Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/8/2013)

Supposedly inspired by a true story and co-written with Agnès de Sacy, Bonitzer's latest outing, Looking for Hortense, is a typically erudite and amusingly convoluted satire of haute bourgeois mores that makes casually evocative use of its majestic Parisian setting and not only explores the more disquieting effects of middle age, but also the chasms opening up between the generations and the hypocrisy of contrasting Gallic attitudes to cultural and human assimilation. Handsomely photographed by Romain Winding, knowingly décored by Manu de Chauvigny and accompanied by a charming Aleksei Aigi piano score that slows from an initial briskness to a melancholic wistfulness, this may lack narrative novelty or thematic depth. But the crisp dialogue brings the best out of a fine cast and confirms that no one exposes the foibles of the comfortable and the complacent quite like the French.

Kristin Scott Thomas is directing an Anton Chekhov play in a bijou Parisian theatre. She is frustrated by the lack of chemistry between leads Arthur Igual and Agathe Bonitzer, but is intrigued when Igual clumsily kisses her as she tries to light a cigarette while he gives her a lift home after rehearsals. Watching him exhale her smoke, Scott Thomas demands to be dropped off immediately. However, she likes being attractive to a much younger man and finds it hard to sleep. Partner Jean-Pierre Bacri is surprised to find her sitting alone in the lounge and asks if she is all right. But she deflects her confusion by criticising Bacri for failing to ask father Claude Rich (who is president of the Council of State) about helping a migrant from the former Yugoslavia, who is in danger of being deported after divorcing her French husband. Reluctant to risk his already strained relationship with his father for the friend of the hairdresser girlfriend (Iliana Lolitch) of Scott Thomas's brother Francis Leplay, Bacri promises to do what he can and is relieved when they are interrupted by their owlish 12 year-old son Marin Orcand Tourrès, who sides with his dad and chides his mother for smoking, while demanding his breakfast.

Bacri is a respected teacher of Asian culture and customs to business executives, but he is gently ribbed by drinking buddies Jackie Berroyer, Jérôme Beaujour and Benoît Jacquot when he drops into their regular café en route to seeing Rich at the Palais Royal. In the courtyard, he also bumps into Isabelle Carré, a waitress at the restaurant adjoining Beaujour's bookshop and she asks if she can sit in on some of his seminars. He isn't clear why she wishes to attend and, feeling flustered, he hurries away to meet his father. However, Rich is too busy to see him and is indifferent towards both the case and the well-being of his son's family.

Looking through the window, Bacri can see Carré being pestered by a stranger and, realising he is getting nowhere with Rich, he dashes down to assist her. She sits alone on a bench on the concourse, but she disappears while he is sending Rich a text to make another appointment and he winds up sitting on another bench with his long-suffering mother, Joséphine Derenne, who wishes she could persuade Rich to retire and cease his philandering and sympathises with her son in his despair at every earning his approval.

Derenne has knitted a jumper for Tourrès, who ungratefully tosses it away and refuses to wear it. He is cross with Scott Thomas for never being home and is also peeved that Leplay and Lolitch have turned up with oysters to thank Bacri for securing their friend's residency. Too embarrassed to admit that he had failed, Bacri allows them to consider him a hero and hurts his hand as he slams it on the mantelpiece in frustration at Rich agreeing to see him at the same time he has a lecture. Tourrès admonishes Scott Thomas for coming home smelling of smoke and skulks off to his room, leaving Bacri and Scott Thomas to bicker in the kitchen about his meeting with Rich, while Leplay and Lolitch make out in the bathroom.

The following day, Bacri bumps into Carré in Beaujour's bookshop and he makes excuses why it would be difficult for her to come to his classes. He spends an unproductive day and it catching up on work at home when Scott Thomas arrives late and apologises for leaving him with all the domestic chores. However, her concern is born out of guilt, as Igual had again given her a lift and she had been much more receptive to his flirting.

Determined to save face over the visa issue, Bacri rushes through his workshop the next day and dashes across the city to lunch with Rich in his favourite Japanese restaurant. However, their brief time together is taken up by the revelation that Rich is sleeping with waiter Masahiro Kashiwagi and he ticks off Bacri for trying to pigeonhole people. Left to lunch alone, the bemused Bacri wanders out into the street and sees Carré chatting with Polish waiter friend Stanislas Stanic, who tells her she can do better than old men when she returns from chattering about her gran and her happy knack of finding solutions to the most intractable problems.

