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As dentist Sabine Azéma leaves a Paris boutique after purchasing a pair of expensive shoes, her handbag is snatched by a thief and her discarded purse is discovered in an underground car park by bypasser André Dussollier. Intrigued by the fact that Azéma has a pilot's licence, he decides to contact her about her lost property and daydreams about the ways in which she might express her gratitude. But Azéma restricts herself to curt thanks over the telephone and the disillusioned Dussollier decides to hand the purse to the police.

With Resnais hinting that Dussollier is hiding a guilty secret from his past, the interview with detective Mathieu Amalric goes anything but smoothly. Indeed, he pays him a visit soon afterwards with partner Michel Vuillermoz to caution him after Azéma complains about being stalked. With wife Anne Consigny and children Sara Forestier and Vladimir Consigny unaware of Dussollier's increasingly erratic behaviour, he takes to prowling around Azéma's neighbourhood in the hope of bumping into her (much to the amusement of her colleague, Emmanuelle Devos). Eventually, they agree to meet. But Dussollier's hopes of taking a flight in Azéma's reconditioned combat plane are cruelly thwarted.

Narrated by the unseen Edouard Baer, this compelling picture manages to be both delightful and disconcerting. Born out of both childhood nostalgia and late-life curiosity, Dussollier's fixation feels both melancholic and morbid. Yet, even though it threatens to turn nasty after he vandalises Azéma's car, it remains rooted in courteous curiosity rather than immorality or malice. Ultimately, however, the storyline risks erring too much towards the kind of Hollywood melodrama to which Resnais alludes by having Azéma spy on Dussollier as he leaves a screening of Mark Robson's The Bridges of Toko-Ri (1954) and the denouement that follow will frustrate some as much as it fascinates.

As they seemingly always do, Dussollier and Azéma excel under Resnais's direction. But his choreography of Eric Gautier's roving camera is equally impressive, as is Jacques Saulnier's production design (which drolly contrasts the ditzy spinster's gaudy flat with the family man's stolidly comfortable home) and Mark Snow's score, which teasingly flits between genres with the same finesse with which Resnais references a range of Franco-American screen classics. Very much the work of a master and one who has mellowed without losing his ability to challenge the viewer, this has an elegance and a simplicity that match the deceptive depth suggested in the opening shot of a tuft of grass growing through a crack in the pavement.

Jane Birkin is less successful in her attempt to do something similarly fresh with the family saga in Boxes. The main problems are the arch actorliness of the enterprise and dialogue that frequently feels as though it's parodying a Woody Allen pastiche of an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama. Yet, for all its Chekhovian clichés, there is a pleasing intricacy about Birkin's encounters with characters who are drawn with evident affection as she sorts through belongings that inspire memories of good times and bad with her parents and the fathers of her three daughters.

Pottering around the family home in Brittany, Birkin's inquisitive fiftysomething seems anything but fazed by the visitation of recently departed father Michel Piccoli or by the fact that he is in surprisingly good spirits. Indeed, she chatters happily to him about their relationship and how people manage to cope with the passage of time and even death itself. As she flits between boxes, she further encounters her three daughters and their respective fathers and thinks back to how she abandoned John Hurt and prevented him from forming much of a bond with Natacha Régnier, how Lou Doillon was left fatherless by Maurice Bénichou's early demise and how the womanising Tchéky Karyo decided to desert Adèle Exarchopoulos when she was still a small girl.

No one seems to blame anybody for the fact that things rarely work out as one might have hoped, although Geraldine Chaplin is slightly more prepared to speak her mind as Birkin's waspish mother. Yet, for all the earnest chat, we scarcely get closer to any of the principals, let along such peripheral characters as widower Jacques Baratier, nappy-wearing spinster Diana Payne-Meyers and eccentric pensioner Annie Girardot, who is convinced there are Belgians hiding in a cupboard.

Making her feature debut as a director, Birkin occasionally struggles to achieve the desired stream of consciousness flow, especially as some of the vignettes simply refuse to segue seamlessly. She also makes disappointingly conservative use of camera movement and cutting. But she's well served by a stellar cast, with Piccoli, Hurt, Régnier and the scene-stealing Chaplin turning in particularly adept performances. Thus, while this may be a little precious in places, it suggests that Birkin has learned enough from the likes of Agnès Varda, Betrand Tavernier and Jacques Rivette to produce more exciting work in the future, if she so chooses.

