Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 31/10/2013)

Sebastián Lelio must now be added to their number, as Gloria builds on the impressive start made with La Sagrada Familia (2005), Navidad (2009) and El Año del Tigre (2011). Moreover, it contains the finest screen performance of 2013 by Paulina García, who deservedly won the Best Actress prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Dominating almost every frame, García recalls Carmen Maura at the peak of her powers for Pedro Almodóvar and she is splendidly supported by a fine ensemble and an excellent soundtrack, which acts as a kind of Greek chorus as the 58 year-old divorcée searches for love and validation in a world she is determined not to let pass her by.

Returning home after another disappointing night at her favourite singles disco, Paulina García bundles the neighbours' hairless cat into the corridor and takes off her make-up. She seems resigned to being alone and yet still feels pity for the unmarried male living above her, who is having another of his ranting fits. The next morning, however, she sings cheerfully with the car radio on her way to work and is delighted to spend some time with son Diego Fontecilla and her young grandson. Over a decade has elapsed since she separated from Alejandro Goic and, while he has moved on and started a new life with the much younger Liliana García, his hard-drinking ex has been left to take her chances in nightclubs and bars and leave long messages in the hope that Fontecilla and his headstrong yoga teacher sister, Fabiola Zamora, will call her.

One night, however, García strikes lucky with Sergio Hernández, a recently divorced father of two grown-up daughters, who is feeling fragile after losing 117 kilos and undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Such is García's delight at getting a man back to her place (even one seven years her senior) that she turns a blind eye to the girdle holding in Hernández's stomach and they spend the night making passionate, if rather inexpert love. As an ex-naval man, Hernández is keen to show off his mettle and following their first lunch together, he takes her to Vertigo Park, his bungee-jumping and paintballing complex, and coaxes the game García into trying out the facilities. He notes sombrely how men like to play war, but Hernández is not one to take leaping into the void lightly.

Keen to keep hold of the first chap to show any interest in her in years, García excuses his the dubious views he espouses while socialising with her academic friend Hugo Moraga, his wife Coca Guazzini and their daughter Antonia Santa María. As he reads her poetry, she even tolerates the fact that he is forever on the phone to his daughters and keeps her a secret from them, as he has not forgiven them for failing to visit him after his operation. However, her patience snaps at Fontecilla's birthday party, when she introduces Hernández to her family for the first time. They are far from impressed by his accomplishments in uniform and tease him over the fact that neither of his girls (who are now 27 and 31) graduated from high school and now cannot find jobs and are entirely dependent upon him for their upkeep. Yet, the moment he ceases to be the centre of attention, Hernández becomes restless and, when the others start reminiscing over old photos, he humiliates García by slipping away without saying goodbye.

Over the next few days, García refuses to take his calls as she comes to terms with the fact that she has been diagnosed with glaucoma and that Zamora is pregnant and is planning to move to Sweden with her boyfriend. She also starts smoking dope after a package for her upstairs neighbour is delivered to her in error. However, having seen Zamora off at the airport and briefly been confronted with her mortality as she watches a skeleton marionette dancing in a shopping mall, García decides to give Hernández a second chance and they head to the coast for a romantic weekend.

No sooner have they arrived than he receives a call that his ex-wife has been involved in an accident. Sighing deeply, García picks up her bag and walks to the door. But Hernández calls her back and proclaims that she is the only woman who matters to him and she strolls over to him, peels open her shirt and rips off his girdle before pouncing on him. They spend the afternoon swimming in the swanky hotel pool and he reaffirms over supper that he is wholly committed to the relationship and is even prepared to go dancing with her in Cuba. However, when García drops his phone into his soup in an effort to stop him fretting, Hernández suddenly becomes very serious and excuses himself from the table.

Realising he is not coming back, García searches the hotel from top to bottom, including the toilets. But, rather than hide away in her room, she returns to the bar and wanders into the casino, where she hooks up with the podgy Marcial Tagle, who paws away at her as they go for a carriage ride, bop at a disco and ride a playground merry-go-round before García wakes alone on the beach the following morning. Having lost her shoes, she tosses her jacket over the sea wall and, feeling cheap and foolish, crashes in the hotel lobby until housemaid Luz Jiménez arrives to take her home by bus.