At the theatre, Scott Thomas tries to inject some passion into proceedings by having Igual kiss Bonitzer's feet and is dismayed by the lack of spark between them. Back at home, Bacri helps Tourrès with his homework and has just put him to bed when he gets a call that Berroyer is in a bad way and he leaves the boy sleeping alone to check up on his friend. He is upset because he has been a widower for 10 years and now feels too old to declare his feelings for a woman he has met and Bacri has to confiscate his revolver, in case he does something foolish. The gun goes off on the staircase, as the pair struggle over it as Bacri tries to leave. But he gets home at 2.36am and hides the weapon in his desk as he has a stiff drink. He realises that Scott Thomas is not home, but she is asleep beside him in the morning. As she searches frantically for her cigarettes, he tries to find out where she has been and tell her about Berroyer and the visa case. But it is only when he checks up on a massage appointment she claims conflicts with their lunch date that he suspects her infidelity.

In no mood for Tourrès's fretting, Bacri berates him for hiding his mother's cigarettes in the linen bin. However, he tells him not to worry when the boy reveals that the red watch he borrowed from Scott Thomas has been stolen by bullies outside school. He is less forgiving when Scott Thomas breezes in late again and, having forced her into confessing she is having an affair and maybe loves Igual a little, Bacri orders her to pack a bag and leave immediately. He goes out to leave her space and calls Carré to meet him in a nearby bar. As she gushes that her fortune teller predicted she would encounter a man just like Bacri, it dawns on him that she is the Serbo-Croatian-Montenegrin he is supposed to be helping and she applauds him for having the courage to tell her to her face when he admits that he has failed to ask Rich to use his influence with government bigwig Philippe Duclos to let Carré remain in France.

Loathing his impotence in seemingly every sphere of his existence, Bacri gatecrashes a meeting at the Council of State and Rich ticks him off for behaving like a child. He also explains that he is unwilling to jeopardise his friendship with Duclos over a case that means nothing to him. Incensed, Bacri goes to the bookshop and the restaurant to find Carré in the hope of making amends. But all he gets for his efforts is a hug from the ebullient Berroyer and punch in the face from Leplay, who tells him to stay away from his family and friends. As he applies ice to the bruise on his jaw, Bacri decides to bypass Rich and call Duclos directly and is pleased to get an appointment with little fuss. Scott Thomas returns to collect some belongings and she tries to get him to discuss their situation. She complains that he is being so coldly calm about things and suggests he wants them to split up. However, Tourrès bursts in to let them know he is going for a sleepover with a classmate and they sigh as he departs, because he is growing up so quickly. Scott Thomas kisses Bacri fondly as she leaves, but neither can summon the honesty to say what they really feel.

Suddenly confronted with a free evening, Bacri goes to Rich's Japanese restaurant and gets so drunk on sake that he has to be helped home by Kashiwagi. He is horrified, however, to find the naked waiter in bed beside him next morning and eventually learns after a strung-out explanation that the only way Kashiwagi could calm him down as he vomited profusely was to suck his toes. Recovering his poise, Bacri goes to see Duclos and is kept waiting in a conservatory within his office suite before being pumped for information on the state of the Tiger economies and dismissed with a vague promise to take the matter in hand. Outside, Bacri runs into Carré, who had heard what he was trying to do for her and reassures him that she will be fine, as she has met a man who wants to have babies with her and they plan to go to India together.

Bacri tells Carré that he wishes he could be the father of her child and they kiss. But, as they stroll, they walk into the middle of a police confrontation with some illegal immigrants and Bacri gets himself arrested by refusing to show his ID in order to allow Carré to escape. Released without charge, he catches a chill as he walks home in the rain and is still feeling out of sorts when Carré arrives to thank him for his gallantry. He asks her why she wanted to see him teach and starts reminiscing about the moment he decided to become an Asian expert during a post-college trip to China. However, it suddenly dawns on him that the man Carré intends running away with is Berroyer and he is pleading with her not to go when Tourrès (who had seemed pretty unfazed by his mother's expulsion) comes home and wonders what on earth is going on.