Twelve years after its original release, Sous le Sable remains the most poignant cinematic study of grief. Director François Ozon revisited the theme with mixed results in Time to Leave (2005). But he once again demonstrates his innate understanding of bereavement and the struggle involved in summoning the resolve to carry on in Le Refuge.

Parisian Isabelle Carré discovers she's pregnant at the same time she learns that she survived the adulterated batch of heroin that killed boyfriend Melvil Poupaud. Disowned by his haughty parents (Claire Vernet and Jean-Pierre Andréani), Carré heads for a villa on the Basque coast, loaned to her by a former lover. However, she is tracked down by Poupaud's younger brother, Louis-Ronan Choisy, and, as he had attempted to be kind to her at the funeral, she allows him to stay.

Initially, Carré (who is taking syrup methadone for her addiction) is frosty towards her taciturn guest. But encounters with a woman (Marie Rivière) on the beach and a café lothario (Nicolas Moreau) convince her that she needs his company, both to come to terms with losing Poupaud and the imminent arrival of her child. Indeed, she becomes so possessive of Choisy that she fires errand boy Pierre Louis-Calixte for starting a romance with him. However, she realises the depth of their passion after she sees them kissing at a disco in the nearby town and feels even more drawn towards Choisy when he reveals that he was adopted and is, thus, as much of an outsider in his family as she is.

A few nights later, Carré helps the intoxicated Choisy undress and they end up sleeping together. However, he heads for Spain the next morning and they don't meet again until Choisy visits Carré in hospital and she asks him to keep an eye on her daughter while she slips outside for a cigarette.

Evocatively contrasting Mathias Raaflaub's luminous seascapes with the sombre interiors, Ozon sensitively conveys Carré's sense of confusion as she comes to terms with so many life-changing incidents. Indeed, by refusing to make a drama out of their situation, Ozon succeeds in letting the characters find their own way of dealing with the unexpected emotions that arise from their enforced proximity. But while Carré (who was pregnant for much of the shoot) ably captures the strain of re-learning to trust her feelings, the debuting Choisy (who is a singer rather than an actor) relies on a placid surface charm that scarcely suggests much psychological depth.

Nevertheless, the pair achieve an affecting chemistry that makes Carré's impulsive denouement decision seem entirely credible rather than a melodramatic contrivance. Thus, this remains as engagingly low key as Choisy's discreet piano score.

Ozon's Sous le sable reunited Charlotte Rampling and Bruno Crémer for the first time since they co-starred in Flesh of the Orchid (1975), a striking adaptation by the debuting Patrice Chéreau and veteran screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière of an infamously brutal psychological thriller by the British writer, James Hadley Chase. Something of a surprise release, this is exactly the kind of rediscovery that UK DVD labels should be unearthing. However, it might have been nice if Bluebell had twinned the picture with St. John Legh Clowes's controversial 1948 take on its prequel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish.

Narrated by Simone Signoret, the action centres on the schizophrenic Rampling, who has escaped from a mental institution and needs to remain at liberty for 14 days if she is to inherit the fortune left by her shockingly abused mother. Emerging from an horrific traffic accident, Rampling throws in her lot with Crémer's reclusive horse trainer. But, just as she is being pursued by wicked aunt Edwige Feuillère, Crémer is on the run from hitmen Hans Christian Blech and François Simon, who proved to be every bit as corrupt as they are ruthless.

With driving rain often making Pierre Lhomme's noirish imagery seem even more sinister, this starts out as an excruciating study of loneliness and self-loathing. Chéreau presents several graphic scenes of debasement and mutilation, which are played by Rampling with a terrifying rawness. But the mood seems to tilt towards the darkly comic as the focus shifts away from Rampling and Crémer's doomed liaison and on to the machinations of various avaricious aristocrats and grasping gangsters. Feuillère is almost pantomimically grotesque, while Alida Valli makes the most of a telling cameo. But Chéreau clearly appears less interested in the storyline than the agony of isolation and insecurity.

Radu Mihaileanu explores notions of false identity with a significantly lighter touch in Le Concert. However, the Romanian-born director settles for too many clichés and caricatures in following the fortunes of a once famous conductor's audacious bid to recapture past glories.

During the Brezhnev era, Alexei Guskov was the conductor of the Bolshoi orchestra. However, his attempts to shelter some Jewish musicians led to his dismissal and disgrace and he now works as a caretaker at the prestigious Moscow theatre. But, when he intercepts a communication from the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris asking the Bolshoi to fill an unexpected gap in its schedule, Guskov decides to fulfil the engagement himself, with the help of the musician friends whose own careers were ruined by Soviet caprice.

