Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 26/3/2015)

Numbering Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar among its producers, Wild Tales is a compendium of six vignettes linked by the theme of vengeance. The subversive black comedy broaches the odd serious issue in riffing on Peter Finch's famous line in Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) about being mad as hell. But such are the deft shifts in tone within and between episodes that this makes telling points about both Argentinian society and human nature with an assurance that is reflected in Maria Clara Notari's production design, Javier Julia's cinematography and the amusing Morricone references in Gustavo Santaolalla's score.

Launching proceedings is `Pasternak', which takes place on an aircraft and centres on model Maria Marull and music critic Dario Grandinetti, as they realise that they have a mutual friend in common. However, as she reveals that she dumped him and he explains how he wrote a review that shattered his confidence, it becomes clear that all of their fellow passengers once offended their disconcertingly absent host - who just happens to be flying the plane. If this feels like the opening to a whodunit, `The Rats' smacks of hard-boiled pulp, as waitress Julieta Zylberberg recognises customer César Bordón as the loan shark who drove her father to suicide and left her mother destitute. However, cook Rita Cortese (who is no angel herself after spending time behind bars) has just the right ingredient to spice up the shyster's egg and chips.

The mood darkens in `Road to Hell', which feels what one of Laurel and Hardy's famous tit-for-tat exchanges might have looked like if directed by Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino. The set-up is pretty standard, as Audi-driving businessman Leonardo Sbaraglia flips nobody Walter Donado the finger after finally managing to pass his humble Peugeot on a narrow mountain road. However, Sbaraglia gets a puncture in the middle of the desert and he has mixed feelings about the sight of Donado rolling up to offer his assistance. Such is the potency of the blend of absurdity and brutality that colours the resulting contretemps, the otherwise admirable `Bombita' makes less impression than it should and Szifrón and co-editor Pablo Barbieri Carrera might have rethought its place in the running order. Particularly, as it stars Ricardo Darín as a demolition engineer who is so angry at having to pay a large fine to retrieve his towed car that he decides to stand up for the little guy.

Darín's mood is hardly improved by the fact that wife Nancy Dupláa gives him grief for missing his daughter's birthday party and another father is put to the test in `The Bill', as the rich and influential Oscar Martinez conspires (under the dubious gaze of wife María Onetto) with lawyer Osmar Núñez to let gardener Germán de Silva take the rap when son and heir Alan Daicz kills a pregnant woman in a hit-and-run accident. But, while De Silva is prepared to help the family for a fee, he is not alone in wanting a pay-off. Exposing the fissures in the class system, this is easily the weightiest tale. But its bleak satire nicely sets up the frantic farce of `Till Death Do Us Part', which looks on with gleeful satisfaction as bride Erica Rivas wreaks havoc at her wedding reception when she learns that groom Diego Gentile has been cheating on her with a female workmate.

Rivas revels in the spirited slapstick, which provides a fitting climax to a picture that forever seems to be on the cusp of eruption. Indeed, the performances are splendid throughout, as is Szifrón's writing and direction, as he strives to give each segment its own flavour without resorting too blatantly to `tales of the unexpected' contrivance. He is clearly familiar with the short stories of O. Henry, JD Salinger and Roald Dahl and is evidently an attentive fan of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Amazing Tales and Tales From the Crypt. But, as with any anthology, maintaining consistency levels proves challenging and the endings of both `Bombita' (which sees Darín end up behind bars) and `The Bill' (which concludes with De Silva being gunned down by the victim `Bombita's spouse) feel a touch forced. Nevertheless, the quirky wit and ready sympathy for the put upon should keep most audiences onside.

The mind of a writer is also very much to the fore in Norwegian Eskil Vogt's directorial debut, Blind. Having forged a solid reputation as a scenarist with compatriot Joachim Trier's Reprise (2004) and Oslo, August 31st (2011), he proves that he has a visual sense to match his way with words in a teasing tale about disability, identity, perception and imagination that will challenge and excite everyone fortunate enough to be able to see it.

Thirty year-old Ellen Dorrit Petersen had to give up teaching when she suddenly lost her sight because of a rare genetic condition. Now, she spends her days in her Oslo apartment coming to terms with her incapacity and struggling to process the visual memories she retains from her past. Architect husband Henrik Rafaelsen has spared no expense in providing Petersen with mod cons, from talking microwaves to a wand that declares the colour of everything it touches. However, she sometimes has the feeling that he stays home to watch her after he's supposedly gone to work. Moreover, she suspects that he may be betraying her with a lover online.

