Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 30/11/2015)

In addition to the Short Cuts strand, there is also a bijou documentary slot that showcases photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Human, a 190-minute epic that contains interviews with over 2000 people from 60 countries (including a Bangladeshi labourer, a former president of Uruguay and an American inmate on Death Row) to explore the emotions we all share and which have shaped our world for better and for worse.

The remainder of the programme is divided into the usual Panorama and Discovery selections. Among the more elusive titles are Philippe Garrel's In the Shadow of Women, a study of male ego that centres on documentarist Stanislas Merhar's relationships with wife Clotilde Courau, mistress Iena Paugam and wartime heroine Jean Pommier; son Louis Garrel's directorial debut, Two Friends, which was co-scripted by Christophe Honoré and centres on the tensions that arise when Garrel tries to help film extra buddy Vincent Macaigne win the heart of sandwich seller with a secret, Golshifteh Farahani; Joann Sfar's adaptation of the 1966 Sebastien Japrisot crime novel, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, which stars Freya Mavor as a prim secretary whose southern joyride takes a dark turn when a body is found in the boot of her boss's borrowed car; Samuel Benchetrit's Macadam Stories, which boasts cameos by Isabelle Huppert and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi in an episodic study of life in a rundown block of flats; Stéphane Brizé's The Measure of a Man, which earned Vincent Lindon the Best Actor prize at Cannes for his performance as a security guard searching for a new job in an alien world; Maiwenn Le Besco's My King, which brought the Best Actress award at the same festival to Emmanuelle Bercot for facing off against Vincent Cassel in the story of a tempestuous marriage; Stefan Liberski's Tokyo Fiancée, an adaptation of prolific Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb's semi-autobiographical bestseller that charts the left-field romance between French-language tutor Pauline Étienne and her sole Japanese student, Taichi Inoue, in the weeks before the Fukashima disaster in March 2011; Yann Gozlan's Un Homme idéal, which follows removal man Pierre Niney into trouble after he passes off a dead man's diary as a work of fiction; Bruno Podalydès's The Sweet Escape, which follows the aviation-mad director (taking the lead on one of his own films for the first time) on a Burgundian adventure after he fetches up at Agnès Jaoui's country inn after wife Sandrine Kiberlain suggests he gets away from it all in his homemade kayak; Jean-Paul Rouve's Memories, a droll adaptation of a David Foenkinos novel that sees Parisian night porter and aspiring writer Mathieu Spinosi take stock of his life when the death of 85 year-old grandmother Annie Cordy's husband causes her to leave her retirement home for Normandy and father Michel Blanc's retirement sees him lose his sense of purpose to the frustration of wife Chantal Lauby; Pierre Jolivet's The Night Watchman, which joins Olivier Gourmet on the graveyard shift at a discount superstore on the outskirts of Paris, as he tries to fathom his feelings for divorced mother Valérie Bonneton and how to stop his workmates from committing a robbery; Eric Barbier's The Last Diamond, in which paroled thief Yvan Attal finds himself falling for gem expert Bérénice Bejo when he and accomplice Jean-François Stévenin decide to steal the 137-carat Florentin diamond; Savina Dellicour's All Cats Are Grey, in which 15 year-old Manon Capelle asks Brussels detective Bouli Lanners to help her track down her biological father without realising that he is the man she seeks; Vincent Garenq's The Clearstream Affair, a white-collar thriller that draws on the exploits of Denis Robert to show how investigative reporter Gilles Lellouche and judge Charles Berling uncover the shady dealings of the Luxembourg-based Clearstream bank; Elie Wajeman's The Anarchists, which follows police brigadier Tahar Rahim after he goes undercover at a fin-de-siècle Parisian nail factory to root out troublemakers and falls for Bakunin advocate Swann Arlaud's paramour, Adèle Exarchopoulos; the debuting Frédéric Tellier's SK1, a police procedural based on the 1990s case of serial killer Guy Georges (aka The Beast of the Bastille) that follows cops Raphaël Personnaz and Olivier Gourmet in their efforts to prove to public prosecutor Nathalie Baye that they have the pioneering DNA evidence to build a case against Adama Niane; and Benoît Jacquot's take on Octave Mirbeau’s Diary of a Chambermaid, which stars Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon in an ambitious bid to top the earlier versions of Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel.

Also included in the programme are Jean-Pierre Améris's Une Famille à louer, Michel Gondry's Microbe & Gasoline, Rémi Bezançon and Jean-Christophe Lie's Zarafa and Jérôme Bonnell's All About Them. However, as these have all gone on general release in recent weeks, reviews can be found elsewhere on this web page.