One month later, Bacri sits in Rich's office and explains how he has recovered from his illness. However, he missed Scott Thomas's play, which was moderately reviewed, and prompted her to dump Igual for the Pole who has adapted a Nabokov story for her. Tourrès is cross with him because he told his mother about the lost watch, but they are rubbing along well enough. He also reveals that he stopped going to the Café Casimir to play chess and has heard nothing more about Carré. But he is still angry with Rich for his intransigence and he places Berroyer's gun on the table (which he was able to smuggle in because the security always allows him to bypass the metal detector) and tells him that if he was a real man he would use it. Rich is coming up to retirement and is not looking forward to losing his power and laments that his latest lover has dumped him and (like Berroyer before him) he is not sure he is attractive enough to find another conquest.

But Bacri is no longer listening, as he has spotted Berroyer in the street below and he rushes after him to find out what has happened to Carré. Having been given the slip, Bacri calls Carré and she tells him she took his advice about Berroyer and decided not to go to India. She is on her way to see her gran in Saint-Pol and, as Bacri rushes into the distance, it comes as no surprise when he alights at her station and they start discussing how they might get her documentation and how he will cope with her rustic dietary  As the film ends, an elderly Chinese man lights a cigarette on the platform and the camera lingers on some golden leaves rustling in the breeze of an almost bare tree.

Such a tranquility appears at odds with the near-perpetual motion of the preceding action. Each character seems always to be busy, hurried or have somewhere else to go and it is hardly surprising that relationships fragment and communication breaks down in such mundane mayhem. Yet, while the conversations remain eloquently urbane, there is no great warmth between the principals. Held together more by habit than love, Bacri and Scott Thomas have drifted apart and there is a sly irony in the fact that a lecturer and a theatre director should find meaningful words so hard to come by. Bonitzer and De Sacy also emphasise the contrasts in Bacri's relationships with his father and his son, as, while both give him incessant stick, there is much more fondness in an intemperate Tourrès tirade than a civilised Rich aside.

Yet, while the script is pretty sharp on male familial bonds, it is slightly chauvinist in its depiction of women, with Scott Thomas being made to seem callous towards her partner and son by keeping late hours and smoking. The discussion of French attitudes towards immigration are similarly somewhat lightweight, with Carré's Balkan origins and connections with La Patrie making her a less problematic romantic heroine than anyone from the Maghreb or Sub-Saharan Africa. Even the running joke that Asia is the future comes with some dubious asides about inscrutability and the deceptive nature of Oriental smiles. However, the storyline is pleasingly contrived, with lots of coincidental meetings easing it along and the denouement is adorable.

The performances are also splendid, with the ever-wonderful (and shaggily permed) Scott Thomas turning a cipher on the page into a credible person, while Carré is charmingly offbeat and optimistic about her less than certain prospects. At opposite ends of the age range, Marin Orcand Tourrès is hilariously precocious and persistent in his inexpert attempts to manipulate his parents, while Claude Rich is supremely aloof as the bisexual civil servant who cannot fathom why his son lacks his own self-knowledge and sense of entitlement. But it is Bacri who holds the film together, with a poignant display of world-weary underdoggery that is entirely devoid of the cheap pathos on which so many American counterparts would have coasted.

Contrastingly starkly with this complex and garrulous saga comes Pat Collins's Silence, an Irish odyssey inspired by the travels of folklorists like Seamus Ennis and Seán Ó hEochaidh, who went from door to door in the 1930s and 40s collecting stories, songs and legends to preserve a heritage that was in danger of disappearing as the Free State found its feet and droves of restless people sought pastures new. Now, as the country seeks to regain its equilibrium following the rampaging of the Celtic Tiger, this intriguing hybrid of documentary and non-drama represents another bid to capture a moment in time and the sounds associated with such elusive transience - barely noticed birdsong, the whistling of coastal winds, the rustling of country breezes and the fleeting moments of cosseting silence that descend before the next machine or human voice inevitably intrudes. The landscape and its characters play their part. But this is a film of aural sensuality that will beguile and bereave in equal measure.

