Parky at the Pictures (DVD 2/4/2015)

It's the summer of 1995 and Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) is only partway through her three-month odyssey from along the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert in Southern California to the Oregon-Washington border. She is already beginning to regret bringing such a heavy backpack (which she has dubbed `the Monster') and now wishes she had taken more time choosing her footwear, as her hiking boots are a size too small and they have just removed a toenail. As she inspects the damage, one of the boots falls down a chasm and Cheryl tosses the other after it in frustration.

Forced to make do with a pair of sandals customised with some duct tape, she struggles on and the action flashes back to the phone call she made to her ex-husband, Paul (Thomas Sadoski), to ask him to support her by dispatching supply packages to pick-up points every 100 miles or so along the route. He agrees to help, in spite of not being able to fathom the reason for the enterprise, and we see Cheryl struggling in a pseudo-slapstick montage to pack her haversack and then carry it on her back.

Heading out to the gas station from her motel room, Cheryl hitches a lift with a friendly couple and a song on the radio prompts her to recall her younger self (Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom) dancing with her mother, Bobbi Nyland (Laura Dern). However, the reverie proves all-too-brief, as Cheryl is dropped at her destination and ventures into the wilderness. As she camps for the night, she writes an entry in her journal and thinks back to how Bobbi had always been there for her and how she had once ticked off her younger brother, Leif (Keene McRae) for expecting their mother to wait on him hand and foot.

Fortified by porridge, Cheryl makes steady progress and has covered 30 miles by the end of Day Five. However, her food supplies have so dwindled by the eighth day that she asks a farmer named Frank (W. Earl Brown) if there is anywhere she can buy some food. He is working with his tractor and tells Cheryl to wait in his truck until he has finished for the day. Having little option, she agrees, only to spook herself out when she finds a gun in the vehicle. She feels even more insecure when the stranger suggests she comes back to his place for a shower and a hot meal and she sips with some trepidation from his hip flask. However, even though she warns him that her husband is waiting for her further along the trail, Cheryl still accepts some liquorice and is mighty relieved to find that Frank is married to the no-nonsense Annette (Jan Hoag), who not only welcomes her inside, but also jokes that she might just join her the following day to get away from her trying spouse.

Amused by her hosts' banter, Cheryl thinks back on the end of her marriage to Paul and remembers the surprise on the face of the tattoo artist when he learned that they were getting inked to forge a permanent bond that would outlast their divorce. They had managed to stay together for seven years, but Cheryl doesn't blame Paul for calling it a day, as she had not made life easy and had cheated on him endlessly. She feels more remorse the next morning when Frank drops her back on the trail and lets her know that he doesn't blame her for being a bit scared of him the night before.

He wishes her luck in her endeavours. But even though she succeeds in lighting a fire, Cheryl begins to wonder why she has set herself such an onerous challenge, especially when she has to make a detour to avoid a snake. An incident with an insect also terrifies her and Cheryl thinks back to her friend Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann) telling her that she has nothing to prove and that she should quit at any time the going gets too tough. This causes her to think about a blazing row with Paul and how she gave up too soon with him and has now lost him to another woman.

However, just as her spirits plunge around the 80-mile mark, Cheryl spots a fit young man named Greg (Kevin Rankin) skinny-dipping in the river. She is embarrassed, therefore, when he calls over to her and reveals that he has been averaging 20 miles a day since he set off. He suggests that she checks into a campsite and rethinks her plan of campaign and this jolts her back to the first time she heard about the Pacific Crest, when she found a guidebook in a shop while waiting with Aimee for the results of a pregnancy test. She had been angry and vowed not to keep the baby, as it would interfere with the lifestyle she had envisaged for herself.

Now back on the path, Cheryl feels pleased with herself for negotiating a difficult climb. She is also happy to bump into Greg at Kennedy Meadows, where his friend Ed (Cliff De Young) shows her how to pack `the Monster' more efficiently. His kindly guidance reminds her of a debate she had with Bobbi when they found themselves on the same Minneapolis campus about the merits of James A. Michener's writing, in which the 22 year-old Cheryl insinuates that her mother lacks her intellectual sophistication. Shortly afterwards, however, they are informed that the 45 year-old Bobbi has a tumour on her spine that she is not expected to survive.