In order to pass the time, Petersen starts writing a story on her laptop that centres around Vera Vitali, a Swede who has remained in Norway because she has joint custody with ex-husband Jacob Young of their 10 year-old daughter, Stella Kvam Young. She knows few people in the city, but has attracted the attention of neighbour Marius Kolbenstvedt, who is addicted to depraved internet pornography and spies on Vitali at every opportunity.

As the line begins to blur between the world Petersen inhabits and the one she concocts, it transpires that Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt are old college pals who haven't seen each other in ages. They meet up and discuss the obscure 1970 portmanteau picture Days From 1000 Years, which contains vignettes directed by Anja Breien, Egil Kolstø and Espen Thorstenson. Such is the fluid nature of the narrative, however, that the backdrop to the conversation changes from a café to a bus and a subway train without the interlocutors pausing for breath.

One day, when Vitali is sitting in a café, she loses her sight. However, when she sleeps with Kolbenstvedt, she tells him that she was blinded by a piece of falling ice. He sneaks into her flat without her knowing and feigns surprise when they bump into each other in the lobby of their building and he tries to turn on the charm. But he is not the only man in Vitali's life, as her daughter has strangely turned into a son, Isak Nikolai Møller. Moreover, Rafaelsen is also interested in her and he invites her to a party to celebrate the completion of an important project.

Vitali wears a new dress to the function, but it turns into something inappropriately revealing before Rafaelsens eyes. What's more, Vitali transforms into Petersen and she burns with embarrassment as she sense the other guests pointing and laughing at her. As she tries to maintain her composure, the venue morphs into an abandoned building whose empty expanses only serve to further expose Petersen and her sense of inadequacy. However, she realises that she has reached her lowest ebb and, having faced up to her worst nightmares, she decides she is ready to venture outside again and rejoin the real world.

There is so much to admire in this remarkable film, which blurs narrative lines so frequently and adroitly that it is often impossible to gauge exactly where the action is taking place. But this is no Charlie Kaufman knock-off, as Vogl is not just interested in the creative process and how it reflects and impinges upon daily life. He is also intrigued by the challenge involved in overcoming incapacity and each item within the ever-shifting mise-en-scène is used so precisely in close-up and within the overall design of the confining interior to convey the limitations and frustrations of being disabled.

The opening sequences are superbly choreographed to familiarise the viewer with the layout of the apartment and the various obstacles that Petersen has to navigate during the course of a day. But, while she seems in control of her surroundings, the struggle to make a cup of tea becomes almost soul destroying and there is real anguish in the moment she strips naked and presses herself against the window, so that the world can see her, even if she can no longer see it.

Whether musing on Petersen's perceived handicap and creative methodology or lingering on Kolbenstvedt peeping through Vitali's window while watching the same TV programme and munching an identical snack, these set-pieces could easily seem tacky or trite. But Vogt works intelligently with Greek cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis to use close-ups to approximate Petersen's gaze, as she feels her way around Jørgen Stangebye Larsen's superbly designed interiors. Editor Jens Christian Fodstad and special effects supervisor Torgeir Busch also team well to make the inter- and intra-scene transitions as seamless as possible. They are aided by Gisle Tveito's evocative sound design and Henk Hofstede's brisk piano score, which help unite and distinguish the locals with impeccable craftsmanship.

The performances are also admirable, with Petersen inhabiting her character completely to suggest vulnerability (but never helplessness) and resourcefulness, as she explores the fictional milieu she has invented to help her regain her confidence in quotidian reality. Vitali is also suitably brittle as her alter ego, while Rafaelsen and Kolbenstvedt slip so easily into the roles that Petersen and Vogt demand of them that it's difficult to know which is the more despicable or misunderstood.

Some will dismiss this as meta-slick, self-reflexive nonsense that spends more time admiring its own ingenuity than creating credible characters in plausible situations. Others will aver that a story that depends so heavily upon voice-over narration has failed as a film. But anyone who has experienced a period of enforced confinement will recognise how the mind works to compensate for physical restriction and how vital such thought processes are to accepting a new set of circumstances and finding ways to normalise them. Life may not always be so sensual, witty and touching, but cinema isn't usually this insightful, innovative or playful, either. And what better way could there be to pay tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy?