Bearded sound recordist Eoghan Mac Giolla Bhride is based in Berlin. As he wanders along the city tramlines by night, he holds up a microphone to catch the sound of passing traffic. While standing on a bridge over a railway line, he tells girlfriend Hilary O'Shaughnessy that he has a job that will take him back to Ireland for the first time in 15 years, but part of their conversation is drowned out by two trains passing beneath them. Back home, Mac Giolla Bhríde tries to shut out the street noise as he works, but he will soon be in a place where the ambience is less abrasive and, at the end of a long drive, he checks into a Donegal hotel and opens his window to look out on to a stunning sunset.

As he chats to barman Andrew Bennett, Mac Giolla Bhride explains that he isn't seeking stories but silences and, the following morning, he delights in the natural sounds he finds in the woods. He lays down his boom to wash his face in a stream and luxuriates in being so far away from civilisation. But he soon picks up the sound of a piledriver breaking rocks nearby and, when a local wanders over to see what he is doing, he discovers that it is likely to remain in the vicinity for several days. Cutting his losses, Mac Giolla Bhride drives to Mullaghmore, where he takes precise compass readings and sets up his equipment. However, as he strokes his beard and surveys the scene, another curious passer-by strolls up to inquire what he is doing. Off-camera, a voice avers that silence and solitude are key to the relationship between the Irish and their soil and Collins juxtaposes monochrome archive footage of people abandoning their crofts with an abandoned house in the present day.

Mac Giolla Bhride strolls by a fast-flowing mountain stream with Sandy Denny's `Who Knows Where the Time Goes' playing on the soundtrack. As he busies himself in a field, an older man approaches and listens for a while to the non-man-made sounds and they discuss the Gaelic terms for `silence' as they drive back to the house belonging to the stranger's mother. They establish that a `host' is a silence between two sounds and, over supper, set to chatting about family and age-old ballads and how each one has a story behind it that makes it more resonant to the intelligent hearer. As the night rolls on, they consider the voices that Mac Giolla Bhride taped as a boy and lament the fact that so many people on old wedding videos are no longer living. His host concludes that we are all enter silence at birth and pass back into it at death and the best thing we can do in between these events is to stay rooted where we belong.

Moving on again the next morning, Mac Giolla Bhride watches a man fishing for eels and records the sounds of stones plopping into the water of a coastal inlet. He overhears a male voice describing the murmuring of the sea in these parts as being the hush of whispers from the people that history forgot. Maybe it is these voices that accompany footage of folks wandering along a jetty to strike out to sea to fish before Mac Giolla Bhride takes a boat himself to the island of Inishbofin off County Galway, where he records the sound of waves crashing into rocks and learns from a fisherman why the residents left around 1916 and became scattered across the country. In the little museum, he sees a newspaper cutting about three locals drowning and he is given a tour by a woman who remembers electricity first coming to the island and has never felt the need to leave again after returning from boarding school.

Singing to himself, Mac Giolla Bhride ventures into the woods to collect kindling for a fire and the scene is bathed in an orange glow. The next day, a stiff breeze whistles along a winding stream and flattens the surface of the water as it passes. The sound of raindrops falling on foliage follows and a close-up of the bark of a tree (like the peeling paint on the walls of the crumbling Bofin crofts) resembles the maps that are guiding the recordist on his journey. He stands in his kagool and enjoys the feel of the water cascading down upon him and, as dusk, descends, he goes for a dip. Mooching around, he bumps into a youth from nearby Tory Island, who is training to be a doctor and hopes to come back and serve his home region. However, Mac Giolla Bhride warns him that travel not only broadens the mind, but also the horizons and that he became so entranced by Berlin that he has been away for far too long.

The lad jokes that he enjoyed a family trip to Blackpool, but he has yet to realise the exquisite agony of the exile. But Mac Giolla Bhride asks earnestly if he saw any elderly people on Tory, particularly around the old lighthouse. However, he has to see for himself and, as the small boat bounces on the rough sea, he recalls listening on a ham radio to his father and his pals singing between their craft as they fished into the night. Somehow, it sounded intimate and distant at the same time and it has never left his memory. As he mills around the gravestones, he meets an old timer who tells him that the corncrakes still sing, but most of the people have long departed in one way or another.