Arriving at Reno, Cheryl calls Paul to let him know she is faring well. However, she decides to hitch a ride and is put out when Jimmy Carter (Mo McRae) accuses her of being a vagabond. He writes for The Hobo Times and speculates that Cheryl has been inspired to wander because she couldn't face up to a trauma. She is stung by his remarks and his casual chauvinism. But she still accepts a care package and feels decidedly uncomfortable when he accepts a lift from a woman and two men, one of whom keeps ogling her as they drive along.

Her eye is drawn to the photograph of a young boy who was killed by a speeding truck and she harks back to the anguished times she spent urging Bobbi not to give up her fight. This fortitude helps Cheryl through the snow that falls heavily on Day 30 and she dismisses the skiers who tease her that she has lost her way and wandered back into California. As she notices a fox watching her, Cheryl recalls remonstrating with the doctor who had given Bobbi a year to live and now cannot explain why her condition has deteriorated so rapidly.

The pain of loss continues to haunt Cheryl for the next week and she wonders why Leif resisted visiting his mother in the hospital when he knew how much he meant to her. Eventually, she persuades him to come. But, while they say their goodbyes, they hardly make peace and Cheryl goes seriously off the rails and not only begins cuckolding Paul, but also starts using heroin and not even Aimee can bring her out of the slough. That is, until she decides to separate from her husband and she finds the trail guide by serendipity.

There is more to endure on the path before Cheryl reaches journey's end. She has encounters with a snarky park ranger (Brian Van Holt), fears being stalked by a pair of bow hunters in the woods (Charles Baker and JD Evermore) and shares her experiences with another solo female trekker (Cathryn de Prume). But, much to her surprise, she also meets Jonathan (Michiel Huisman), who invites her to a gig after they sleep together and she writes Paul's name in the sand for the last time to signify she is no longer dependent upon him and can stand on the two feet that have carried her to the brink of a fresh start.

A clutch of films have focused on intrepidity in the great outdoors since Sean Penn directed himself as Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild (2007). Standing just 5' 1", Reese Witherspoon certainly deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as James Franco and Mia Wasikowska for their respective efforts in essaying Aron Ralston in Danny Boyle's 127 Hours (2010) and Robyn Davidson in John Curran's Tracks (2013). She may be a decade too old for the role (and, indeed, is only nine years Dern's junior), but she conveys a wider gamut of emotions here (while under extreme physical duress) than she exhibited in her Oscar-winning turn as June Carter Cash in James Mangold's Walk the Line (2005).

Moreover, Witherspoon also co-produced the picture, which seems destined to become a feminist classic, even though it was written and directed by males. In truth, Hornby strains a little too hard to find audio and visual cues to trigger the flashbacks, but Vallée (masquerading as John Mac McMurphy) and co-editor Martin Pensa amusingly avoid seamless transitions, as if self-guyingly to draw attention to occasional gaucheries like the match cut between a panting Witherspoon emerging from a hedge and her wilder self gasping during a vigorous bout of coitus. However, some of the promiscuity and smack-taking montages feel mannered, as does the inclusion of snippets of poetry by Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. Moreover, too many of the soundtrack prompts appear to have been selected to manipulate audience response during moments of sinister suspense that turn out to contain red herrings rather than rapacious predators.

Yet, this is a slickly assembled picture, with Yves Bélanger's widescreen imagery often taking the breath away, as it emphasises Witherspoon's insignificance in the grander scheme of things. On screen throughout, she excels whether persevering in the face of physical and psychological upheaval or having the awareness to recognise the landmarks on her way to xelf-discovery. Dern provides admirable support, but there is something Sirkian about the positioning of her demise within the narrative and this tendency towards melodrama in the flashbacks has an undeniably enervating effect. But Vallée's sincerity can never be doubted, while Witherspoon proves (as she has done previously with Alexander Payne's Election, 1999 and Robert Luketic's Legally Blonde, 2001) that, when she finds the right role, she is one of the finest screen actors of her generation.

Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy rather got lost when it arrived in cinemas, as it was reelased a week after Sam Taylor-Johnson's hideously hyped adaptation of EL James's bestseller, Fifty Shades of Grey. However, this intense, claustrophobic study in sadomasochism stands a better chance of being noticed in the various home entertainment formats, if only because it owes more to the 1970s sexploitation sagas of Jean Rollin and Jesús Franco than smut fiction. Indeed, just as Berberian Sound Studio (2012) paid affectionate tribute to the giallo thrillers produced around the same time in Italy by the likes of Dario Argento, so this darkly droll tale of obsession, submission and possession (which is named after a species of butterfly) is filled with grace notes that will delight Euro aficionados, while also reminding bibliophiles of Jean Genet's The Maids and John Fowles's debut novel, The Collector, which was filmed five decades ago by William Wyler, with Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar in the leads.

Proceedings are set in a rustic idyll somewhere in Central Europe in an unspecified period and open with a sublimely stylised credit sequence accompanied by the folksy music of Cat's Eyes (Faris Badwan and Rachel Zeffira) that makes knowing use of colour-washed, freeze-frame photomontage and eccentric credits to the providers of the lingerie (Andrea Flesch) and perfume (Je Suis Gizella) used in the picture. However, the mood quickly changes, as thirtysomething maid Chiara D'Anna returns from cycling through the woods to be scolded by older mistress Sidse Babett Knudsen for being late.

The latter is an eminent orthopterist (while D'Anna is merely an amateur entomologist) and her remote, ivy-covered mansion is filled with specimens and illustrations testifying to her expertise. She also appears to demand total obedience from D'Anna and inflicts a scatalogical punishment when she is dissatisfied with the hand-laundering of her underwear. But any notion that Knudsen is the controlling force in the relationship is dispelled when it is revealed that D'Anna has purchased the kinky outfits in her wardrobe. Moreover, she scripts their encounters down to the last detail and leaves handwritten cards around the premises to instruct Knudsen in the words she should use in chastising her and how long to leave her locked in a wooden chest that seems to be her favoured place of confinement.

Inhabiting a male-free world populated entirely by lesbian lepidopterists, Knudsen and D'Anna have their private moments of tenderness. But they readily reassume their respective roles of dominance and servility whenever they are in company. However, they don't live solely for sensual pleasure, as Knudsen takes her science very seriously and joins fellow specialists Eugenia Caruso, Kata Bartsch, Eszter Tompa and Zita Kraszkó in lecturing on the sounds made by various butterflies and moths to a small audience of tweed-wearing ladies (whose numbers are swelled by some pale mannequins in a sly reference to Franco's 1968 insight into S&M performance, Succubus). But these encounters with the outside world afford neighbour Monica Swinn the opportunity to sew a little discord, as she informs Knudsen that D'Anna has been cleaning Kraszkó's boots in the backyard.

Rather than being irate, however, Knudsen is somewhat grateful for the excuse to keep D'Anna at a distance, as she has hurt her back and finds it much comfier to wear a pair of baggy pyjamas in bed than some of the constricting ensembles that the maid has purchased for her (a couple of which are so complicated that they require instruction manuals). Seeking to rekindle the spark, they consult carpenter Fatma Mohamed about a new wooden bed, complete with restraining compartment, only to discover that there is such a demand for them in the vicinity that delivery cannot be guaranteed in time for D'Anna's birthday.

As a consequence of these disappointments, D'Anna's party turns out to be something of a disaster and she grows increasingly resentful at Knudsen's snoring. Things come to a head when Knudsen declares that she can no longer go along with the charade and refuses to entomb D'Anna for an entire night in her ornate trunk. She also pleads to be allowed to abandon the regnant role that D'Anna has devised for her, as she now finds that learning new dialogue and remembering when and where to hit her marks is a chore rather than a thrill. But, while they agree to compromise and accept that their dependency extends beyond the physical, any suggestion that they have resumed their romance on a new and less demanding basis is called into question by the closing shot of Knudsen dressing provocatively, as D'Anna cycles home through the trees.