The ever-compelling Arnaud Desplechin offers a prequel to his epic saga My Sex Life, or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) in My Golden Days, which opens with anthropologist Mathieu Amalric returning to France after a lengthy assignment in Tajikistan. As he makes his final preparations, he thinks back to his Roubaix childhood, when his 11 year-old self (Antoine Bui) took such exception to the antics of neurotic mother Cécile Garcia Fogel that he he pulled a knife on her. But, shortly after he runs away to stay with great-aunt Françoise Lebrun, Fogel kills herself and father Olivier Rabourdin slumps into a depression that leaves him unable to care for his three children.

Amalric arrives back in Paris only to be accused of being a Russian spy and forced to explain himself by André Dussollier. Thinking back, he remembers a teenage school trip to Minsk when he (Quentin Dolmaire) and classmate Elyot Milshtein) smuggled money and documents to Jews under surveillance by the Soviet authorities. But the most important development of this period proves to be his meeting with 16 year-old sister Lily Taeib's friend, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, who becomes a soulmate (she is played in the original film by Emmanuelle Devos), even though the student Dolmaire also embarks upon a passionate affair with a tutor's girlfriend, Mélodie Richard and falls under the spell of professor Eve Doe-Bruce. He also finds himself trying to talk religious brother Raphael Cohen out of becoming a bank robber and consoling cousin Théo Fernandez, who not only has trouble with mother Anne Benoît, but also becomes besotted with Roy-Lecollinet, who also has a crush on Fernandez's best friend Pierre Andrau.

Settling back into the Parisian routine dictated by his dull government desk job, Amalric realises that he may not always have made the smartest of decisions. But he is left with his bittersweet memories, which have been lovingly designed by Toma Baquéni and photographed by Irina Lubtchansky in a drama that may lack the complexity and intensity of its predecessor - and such other Desplechin landmarks as Kings & Queen (2004) and A Christmas Tale (2008) - but which is full of acute insights into going up and its lingering legacy. Moreover, it is splendidly played by the juvenile leads, with Dolmaire and Roy-Lecollinet and Desplechin makes affectionate use of the old iris scene transition that makes the flashbacks and their copious news clips of seismic events at the end of the Cold War seem both nostalgic and immediate.

A less idealised snapshot of adolescence is provided by actress Emmanuelle Bercot in her fourth directorial outing, Standing Tall, a Dardennesque slice of social realism that pays tribute to the social service network that tries to prevent turbulent teenagers from slipping between the cracks. First seen as a cowering six year-old (Enzo Trouillet) in magistrate Catherine Deneuve's Dunkirk courtroom, Rod Paradot struggles to get over being abandoned by mother Sara Forestier and keeps coming up before Deneuve as he gets involved in petty larcenies and car thefts. Trendy counsellor Benoit Magimel tries to put Paradot on the straight and narrow, but it's the sympathetic Deneuve's refusal to give up on him that gives the kid a chance to make something of himself.

There are no certainties in this dourly downbeat drama, however, as Bercot is determined to show how low youngsters can sink when they are deprived of affection, let alone a fair chance. The shot of Trouillet's frightened eyes is searingly poignant and Bercot and co-scenarist Marcia Romano leave the audience in no doubt that Forestier is not solely to blame for this scruffy scamp becoming the volatile teen who only seems to calm down in the presence of tomboy Diane Rouxel and the no-nonsense Deneuve, who is well aware that Paradot is bemused by the legal jargon that determines his fate.

Magimel overplays his hand, while Forestier is merely required to play a stereotypically addled and neglectful mother. But Paradot makes an impressive debut alongside the ever-reliable Deneuve. Its just a pity that Bercot felt the need to sugar-coat the action with emotional classical pieces by Bach, Schubert and Pärt.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne take a more active role in Cédric Kahn's A Wild Life, as they serve as co-producers of this dramatisation of the notorious case involving Xavier Fortin, who went on the run for 11 years with his two sons after wife Catherine Martin decided to abandon their alternative lifestyle and won custody of the siblings in the courts. Mathieu Kassovitz and Céline Sallette play the feuding parents, whose dream of raising their children (she had another son from a previous relationship) outside the corporatised consumer rat race is crumbling as the picture starts and Kahn and co-writer Nathalie Najem divide the action into two parts, as Kassovitz convinces the seven and eight year-old Sofiane Neveu and David Gastou that they are going on a great adventure and as their teenage counterparts, Jules Ritmanic and Romain Depret rebel against his authority and decide to return to Sallette and enjoy the benefits of a stable home and education.