The demarcation line between fact and fiction runs equally indistinctly through Michael Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel, a treatise on the events surrounding the Meredith Kercher murder case that rather dubiously arrives in cinemas in the week that an Italian court delivers the latest in an embarrassingly long line of verdicts on the guilt or innocence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Winterbottom is a questing and eclectic film-maker, who has previously mined the headlines for Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and In This World (2002). However, he is also infeasibly prolific and, as a consequence, some projects feel less considered than others. Sadly, despite making some cogent points about the impact of rolling news and the elusive nature of truth in a confessional age, this always seems a little rushed. Moreover, thanks to the protagonist's obsession with Dante, it's also a bit pretentious.

German film-maker Daniel Brühl arrives in Siena in 2011 to prepare a TV-movie based on journalist Kate Beckinsale's account of the murder of British student Sai Bennett by her American flatmate Genevieve Gaunt. Brühl is reluctant to make a true crime saga and is already at odds with his producers back in London as Beckinsale shows him around the city and familiarises him with the facts of the case. She also introduces him to some of the reporters awaiting the next development in the appeal process and he is struck by the different stances taken by British tabloid hack John Hopkins, local stringer Corrado Invernizzi and American crusader Sara Stewart, who refuses to entertain any notion that Gaunt and her Italian beau may be guilty. Consequently, Brühl becomes fascinated with the media coverage of the story and the way in which the focus on the alluring culprit has resulted in the victim being forgotten.

Brühl has recently divorced and is struggling to cope with being away from nine year-old daughter Ava Acres, with whom he has long conversations on Skype. He is also using a good deal of cocaine and the effects quickly begin to cloud his judgement, as he decides to centre his screenplay on the media circus rather than the gory crime. His fixation with Dante's The Divine Comedy also begins to impinge upon the project, although Brühl is already passing through circles of his own, as he leaves the hell of the press frenzy for the purgatorial pursuit of Valerio Mastrandrea, a local blogger who claims to have inside information on Bennett's fate.

Beckinsale sleeps with Brühl, but becomes increasingly concerned that he is trivialising the case and her book. She loses patience with him when he becomes enamoured of English student Cara Delevingne, who works in a bar and, in his addled brain, becomes the living embodiment of what Bennett could have become had she not been slain. Moreover, she becomes his very own Beatrice and Brühl takes Delevingne to Ravenna to see Dante's tomb. But the combination of the drugs, his domestic anguish and his inability to get to grips with the crime or his scenario tips Brühl over the edge and he becomes plagued by violent fantasies, in which he convinces himself that he has stolen the murder weapon from the malevolent Mastrandrea.

A bruising confrontation with the Italian sees Brühl spend some time in the cells. But he is released in time to see Gaunt acquitted and learns shortly afterwards that the teleplay has been cancelled. However, rather than allow the vicissitudes of the movie business to get to him, Brühl is inspired by Delevingne to conclude his script by dwelling on the happier moments that Bennett must have spent during her time in Siena.

Although it takes its primary inspiration from American journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau's book Angel Face, this is also a deceptively personal picture, with the suffering Brühl experiences after his divorce appearing to contain echoes of Descent: An Irresistible Tragicomedy of Everyday Life, a novel written in 2004 by Winterbottoms ex-wife, Sabrina Broadbent, which chronicles the marital woes of a philandering film-maker. However, there are also moments when this feels like a serious version of The Trip to Italy (2004), with coke-fuelled hallucinations replacing the toothsome repasts in chic restaurants.

Winterbottom has gone to great lengths in the press to distance his film from the horrific events that occurred in Perugia in 2007. But this is clearly a rumination on the Knox-Kercher case and the culture clash involved in its coverage and no amount of bluster and blurring can alter the fact. Screenwriter Paul Viragh approaches the material from an intriguing angle and the sequences Beckinsale and Brühl share with the press pack are full of astute observations about the way in which stories are now covered by professional news outlets and citizen journalists. There is also much to mull over during Brühl's quaint chats with Acres. But the attempts to shoehorn Dante into the equation are less persuasive, while the subplot involving Mastrandrea and the coke-driven reveries feel like they belong to exactly the kind of cheap thriller that Brühl and Winterbottom are supposedly so keen to avoid making.