For all its calculated eroticism, this is very much a love story involving a same sex couple whose familiarity with each other recalls the easy connection between John Lithgow and Alfred Molina in Ira Sachs's Love Is Strange. However, for all its cosily chaste and cannily accessible titillation (which occasionally comes teasingly close to chauvinist voyeurism), this is also a work of avant-garde artistry. In an article for the BFI website, Strickland lists the five works that particularly influenced his aesthetic and, while many might have seen Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967), Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and Juraz Herz's Morgiana (both 1972), few will be familiar with Jess Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973), Cleo Übelmann’s deliciously obscure meditation on restraint and anticipation, Mano Destra (1986), or Stan Brakhage's troublingly exquisite abstract short, Mothlight (1962), which directly influences Strickland's hallucinatory reveries and which was created by encasing moth wings and bits of foliage inside a strip of clear celluloid leader.

However, the exhaustive information given about the content and derivation of the field recordings heard throughout the film betray the unspoken influence of Peter Greenaway, whose fixation with taxonomy and classification Strickland evidently seems to share. He also pays lip service to Greenaway's predilection for fashioning hermetic milieu that operate according to their own idiosyncratic logic, although the hiring of Nic Knowland as cinematographer implies that he was also aiming to reproduce some of the ethereal sheen that characterises the live-action features of the Brothers Quay. The digital imagery is never less than beguiling and Strickland is also fortunate in his choice of production designer Renato Cseh, costumier Andrea Flesch, editor Mátyás Fekete and sound designer Rob Entwistle, whose contribution imparts a mix of wit, menace and endless fascination to a tale of mannered repetition that mischievously invites comparison with the films of both Alain Robbe-Grillet and Walerian Borowczyk.

But, as he has now demonstrated with Katalin Varga (2009) and Berberian Sound Studio, Strickland is an impish magpie who possesses the enviable ability to put a personal spin on his self-reflexive borrowings. He also has a wicked sense of humour, which manifests itself here in the use of the word `pinastri' (which is a form of pine hawk-moth) as the lovers' safe word, and by the crediting of Manfred and Geert as `Human Toilet Consultants' in the closing crawl for an incident that is left entirely to the imagination, as the camera lingers outside a glass bathroom door. But he is also a fine director of actors, with D'Anna and Knudsen (doubtlessly surprising many devotees of Borgen) matching the measured intensity of Hilda Péter and Toby Jones in Strickland's earlier outings, as they prove to be the perfect co-conspirators with this fiendishly tantalising master pasticheur.

It can't harm a young film-maker's prospects to have a famous father for a director. But the downside comes when critics start making unhelpful comparisons, as has been the case with Max Nichols's Two Night Stand, which many American commentators have claimed captures the youthful zeitgeist in much the same way that his late father, Mike Nichols, did with The Graduate back in 1967. Sadly, such judgements are wide of the mark on two counts. Firstly, this smart, if limited debut falls way short of the standards set by Nichols père, while its hip satire on Internet dating has far more in common with Dustin Hoffman's second feature, Peter Yates's little-seen John and Mary (1969), in which he and Mia Farrow try to piece together the events of a one-night stand after meeting in a singles bar.

Having just been dumped unceremoniously by her fiancé, twentysomething Analeigh Tipton is feeling fragile. She slouches round the flat she shares with Jessica Szohr and complains that the world has got it in for her. However, Szohr (who is keen to have the place to herself to spend a little quality time with boyfriend Scott Mescudi) suggests that she takes control of her situation by joining an online dating agency and bagging herself a beau for the night.

Against her better judgement, Tipton opens a bottle of wine, perches on the sofa with her laptop and (through green text bubbles in the right-hand corner of the screen) soon finds herself fending off idiots and exchanging sparky banter with Miles Teller. The chat quickly moves on to sex and Tipton demands to be given a webcam tour of Teller's apartment in order to convince herself she is negotiating with a regular guy rather than a game-playing creep. Suitably reassured, she agrees to head out from the East Village to Brooklyn, even though it's approaching midnight.

One abrupt cut later, Tipton wakes with a rueful expression that tells viewers everything they need to know about the tryst. Beside her, Teller rolls over after snapping off the alarm and she tries to thank him for a lovely evening in order to beat a hasty retreat. But, having said her bickering goodbyes, Tipton discovers that an overnight snowdrift has marooned her inside the apartment block and she has no option but to return upstairs.