As he strolls along the headland, Mac Giolla Bhride clambers up a craggy rock. Eventually, he arrives at a farmhouse that has been seen at various times during the journey (most notably in a shot of the wind whooshing through a cracked window pane). This is clearly his old family home and he sees there are still plates in the cupboard as he wanders between rooms. Voices crowd in on the soundtrack, as ghosts and memories compete for his attention. He climbs the stairs and gazes outside at his own past and realises that it is lost and gone forever.  

Almost capriciously avoiding anything approaching a narrative, the action has been lovingly photographed by Richard Kendrick in locations across Ireland, including Baltimore, Lough Hyne, Finavara, The Burren, The Inagh Valley, Inishbofin, Ballycroy, Glenveagh National Park, Gaoth Dobhair and Tory Island. Indeed, the landscape is perhaps an even more important character than Mac Giolla Bhride, as it summons up centuries of history and literature that can be detected by the more learned or perceptive. But, even those with no affiliation to Ireland will be moved by the reflections on life, death, time, memory and the beguiling contrasts between natural sounds and silence.

Mac Giolla Bhride (who concocted the outline with Collins and his wife Sharon Woolley) cuts a tragic-heroic figure, whose boom mic is almost a mock symbol for Don Quixote's lance. But the strangers he encounters are much more welcoming, even though they do find his antics odd. The majority are non-professionals playing themselves (which makes it very difficult to work out who is who in the cast list) and they do so with a wry whimsicality that rather conforms to Oirish stereotype. But the views aired are intriguing and sneak back into the mind after viewing. As do the sounds, recorded and mixed by John Brennan and Eamon Little, which bring the visuals to thrilling life.

Yet, while the spirit of Joyce, Synge, Yeats and others pervade proceedings, so, too, does the influence of the peerless Iranian auteur, Abbas Kiarostami, whom Collins profiled in the 2003 documentary, The Art of Living. The detached observation of exchanges between an outsider and a laconic local recall both Taste of Cherry (1997) and The Wind Will Carry Us (1999). But Collins is less interested in plot than how far technology can go in recreating the natural world and the past and the associations they evoke. He has set himself an impossible task and, occasionally, the conceit feels self-conscious. But anyone living away from their place of birth will feel a pang as they watch Mac Giolla Bhride wrestling with unspoken recollections and regrets, as well as the sad realisation that he probably did the right thing in moving away.

Finally, this week comes a genuine curio: Springsteen and I. Directed by Baillie Walsh and executive produced by Ridley Scott, this documentary has been assembled from over 2000 submissions by fans of The Boss explaining why they adore him and how his music has transformed their lives. As the first few devotees try to sum up Bruce Springsteen's appeal in three words, the misgivings start to rise. But they are quickly trampled by a surging crowd of ordinary people seeking to pay heartfelt homage and express their gratitude for songs that have affected them in moments of crisis, change and contentment. There is a notable absence of black faces among the talking heads, the majority of whom tend to discuss how the music makes them feel rather than what it is trying to say about modern America, Springsteen himself and his audience. But this is an honest appreciation and the concert clips selected by Walsh do much to justify the clamour. Even Brusceptics will feel a certain twinge of admiration by the end of the epilogue.

Following the first batch of three-worders, a Dane named John recalls being taken as a nine year-old boy to see the Tunnel of Love Express tour. He was amazed by the size of the stadium venue (where he now tends the grass) and the intensity of the atmosphere. But, once Springsteen and The E Street Band started playing, he was lost in the music, which he recorded on his Walkman and he still returns to the tapes every now and then to relive the moment. He is followed by a middle-aged woman, who admits to showing her baby son a photo of her idol and cooing `daddy' repeatedly over his crib.

The first of many concert clips (some rare, some not) shows Springsteen performing `Growin' Up' and it soon becomes clear that the 63 year-old has walked beside countless fans since he started out with bands like Earth and Steel Mill in the late 1960s. Having been to over 30 gigs, Tracy has certainly passed her passion of a lifetime on to her son Dominic, who is brought before the camera to explain how he got a shot of Bruce through the window of his car as he left a gig. She is keen for her boy to focus on the words as much as the melodies, as his albums don't just contain rock tunes, they are almanacs to guide the attentive through life and many contributors insist that Springsteen's lyrics have helped them become better people.