Having been raised in a rural commune, Kahn captures the thrill of simple pleasures like campfires and cocking a snook against the system. But, while he is keen to explore this harrowing situation from the fugitive father's perspective, he leaves out too much of the story to allow the audience to appreciate his ideas and parenting skills or to understand the reasons why the sons lose faith in him and Jenna Thiam, who appears to become a sort of surrogate mother. Moreover, even though Kassovitz is entirely empathetic as the ponytailed dropout, Sallette makes such an impression as the disillusioned mother that she is much missed until her belated return.

Cinematographer Yves Cape makes the countryside look both enticing and forbidding, while his restless handheld imagery reinforces the sense that Kassovitz and the boys are forever on their guard in the company of strangers or when being actively pursued by the police or search parties. Even though Sallette goes to the papers and demonises Kassovitz, Kahn strenuously seeks to remain neutral in the best Renoirian tradition of everyone having their reasons. But this never quite hangs together, as the tug-of-war twosome remain ciphers whose relationship with Kassovitz is so sketchily developed that it's hard to see why they would want to remain as hostages to a fortune he has imposed upon them.

Another father-son relationship domimates Stéphane Demoustier's debut feature, 40-Love, which draws on his own experiences as a junior tennis player. Set in the Lille neighbourhood where Demoustier was raised with his actress sister Anaïs, this is has the feel of a melodrama whose more blatant convolutions are tempered by a liberal dose of Dardenne realism. Olivier Gourmet reinforces this impression as the manager of a chain store who redundancy sends him into a downward spiral that prompts wife Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi to leave him for another man when his plans to open a ladies' shoe shop fail to materialise. However, during a drunken session that culminates in him graffiti-tagging the windows of his old shop, Gourmet realises he would be better investing his time and energy in 11 year-old son, Charles Mérienne, who is a promising tennis player.

Having entrusted Mérienne to coach Jean-Yves Berteloot, Gourmet proves hugely unreliable when it comes to getting his son to practices and matches in time. However, when a routine check-up reveals the boy to be suffering from a rare condition, the story tips into soap opera, especially when Mérienne resorts to low tactics to beat a superior opponent and ends up being caught red-handed.

There's something Truffautian about the closing close-up of the tweenager's impassive face. Yet, despite solid performances from Gourmet and the debuting Mérienne (who Demoustier discovered while making a tennis documentary), this never quite convinces. Demoustier and co-scenarist Gaëlle Macé deftly shift the focus from Gourmet's self-pity to Mérienne's sporting struggle, while also commenting on the pressures that the recession load on to family life. But their often distractingly elliptical approach seems ill-suited to a plot that is so reliant on dramatic and psychological contrivance.

Another son proves key to the destiny of his parents in Québecois director François Delisle's sixth feature, Chorus, as Sébastien Ricard and Fanny Mallette come together after a decade apart following the discovery of their missing child's body. Their ordeal began when their eight year-old vanished without a trace. But they have to endure the agony of hearing paedophile Luc Senay's confession and the grief that follows the exhumation of his corpse. Unable to confide in mother Geneviève Bujold, Mallette finds herself being drawn in mutual misery towards Ricard, who fails to find suitable solace in father Pierre Curzi.

Filmed in a stark monochrome that reflects the grimness of the situation and the unflinching horror of Senay's police tape, this makes for difficult viewing. Acting as his own cinematographer and editor, Delisle maintains a minimalism that coerces the audience into sharing the emotional depths into which Mallette and Ricard are plunged when he returns from Mexico to Montreal to face a reality they had never wanted to confront. Slipping between excruciating silences and harrowing outbursts, Mallette conveys genuine anguish as the periodically suicidal chorister who tries to lose herself in medieval polyphony, while Ricard tries to remain stoic in the face of a tragedy he has spent 10 years trying to run away from.

Delisle refuses to succumb to an upbeat ending, but Alexandre Coffre can be excused for providing a happy ever after to Santa Claus. However, this is a rather lightweight rite of passage that sees young Victor Cabal latch on to cat burglar Tahar Rahim in the mistaken belief that he is Father Christmas and can give him a ride on his magic sleigh that will allow the boy to visit the star where he thinks his deceased father now lives. Sliding down a rope to keep the red-suited Rahim in his sight, Cabal proves a quick learner on being taught a few tricks of the trade. So, with a menacing gang making life difficult for him, Rahim is grateful to have an accomplice who not only has a gift for breaking an entering, but who can also get through narrow gaps and operate in small spaces. This all feels like a seasonal teleplay rather than a theatrical feature, with Annelise Hesme fretting hammily as Cabal's mother and Pierre Cottereau's digitally gussied camerawork prettifying the Parisian rooftops on Christmas Eve. Yet, Rahim tries to keep the tackiness at bay by playing a pantomime villain whose heart is eventually softened because he is also an orphan. Master Cabal is a tad too twee as the moppet on a mission, but this meld of A Christmas Carol and The Little Prince is easy enough to enjoy as a cornball yuletide fable.