As they watch TV weatherman Michael Showalter explaining the reasons for the blizzard, Teller can scarcely suppress a smirk. But Tipton sulks her way through breakfast, a hit on a bong and a game of table tennis before managing to block the toilet. The mood lightens as the pair share snacks and dance to old LPs, but each conversational gambit invariably leads to another squabble and it almost comes as a relief when they have to climb up the fire escape to break into an another apartment so that Tipton can use the loo.

Back downstairs, the twosome continue to reveal small details of their lives and personalities, while remaining uncertain whether they like or loathe each other. Eventually, they broach the subject of the night before and offer each other tips on how to improve their sexual performance. This leads to them agreeing to give it another go to see if they have learned anything from the experience. But, just as Tipton realises she is beginning to quite like Teller, she finds a photograph hidden in a desk drawer and he is forced to confess that he is living with girlfriend Levin Rambin.

Teller shows Tipton the letter he found in Rambin's purse proving that they were about to break up when she had to go away for a few days. But Tipton feels he has cheated on them both and leaves the moment she can get the outside door open. Yet, while she refuses to answer Teller's online messages, it's clear to Szohr and Mescudi that she is in denial as she fends off eager suitors at a party.

Meanwhile, Teller has had a heart-to-heart with Rambin and they have called it a day. But he has to resort to drastic measures in order to reunite with Tipton, as he reports her to the police for breaking into his neighbour's flat. Furious that he would subject her to such humiliation, Tipton refuses to let him pay her bail and it's only when Szohr and Mescudi arrive at the police station that she agrees to speak to him. He insists that they should give their relationship more than two days and she relents when he makes her laugh with an apology balloon and the picture ends with Tipton and Teller smooching on a neatly ploughed street at dawn with fairy lights twinkling on the still pristine snow.

Notwithstanding the convolution of their premise, Nichols and first-time screenwriter Mark Hammer deserve considerable praise for putting their faith in dialogue rather than creakily cute sitcomedic set-pieces. The byplay relies a touch too much on teenspeak, but the well-matched Tipton and Teller cope admirably and would have generated much more heat if Nichols had committed to the two-shot a bit more rather than allowing editor Matt Garner to keep cutting between single close-ups. However, Nichols and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski make decent use of Molly Hughes's interiors, although Tipton's apartment seems far too big for someone on his moderate resources, while the romantic nook filled with cushions and a record player is more than a little twee.

Rather aptly, Stefano Falivene's camera remains pretty much static in Uberto Pasolini's Still Life. The producer of The Full Monty (1997) made his directorial debut with the charmingly quirky Sri Lankan handball comedy, Machan (2008). But, while this sophomore outing is sustained by a splendid display of taciturn saturninity by Eddie Marsan, it collapses under the weight of its aching sincerity in a closing coda that is almost too embarrassingly sentimental to endure.

For exactly half his life, 44 year-old Eddie Marsan has been handling the funeral arrangements of those who have died alone in his part of South London. Rummaging through the deceased's belongings, he searches for clues to the identity and whereabouts of any loved ones and, as is often the case, when no one comes forward, he chooses music for the ceremony and composes eulogies that are only ever heard by himself and the officiating cleric.

Convinced that even the most wretched soul deserves dignity in death and a decent send off, Marsan takes his job very seriously. But, when the local council is forced into making cutbacks, he is made redundant and suddenly becomes aware of the emptiness of his own existence. This revolves around following up obscure leads, dining nightly on toast and tuna, and sticking photographs of his clients in a souvenir scrapbook.

