she lashes out with her whip at the crucifix on the bedroom wall before being stricken with remorse and pleading for forgiveness while clutching and kissing the inanimate figure of the dying Christ.

Following Tiesel's example, Hofstaetter delivers a performance of astonishing commitment and courage that Seidl honours with a non-judgemental detachment that ensures Wolfgang Thaler and Ed Lachman's cameras are kept at a discreet distance throughout. Shooting sequentially in long take to allow Hofstaetter and the non-professional Saleh to improvise their dialogue, Seidl rarely employs cuts within scenes and, while some may complain that certain sequences are left to linger, this considerably enhances the authenticity of action that always manages to remain the right side of soap opera or farce. But, while there is an element of repetitiveness in the proselytising sequences, editor Christof Schertenleib keeps a tighter rein on proceedings than he managed in Paradise: Love.

Despite being dedicated to the silent slapstick clown Max Linder (who committed suicide with his younger wife of two years, Heléne `Jean' Peters in 1925), the tone is markedly less mocking than it was in compatriot Jessica Hausner's miracle satire, Lourdes (2009). That said, Seidl shies away from delving too deeply into the country's spiritual malaise or any comparisons between Christian and Islamic approaches to conjugal conduct. Yet he still raises plenty of smiles in his depiction of Hofstaetter's distinctive acts of worship, her debates with her avowedly secular neighbours and her altercation with Saleh, which occasionally comes close to matching the ferocity of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner's feud in Danny DeVito's The War of the Roses (1989). We shall have to wait until August to see how Melanie Lenz fares at a health resort, but, after what has gone before, one anticipates Paradise: Hope with considerable trepidation.

Mary Hofstaetter's bravura performance is more than matched by Martina Gedeck's in television veteran Julian Roman Pölsler's adaptation of Marlen Haushofer's 1962 novel, The Wall. Borrowing its plot from the 1960 `The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street' episode of Rod Serling's ever-inventive TV show, The Twilight Zone, the premise audaciously strains credibility. But the metaphorical sci-fi conceit is quickly forgotten and what was originally a Kafkaesque Cold War take on Robinson Crusoe becomes a thoughtful allegory on the status of woman in the modern world and the place of humanity in the greater scheme of things. Photographed by nine different cinematographers over several seasons, this may rely a little too heavily on voiceover narration. But its combination of visual majesty and philosophical intimacy make this quietly compelling and touchingly memorable.

Alone in an Alpine hunting lodge, fortysomething widow Martina Gedeck writes in her journal about the things that have befallen her since she went on an expedition with cousin Ulrike Beimpold and her husband Karl Heinz Hackl. She had remained behind when they had gone to the nearby village for supplies and had awoken the following morning to discover that they had not returned. Accompanied by their dog Luchs, Gedeck had gone in search of them and had been surprised to find that her way by the lakeside road had been blocked by an invisible barrier that appeared to have sealed her off from the outside world. She could see beyond the obstruction and feel its cold, glassy surface. But, as the distant landscape seemed unchanged, she was curiously accepting of her plight and returned to the cabin, grateful that it had been so well stocked with provisions.

As the days turn into weeks, Gedeck realises that she is trapped in a bucolic enclave that is still more an idyll than a dystopia. So, she begins cultivating crops and teaches herself to hunt deer. She allows a passing fox to survive, as it pauses in the snow to inspect her, and her menagerie grows when she befriends a couple of cats and a pregnant cow, whose calf she helps deliver. Luchs (who is a rusty-brown Bavarian Mountain Dog) remains her faithful companion and she decides to start keeping a written record of her experiences for posterity. While out exploring one day, she sees an elderly couple (Julia Gschnitzer and Hans-Michael Rehberg) seemingly frozen in mid-motion on the other side of the divide and deduces that she must have been spared some sort of apocalyptic event. She ponders in her diary about her fate and how humanity fits into the grand design. Yet, she also contemplates her relationship with her animals and whether she retains any moral superiority to them when they are clearly better suited to survival than she is.

Distressed by the death of the pedigree cat in the depths of winter, Gedeck urges herself not to let emotion undermine her resolve. However, as the summer returns, she arrives home from a walk to find a stranger (Wolfgang M. Bauer) attacking the cow. She rushes to stop him and is forced to shoot him dead. But he has already killed both the cow and Luchs and her sense of isolation and despair becomes ever greater when she runs out of paper and, as a consequence, her fate becomes unknowable.

Dispensing with some of the background information that Haushofer had provided in her text, Pölsler follows her lead in refusing to speculate about what has caused the castaway's bizarre situation and how it might have impacted upon the rest of civilisation. He also resists prying too deeply into Gedeck's psychological state. But he does make extensive use of off-screen narration when he might have trusted more his own visual sense and Gedeck's ability to convey emotion through gesture and expression. This rather lazy literary device also seems to undermine the CinemaScopic contribution of the nonet of cinematographers that includes such key figures in the Austrian new wave as Martin Gschlacht and Christian Berger, as well as JRP Altmann, Markus Fraunholz, Bernhard Keller, Helmut Pirnat, Hans Selikovsky, Thomas Tröger and Richi Wagner. It also detracts from Johannes Konecky's inspired sound design and violinist Julia Fischer's sensitive renditions of the Bach partitas that help reinforce the mood of reverence and awe at the breathtaking beauty and forbidding barbarity of Nature.

Given that the source was written months after the erection of the Berlin Wall, it is easy to see it as a commentary on its contemporary world. However, Pölsler updates the themes to question patriarchal constraint and challenge the notion of the glass ceiling that prevents so many women from fulfilling their potential. Matt Groening and his co-scenarists examined a similar situation with a good deal more levity in The Simpsons Movie (2007), while Stephen King placed another town in a giant bell jar in Under the Dome (2009). But this is as much about self-sufficiency and discovery as it is about societal injustice or the concept of praxeology so key to the Austrian School of Economics, which posits that human behaviour is dictated by need and purpose rather than anything more visionary or philanthropic.

It is also more concerned with human nature and morality than it is with ecology, although the asides on Gedeck's growing respect for her animals and their non-bestial interaction raise the same kind of interesting issues that Bruce Dern's interaction with the robots Huey, Dewey and Louie did when he became trapped in space with a precious cargo of endomed flora in Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1971). But, while that deeply moving film followed its climactic descent into violence with an optimistic closing image, Pölsler ends on a note of existentialist ambiguity that feels a little abrupt and unsatisfying.

Released three years after this sci-fi classic, Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) reverses the situation presented in The Wall by having someone accustomed to captivity being released into the wider world. Reissued as part of the extended season devoted to the maverick German director at the National Film Theatre, this is perhaps less well known than last month's Klaus Kinski vehicle, Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972). But this fact-based saga set in Nuremberg in 1828 similarly considers Herzog's perennial theme of the chaos of the universe, which has seen him focus so frequently on protagonists who venture (or, in this case, are pushed) into alien environments that expose their insignificance and vulnerability.

After years of being chained n a dark room with nothing for company but a toy horse, 17 year-old Kaspar Hauser (Bruno Schleinstein) is released by his carer-cum-jailer (Hans Musäus) and taught how to walk upright and write his name. He is then left in the square in the German town of Nuremberg with a note in his hand explaining his background and his desire to be a cavalryman. Uncertain what to do with a wild-eyed stranger whose inability to communicate is compounded by his unfamiliarity with everything around him, the townspeople decide to lock him in the tower prison. However, Hiltel the guard (Volker Prechtel) quickly realises on seeing him burn his fingers on a candle that Kaspar is a gentle soul and take sufficient pity on him to bring him home to meet his wife (Gloria Doer) and children. Scarcely older than the latter, Kaspar responds to their efforts to teach him how to play and make himself understood and Frau Hiltel brings tears to his eyes by allowing him to hold her new-born infant.

However, the cost of keeping Kaspar is mounting and the mayor (Herbert Fritsch) decides to let a ringmaster (Willy Semmelrogge) exhibit him as a freak in his circus in order to pay his way. News soon spreads of this marvellous man-child and Professor Daumer (Walter Ladengast) joins the queues to see him. But, rather than dismiss him as a curio, Daumer recognises Kaspar's intelligence and potential to learn and, over the next two years, the youth grows in social and intellectual confidence without losing his inherent innocence and curiosity with his new environment.