Using cellist buddy Dmitri Nazarov as a go-between and talking dodgy oligarch Vlad Ivanov into bankrolling the enterprise, Guskov persuades former Bolshoi manager and covert KGB operative Valeri Barinov to conduct negotiations with Châtelet director François Berléand. However, he is adamant that the only piece he will play is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 35 and he further insists that his soloist is the inexperienced Mélanie Laurent, who is managed by Miou-Miou. .

What ensues is like a crass cross between The Dirty Dozen and The Blues Brothers, as Guskov attempts to reunite the old gang. But, in the three decades since they last played together, the musicians have found work as ambulance drivers, hot dog sellers, mechanics, mobsters and Gypsy fiddlers. Moreover, they are too careful with a kopek to waste money on taxis to the airport, even though the flight to France represents their last chance of doing something useful with their lives.

Such stereotyping would be less garish if it was relieved by some affectionate humour or perceptive satire. But the wit is as broad as Barinov's ludicrous French accent and things scarcely improve after the ensemble arrives in Paris, as the tone shifts awkwardly from camp slapstick to shameless sentimentality. The performances are game, but the storyline is riddled with implausibilities, as Mihaileanu lurches from coarsely politically incorrect comedy to gauche moments of cultural preciousness. Thankfully, Andrei Khrzhanovsky more than atones with A Room and a Half.

Memory has always soothed the agony of the exile. But film-makers have invariably found it difficult to explore such emotions without descending into pathos. However, by refusing to be shamed by nostalgia, the acclaimed Russian animator steers a path between affection and affectation in this charming live-action feature, in which he imagines the return to his beloved Russia of prodigal poet Joseph Brodsky, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987. Cast out of the Soviet Union 15 years earlier, he failed to make his cherished pilgrimage before his death at the age of 55 in 1996. But it's hard to imagine a more poignant or captivating homecoming than the one Khrzhanovsky accords him here.

The recollections flow as Brodsky (Grigori Dityakovsky) sets sail for St Petersburg on a luxury liner and it's his reunion with his naval photographer father (Sergei Yursky), after his wartime service in China, that sets the tone of wonderment that dominates the childhood episodes. Even though he has been forced to endure a miserable existence in prison camps across the country with his Red Army translator mother (Alisa Freindlich), young Evgeni Ogandzhanyan finds everything fascinating and the treasures that Yursky unpacks from his suitcase fire the boy's imagination. Thus, Khrzhanovsky is able to use animated reveries to convey his flights of fancy with the family cat penning sonnets and orchestra instruments floating over the Leningrad rooftops, as yet another Kremlin clampdown means that soldiers are dispatched quite literally to throw culture out of the window.

Ogandzhanyan isn't solely preoccupied with lofty thoughts, however. On the day that Stalin dies, his gaze falls upon the ample posterior of his music teacher, as she kneels to collect the broken pieces of the dictator's toppled statue. Then, while Yursky is playing cards with the caretaker at the museum, Ogandzhanyan finds a book of Old Masters and purloins it to view the images of naked female flesh under the bedsheets. Indeed, sex becomes such a priority with the adolescent Artem Smola that he piles books against the curtain that separates his bedroom from the main living area in the family's cramped apartment so he can have some privacy with the succession of pretty classmates he singularly fails to seduce in an amusing montage sequence.

The picture loses momentum as Smola seeks to find his niche among the city's bohemian clique and winds up being accused of parasitism by the Khruschev regime. But Khrzhanovsky judges the denouement to perfection, first as Dityakovsky phones home from a New York bar to ask Freindlich if she remembers the words to a sentimental song and neighbours in her hallway join in the rendition along with the ex-pat revellers on the other side of the world, and then as he joins his now deceased parents for a last supper in the cosily shabby room in which they survived the poverty, repression and anti-Semitism of his youth. Rarely has a child's gratitude been so warmly and sincerely captured and it's impossible not to be touched by Dityakovsky's realisation of the sacrifices his folks made for his intellectual freedom and his dismay at the transformation of his drastically capitalised hometown.

Impeccably designed by Marina Azizjan and photographed by Vladimir Brylyakov with a lyricism that matches the extracts from Brodsky's writings that punctuate the action, this is a highly personal and deeply moving celebration of loving domesticity. The performances are exceptional, while Khrzhanovsky's inspired use of animation and archive footage imparts a touch of surrealism to the teasing allusions to Soviet political and cultural history. Purists may complain that the film takes too many liberties with Brodsky's life. But one suspects he would have greatly appreciated this chimerical pilgrimage and the memories it evoked.