Occasionally, he visits the cemetery to lie on the plot he picked out for himself many years before. But Marsan is not a morbid character and his compassion prompts him to ask dourly insensitive boss Andrew Buchan if he can complete his last case at his own expense, as the man in question lived opposite him. At first glance, there seems nothing remarkable about the elderly alcoholic who so kept to himself that Marsan scarcely recognises him. But, as he makes enquiries, he discovers that not only did he serve in the Falklands War, but that he also has friends in the Midlands and an estranged daughter.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Marsan and Joanne Froggatt hit it off as they plan the service and he becomes a new man overnight, as he changes his attire and his favourite beverage. Moreover, following a meeting at the railway café, Marsan realises he is no longer content - he is genuinely happy. He asks Froggatt for a date and if he can accompany her to the funeral. But, as he crosses a busy road, he is killed by a passing bus and is buried in the same cemetery on the same day as Froggatt's father. However, she thinks he has let her down, while he is laid to rest with no one to mourn him. As the dust settles, however, the ghosts of those Marsan had helped down the years gather at the graveside to pay their respects.

One suspects that this ending might have melted the hearts of millions during the golden age of Hollywood. But modern audiences are less susceptible to such monochrome kitsch and the good intentions turn to mush as the spectres mumble their encomia. Marsan's performance certainly deserves something better than this cornball mawkishness, which is made all the more unbearable by Rachel Portman's glutinous score. Surely one of Pasolini's fellow producers should have stepped in and demanded a rethink? But this false step is entirely in keeping with the faux mood of social realism that should have been supplanted by an air of Ealing whimsy.

Froggatt briefly provides some peppy support in a story that contains echoes of Carol Morley's Dreams of a Life (2011) and Vincent Lannoo's Paper Souls (2013). But this is very much Marsan's show and it says much about his doleful presence that he is utterly captivating for the first two-thirds of the action, as he goes about his daily routine with a touching sense of dedication. Lisa Hall's interiors are also worthy of note, but Pasolini's writing and direction are consistently heavy handed, whether he is seeking to pass comment on Marsan's melancholic duties or the state of Coalition Britain.

By contrast, Bryn Higgins adopts a self-consciously stylised approach to conveying the sensation of suffering an epileptic fit in his otherwise realist adaptation of Ray Robinson's novel, Electricity. The smears, streaks and striations of light and colour have been deftly achieved by cinematographer Si Bell using a pinhole camera. However, seemingly aware of the dramatic limitations of this big city reworking of Alice in Wonderland, Higgins ends up relying too heavily on the effect to jolt the moribund narrative back into life. Model Agyness Deyn may surprise some with the courage and conviction of her performance, but even her character is so thinly sketched by screenwriter Joe Fisher that she simply becomes one more cipher in a `grim darn sarf' saga whose artistic pretensions are swamped by its soap operatic contrivances.

Twentysomething Agyness Deyn suffers from temporal lobe epilepsy. She works in an amusement arcade in the rundown Yorkshire resort of Saltburn, where boss-cum-landlord Tom Georgeson keeps an eye on her after she has her latest fit while out on a date. In a voiceover, Deyn explains how she was thrown down the stairs as a two year-old by mother Sharon Percy because she wouldn't stop crying and how her juvenile misery was compounded when younger brother Christian Cooke was taken into care for trying to defend her from bullies. Thus, when she learns that Percy has died, Deyn slaps her face when she goes to view the body, as payback for all her troubles.

Venturing back to her childhood home, Deyn finds older sibling Paul Anderson, a poker hustler who ticks her off for not doing more to help Percy in her later years. However, a flashback to her fitting younger self (Millie Taylforth) nearly drowning in the bath as a cacklingly addled Percy looks on confirms Deyn's detestation and she eagerly accepts Anderson's suggestion that they sell the house. But she insists they split the £180,000 three ways and proposes to travel to London and find Cooke, who has drifted around since being released from prison and going in search of old flame Alice Lowe. Anderson tells her she is wasting her time and buys her a ticket to join him on a gambling trip to Las Vegas, but Deyn is determined to repay her brother for losing his liberty to protect her.

Arriving at King's Cross, Deyn checks into a swanky hotel and starts showing Cooke's photo to the strangers on the streets. She even engages private eye Peter-Hugo Daly and struggles on after suffering another fit. However, homeless beggar Saffron Coomber offers to help her and they visit a hostel in their search for clues. Deyn invites Coomber to spend the night in her room, but she steals her belongings and she has to ask local doctor David Smith for a repeat prescription of her medication. He expresses surprise that she has been taking her pills for so long and suggests she undergoes tests, but Deyn dismisses his concerns, as Daly has come up with Lowe's address.