Once home, García throws herself into spring cleaning and finds Hernández's paintball gun. Putting on a black dress and red sequinned jacket, she returns the weapon after peppering Hernández and the front of his house with pellets and derives considerable satisfaction from the fact that his daughters witness his vanquishing. Still eager to find love, but no longer willing to make compromises, García arrives at Santa María's wedding reception and turns down an invitation to dance. She wanders outside and, hearing a peacock screeching, gazes at its fanned feathers and returns indoors with renewed vigour to strut her stuff to Umberto Tozzi's 1982 hit, `Gloria'.

Throughout the film, the music is often key to setting the scene and commenting on the action, whether it's Donna Summer's `I Feel Love' accompanying García's latest attempt to snare a man at the disco or the use in the hairdresser's of the `Adagietto' from Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which mischievously recalls the humiliation of Dirk Bogarde in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice (1971). However, García's bespectacled lonelyheart is never as pathetic as Von Aschenbach and her willingness to throw herself into everything she does makes her a charmingly sympathetic character.

She may not want much, but she knows how difficult it is to fulfil dreams in a country that is still struggling to acclimatise to democracy at a time of global recession. Yet, this is not an overtly political picture. Lelio sets up Hernández as the epitome of militaristic paternalism and there is a sly dig at the Chilean audience in the fact that his daughters are so helpless in his absence. But Lelio is less interested in the state of the nation than the mood of its people and his quiet admiration is summed up by the incredulity in Hernández's voice when he asks García if she is always so interminably happy. Indeed, this dogged determination to make the most of things prevents the story from lapsing into sentimentality and one hopes any US version will respect this emphasis on positivity in the face of adversity.

Presumably, Hollywood stars of a certain age will already have contacted their agents about remake rights, as this is a magnificent role and it is played to perfection by Paulina García, who dabbles with dope and strips for her sex scene with the same confidence that she fires off the stinging one-liners that stud Lelio and Gonzalo Maza's first-rate script, which also contains a quirky anecdote from Jiménez about how cats came to be created on board Noah's Ark. However, Sergio Hernández should not be overlooked, as his entrapment between lust and terror has symbolic as well as dramatic significance, while Benjamín Echazarreta's intimate, but rarely intrusive cinematography, Marcela Urivi's production design and Eduardo Castro's costumes are all spot on. Indeed, this rivals anything produced by Andrés Wood and Pablo Larrain (who is among the producers), with the sequences in which García encounters the dancing skeleton and the displaying peacock capturing her shifting mindset with a visual subtlety that far too few modern film-makers possess.

García may have pipped Luminita Gheorghiu to the Silver Bear, but the Romanian also delivers a powerful performance as the controlling matriarch in Calin Peter Netzer's Child's Pose, which took the award for best film at the same festival Scripted by Razvan Radulescu, whose CV reads like a list of new wave greatest hits, this scathing comparison of the current nouveau riche and the ousted Communist élite is superbly played and boasts three compelling exchanges. However, the satire always feels a bit obvious and we learn little about the corruption and complacency of the democratic regime that we didn't know before.

Arriving for her birthday party, architect-cum-stage designer Luminita Gheorghiu is feted by the great and the good as she mingles with her guests. She chides doctor husband Florin Zamfirescu for arguing with a leading politician over supper and confides in a friend that son Bogdan Dumitrache cannot be with them as he has important business elsewhere. In fact, he has refused to attend and is seeing girlfriend Ilinca Goia, of whom Gheorghiu heartily disapproves, as she is lower class and already has a daughter out of wedlock. Having danced and been sung to, Gheorghiu looks upon the assembled as though they were minions at her court and outwardly appears to have it made.

But Dumitrache is a source of constant worry and, the following morning, Gheorghiu quizzes maid Cerasela Iosifescu (who also cleans his apartment) about the state in which he keeps things and the book he has on his bedside table. She attempts to get into Iosifescu's good graces by offering her a pair of cast-off shoes and, when she says they won't fit, Gheorghiu shoots her a look of contempt and tells her to give them to her daughter.