Others just go to the shows to have fun, including Rachel, a thirtysomething British girl who explains how she had been so taken by Brian De Palma's video for `Dancing in the Dark' that she held up a sign saying `I'll B Ur Courtenay Cox' and was plucked from the crowd to recreate the steps immortalised by Springsteen and the future Friends star. Naturally, someone in the crowd was filming their own bootleg record and the footage accompanies the anecdote, in a manner that makes this crowd-sourced picture a classic artefact of the YouTube era, as seemingly every live performance by major music stars are captured on some sort of device and then broadcast online for less fortunate acolytes to share. Given the blue-collar tone of so many Springsteen songs, this film is virtually his left-leaning mantra in action.

The next trio to nail their colours do so inside vehicles. Kitty, an Asian-American truck driver, states that Bruce has provided the soundtrack to her life and that she always plays `Atlantic City' while driving through the desert. A slightly shouty soccer mom whoops that she only allows Bruce's music while she ferries her sons around, while a middle-aged man extols the musicianship of The E Street Band before becoming tearful, as he admits that he finds the songs so deeply personal that he feels like he is leafing through a photo album each time he hears them.

A time and place is certainly evoked by an acoustic rendition of `Mansion on the Hill'. But not everyone is a die-hard Springsteen fan. David has been to eight gigs across Europe, but solely because it makes his wife Shagufta happy. By contrast, Max encouraged husband Nick to go to a Philadelphia concert dressed as Vegas Elvis with a sign asking `Can The King sing with The Boss'? Amused and seemingly ever-willing to interact with the audience, Springsteen brought Nick on stage during a performance of `All Shook Up' and the `Philly Elvis' just about remained in key as he jammed with his hero. Unfortunately, in building up his part by throwing some Presley moves, he tore a hamstring as he dropped to his knees and broke into `Blue Suede Shoes' to try and hide the pain. Eventually, Springsteen tired of his antics and ushered him back into the crowd with the phrase `Elvis has left the building'. But, as they munch on sandwiches in the park, Max and Nick recall with pride how he was mobbed by fellow worshippers and, once again, this moment in the spotlight was caught for posterity and recycled here.

This rousing interlude is followed by a more intimate contribution by a fortysomething woman, who leans into her webcam to recall the night her ninth-grade self saw Springsteen at a small venue on 29 March 1976 and the crowd allowed her and her friends to stand at the front. As an extract from `Thunder Road' plays, Kitty explains how Springsteen has the knack of making ordinary people feel as though they are the backbone of America, whose mundane jobs are of national importance. Such affinity with the working stiff is reinforced by Anthony, who had toiled in a factory in the UK for 20 years and finally saved enough to take his wife Kath to New York to see The Boss at Madison Square Gardens in 2000. They had tickets for two nights, but were disappointed on the first to find themselves at the back of the gods. However, as they tried to make the best of being there, a stranger asked if they would like better seats and gave the couple orange wristbands and replacement tickets. At first, Anthony and Kath wondered if they had been duped. But they quickly discovered that their benefactor was one of Springsteen's entourage and that they had been given the best seats in the house. To celebrate, Anthony bought his wife three glasses of champagne in the cocktail bar at $7 a pop.

Confirming Springsteen's status as a poet of the proletariat, `Factory' leads into a segment with a couple who have been together for 28 years. She is wearing a tour t-shirt that an old boyfriend had given her, but they have never been able to afford to go to a gig. Yet, while Springsteen has serenaded them throughout their relationship, he has also provided solace to the heartbroken, as one young man remembers in a rather pretentious shakicam recreation of his big moment. Ditched by his girlfriend on the eve of a show, he had made a sign saying `Hi, Bruce. I just got dumped,' which Springsteen spotted and, having said he had been spurned many times and was willing to bet each and every woman was regretting it now, he proceeded to play a request for `I'm Going Down'.

Straying further afield, Walsh includes a comment from a Polish man about how Springsteen albums were smuggled behind the Iron Curtain and that tracks like `Born in the USA' became aspirational anthems, even though they didn't always understand the words. John the Dane shares this sense of Springsteen belonging to the world and reminisces about a complete stranger hugging him during `Blood Brothers' on the Reunion tour. Compatriot Jane claims to have been friends with Bruce since 1985 and has touched him twice from the front row of his Copenhagen gigs. She admits to having cried and still envies wife and E Streeter Patti Scialfa the devotion that prompted Springsteen to compose `Red-Headed Woman'. However, Walsh neatly juxtaposes this misty-eyed eulogy with a clip of a younger Bruce discussing cunnilingus before launching into the song, with his closing quip for kids in the audience that the word is Latin for keeping your room tidy being priceless.