Heading into suburbia, Deyn is intrigued to know if the boy who answers the door (Callum Coates) is her nephew. However, Lowe aggressively warns her to stay away from her family and Deyn is so distressed that she has a major incident on the Underground. She wakes in her room two days later and uses a number in her bag to contact the woman who helped her get back to the hotel. Lesbian secretary Lenora Crichlow offers Deyn her spare room and promises to provide unquestioning support in her quest. Grateful, Deyn decides to confront Lowe again and she admits that she dated Cooke and hurt him by cheating on him with Anderson (who is Coates's father). She tells Deyn that Cooke was living under an assumed name in Balham and suggests she makes inquiries at the Grace Inn.

Electrician Ben Batt claims to know Cooke and they get chatting. Deyn trusts him implicitly and winds up in his bed. But she suffers another fit and Crichlow is distressed that she can do so little to help her new friend. Deyn jokes that she isn't on the market, but Crichlow keeps a watchful eye on her as she has a bath and reassures her she is happy to be a friend. She is a little peeved when she learns that Deyn has slept with Batt, however, but is pleased that he has persuaded Cooke to meet her at the pub. Skulking in a back corridor, Cooke apologises for being so elusive and Deyn regrets not having come looking for him sooner. She tells him about his inheritance and he orders her to bring the money as soon as possible so he can get on with his life without anyone trying to interfere.

Batt promises to act as go-between and Deyn rewards him with a night of energetic passion. However, she has a post-coital fit and is rushed to hospital, where she undergoes a series of tests before neurologist Julian Firth informs her that she has to change her medication. Despite feeling like she has snow on the brain, Deyn snaps at the doctor for patronising her and discharges herself. She returns to GP Smith and is furious when he concurs that she will be better off with the new prescription, despite her insistence that she knows who she is on the current dosage. Deyn complains to Crichlow that the new tablets make her feel like a ghost and she is still feeling vulnerable when she meets up with Anderson, who has brought Cooke's share of the money. She rejects the snake bracelet he bought her in Vegas and sheepishly apologises for lying about Lowe and claims he merely wants her to love him as much as she does Cooke.

A couple of days later, Cooke shows up at Crichlow's house and trashes the place in a burst of fury that Deyn is powerless to assuage. He lifts his shirt to show her his snake tattoo and gyrates in front of her before storming off. Crichlow tells Deyn not to worry about the damage and gives her a consoling hug. That night, Deyn has a dream in which birds fly out of her mouth and, the next morning, she flushes her medication down the toilet and declares she is washing her brain out. That night, she goes clubbing with Crichlow and has a massive fit on the dance floor and her face is badly scarred when she comes round in hospital. She proves a difficult patient and growls that she is not a dog when asked why she doesn't wear an identity tag that could help people recognise her condition. However, she perks up when Anderson delivers Cooke's cut of the house sale and she is equally delighted to see that Georgeson has come to take her home.

Slipping away after spending her last night with Crichlow, Deyn finds Cooke at the pub and he apologises for his earlier vandalism. He says he doesn't deserve the money or a second chance at happiness and makes Deyn cry by telling her that he stayed away because he always hurts those he loves the most. They hug and she says he has to come and find her next time. As she drives home, Deyn hangs out of the car window and lets the breeze blow through her hair. Saltburn may not be paradise, but it is home and she smiles at a man walking his dog on the beach, as she watches the kids play and the wind turbines whirr on the hazy horizon. She is off her meds and, for now, feels at peace.

In his second feature collaboration with Fisher after the little-seen Unconditional (2012), TV veteran Higgins makes a brave stab at suggesting what it must be like to experience a full-blown epileptic fit. There is an avant-garde audacity to the flash-cut jags and blurs concocted with Bell and editor Ben Yeates. But the sheer number of attacks (while perhaps clinically valid and accurate) feels excessive, especially when taken in conjunction with the multifarious flashbacks and dream sequences. The fact that even the snake bracelet momentarily comes to life betrays that Higgins is taking refuge in his Stan Brakhage-inspired special effects in the hope of distracting the audience from the clunkiness of the storytelling and the fact that the majority of characters exist simply to ease the plot out of its latest dead end.