Daumer learns that Kaspar has started to dream since leaving his shack and he develops a talent for the piano. He also befriends Daumer's housekeeper (Brigitte Mira) and questions why women have a subservient role in society. When Daumer introduces him to a logician (Alfred Edel) and a pastor (Enno Patalas), Kaspar evades their efforts to trick him and bamboozles them with questions that cut through the cant of so much religion and philosophy.

But such exchanges serve only to increase Kaspar's celebrity and effete English dandy Lord Stanhope (Michael Kroecher) attempts to lure him into his orbit, only for him to feel so uncomfortable with the dissolute lifestyle that he is discarded as an uncivilised clod. Shortly afterwards, Kaspar is badly beaten by the man who had first imprisoned him and he tells Daumer about a dream he had about people struggling up a steep hillside at the top of which awaits Death. After he is stabbed by his mysterious black-caped assailant, Kaspar starts to relate another vision about a blind Berber leading a lost tribe across the Saraha desert. But he dies before he can complete his tale and the film ends with the dispassionate autopsy details that he had an enlarged liver and cerebellum

Much has been made of the similarity between this picture and François Truffaut's L'Enfant sauvage (1970), which was also based on an historical character. However, Herzog is never interested in the reasons for Kaspar's incarceration or the controversy about his authenticity that blew up during his lifetime. Instead, he concentrates on the sensations that Kaspar experiences on acclimatising to so-called normality and it says much for his empathy with the character that he cast 41 year-old street performer Bruno S. (as he was known at the time), as he was the son of a prostitute who had spent 23 years in children's homes, prisons, homeless shelters and mental institutions (where he had endured experimentation by Nazi doctors) and shared Kaspar's undaunted fascination with his surroundings.

The remainder of the cast, including acclaimed director Reinhard Hauff as a farmer, prove every bit as naturalistic, as they provide foils for Schleinstein and demonstrate the validity of the film's German title, Every Man for Himself and God Against All. Like John Merrick in David Lynch's version of The Elephant Man (1980), Kasper remains a hapless victim, in spite of his progress, and the tragedy of the narrative lies in the fact that his spirit is essentially crushed by those attempting to ameliorate his existence. Fittingly, the film is dedicated to the German critic Lotte Eisner, who had nurtured Herzog's talent in much the same way that André Bazin had done for the young Truffaut and Dr Jean Itard had done for Victor (the `wild child') and Daumer for Kasper. But, while novelist Anaïs Nin may have stretched the point when she claimed, `the story of Kaspar is more fascinating than the story of Jesus Christ', this continues to make compelling viewing and the contributions of cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein and production designer Henning von Gierke should not be overlooked.

Diametric worlds also collide in Michael Mayer's debut, Out in the Dark, which makes the most of a meagre budget to impart a political spin upon the oft-told tale of love across a divide. However, the Haifa-born, California-trained director is not content with pitching his star-crossed lovers into the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. He and co-scenarist Yael Shafir also make them gay and gives one of them a Muslim fundamentalist brother with connections to a terrorist organisation. As if this isn't enough melodrama for one picture, Mayer also laces the mix with denial, regret and sacrifice to ensure that the climactic thriller segment ends on a resounding note of poignancy and indignation.

Currently studying for his psychology masters at the Birzeit University in Ramallah, Nicholas Jacob has high hopes of being allowed to continue his education at Princeton, Stanford or Cambridge. However, for the moment, he has trouble leaving the West Bank in order to get into the nearby Israeli city of Tel Aviv. Thus, he has to wait until dark before sneaking past the checkpoints to visit his flamboyant friend, Loai Noufi, who works in a trendy gay bar. One night, Jacob catches the eye of affluent Israeli lawyer Michael Aloni, who explains that he is out to parents Alon Oleartchik and Chelli Goldenberg, but keeps his sexuality a closely guarded secret from his colleagues and opponents. In return, Noufi reveals that he comes from a conservative village where homosexuality is ranked among the deadliest of sins.

Compounding Jacob's problem is the fact that brother Jameel Khouri is part of a militant anti-Israeli cadre and has hidden a cache of weapons in the family home. He is unhappy that Jacob keeps going to Tel Aviv and fumes when he is granted a special student visa to enable him to use the city libraries. However, Jacob exploits his new freedom to call on Aloni and the pair soon become lovers. He has less time for Noufi, though, and is powerless to prevent him from being detained by the Israeli Defence Force and returned to Ramallah. Khouri's group decide that Noufi is an informer and they beat and kill him as a warning to others not to fraternise with the enemy.

Distraught at having witnessed his friend's execution, Jacob begs Aloni to secure him residency papers before Khouri, mother Khawlah Haj and younger sister Maysa Daw find out about his sexuality. However, Aloni's actions only arouse suspicion and IDF agent Alon Pudt tries to blackmail Jacob into spying on Khouri and his associates. When he refuses, his visa is revoked and his situation deteriorates rapidly when his family learn about his activities in Tel Aviv and disown him. 

Alone and afraid, Jacob slips back into the city. However, the IDF raid his house that night and arrest Khouri on discovering his weapons stash. Watching the TV news, Aloni convinces himself that Jacob must share his sibling's ideology and refuses to see him, let alone offer him sanctuary. Certain he is going to be killed, Jacob narrowly escapes capture after being chased by the police. However, help is soon at hand, as Aloni realises his mistake after Pudt pays him a call and he risks his own neck in trying to find his lover. He tells him a gangster who owes him a favour can smuggle Jacob to France, where they can be together. But, in acting as a decoy, Aloni is arrested by the IDF and, as Jacob leaves the harbour by boat, Pudt delights in taunting Aloni that not only is his career over, but his life is ruined, too.

Ever since he made Yossi & Jagger in 2002, Eytan Fox has been the doyen of gay Israeli cinema. Indeed, echoes of The Bubble (2006) reverberate around this earnest, but deeply flawed picture. Yet, for all his sincerity, Mayer lacks Fox's narrative control and visual sense. Consequently, this always feels like a tract with a message to disseminate rather than a story about human beings trapped in an appalling predicament. Employing close-ups in often dimly lit locales, cinematographer Ran Aviad capably contrasts realities in Tel Aviv and the West Bank, while editor Maria Gonzales introduces an air of unpredictability with her skittish cutting. Composers Mark Holden and Michael Lopez also impose a brooding atmosphere without overly manipulating the audience's emotions. But there is precious little chemistry between Aloni and first-timer Jacob and the dearth of spark makes the reckless chances the pair take seem all the more contrived.

Similarly, too many of the secondary figures border on caricature, with Noufi's campness being as clumsily limned as Khouri's extremism. Nevertheless, Mayer does succeed in exploring the sense of confinement and persecution that most Palestinians feel. The opening sequence in which Jacob creeps towards Tel Aviv, for example, is unaffectedly disconcerting and it's a shame that Mayer decides to jettison such restraint in ratcheting up the tension in the latter stages Similarly, he might have made more of the pressures that are brought to bear upon ordinary citizens by both the security forces and their jihadist counterparts. But resonant points are invariably made with a thud rather than with precision and, as a result, while this potently exposes the prejudice that exists on both sides of the conflict, it feels closer in spirit to Merav Doster's heavy-handed Eyes Wide Open (2009) than Eytan Fox's nimbly critiquing Yossi (2012).

The reasons for ex-model Daisy Lowe's immuration are explained in a slickly assembled montage behind the opening credits of Tobias Tobbell's Confine, an atmospheric, but rather muddled thriller that both benefits and suffers from the inexperience of its young cast and the debuting director's determination to prevent the single-setting action from becoming overtly theatrical. The house invasion has long been a screen staple, with William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), Walter Grauman's Lady in a Cage (1964) and Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967) refining the rules before David Fincher put a postmodernist paranoiac spin on the situation with Panic Room (2002) and it was seized upon by the B brigade as a cheap and effective horror scenario. Tobbell moves Eben Bolter's camera around Luke Hall's sets with some confidence. But he might have taken another couple of passes at the screenplay, which is far too reliant on the dialogue to convey crucial information and becomes increasingly predictable rather than suspenseful.