The effect that Springsteen has on women is confirmed by the returning ninth-grader, who confides that he helped her grow up and she becomes wistful as she thinks back to the night she attended a concert in a red satin dress and felt her senses being ripped out of her as she watched him dancing to the instrumental opening of `Jungleland'. As the full force of sex and rock'n'roll hit her, she felt in an instant that the genie was out of the bottle. But her fantasy became a reality, as she was lifted on to the stage and got so close to Springsteen that she could see the sweat on his body and they exchanged smiles before she was lowered back into the crowd soaked to the skin and trembling. 

Kitty adores him for other reasons. She admires his ability to mix the poetic and the political and values his encouragement to defy stereotypes. The New York couple dance in their kitchen to `Radio Nowhere', while David remains the sole discordant voice, as he begs The Boss to make his concerts shorter because they are torture for loved ones on escort duty. Perhaps he would prefer the brief impromptu jam that took place on a Copenhagen street when Bruce passed a busker named JoJo, picked up his spare guitar and started strumming along to `I'm on Fire' and `Dancing in the Dark'. A sizeable crowd had gathered by the time Springsteen and saxophonist Clarence Clemons moved on, but JoJo will never forget his 15 minutes or how glad he was that his hero lived up to his reputation as a man of the people.

Gillian flubs her lines a couple of times, but eventually composes herself to read a letter she wrote and never sent. She explains how Bruce Springsteen's music has shaped the last four years of her life and, as we see footage of him crowd-surfing, she goes on to thank him for touching her heart and mind and the main part of the documentary closes with a collage of live performances of `Born in the USA' taken from different phases of Springsteen's career. But don't think of leaving the cinema as the credits roll, as a treat is in store for aficionados in the form of exclusive highlights from the London Hard Rock Calling leg of the 2012 Wrecking Ball tour. Although they are rather clumsily edited together, the renditions of `Thunder Road', `Because the Night', `Shackled and Drawn' and `We Are Alive' are slick and exciting, while the guest appearance of Paul McCartney for `I Saw Her Standing There' and `Twist and Shout' prove to be the icing and the cherry.

But there is still more, as a somewhat anti-climactic epilogue sees Danes John and Jane and Brits David and Shagufta meet The Boss backstage after a gig in Copenhagen. He has seen the film and jokes with David that he made the show extra long to punish him. David explains how they had found Springsteen's hotel and lingered in the lobby in the hope of catching a glimpse of him. However, he had seen them from the bar and recognised David and come across to chat with them and promised Shagufta that he would play `Brilliant Disguise' for her. As always, it seems, he kept his promise and he tells the quivering quartet that it is an honour to play for such huge crowds each night and he always tries to give the best show, as it may be the only time some people get to see him and they deserve the best. The final word, however, goes to John, who reveals that Springsteen came back after the others had left to present him with the leather wristband he had been wearing. He takes this as a sign of brotherhood and the gesture encapsulates both the picture's bid to celebrate the bond between Springsteen and his fans and the impression it leaves that he is a solid citizen who hasn't let fame or fortune go to his head.

Culled from 190 hours of material volunteered from 30 countries, this is should be a limited interest fanfest. But it says much for Walsh, his contributors and his clever choice of archive footage that this is both wholly engaging and entirely entertaining. The sincerity of the quieter recollections is palpable and perhaps preferable to the showier anecdotes. But these are told with a mixture of panache and bashful pride and Sarfraz Manzoor has his work cut out to improve upon them in adapting Greetings from Bury Park, his memoir about growing up as a British Asian Springsteen nut in Luton, for director Gurinder Chadha.

Of course there are longueurs and the three-word paeans quickly come to feel like padding. It might also have been nice to identify the featured speakers with on-screen captions, as not all give their names and the red-headed ninth grader speaks with such lyricism that it is a shame that she should remain anonymous (as it isn't easy working out who is who from the closing crawl). But, while this will probably work better on disc or television, and is much more a piece of memorabilia than an in-depth profile, Springsteen and I sprang a surprise.