Still smarting, she goes to an opera rehearsal. However, she is beckoned out of the room by doctor friend Natasa Raab, who informs her that Dumitrache has been arrested for killing a teenage boy through reckless driving. As the women speed to the police station on the outskirts of Bucharest, Gheorghiu learns that her son was trying to overtake another car when three boys ran out into the road and, in swerving to miss one of them, he hit another full on. Terrified that Dumitrache will go to prison, Gheorghiu calls Zamfirescu to see if he can pull strings and ensure that a family friend conducts the necessary medical tests. They pass the garage where the incident occurred and are met at the station by the victim's furious and vengeful uncle. But Gheorghiu is anything but intimidated and looks disdainfully at a woman grieving with a couple of kids before complaining bitterly about being kept waiting.

When she is finally allowed to see Dumitrache, she actively interferes in his interrogation and coerces him into lying about the speed he was doing when his Audi hit the youth. Duty officer Mimi Branescu warns her that it is foolish to make false statements (especially as Dumitrache has already admitted he was going 140 kph), but Gheorghiu sticks to her guns and backs her boy when he insists on seeing the needle being used for his blood test being taken out of an unopened package, as he doesn't trust backwater quacks. She also gives him a disconcertingly intimate massage after Raab examines Dumitrache at home and finds he has severe bruising from being beaten by the locals who had flocked to the crash scene.

Yet, despite all his mother's efforts on his behalf, Dumitrache is not the slightest bit grateful and bites her head off at breakfast the next morning when she suggests they pay for the funeral in the hope that the bereaved parents will be less inclined to press charges. Keen to make a show of penitence, she returns to the police station and asks lots of questions about the dead boy's family and whether they would appreciate assistance with the funeral expenses. Branescu agrees it would be a nice gesture and, having discovered how important Gheorghiu is, he asks for her advice on a building project. She replies with frosty politeness and goes to watch the neighbourhood kids playing by the road before letting herself into Dumitrache's flat to pack an overnight bag and have a snoop around. She puts a book she bought him on the nightstand and checks in his drawers and medicine cabinet before she is interrupted by Goia knocking on the door.

As she sits in silence, waiting for Goia to go away, Gheorghiu gets a phone call from Vlad Ivanov, who was driving the vehicle Dumitrache was trying to overtake. He suggests that he might be amenable to giving favourable testimony if a financial arrangement can be made and she readily agrees to a meeting in a coffee shop in the mall. However, Dumitrache refuses to go and says he sees no reason why he should put himself out when his parents can do such things for him. He also spurns the suggestion that he should attend the funeral for fear he will be beaten again and his tantrum boils over when he discovers that Gheorghiu has bought him the wrong kind of nose drops and he throws the box at her. When Zamfirescu tells him to show some respect, the twentysomething accuses him of being weak and, after Dumitrache storms out, Gheorghiu echoes his words in berating her husband for leaving her to do everything to help their son.

Left alone, Gheorghiu smokes, drinks, paces and plots - although she also seems to be wondering what she has done to deserve such an ungrateful child. However, the smugly middle-aged Ivanov turns out to be just as objectionable, as he eyes his trophy wife through the coffee shop window and uses his cigar case to explain to Gheorghiu how the accident happened. He reckons that Dumitrache was being macho in trying to overtake him and, yet, he would be willing to blame the boy for his own death if Gheorghiu makes it worth his while. When she asks how much he wants, he says setting his own figure would be vulgar and leaves her to calculate the value of three years of her son's life. They agree on a sum of €80,000 and he embarrasses her by asking for a €100 deposit and being sneeringly magnanimous when she admits she doesn't have that much with her.

Quietly seething at the humiliation she is having to endure for her son, Gheorghiu goes to his flat and presents Goia with a bunch of flowers for women's day. She asks about her daughter and stresses that Goia needs to make Dumitrache see the importance of going to the funeral. But, when she asks what plans they have for the future, she is surprised to learn that Goia is ready to end the relationsip. As they sit facing each other, Goia explains how they had decided to try for a baby and that the germophobic Dumitrache had made her undertake countless tests before he agreed to stop using barrier contraception. After a while, it became clear that he was shooting blanks. But, even though she had already conceived a child, he blamed her and insisted that they started using protection again. One night, however, the condom had come off inside her and Dumitrache had made such a fuss that Goia realised what a spineless rat he was and that she needed to get away from him as soon as possible.