Having been forced to abandon her modelling career after the car crash that left her with a limp and a severely scarred right cheek, Pippa (Daisy Lowe) has spent the past four years locked in her sizeable apartment, bidding in online art auctions and running a charitable foundation with her French assistant, Clemence (Corinne Kempa). Indeed, she is in the middle of a conversation with the latter when twin Edwina (also Lowe) calls to try and persuade her to part with some paintings that her parents are keen to sell to maintain the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed during their daughter's heyday. Reminders of her glamorous past are evident in the neat stacks of glossy magazines that fill each room. But Pippa is more concerned about the present and being seen by anybody outside her trusted circle.

Her defences are breached, however, when Kayleigh (Eliza Bennett) manages to break in while seeking sanctuary from a bungled burglary in a neighbouring flat. Hiding behind her bed, Pippa desperately tries to keep out of sight while attempting to summon help via her laptop. Yet, although she grabs Kayleigh's gun, she is quickly overpowered and tied to the frame of the bed, while Kayleigh urges her contact to come and complete their transaction. Removing her dark wig to reveal her blonde hair and chattering cockily in several languages, Kayleigh sprawls on the bed leafing through magazines. She recognises Pippa from her fashion shoots and excitedly introduces her as a third-rate celebrity to her boyfriend Henry (Alfie Allen), who has also slipped in to the apartment to avoid the prowling police.

Dispensing with the cutesy love talk, Kayleigh knocks Henry cold and binds him to a chair. She calls the cops to report a suspicious car and phones Henry's accomplice brother, Brian (Adam Leese), to coerce him into taking the rap for the robbery by cutting Henry's wrist and threatening to slit his throat. Exuding confidence, Kayleigh tells her contact that everything is under control. But Pippa has freed herself and tosses a beseeching note out of a window before Kayleigh regains the upper hand. As they chat, they discover a mutual acquaintance in a perverted French fashion designer and Kayleigh reveals that she excels in stealing expensive items to order and has them stored in a lock-up.

Pippa is expressing envy at her freedom when a neighbour pops her post under the door and Kayleigh opens a letter from Pippa's parents bullying her into handing over part of her art collection. The indignant Kayleigh sets light to the papers and sets off the smoke alarm before taking pity on the bleeding Henry (who has asked Pippa to get him a knife so he can escape). However, they are unaware that a spy camera poking through an air vent is now recording their every move, as Pippa makes everyone a snack as an excuse to slip Henry a blade. The contact arrives and turns out to be Edwina, who accepts a small bundle in return for a brown package full of cash. However, just as Kayleigh is about to confide a secret to Pippa, Henry makes his attack and slashes Kayleigh's cheek and abdomen before being stabbed in the chest in the ensuing melee.

As Edwina cowers in the hall, terrified that Pippa will see her, the furious Kayleigh gets a call from Neil (Richard Wellings-Thomas), a policeman who is keen to bring the situation to a peaceful resolution. However, Kayleigh lashes out when Edwina blames her for letting things go to extremes and she is rendered unconscious by the heavy fall. Desperate to get away, Kayleigh orders Pippa to swap clothes and is about to open the front door when her luck runs out.

Packed with macguffins and off-screen characters who exist primarily to get the slender plot over the odd bump, this is more technically than dramatically accomplished. The reasons for Edwina's treachery are ludicrously implausible and make the spiralling violence seem all the more inappropriate and contrived. Moreover, the sinister presence of the French designer is never satisfactorily explained, as Edwina is interrupted before she can spill the beans, and this tendency for the plot to veer off at tangents at key moments proves its most irksome trait.

Model Daisy Lowe does well enough in a dual role, but she is always too obviously acting when she whispers reassurances to herself and breathes into brown paper bags during her panic attacks. Evidently more experienced, Eliza Bennett occasionally camps it up too much as the mercurial sociopath in pixie boots, although part of the problem lies in Tobbell's frequently clunky dialogue. His visual sense is more assured, however, and he makes disconcerting use of the claustrophobic space as the camera and characters are choreographed to the strains of Paul Lawler's pseudo-Hitchcockian score. Thus, for all its flaws, this fixes the attention and the downplayed pay-off is slyly amusing.

Strangely, Stuart St Paul's Bula Quo! is also irresistibly entertaining, even though its premise is quite deliciously delirious. Essentially, a reworking of Richard Lester's Beatle outing, Help! (1965), the plot has veteran rockers Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt caught up in an organ harvesting scam when Status Quo arrive to play a series of concerts in Fiji. Having never forgiven the duo for cheerleading for Manchester United with the execrable 1994 single, `Come On You Reds', this seemed the perfect opportunity to exact revenge. But memories of seeing the band supporting Queen at Wembley in 1986 and Alan G. Parker's excellent 2012 documentary, Hello Quo!, just about ensure a stay of execution. However, unless things improve markedly, one suspects it will be tougher to be so lenient when the Indian-set sequel, Namaste Quo!, finally reaches our screens.

Following a cod monochrome newsreel introducing the Fijian islands and recalling how a couple of Aussie explorers named Rossi and Parfitt fell victim to cannibalism when they tried to sing, the action switches to Nadi Airport, where PR Laura Aikman is dismayed to discover that the members of Status Quo are so ancient. As minder-cum-manager Craig Fairbrass bundles the troublesome Rick Parfitt and Francis Rossi into the waiting transport with bandmates Andrew Brown and John `Rhino' Edwards, local TV weatherman Matt Kennard snoops around for a story that will help him persuade news anchor Jean Heard that he has the right stuff to become a reporter. However, she is less than impressed when rumours that Parfitt has been killed in a plunge from a waterfall prove unfounded and she sniffily opines that celebrities will do anything to stay in the headlines.

As they watch Quo belt out their classic hit `Caroline' for ecstatic Fijian fans, Fairbrass warns Aikman that while Rick and Francis may no longer be in the first flush of youth (jokes abound about their age and Parfitt's previous brushes with death) they are still a handful. And so it proves when they sneak away from the after-show party and witness a game of Russian roulette in the courtyard of the restaurant run by American expat, Jon Lovitz. Causing a fire to facilitate their getaway, Rossi and Parfitt realise they have stumbled on to an organ smuggling racket, but decide not to show the police their phone-cam footage, even though Lovitz has dispatched heavy Leo Richmond to apprehend them before they can talk.

Having missed the ferry to the next island, Rossi and Parfitt steal some aloha shirts and try to blend in with the tourists. However, in trying to catch they next boat, they are pursued by thugs on jet skis and have to jump overboard wearing scuba-diving apparatus. Debating what to do while larking around among the tropical fishes, they beat a hasty retreat from some sharks and find themselves washed up on a beach. Rossi calls for help and Fairbrass picks them up in a flying boat to shoot a new video for `Living on an Island' with some friendly locals, who introduce them to the hallucinogenic hooch, kava.

Rossi entrusts his phone to Aikman and she is appalled by the footage of the murder at Lovitz's place. Consequently, she baits him with unsubtle remarks about his hideous sideline during a boat-board reception for the band and Fairbrass tries to smooth things over by inviting Lovitz to that night's gig. By the time he arrives, however, Lovitz has seen CCTV images of Rossi and Parfitt in his courtyard and he goes to the concert intent on killing them so that his tame surgeon can fillet them for merchandise. However, as Quo play `Pictures of Matchstick Men' on stage, Kennard finds the incriminating evidence on Aikman's laptop and tries to convince Heard that he is on to a real scoop.

Lovitz breaks into the dressing-room in time to prevent Heard receiving an e-mail containing the evidence and smashes the laptop before attempting to kill Parfitt and Rossi with a bomb in a souvenir doll. Luckily, Fairbrass rescues the boys and they speed off in a courtesy car. Lovitz has them followed, however, and Aikman is forced to follow her male companions in jumping off a bridge into the river when they are trapped at a roadblock. They are more than a little surprised, therefore, to see Heard announce on the next morning's news that they are drug dealers who have murdered their own driver. So, Rossi and Parfitt agree to lay low at an exclusive hotel, while Fairbrass tries to sort everything out. He returns to find the pair playing `Down Down' on ukuleles with some Fijian musicians and discovers that Lovitz has taken Aikman and Heard hostage and threatens to kill them unless all footage of the shooting is handed over.