Sporting her cuts and bruises like a badge of actorly honour to distance herself from her modelling past, Deyn impresses as a rather resistible anti-heroine who is anything but a vulnerable victim. However, some of the support playing is decidedly sub-par, although the likes of the dependable Crichlow are hardly helped by the florid, often tin-eared dialogue. Indeed, Fisher's script is strewn with clichés and caricatures (for which Robinson must share some of the blame). But it's the lack of emotional depth and subtlety that makes this such a cold and unmoving exercise.

British documentarist Kim Longinotto has forged an enviable reputation chronicling the disenfranchisement of women across the developing world. Her focus in Dreamcatcher falls on Brenda Myers-Powell, the founder with Stephanie Daniels-Wilson of a non-profit organisation based in the rougher neighbourhoods of Chicago's rundown South Side that is dedicated to weaning women off prostitution and drugs. Apparently, Longinotto had to be coaxed into taking on the project after producers Lisa Stevens and Teddy Leifer met Myers-Powell while making their own actuality, Crack House USA (2010). But, operating her own camera and collaborating once more with editor Ollie Huddleston, Longinotto imposes her own Direct Cinema stamp on a study that deserves to stand aside such notable achievements as Divorce Iranian Style (1998), The Day I Will Never Forget (2002), Sisters in Law (2005), Rough Aunties (2008) and Pink Saris (2010).

Brenda Myers-Powell is a remarkable woman. In 1973, aged 15 and with two children to support, she started working as a prostitute and continued to walk the streets until April 1997, when she quit shortly before her 40th birthday. During the course of that quarter century, Myers-Powell knew poverty, violence, addiction and degradation. But her troubles had started at the age of four when she was raped for the first time and she continued to suffer abuse at the hands of members of her own family for the next decade. However, in 2008, she teamed with Daniels-Wilson to set up the Dreamcatcher Foundation, which she hoped would complement her work with the prostitution intervention unit based at the Cook County Sheriff's Department.

When not conducting seminars at the local prison or visiting schools to alert teenagers to the dangers of being lured into prostitution by promises of easy money, Myers-Powell is trawling the night-time streets offering working girls hot drinks, condoms and a sympathetic ear to their problems. Invariably sporting big hair wigs and never at a loss for words, she cuts an imposing figure. Yet, she is also a tactful listener and 15 year-old Temeka (who has been turning tricks for three years and is afraid to confront her mother) and the older and heavily pregnant Marie (who has always been too proud to accept charity) are show benefiting from her kindness and practicality. A tougher nut to crack, however, is her own sister-in-law, Melody, who refuses to admit she has a problem with either sex or drugs, even though Myers-Powell is raising her son Jeremy as her own, with her supportive husband, Keith.

Even reformed pimp Homer King is welcomed with open arms and he attends seminars designed to teach young women how to avoid falling into the traps he knows all too well how to set The majority of those attending these sessions have harrowing tales of mistreatment to relate and Myers-Powell provides the kind of nurturing atmosphere that many of them have never previously experienced and which gives them the confidence to share their woes with others who would never judge them, as they have been down the same road themselves. At Paul Robeson High School, girls discuss with humbling equanimity being raped while still children by family members or friends. One even details how she allowed herself to be abused by her mother's partner at the age of eight in order to protect her four year-old sister. No wonder there is such conviction in the workshop's climactic rendition of Mary J. Blige's empowerment anthem, `Just Fine'.

It says much for Longinotto's discretion, as well as the respect that Myers-Powell commands, that the girls trust them both sufficiently to disclose such intimate and often deeply distressing incidents on camera. But such scenes also testify to the confidence that Myers-Powell has in the tough love offered by the Dreamcatcher programme in the absence of any alternative arrangements being made by the city authorities, whose answer to the issue is to jail as many prostitutes as possible rather than prosecuting the men who pay for their services or finding a workable solution to the problem. Yet, for all her efforts and inspired oratory, Myers-Powell knows that little will change until the United States starts to address the deep-rooted socio-political iniquities that keep forcing women with seemingly no other option to sell both their bodies and their souls in order to survive.