Cyprien Vial profiles another youngster being led astray in his debut feature, Young Tiger. Offering a rare insight into Paris's little-seen Sikh community, this gritty social realist drama is derived from actual experiences and has a recognisable ring of authenticity. Photographed by Pierre Cottereau to locate the characters within their dingy quarters and the wider Seine-Saint-Denis banlieue, this raises the thorny issues of smuggling, integration and exploitation without senationalising or moralising. Consequently, this makes its political points from an empathetically human perspective.

Sent from India to make money for his struggling parents, Punjabi 15 year-old Harmandeep Palminder is too young for smuggler Vikram Sharma to risk on a construction site. So, he turns him over to the authorities who have a duty to find him a lodgings and provide him with an education. After two years with a foster family, Palminder has developed ambitions that he hopes to fulfil alongside African girlfriend Elisabeth Lando. However, as he is under pressure from the folks back home to start sending them cash, he has no option but to ask Sharma to find him paid work.

Sharma agrees to let him help with arranging schedules and soon proves such an effective liaison between clients and labourers that Palminder becomes indispensable. But Sharma also requires him to oversee the care of a new consignment of migrants and Palminder has to lie to Lando and betray his own principles in order to keep them under control. However, as the task becomes tougher, he finds there are few people he can rely on for help.

Exposing the appalling conditions in which many illegals are hidden away from prying eyes, this is a fascinating study of the difference between acclimastising and integrating. The contrasts between the moods at the holding centre, the foster home, the school and the temple are ably judged and reveals the tensions between the Sikh, Arab and African populations. Vial settles for a conventional conclusion, but he coaxes fine performances out of an inexperienced cast and cogently explains the sense of isolation, injustice and disrespect that can drive youths to seek drastic remedies.

Finally, Jean-Paul Civeyrac puts both race and class in the spotlight in My Friend Victoria, an adaptation of the Doris Lessing story, `Victoria and the Staveneys', that transfers the action from London to Paris to examine the concepts of belonging and acceptance in a way that intrigues without ever quite engaging. Divided into four chapters and photographed with a warm languor that is reinforced by the melancholic Aaron Copland music on the often jazzy soundtrack.

When her aunt falls ill, eight year-old orphan Keylia Achie Beguie spends the night in a comfortable home belonging to a white family. Beguie is collected from school by teenager Alexis Loret, who makes light of the fact he had not been expecting to meet a black girl and she takes an immediate shine to him and feels very important to be sleeping in such a fine house. However, when her aunt dies, Beguie is taken in by neighbour Elise Akaba and raised alongside her own daughter, Keemyah Omolongo, who is happy to have a sister.

As the years pass, the girls grow into Guslagie Malanda and Nadia Moussa, with the former taking a job in a record shop while the latter completes her education and dreams of becoming a writer. One day, Loret's younger brother. Pierre Andrau, comes into the store and remembers Malanda from her overnight stay as a child. They become inseparable for the summer, but Malanda doesn't tell Andrau she is pregnant when he leaves to study in the United States. Consequently, she raises daughter Maylina Diagne with the help of Akaba and Moussa, who prove equally accepting when she also has a son with musician Tony Harrisson.

However, Malanda's circumstances change when Andrau discovers he has a child and parents Catherine Mouchet and Pascal Greggory (who are both liberal-minded actors) do everything they can to make their granddaughter feel part of the family. They even offer to pay her boarding school fees. But brother Khadim Ka becomes jealous when Greggory gives Diagne a phone to call him whenever she wants and Malanda has to reassure him that she loves him every bit as much as his sister. As the film ends, Moussa is on the cusp of publishing the book she has written about her friend. But she knows she will never read it and will continue to make her way through life like `a puppet sliding on the surface of the world'.

Nicely played by the debuting Malanda and an experienced supporting cast, this retains the feel of the Lessing original and its warning about allowing life to pass by while awaiting better options. But the narrative drifts along without pausing long enough to explore milieux or personalities in sufficient depth. The men Malanda sleeps with certainly make little impression and Moussa is more of a presence as the off-screen narrator than she is a fully rounded character. Nevertheless, Mouchet and Greggory contribute amusing cameos that introduce a hint of Chabrolian satire and Civeyrac avoids making lazy points while also recognising the limited insights that a white bourgeois male film-maker can have into the mind of an African woman who hardly seems to know herself.