Pushing her guard into the swimming pool at Heard's house, the plucky Aikman makes a bid for freedom in a kayak and leads Richmond a merry dance in a golf buggy before she crashes and Lovitz recaptures her. Meanwhile, Rossi and Parfitt prove themselves useful with their fists (and some pots and pans lying around in Lovitz's kitchens) as they join Fairbrass on a recce to the restaurant that ends with them jumping through a plate glass window in order to escape the chasing goons. They meet up with Kennard, who has learned that Richmond is a retired copper who fell in with Lovitz to pay for his wife's black market kidney transplant and they realise that Lovitz has been serving up unwanted body parts on his menu. Heard insists she is still to be convinced by Kennard's findings, however, and, even though he shows her footage of Parfitt being captured by Richmond after an encounter at the food market, she keeps broadcasting the story that they are the real villains.

That night, Rossi and Fairbrass gain access to the restaurant, where Lovitz is taking bets from the chanting onlookers about whether Parfitt or Aikman will perish in the game of Russian roulette. But Rossi insists on taking Aikman's place and they begin fooling around as Lovitz rants on about organs having always been in his family because his grandfather used to play a Wurlitzer in his hometown cinema. Amidst the chaos, Parfitt grabs the gun and shoots Lovitz in the backside. But he slips away as Heard arrives with police reinforcements and the picture ends with Rossi and Parfitt dragging Aikman on to the plane home before Kennard can declare his love.

Accompanied by the rousing title track, a mixture of highlights and out-takes runs to the closing credits. But only die-hard fans are going to warm to this cornball hokum. Cast as a latterday Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Parfitt and Rossi banter in an appealingly deadpan manner that is capably complemented by Fairbrass's world-weary resourcefulness and Aikman's sparky cynicism. Comic Jon Lovitz is woefully miscast as the baddie, however, while Kennard and Heard (who co-scripted with St Paul) often seem stiff. Yet, even though the attempts to turn the two 64 year-olds into action heroes are frequently risible, they keep their tongues firmly in their cheeks and exude a charm that just about atones for the lapses in plotting and the more awkward thrill sequences.

Musically, Quo may not be what they used to be and the recycled hits are vastly superior to the many new songs. But their 12-bar style remains distinctive and Mark Blackledge deftly incorporate snatches of several solid gold tracks in his incidental score. Operating on a limited budget, St Paul (who directed Rossi and Pariff in their 2005 Coronation Street cameo) keeps things ticking over and allows cinematographer Chas Bain to reflect the beauty of the exotic setting. But one hopes he can come up with something a bit more original if Quo really are going to start rocking all over the world.

Changing the mood slightly, Sophie Lellouche achieves quite a coup in her first feature, Paris-Manhattan, as not only does she borrow the central conceit of Woody Allen's Play It Again, Sam (1972), but she also succeeds in luring the man himself to go along with the gag. Whereas Allen was advised by Humphrey Bogart in the courtship of Diane Keaton, so Parisian pharmacist Alice Taglioni relies on the wisdom of a life-sized poster of Woody, who hangs in her bedroom and is never backward in coming forwards with an insight or suggestion. It takes considerable confidence and scripting skills to convince Allen to accept a role for hire, albeit (for the most part) one in which his dialogue has been lifted from previous pictures. But Lellouche displays plenty of both in this genial, if ultimately gossamer confection.

Ever since she was 15, Sophie Taglioni has been besotted with Woody Allen. She knows his films off by heart and even prescribes them to customers at the 4th arrondisement pharmacy run by her father Michel Aumont. Occasionally, she will suggest some Lubitsch or Wilder, but her predilection for Woody even prompts her to recommend a couple of crime-themed Allens for the small-time crook holding her at gunpoint - and the pictures prove to have a positive influence on him.

In addition to Woody movies, the thirtysomething Taglioni also loves American jazz and collects snow globes. There is little wonder, therefore, that Aumont and lawyer sister Marine Delterme despair of her ever finding a husband. The latter conveniently forgets that she actually stole spouse Louis-Do de Lencquesaing from under her sister's nose. But Taglioni is hardly a good judge of character, as she has started dating the handsome Yannick Soulier even though she is eminently better suited to Patrick Bruel, an electrician who specialises in security systems who she meets by chance in an elevator as she flees from an excruciating party.

Admittedly, Taglioni and Bruel appear to have nothing in common on the surface and their fate appears to be sealed when she lets him instal a chloroform-spraying alarm that naturally incapacitates the wrong person. However, a series of chance encounters eventually persuades Taglioni that she might be about to make a mistake with Soulier and her suspicions are confirmed when Allen himself pops up in Paris in time to put her straight so that this sweet, if uneven story can drift towards its inevitable conclusion.

France is hardly short of film-makers eager to pay homage to Woody Allen. Emmanuel Mouret (Change of Address, 2006 & Shall We Kiss?, 2007) and Michel Leclerc (The Names of Love, 2010) most readily spring to mind. But only Lellouche has managed actually to bring him on board with a project - not bad for a debuting 42 year-old divorced mother of two who has dreamed of befriending her idol since she was a girl. Her picture has its flaws, with the opening flurry of flashbacks feeling fussy and too many of the subplots turning into cul-de-sacs. Moreover, Soulier proves too slight an obstacle for Bruel to overcome. Nevertheless, Taglioni makes a pleasingly ditzy heroine and her interactions with a monochrome Philippe Halsman portrait are charming in both their wit and sincerity.

That may be it for fiction this week, but there are also four documentaries on offer.

On 21 February 2012, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich donned baggy jumpers and pastel-coloured ski masks to perform `Virgin Mary, Put Putin Away' on the high altar of the cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. They were removed by security guards and were later charged with `hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' after complaints were made by worshippers that they had been prevented from praying by the protest against the closeness between Kirill, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and President Vladimir Putin.

Presumably, little would have been heard of this incident had Nadia, Masha and Katia not been sentenced to two years each in a penal colony for their crime and had fellow artists like Yoko Ono and Madonna not taken up their cause in the West. As a result of the international furore that followed the instigation of what many compared to the show trials of the 1930s, Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin decided to chronicle proceedings in Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. Clearly released at the earliest opportunity, this always feels more like a piece of reportage than a considered documentary. Thus, while it bears a marked similarity to Cyril Tuschi's Khodorkovsky (2011) in its depiction of the Russian judicial system in action, it is much rougher and readier and will leave many wondering what this infamous performance troupe-cum-punk combo was actually seeking to achieve during its brief moment in the spotlight.

Opening with grainy, handheld footage of the cathedral stunt, Lerner and Pozdorovkin take up the story as Nadia, Masha and Katia face up to the prospect of spending seven years behind bars for taking a stand against a regime whose unpopularity had been made manifest during the street demonstrations before the 2012 presidential election that saw Prime Minister Putin swap places with his sidekick, Dmitry Medvedev, who had occupied the Kremlin for a single term after Putin's initial entitlement to the highest office had elapsed. During clips from their interrogation as the Women's Detention Centre in Moscow, Nadia declares that the bond between Church and State has become too close and that she had stormed the altar to draw attention to this dangerous anomaly and the fact that women were excluded from presiding over religious services.

Her father, Andrei Tolokonnikov, tells the film-makers of his pride in his daughter's stance and confides that he had not only encouraged her since Pussy Riot played its first shock gig in a Moscow beauty salon, but had also helped her with the lyrics to some of their songs. The band had been formed as a direct response to Putin bending the rules of the constitution to run again for the presidency and they had denounced his nationalist approach to governance while calling for an uprising during a performance in Red Square. However, Andrei confesses that he had tried to talk Nadia out of the cathedral show, as religion was such a sensitive issue and the edifice had a special place in the hearts of believers, as it had been rebuilt following the collapse of Communism after the original had been demolished on 5 December 1931 to make way for a municipal swimming pool.