Clearly dismayed by what she has heard, but still standing by her son, Gheorghiu goes home and counts a wad of banknotes into an envelope. After a sleepless night, she is confronted by her son in the foyer of his building and he tells her that unless she backs off and lets him start living his own life he will sever all ties to her. She protests that a child is supposed to help a parent in the latter stages of their life, but his continued threats leave her with no option but to accept his terms and even promise not to call him unless he has contacted her first.

Unsurprisingly, no one speaks as they drive to see the dead boy's parents, with Dumitrache sulking in the back seat and refusing to get out of the car when they arrive. Gheorghiu and Goia go to the door alone and father Adrian Titieni bids them enter. He sits beside his wife, as Gheorghiu assures them that Dumitrache had not meant to harm their son and she fervently hopes that they can find it in their hearts to forgive him. Titieni describes his emotions on visiting the morgue to identify his child and blames himself for not hammering home his lessons on road safety. But he avers that he wants justice and is about to warm to his theme when he is called away to meet with the deacon.

Goia also makes her excuses and Gheorghiu is left with Titieni's wife. Pleading as one mother to another, Gheorghiu explains how her son's life will be ruined if he goes to jail. She recalls how sweet he used to be when they went ice-skating together and he used to tell her how much he loved her. But, while she knows that Dumitrache didn't intend killing anyone, the other woman bemoans the fact she can never get her child back. At this point, Titieni returns and tells Gheorghiu that he does not want her at the funeral and will not accept any contribution towards it. However, when she says that the money could be used to help the teenager's younger brother get a better start in life, he seems to soften and a relieved Gheorghiu leaves promising to visit them again soon to see how they are getting along.

Returning to the car, Gheorghiu locks the doors, in case any of Titieni's relations attempt to exact their revenge. But, when he comes to the gate to see them off, Dumitrache gets out and Gheorghiu watches in her rear-view mirror as he goes over to Titieni and, after some discussion, shakes him by the hand. She may be an arch schemer with wealth and influence, but, when it all boils down to it, it's still a man's world and the screen cuts abruptly to black after the trembling Dumitrache clambers back inside the vehicle and slams the door. .

With her dyed blonde hair, designer clothes and impregnable air of entitlement, Gheorghiu appears a formidable force. But Netzer and Radulescu quickly reveal how impotent she really is and the fascination with this cannily scripted picture lies in waiting for her to reach the same conclusion. It's not entirely certain that the penny has dropped by the time she sees her son and his foe clasp hands and, such is her conviction in her own Machiavellian genius that she may still not recognise the full import of what she has just witnessed. Indeed, it is this inability to grasp reality that makes Gheorghiu's performance so compelling and it might have been even more imposing had Netzer not insisted on having Andrei Butica's camera record it in such a vespine manner.

Perhaps intentionally mirroring Gheorghiu's control freakery, this fussy intensity nonetheless prevents viewers from reaching their own conclusions about Gheorghiu's behaviour and the effect it is having on those she is seeking to browbeat. The decision to make the infantilised, emasculated and cowardly Dumitrache so one-dimensionally brattish is also a miscalculation, as he belongs more in a soap opera than a sophisticated melodrama. Yet what is most fatally lacking here, and which has proved so crucial to the majority of previous Radulescu's screenplays, is a bleak wit that enables the audience to identify with the hapless characters. But everyone is eminently resistible in this procession of grotesques, with the consequence that, for all its slickness and cynicism, this exposé of negotiability of post-Ceausescu society is also disappointingly superficial.

The third of the week's anti-heroines is 17 year-old Suzanne Simonin, who first appeared in the pages of Denis Diderot's posthumous roman-mémoires, The Nun, in 1796. She was memorably played by Anna Karina in Jacques Rivette's 1965 adaptation, which was denounced by the Catholic Church for anti-clericalism and banned for two years until Jean-Luc Godard and others campaigned to have it rehabilitated. Now Guillaume Nicloux, a tutor at the Fémis film school whose previous nine features have predominantly been crime thrillers like Le Poulpe (1998) and The Stone Council (2006), has produced a handsome, meticulous, but somewhat redundant updating that serves as an excellent showcase for its cast and crew without really engrossing the viewer or conveying the element of subversion that made Diderot's novel and Rivette's film seem so dangerous.