As always, Brühl gives a fully committed performance. But Beckinsale and Delevingne are less well served by a screenplay that often feels as restless as Hubert Taczanowski's skittish handheld photography. One suspects that actual events will overshadow the film's release. But, while it's undoubtedly flawed, this still forces viewers to reassess their response to news bulletins and the reports carried in print and online and the extent to which they accept what they read and hear at face value.

Finally, the past and the present overlap in Frédéric Tcheng's Dior and I, which provides an intimate record of the eight weeks in spring 2012 that new creative director Raf Simons was given to compile his first collection for the prestigious Parisian fashion house, Christian Dior. Having served as co-editor on Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) and having co-directed Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) with Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Tcheng is the rising star of the fashion documentary. But, while it offers some shrewd insights into life in an haute couture atelier and draws some well-observed comparisons between Dior and Simons, this stylish and slickly structured picture opts to turn a blind eye so often that it winds up feeling more like an infomercial than an objective overview.

Known for the minimalist men's clothing he created with Jil Sander, Belgian Raf Simons was something of a surprise choice to succeed flamboyant Brit John Galliano when the latter was dismissed following a very public racist and anti-Semitic tirade. Yet no mention is made of these shameful circumstances and, thus, it becomes apparent from the outset that Tcheng has had to make compromises in order to obtain his remarkable access to Simons and his new staff.

Speaking little French and relying heavily on trusted assistant, Pieter Mulier, Simons decides to base his debut collection on the New Look range that made Christian Dior a household name in 1947. Indeed, Tcheng is quick to spot the similarities between the taciturn founder and his publicity shy successor and uses passages from the autobiography Dior et Moi (read by Omar Berrada) to establish personal and artistic connections between the pair. But Dior isn't Simons's sole inspiration, as he draws on the paintings of Gerhard Richter and Sterling Ruby to devise a patterned thread that would offset the weave of the fabric. Moreover, he is also taken by `Puppy', a 1992 Jeff Koons piece at the Guggenheim in Bilbao that carpets a giant West Highland terrier in bedding plants. However, as he is not a skilled draftsman, he has to create mood boards to convey his ideas and hopes that Mulier can conspire with premières Florence Chehet and Monique Bailly to realise his vision.

This middle-aged pair are much more gregarious than Simons and Tcheng gratefully seizes upon them as an alternative focal point. Indeed, so key are they to the success of the brand that Simons is upbraided when he protests that one has crossed the Atlantic to supervise a personal fitting for a client who spends a six-figure sum with Dior each season. Stylist Hongbo Li might get misty eyed at the sight of Simons's creations, but president and chief executive officer Sidney Toledano and chairman Bernard Arnault (who holds the same post at the luxury goods conglomerate Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton, aka LVMH) keep their sights fixed firmly on the bottom line.

What emerges as the time ticks away is that the atelier could quite easily cope without Simon, who can barely speak a word of French and often struggles to get his ideas across. But Dior would be lost without the commitment to the brand and the sheer professionalism and craftsmanship of its cutters, seamstresses and stylists. Thus, while Simons is lining up a swanky mansion for the runway show, his staff work long hours to ensure everything will be ready on time - even the jacket that Simons decides needs to be spray-painted black just before the curtain goes up.

Fortunately, the collection gets the critical nod, but Tcheng's film is markedly more problematic. He makes a decent job of combining observational material with interview clips and movie buffs will enjoy seeing the likes of Sharon Stone, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lawrence making guest appearances alongside fashion priestess, Anna Wintour. However, cineastes will be more appreciative of the way in which editor Julio Perez nimbly cross-cuts between Gilles Piquard's refined imagery and archive clips of Dior launching the New Look in a Paris that needed a definitive statement to restore its authority after the Occupation. But Tcheng decides not to mention that Dior dressed the wives of Nazi officers and Vichy collaborators while working for Lucien Lelong. He similarly overlooks the fact that Dior's creations helped foster the enduring culture of elitism within haute couture because they required vast amounts of expensive fabric at a time when it was still rationed.

Despite wallowing in the pomposity of his milieu, Tcheng also struggles to generate any sense of tension during the run-in to the launch. But he is more successful in finding matching personality traits between Dior and Simons, whose confidence in his work contrasts so starkly with his aversion to the limelight. However, it should be noted that he handles his big day with considerable savoir faire and is more than eager to bask in the acclaim. Those watching after the event, however, will know how much he owes to Mulier, Chehet and Bailly, who not only get the credit they deserve, but they also steal the film.