Katia's father, Stanislav Samutsevich, jokes that he thought they looked like bank robbers, and Masha's mother, Natalia Aliokhina, admits that she almost felt like disowning her. But, judging by the rehearsal footage of the song `Sh*t! It's God Sh*t!', the trio had clearly calculated that their protest was going to provoke and Andrei reveals that Nadia had wanted to call their first CD `Kill All Sexists' rather than `Occupy Red Square'. Once again, we are shown the images from inside Christ the Saviour, as Stanislav wishes that they had found a less contentious place for what he insists was a point well worth making.

The Moscow police didn't agree, however, and the members of Pussy Riot were forced into hiding and two managed to flee abroad before Nadia, Masha and Katia were eventually detained. Denied bail by the female magistrate, even though the first two were the mothers of young children, the threesome spoke courageously from the cage in which they were made to sit during the hearing, with Nadia suggesting that Russia didn't understand performance art or punk rock and that the nation needed to throw off its shackles and embrace the modern world if it was to take its place alongside the other civilised nations.

As the respective legal teams squabble unedifyingly in the corridor outside the courtroom, Nadia, Masha and Katia are photographed and bombarded with questions by a press corps allowed surprisingly easy access to such notorious prisoners. Nadia denounces Putin as a totalitarian leader and her father is accused by an onlooker of being the real brains behind the Pussy Riot phenomenon. Outside, lawyer Mark Feygin holds Nadia's daughter Gera as he gives a press conference about the denial of visitation rights and confides to the camera that, having been fined for the earlier song `Putin P*ssed Himself', he fears that they may be given custodial sentences as an example to any other would-be upholders of free speech.

The Pussy Riot Support Group declare the trio to be prisoners of conscience and plan a series of activities to keep them in the public eye. However, their opponents are also mobilising and there is a disconcerting ferocity about the way in which they are branded as witches at a prayer meeting at the cathedral. The Patriarch declares that Russia is doomed if its holy places are not protected from blasphemers and there is a danger that the situation might deteriorate as Pussy Riot activists mingle with the crowds outside Christ the Saviour and accuse them of being knee-jerk conservatives. In retaliation, white-bearded men in `Orthodoxy or Die' t-shirts scoff that the band's name means `Demented Vagina' and one avers that if they hate men so much they should go and live on an island and think themselves lucky this isn't the 15th century when the authorities knew how to treat their kind.

Footage follows of a press conference at which three masked woman demand a free society and a huge picture of Putin is torched in an abandoned factory. It isn't made clear whether this event occurred before the arrests, but it rather plays into Putin's hands, as he refuses to utter the group's name during a television interview, during which he implies that it is the duty of the secular government to protect Russian Orthodoxy after what its adherents had endured during the Soviet era.

Six months after the arrests, Nadia, Masha and Katia return to court. The first says she is ready to apologise for the distress her actions might have caused genuine believers, but she refuses to disown the sentiment behind them. Katia contents herself with saying that the charges are unconvincing before entering a plea of `not guilty', while Masha refuses to co-operate with the court because she fails to understand the ideology behind the charge being levelled at her. Having allowed them time to speak, a new female judge commits them for trial on the grounds of hate-based hooliganism.

In a rather clumsy bid to present them as victims of the society in which they were raised, Lerner and Pozdorovkin have Natalia say that Masha might have been an argumentative child and a huge fan of The Spice Girls, but her heart was always in the right place. Consequently, her support for the campaign to save the Utrish Forest had been based more on personal conviction than politics. Stanislav lauds Katia as a keen student of art history, who lost her sense of direction when her mother died and she ceased wishing to emulate her by becoming a painter herself. Furthermore, Andrei reveals how his happy five year-old daughter had changed when her mother had demanded a divorce and he was powerless to prevent her from later cultivating an interest in the conceptual art group, Voina. Indeed, it's evident that he disapproved of such antics as having women members give lesbian kisses to strangers on the street (including cops) and indulge in naked acts of unsimulated intercourse in the Biology Museum. As Nadia was eight months pregnant at the time, this had particularly shocked him, but he had never ceased to admire her courage or commitment.

Now joined by Violetta Volkova and Nikolai Polozov, Mark Feygin decides to base the defence case on the Church-State dichotomy. Nadia reiterates her regret at offending adherents of Orthodoxy, while Katia tries to point out that a combination of ignorance and culture shock had landed them in trouble, as too few people understood their brand of artistic expression and wonders whether they would even be here if they had asked the Virgin to protect Putin rather than remove him. Feygin points out that there is no formal blasphemy law in Russia and suggests that Pussy Riot are more Christian in their actions and attitudes than the majority of their accusers. But the prosecution counters by insisting that the right to worship had been violated by an act that was so brazenly anti-democratic that it has damaged the liberal cause. They also respond furiously to accusations that Putin himself is controlling the case and has already instructed the bench on its verdict and its sentence. At one point, they even claim that detention would be a kindness, as such is the wrath of offended zealots that the threesome would be safer inside prison than out.

In conclusion, the state lawyers demand three years of penal servitude and Natalia admits that she has been frightened since receiving phone threats from so-called Orthodox jihadists. Nadia's husband, Peter Verzilov, tells the media that it feels like they are living in Stalinist times and he lets his wife know that he is proud of her on the final day of the trial, when each of the accused is allowed to make a last statement. The guards try to keep the women quiet as they await commencement and they are singularly unimpressed that Madonna sang `Like a Virgin' during her Moscow concert the night before while wearing a Pussy Riot balaclava.

Katia speaks first and says that the protest has served its purpose as it made people think and has proved that an unholy alliance exists between Kirill and Putin, as they have been so united in their statements about the affair. Masha agrees that they have embarrassed the government and compares their plight to that of poet Joseph Brodsky, who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 after repeated run-ins with the Brezhnev Kremlin. She says she cares more about the fate of her child than herself and refuses to be intimidated by a tyrannical state, as she feels more free each time it tries to oppress her. Summing up, Nadia says that Pussy Riot have not been on trial, as the charges have all been made against Russia, and that Putin has lost because of the cacophony he has caused in trying to silence them. She ends by quoting a lyric about opening doors, removing uniforms and sampling freedom and calls upon all citizens to join them in open revolt.

All three manage a smile at the courthouse gates as they are led away and the police struggle to cope with the mask-wearing supporters venting their fury at the two-year sentences. However, eight months after the now globally infamous incident, Katia comes to the appeal court to ask the judge to look again at the footage and see that the had been busy getting her guitar out of its case and had not, therefore, actively participated in the protest. Her new lawyer, Irina Khrunova, goes on the attack and succeeds in securing a suspended sentence and Katia is embraced by her grinning bandmates before being reunited with her father in the middle of a media scrum. Closing captions reveal that Nadia and Masha have also since engaged Khrunova and plan to lodge their own appeals. However, little will change in Russia as a whole, as Putin looks set to remain in power until 2024.

Largely dependent on the found footage edited deftly by Esteban Uyarra, Lerner and Pozdorovkin deserve great credit for producing such a coherent profile in such a short space of time. They also make the best of the fact that they cannot speak directly to the members of Pussy Riot themselves by coaxing their parents into providing so much of their backstory. But, while they capture something of Nadia, Masha and Katia nascent personalities, they barely scratch the surface when it comes to their mature opinions or their motives for making such an audacious statement when they must have suspected the consequences. The fact that what was essentially a prank could provoke such a sledgehammer response exposes the insecurity of the post-Communist state. But, by presuming that most viewers will already be familiar with life in Putin's Russia, the co-directors struggle to contextualise the cathedral protest within either an historico-political framework or the band's own career arc. Similarly, no great attempt it made to explore Pussy Riot's status within the country before the trial or how much their fate has impacted upon ordinary Russians.

There is also little sense of the dynamics within the group and who provides its creative and, thus, its activist impetus. From the few clips of their music shown here, Pussy Riot are raw in the extreme, with the lyrics often being screamed over a discordant thrash backing track. But, as they demonstrated in the courtroom, each woman displays a poise, eloquence and courage that is truly humbling and their confidence in their rectitude leaves many of their more technically proficient and commercially successful contemporaries looking anodyne and toothless when their are so many pressing social, humanitarian, ecological and political issues to confront. The pampered British bands currently dominating the charts and complaining about the state of the music business should watch this and hang their heads in shame.