In 1765, Baron de Lasson (Lou Castel) hands his heir, Marquis de Croismare (Pierre Nisse), a manuscript and instructs him to read it and learn from its contents. It tells the story of Suzanne Simonin (Pauline Étienne), who comes to regret informing her mother (Martina Gedeck) that the only man she could ever love is Jesus when she is told that she is being sent to a convent because the task of affiancing sisters Armelle (Héloïse Jadoul) and Lucie (Gaéline Kalis) to their suitors (Vincent Zetti and Benoît Samarq) has bankrupted her father (Gilles Cohen).

Reluctant, but obedient, Suzanne enters the walls of Sainte-Marie and is taken under the wing of kindly mother superior, Madame de Moni (Françoise Lebrun). However, Suzanne knows she does not have a vocation with the Poor Clares and causes a scandal when she refuses to recite her vows at the climax of the ceremony and is returned to her parents in disgrace. It is only now that her mother confides that Suzanne is the issue of an extramarital discretion and that she has to return to the convent in order to atone for the only sin that Madame Simonin ever committed.  

Shortly after Suzanne returns to Sainte-Marie, however, Madame de Moni perishes in mysterious circumstances and Abbess Christine (Louise Bourgoin) is chosen as her successor. She soon takes against Suzanne and charges her with stealing writing materials. But, while she punishes her by cutting off her hair, she is not content with such trivial humiliation and sadistically has her stripped naked and dressed in rags before condemning her to sleep in a dungeon cell. When Suzanne responds by petitioning the pope to have her vows annulled, Christine begins starving and isolating Suzanne and claims that she can only be saved by being subjected to an exorcism. Remorselessly determined to break her spirit, Christine even has Suzanne led barefoot down a staircase scattered with shards of broken glass.

Yet, while she receives little succour from her confessor (Nicolas Jouhet), Maître Manouri (François Négret) takes pity on her and convinces the archdeacon (Pascal Bongard) that Suzanne is sufficiently ill to merit a transfer to Saint-Eutrope. Here, she is welcomed with open arms by mother superior Madame de Chelles (Isabelle Huppert). But she is too naive to realise that her intentions towards her are far from chaste and she is forced once again to throw herself on the mercy of lawyer Manouri and Father Castella (Marc Barbé), who help her escape into the custody of Baron de Lasson, who turns out to be her real father. However, when he dies, Suzanne is left alone with her half-brother.

Scripting in collaboration with Jérôme Beaujour, Nicloux has produced an interesting treatise on class, power structures and religious fanaticism that reveals Diderot's concerns to be more than relevant in the 21st century. Indeed, the ostensible chauvinism of having the female characters seem duplicitous and carnal and their male counterparts appear rational and abstemious only reinforces the parallels between the philosopher's satirical targets and the faith-inspired patriarchies of our own times. But this is such a studious transposition that much of Diderot's wit is lost, while the rigorous classicism of the shooting style deprives the action of a tension to match its elegance.

Yves Cape's photography, Olivier Radot's production design and Anaïs Romand's costumes are outstanding, while Max Richter's diegetic score is movingly complementary, as Nicloux fashions a sequence of tableaux that are composed, lit and framed like paintings. The performances are also splendid, with the Belgian Pauline Étienne more than holding her own against an adroitly cast-against-type Louise Bourgoin and a typically magnificent Isabelle Huppert, who invests her scenes with a knowing delicacy that allows them to seem simultaneously scurrilous and amusing. Agathe Bonitzer, Alice de Lencquesaing, Alexia Depicker and Éloïse Dogustan all show well as Étienne's sisters in Christ. But, while it works better than Dominik Moll's 2011 take on Matthew Lewis's gothic novel, The Monk, this has too little of the cinematic audacity that made Rivette's interpretation (which is long overdue a DVD release) so visually striking and intellectually bold.