Following Manet: Portraying Life at the Royal Academy, the Exhibition On Screen series moves to Oslo for Exhibition: Munch 150, which provides an inside view into the three-venue celebration of Norway's greatest artist. Learning lessons from its engaging, if occasionally digressive predecessor, this is a much tighter and more focused film, which sees presenter Tim Marlow return alongside Phil Grabsky, who acts as producer for new directors Karen McGann and Ben Harding. Leavening the analysis with sensitively rendered dramatic reconstructions illustrating passages from Edvard Munch's diaries and journals, the emphasis is more on the psychological than the biographical. But, once again, the paintings are very much to the fore, as Marlow examines the key works in the largest and most ambitious Munch retrospective ever mounted.

In a career spanning over 60 years, Munch produced over 800 canvases and co-curators Mai Britt Guleng and Nils Ohlsen from the National Museum in Oslo had quite a job selecting the 220 items that best represent his personal and artistic evolution. The decision seems entirely justified to divide the show into two, with the Munch Museum hosting the post-1903 works, as this allows visitors to discover the later period that has previously been somewhat overshadowed by the masterpieces in the Frieze of Life, which has been assembled in its original format for the first time in over a century.

The National Museum presentation begins with a pair of self-portraits dating from 1882, which demonstrate how the 19 year-old Munch was willing to experiment from the outset and this refusal to adhere to a single style or school explains why he has so often proved elusive for critics and scholars alike. Born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten on 12 December 1863, Munch was one of five children (along with Johanne Sophie, Peter Andreas, Laura Catherine and Inger Marie) born to Dr Christian Munch and his wife, Laura, who died when Munch was just five years old. He was raised by his aunt, Karen Bjølstad, who encouraged him to start drawing at the age of seven.

Like his mother, Munch would suffer from bouts of tuberculosis and he never quite got over the loss of his sister Sophie to the same disease in 1877. His father also began to show signs of mental strain around this time and Munch would later write that fear and death haunted him throughout his life, along with visions of Hell and damnation. Yet these sad incidents and dark thoughts would inform some of his finest paintings and David Jackson, Professor of Art History at the University of Leeds and Sue Prideaux, the author of Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream, speculate about the extent to which his pain informed both his subject matter and his technique in `The Sick Child' (1885-86), which so transformed a common theme of the period that it seemed more like a work of memory and experience than one of mere captured light. Indeed, the way in which layers of paint were applied and then scratched off give the canvas a textural anguish that art historian Frank Høifødt claims left contemporary Norwegian critics as baffled as pieces like `Morning' (1884), which combines an early interest in realism with a hint of the Impressionism that was still unfamiliar in the remote capital of Kristiania.

Having proved that he could present ailing youth in a more classical style in `Spring' (1889), Munch landed a bursary that enabled him to study in Paris, where he produced `Night in Saint-Cloud', `Spring Day on Karl Johan' (1890) and `Rue Lafayette' (1891), which not only bore the influence of Impressionism, but also the American James McNeill Whistler, who had also rethought his approach while in the City of Light. But Munch continued to experiment and `Self-Portrait Under the Mask of a Woman' (1893) and `Puberty' (1894-95) marked a drift towards Symbolism. However, his work at this time also reflected the 21 year-old's passion for Milly Thaulow, the wife of a distant cousin whom he used to meet at his new cottage in the fishing village of Åsgårdstrand. McGann and Harding recreate one of the couple's walks in the wood and quote from Munch's writings about how he longed for Milly while always finding the reality of adultery to be somewhat sordid.

This romance led to Munch painting the likes of `Moonlight' (1895) and `Summer Night: The Voice' (1896), as well as the various versions of `The Kiss' (1892), which show the lovers melting into one another in a bid to convey the emotional experience of an embrace rather than its physical reality. This burst of creativity also resulted in the first incarnation of the Frieze of Life, which Munch termed `A Study for a Series Called Love', which he exhibited in Berlin in 1893. However, in 1902, he returned to the concept and produced a second frieze, which was divided into four parts: The Seed of Love, Love's Blossoming and Demise, Angst and Death. Guleng and Ohlsen explain the thinking behind taking the pictures out of their frames and hanging them on plain white walls, as Munch had done, and their pride is rightly evident in presenting both collections in adjoining rooms.

The first segment of this 21-strong `Poem About Life, Love and Death' is The Seeds of Love, which includes `Red and White' (1899-1900), `The Kiss' (1893) and `The Madonna' (1894-95), which respectively show two women in white and red dresses as if to symbolise the moment of sexual awakening and its consummation in an embrace and an orgasm. Such a graphic depiction of a woman experiencing such unbridled pleasure was considered scandalous in its day and this nude remains one of Munch's best-known works.

Yet, as Love's Blossoming and Demise suggests, the flame does not burn for long. The clue comes in `Dance of Life' (1899-1900), which uses waltzing couples to explore the all-too-brief stages of a woman's life, while `Vampire' (1895) considers the power of the supposedly weaker sex by showing a woman both consoling and consuming her mate and`Ashes' (1895) captures the sadness and despair of a relationship falling apart. Resident in Berlin for much of this period, Munch began drinking to ease the pain of losing his father and he wrote that so many members of his family had passed away that he felt like he was living with the dead and found it difficult to be happy with his friends. He contemplated suicide and convinced himself he could see his own ghost looking back at him in the mirror. There is, perhaps, little wonder that, while walking in Ekberg near Kristiania, he suddenly felt a scream welling up inside him on a quiet country path and the magnitude of the sensation left him trembling with fear.

In an effort to process his emotions, Munch painted `The Scream' (1883), which became a recurring theme over the years. This is easily the artist's most famous work, with the third version selling for $120 million at auction in 2012. Jon-Ove Steihaug of the Munch Museum reveals that it was conceived as the last part of the original frieze, as humans scream at both birth and death. It was painted on cardboard using egg tempura paint and crayon and conservator Trond E. Aslaksby explains that it presents a restoration challenge, as Munch often left pictures out in the open air to dry and the natural detritus they attracted became a component of the work. David Jackson discusses the twisting lines of febrile colour in the background of the picture and opines that its iconic status owes much to the fact that the central figure has a mask-like visage that defies identification in conveying a timeless primevalism.

Marlow and Knut Olav Åmås, the cultural editor of the Aftenposten newspaper, debate whether `The Scream' has become too familiar to surprise, even in this audacious setting, and they agree that while it may well have facilitated the cliché of bleak Nordic fatalism, it also obscured the quality of Munch's other work, including the two highlights of the Angst section, `Evening on Karl Johan' (1892), which depicts a single figure (perhaps Munch himself) walking in the opposite direction to the rest of polite Kristiana society, and `Red Virginia Creeper' (1898-1900), in which a man in the foreground looks out in wide-eyed dismay as the house behind him seems to have blood oozing out of its walls.

Moving into the Death segment, Munch's enduring love for his sister Sophie informs `Death in the Sickroom' (c.1893) and `At the Deathbed' (1895), which are notable for the fact that her siblings are shown as adults in the former, while their mother is present in the latter, although her skull-like expression implies that she may only be in spectral form. These compositions have a theatricality that reflects Munch's growing friendship with the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg. But the final image, `Metabolism: Life and Death' (1898-99), seems to hark back to medieval art for its depiction of a latterday Adam and Eve standing either side of a Tree of Life, whose roots extend into the skeleton buried beneath it. As David Jackson concludes, this is a fitting ending to a collection that eschews narrative but conveys the essence of being human by forcing viewers to confront events that we shall all have to experience and come to terms with during out three score years and ten.

In the rooms that follow, it is clear to see Munch enjoying the trappings of success and there is something more relaxed about profiles of friends, like `Dagny Juel Przybyszewska' (1893), and the famous `Self-Portrait with Cigarette' (1895). Jackson and Høifødt assess the extent to which his contentment manifests itself in the use of light and colour in popular pieces like `The Girls on the Bridge' (1901), which was painted at Åsgårdstrand and shows three young women in white, red and grey dresses in a bucolic setting on a sunny day. Yet, even here, the darkness of the foliage of the tree in the middle distance and its forbidding reflection in the still water suggest the travails that will beset the trio in the future and Knut Olav Åmås laments the fact that Aftenposten continued to accuse Munch of lacking technique and Marlow avers that it is deeply ironic that he has since become a national treasure, whose style seems so fresh precisely because it skirted the passing trends that seduced the less visionary critics of the time.

As Marlow crosses Olso to the Munch Museum, he is greeted by `Self-Portrait' (1886), `Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine' (1906) and `Self-Portrait in Front of the House Wall' (1925), which not only reveal the changing face of the artist, but also his ever-restless approach. In 1907, Munch spent the summer in the German Baltic town of Warnemünde, where he frequented the local brothel. Pictures such as `Zum süssen Mädel' and `Desire' (both 1907) stem from what he called his `inferno period', as he sought to sever his ties with Tulla Larsen, the red-headed daughter of a wealthy wine merchant who was bent on marrying Munch to escape her bourgeois prison. This tempestuous affair reached its dramatic climax at Åsgårdstrand in 1902 when a gun was fired during an argument and Munch was wounded in the left hand. He struggled, thenceforth, with increasingly severe depression and, in 1908, he spent eight months in the clinic of Dr Daniel Jacobson in Copenhagen.

Tulla featured heavily in his writings during this period, as he denounced her use of emotional blackmail to ensnare him. She also appears in pictures like `The Death of Marat' (1907), in which the reclining male figure (who bears a resemblance to Munch) is bleeding from the hand, while a naked woman stands tall in the foreground without much sense of remorse. Jackson says that Munch saw himself as an equal of the grand masters and would have had no qualms in producing his own version of Jacques-Louis David's famous 1793 canvas. But this was a radical departure, as it bore the influence of Fauvism in its tapestry-like use of colour, while its implication that women are predators would have appalled many of Munch's peers.

The 1908 breakdown proved a turning point, as Munch returned to Kragerø and rediscovered the Norwegian landscape in pictures like `Winter in Kragerø' (1912) and `The Yellow Log' (c.1912). This homecoming also led to him being feted as a cultural titan, as Norway celebrated its independence from Sweden in 1905, and Munch was commissioned to decorate the walls of the Aula Hall at the University of Oslo. Now resident in Hvisten, Munch took his inspiration from the surrounding countryside, as he had a special studio built to enable him to paint the giant canvases that were stitched together by his housekeeper. In `History' and `Alma Mater', Munch showed the older generation imparting its wisdom to youth. But the centrepiece, `The Sun', broke from such conventional representation to affirm life through abstraction. Combining nationalism and universality, these rarely seen offerings managed to be both populist and personal and the university authorities have decided to make them available to the public throughout the Munch 150 festivities. 

Rather disappointingly, the final third of Munch's life is somewhat glossed over. In 1916, he purchased the house in Ekely that provided the backdrop for such seminal late works as 'Self-Portrait: The Night Wanderer' (1913-14), `Model By the Wicker Chair' (1919-21) and `The Artist and His Model' (1921). Yet, while he withdrew from public life, he continued to paint and, in 1933, he reminded himself in his diary not to burn out like Van Gogh. Seven years later, he found himself enduring the humiliation of the Nazi occupation of Norway, during which he feared that his reputation as a `degenerate' artist would lead to his arrest or the destruction of his works in the National Museum. But he was largely left alone to work on his final masterpiece, `Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed' (1940-43), which shows him standing in valedictory defiance in his room beside a clock with no hands and the bed in which he hoped to embrace death while still conscious. His wish was granted on 23 January 1944, after an explosion in a Nazi munitions dump in Oslo harbour brought on a bout of pneumonia.

In conclusion, Guleng and Ohlsen hope that the exhibition will encourage new research into the more neglected areas of Munch's oeuvre, with his influence on Abstract Expressionism being a particularly significant area awaiting exploration. But, as this whistlestop tour concludes, one is left wishing for a more comprehensive account of Munch's life story and a more insightful analysis of his myriad influences and styles. The need to keep the exhibition partners on board clearly explains the amount of puff expended on boosting the show and its curators. But, while the makers have wisely dispensed with the celebrity fans who added little to the Manet feature, they still try to cover too much in 90-odd minutes. Obviously, they can point to the fact that the artist has already been the subject of one excellent in film in Peter Watkins's Edvard Munch (1974). But, while budgetary constraint probably dictates what can be achieved, a way must surely be found of extending the running time before the team comes to cover the Vermeer event at the National Gallery in October, as this is a splendid initiative that one hopes will continue for many years to come.

Completing this incredibly busy week are a couple of tennis documentaries that have been released to coincide with Wimbledon. There was much talk during the first week about what might happen if Andy Murray played Serena Williams or Novak Djokovic took on Maria Sharapova, which must have been music to the ears of James Erskine and Zara Hayes, as their informative and highly entertaining actuality, The Battle of the Sexes, harks back 40 years to recall the challenge match that took place between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs that helped change the face of the women's game forever.

Top flight tennis spent much of the 1960s in a ferment, as the leading players fought to have professionalism accepted in a sport that was attracting big money for the various groups organising the grand slams and the other prestigious tournaments. The Open Era officially began in 1968, but the fallout continued into the 1970s, with the men's game being split between the National Tennis League and World Championship Tennis. Eventually, the dispute was ended by the formation of the Association of Tennis Professionals in September 1972. But, while all this was going on (the co-directors deem it irrelevant, by the way), the front-ranked women players were demanding equal prize money after it emerged that Billie Jean King received a mere $1800 for winning the women's singles at Wimbledon in 1968, while her male counterpart, Rod Laver, pocketed $4800.

These demands for equality were lead by King and eight colleagues, Americans Rosie Casals, Nancy Richey, Peaches Bartkowicz, Kristy Pigeon, Valerie Ziegenfuss and Julie Heldman and the Australians Kerry Melville Reid and Judy Tegart Dalton. Peers like Margaret Court and Virginia Wade decided not to go against the International Lawn Tennis Federation. But the so-called `Original 9' cut a deal with World Tennis magazine publisher Gladys Heldman to target the 1970 Pacific Southwest Championships in Los Angeles because the male winner stood to earn eight times the amount awarded to the female victor. When tournament chairman Jack Kramer refused to reduce the deficit, the nine renegades staged an event of their own in Houston, Texas that established what became the Virginia Slims Circuit.

Looking on with growing bemusement, as King and her cohorts appeared to hold the tennis world hostage, former Wimbledon and US Open champion Bobby Riggs decided to speak out. Having won all three events in which he was competed in SW19 in 1939, Riggs had been the best amateur player on the planet when the Second World War interrupted his career. Yet, he still made a decent living as a professional in the postwar era and had several senior titles to his credit when, at the age of 55, he announced that he was still good enough to beat any of the top women players currently on the tour. Renowned as something of a hustler, Riggs was ignored by the leading lights. But he convinced 30 year-old Margaret Court to play him in Ramona, California on Mother's Day 1973.

Much to King's dismay, Court not only curtseyed when Riggs handed her a bunch of flowers, but she was also thrashed 6-2, 6-1. Thus, as Riggs beamed from the cover of ensuing issues of Sports Illustrated and Time magazine, she realised that she would have to play him and win if she ever was to silence his carping and restore the honour of women's tennis. As the media feasted on the story, King was terrified that a bigger secret would leak out, as she had realised that she was a lesbian and was having an affair with secretary Marilyn Barnett behind husband Larry King's back. However, the focus remained firmly on the `battle of the sexes', as winner-take-all prize money of $100,000 was announced, along with live television coverage from the Houston Astrodome on 20 September 1973.