Arriving hard on the heels of the revival of FW Murnau's 1922 silent original, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) also returns to cinemas this week and the pair make for a fascinating comparison. In some places, Herzog faithfully recreates scenes devised by his illustrious predecessor. However, he was denied access to the city of Bremen (which had stood in for Murnau's Wismar) and was forced to shoot his exteriors in the Dutch city of Delft - although, he was refused permission to unleash thousands of rats imported from Hungary and had to relocate to nearby Schiedam to obtain his footage. The mistreatment of the rodents, both in transit and in being dyed grey to suit Herzog's aesthetic purpose, undoubtedly tarnishes the reputation of the picture. But Herzog and star Klaus Kinski chillingly recapture Murnau and Max Schreck's inspired depiction of the awful misery of being a nocturnal predator condemned to the isolation of ravenous immortality.

Land agent Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is dispatched by boss Renfield (Roland Topor) from the German town of Wismar to the Carpathian mountains to discuss properties with new client, Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski). Bidding farewell to his wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani), Harker travels to Transylvania, where the villagers ply him with tales of vampirism and plead with him not to go to the castle. Abandoned by the coachman (John Leddy), Harker is greeted warmly by his host, who compliments him on Lucy's beauty on seeing her portrait amongst his belongings. Eager to become a neighbour, he quickly signs the deeds. But Harker is disconcerted by Dracula's reaction when he cuts himself with the bread knife at supper and begins experiencing strange dreams that are shared by his wife hundreds of miles away.

Left to his own devices during daylight hours, Harker explores the castle and stumbles across Dracula lying in his coffin. Now convinced that the count is a vampire, Harker makes plans to leave. But Dracula slips away in the night with a consignment of coffins filled with his native soil and Harker is detained to hospital after injuring himself in jumping from his castle confinement. While Renfield is being sectioned in an asylum after attacking a cow, Dracula makes a leisurely voyage to Wismar, systematically feasting upon the members of the crew and making it appear as though they had fallen victim to a plague. When the ghost ship finally docks, physicians including Abraham Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast) convince the harbour master (Jan Groth) and some senior civic officials (Rijk de Gooyer and Clemens Scheitz) that they have nothing to fear.

By the time the ailing Harker returns home, however, Wismar is in the grips of an epidemic that no one seems to understand. But, on encountering Dracula and being asked for a fraction of the love that she lavishes upon her husband, Lucy realises that the stranger is responsible for the spate of deaths. She tries to explain to Van Helsing and the authorities, but they are highly sceptical and she concludes that she can only rescue her fellow citizens by sacrificing herself. Luring Dracula into her chamber, she tantalises him until dawn when she surrenders to his advances and distracts him from the crowing of the rooster. Struck by the first shaft of light, the satiated vampire collapses and Van Helsing arrives to drive a stake through his heart. But Lucy fails to survive her ordeal, which is rendered meaningless when Harker awakens from his sickness, charges Van Helsing with murdering Dracula and rides off on horseback with the sky darkening in his evil wake, as a symbol of the pestilence and death he is about to unleash.

One of the recurring glories of Werner Herzog's work is his use of landscape to reflect the psychological state of his characters. Consequently, cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein emphasises the hard, cold greys of the rugged terrain around Dracula's castle (actually located in Czechoslovakia) and contrasts them with the sombre browns and reds of its interior. The seascapes on the count's circuitous odyssey from Varna to Wismar are equally forbidding and the town to which Harker returns is no longer recognisable as the picturesque place he left just weeks before. Yet, while Herzog is indebted to Schmidt-Reitwein and production designer Henning von Gierke, he owes much more to make-up artist Reiko Kruk, who not only transformed Kinksi into Schreck's doppelgänger, but also helped keep him relatively calm during a shoot whose modest budget meant that the crew was limited to just 16 people.  

Kinski, Ganz and Adjani all deliver fine performances, while Herzog makes evocative use of music by Wagner, Gounod and the avant-garde electronica combo Popol Vuh. But, rather than assessing the film in exhaustive detail, it would be better to take the unusual step of directing readers to an earlier dissertation on its making, meaning and mysteries on the MovieMail website (http://www.moviemail.com/blog/foreign-classics/1571-Werner-Herzog-s-Nosferatu-the-Vampyre-Stranger-in-a-Strange-Land/).