Having been carried into the arena like Cleopatra on a large chair borne by four shirtless hunks, King watched Riggs being rickshawed to the court by a team of scantily clad women. He handed her a lollipop and she presented him with a piglet named Larimore Hustle as a swipe at his chauvinism. Intent on exploiting the 26-year age difference, King kept Riggs running and refused to allow him to adopt the defensive game that had served him so well against Court. Then, having won the first set 6-4, she was able to force him on to the offensive and exploit the gaps he left as fatigue set in and she took the next two sets 6-3.

According to King, Riggs admitted that he had under-estimated her as he jumped to net to accept his defeat with good grace. His son, Larry, recalls how his handlers were distraught because they realised that the revenue streams that had suddenly sprung up would soon run dry and little more was heard of Riggs before he succumbed to prostate cancer in 1995. Although it's not mentioned here, Riggs and King remained in touch and she spoke to him on the night before he died. But such philanthropy would not fit with the spirit of a documentary that seeks to present Ms King as an uncompromising figure who not only defeated her misogynist rival, but also got the better of milquetoast contemporaries like Court, Wade and Chris Evert by barricading them and 60 others into a room at the Gloucester Hotel during Wimbledon fortnight to thrash out the formation of the Women's Tennis Association in 1973.

There is no question that King was a fine athlete and remains a remarkable woman. But, in addition to overdoing the clips from now grotesquely sexist commercials, Erskine and Hayes also overload this account in her favour and somewhat devalue her achievement in beating Riggs in a best of five sets encounter by making him out to be nothing more than a braying buffoon. By this time, he might have had a couple of failed marriages and blown a lot of the money and goodwill he had earned as a pro. But he had won the triple crown at Wimbledon and was still in decent enough shape in his mid-50s. Moreover, he was also well aware of the impact that his calculated remarks were making and it is disappointing that no attempt is made to discern how sincerely they were espoused. Indeed, Riggs and King even made adverts for American Express and hair curlers together. His mistake was to allow himself to be swept along by the media circus and his lack of practice and focus cost him dear. Similarly, injudicious editing leaves Court, Wade and Evert looking feeble alongside Casals, Richey, Bartkowicz, Ziegenfuss, Heldman and Tegart Dalton, and it may well have been a mistake to offer King an executive producer credit on what should have been an entirely subjective assessment.

More egregious, however, is the decision to incorporate freshly shot inset footage to pad out the archive material and it comes pretty close to ruining the big showdown. Yet this remains a riveting story, with the match being particularly cannily contextualised within a bigger picture that also contained such feminist icons as Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer. The footage of the Women's Lib street demonstrations and bra burnings is treated with suitable respect, as is the discussion of abortion (although some of the statements made about the contrasting situations in Britain and America are unfortunately inaccurate). But the makers succeed in showing how sporting role models can play a vital role in changing perceptions and expectations, and this theme recurs in Maiken Baird and Michelle Major's Venus and Serena, which follows the Williams sisters during the 2011 season as a means of assessing their wider contribution to tennis since they started smashing barriers that African-American forebear Althea Gibson had so elegantly skipped over in the 1960s.

Anyone who follows tennis will know how Richard Williams decided that they best way out of poverty in Compton, California was to turn five year-old Venus and her three year-old sister Serena into champions. Devising a unique training method and keeping the girls practicing for hours on the local public courts, Richard convinced coach Rick Macci that they were special talents and the family moved to West Palm Beach in 1990 to enrol them in Macci's academy. Supported by mother Oracene and siblings Yentude, Isha and Lyndrea, the pair blossomed as athletes, while still attending to their education, as Richard was determined that they should have qualifications to fall back on if his great experiment failed. However, the snide remarks of white parents at junior tournaments spurred everyone on and Richard and Oracene assumed full control for their careers when Venus and Serena quit Macci in 1995.

Turning professional at the age of 14, Venus was always aware that while Serena idolised her, she was also intent on surpassing her. In 1997, she reached the final of the US Open at the first attempt after being barged during a changeover in the semi by Romanian Irina Spirlea (an act that Richard still insists was racially motivated). However, she was beaten by Martina Hingis (who is shown to be one of several players who found or still find the Williams sisters hard to like) and it was Serena who claimed the first grand slam, when she defeated Hingis at Flushing Meadow in 1999. Subsequently, Venus has gone on to win 22 slam titles, while Serena has amassed 31. But this is less a chronicle of consistent success than an insight into how dedicated athletes confront ageing and injury and put in the long hours to recover fitness and renew commitment.

In this regard, the film-makers could not have been more fortunate in the fact that both Venus and Serena were sorely tested in 2011. The year started with Serena suffering a hematoma and a pulmonary embolism, while Venus was stricken with a debilitating autoimmune deficiency after battling back from a hip muscle injury. The effort each womn puts into her rehabilitation is excruciating and they draw strength from their family, their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses and each other, as they vow to keep competing into their forties. It's not all sweetness and light, however. Having famously hurled abuse at the line judge who had foot faulted her during the 2009 US Open semi against Kim Clijsters, Serena allows that she can be a complex character in revealing that she has at least four alter egos: Summer (a kind of benign personal assistant), Megan (a bit of a bad girl), Psycho Serena (whose name needs little explanation) and Laquanda, the much-dreaded wild child who was apparently responsible for the Clijsters incident.

One suspects she was also around when Serena got into trouble during the 2011 US Open final when chair umpire Eva Asderaki awarded a point against her for yelling `come on!' just as opponent Sam Stosur was about to hit the ball. She went on to lose and John McEnroe (who was, of course, no stranger to on-court controversy himself) suggests that she was badly treated on each occasion and acknowledges that he finds her feistiness an eminently appealing characteristic. Whether hitting partner Sasha Bajin would always agree is a different matter, as he seems to be on the receiving end of several tantrums. But, while they are fierce rivals on the court, Venus and Serena are the closest of sisters off it. They share a home in Florida and joke about what they would do if either announced her intention to marry. But romance is something of a taboo topic and, while Baird and Major coax Serena into conceding she prefers black guys like the rapper Common (despite also dating white Hollywood director Brett Ratner), they get short shrift from Venus.

Oracene is more forthcoming on the subject of Richard, as she advises his new wife to get away from him as soon as possible. His domestic arrangements are complicated to say the least, with Venus and Serena being presented with a brother they previously knew nothing about at one of their training sessions. They confess to having little to do with the majority of their half-siblings, but are more circumspect in recalling the loss of their oldest sister, Yetunde, who was tragically shot in a case of mistaken identity in 2003. But, even though Richard and Oracene can barely remain civil around each other and both Venus and Serena find his coaching methods a little eccentric now they are in their thirties, it seems to be accepted by everyone that the unit will remain together as long as the pair wish to compete.

Although Venus was the subject of most attention when they were kids, Serena now seems to hold centre stage. Whether this is because Venus is less fond of the spotlight or is more contentedly preoccupied with her off-court sidelines is unclear. Indeed, considering how much access Baird and Major claim to have been granted, they manage to unearth few home truths or guilty secrets. We discover that Venus and Serena both love karaoke and that Venus is usually willing to let Serena have her own way. But the revelations are mostly as prosaic as the eulogies delivered by such admirers as Billie Jean King, film producer Arnon Milchan, writers Peter Bodo and Gay Talese, comedian Chris Rock, Vogue editor Anna Wintour and former president Bill Clinton.

No documentary with Alex Gibney's name on the credits (here as executive producer) can ever be dull. But Baird and Major are more used to producing than directing and, while Samuel D. Pollard's editing and Wyclef Jean's score is suitably propulsive, this always feels more like a promotional plug than a cine-journalistic profile. The promised intimacy proves illusory and, while Serena occasionally lets slip more than she intended, Venus is far too poised to let anyone through her defences. The insights into how serial winners cope with frustration and disappointment is fascinating. But the speed with which the crew is dispatched after Serena loses at Wimbledon 2011 betrays how little control the co-directors actually had over their subjects and, thus their project.

A coda details the triumphs of 2012, which included Serena winning Wimbledon, the Olympic Games and the US Open and the pair scooping dual doubles success at Wimbledon during the Championships and the Olympics. Yet, the unwelcome suspicion persists that the Williams era is drawing to its close faster than either Williams is willing to admit and that the most daunting challenges for this engaging, but ineluctably enigmatic twosome still lie ahead.