Not As Bad As She's Painted

Opening in postwar Havana, the action quickly brings Chico and Rita together, as the struggling pianist spots the lissom chanteuse in a tiny dance club and asks if he can accompany her in an upcoming radio talent contest. Rita, however, plays it cool and leaves on the arm of an American impresario named Ron. But they meet again, hours later, at the swanky Tropicana (after Chico's opportunist manager Ramon had smuggled them in) and she's suitably impressed when he sits in with Woody Herman's band and makes an impeccable sight reading of Stravinsky's `Ebony Concerto'. A breakneck car chase through the city and a night of torrid passion ensues, only for Rita to end up slapping Chico's face when they're interrupted next morning by his sassy mistress, Juana.

Ramon coaxes Rita into participating in the radio show and their triumph leads to brief celebrity. However, Chico becomes jealous of Ron's attempts to lure Rita to New York and she decides to leave after watching him take drunken consolation in the ever-willing Juana. Once again, Ramon rises to the occasion and lands Chico some gigs in the Big Apple. But Ron is desperate to keep the couple apart and, when Rita lands a lucrative Hollywood contract, he bribes Ramon into sending Chico on a European tour and years pass before they are reunited. Even then, however, Ron is prepared to do whatever it takes to prevent Chico from keeping their New Year wedding night rendezvous in Las Vegas.

Employing the enhanced rotoscoping technique used by Richard Linklater in Waking Life (2001), animation director Marcelo Fernandes De Moura captures the rhythms of the Cuban jazz scene with sensual grace. The background rendition of the clubs and landmarks of Havana, New York, Paris, Hollywood and Vegas is also wonderfully atmospheric. But the character animation is frustratingly unflattering, with Rita resembling a Modigliani caricature, while Ron glowers with all the subtlety of a comic-book villain. Moreover, the graphic shortcomings serve to emphasise the narrative contrivances that are almost wholly dictated by impulse and irrationality. If Chico and Rita had taken the time to have one frank conversation some time around 1950, they could have spared themselves a lot of heartache.

But, as in most musicals, the storyline is simply a convenient hook on which to hang the numbers and the music here is sublime. With jazz legend Bebo Valdes playing Chico's piano part and Idania Valdes providing Rita's sultry singing voice, tracks like Consuelo Velásquez's `Besame Mucho' and Cole Porter's `Love for Sale' evoke both period memories and the heyday of the Buena Vista Social Club. The cameos by Charlie Parker, Woody Herman, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo (who meets a violent end after a run-in with some Gotham drug dealers) are also persuasive, as is Chico's late-life revival with Estrella Morente. However, Rita's career-wrecking rant against racism within the American entertainment industry is less convincing (despite its historical accuracy) and the final reconciliation is pure cornball. But when was a musical - whether animated or not - ever anything else?

A more unconventional arrangement transforms freelance business journalist Monica del Carmen's hermitic existence in Michael Rowe's Camera d'or-winning debut, Leap Year. An Australian based in Mexico, Rowe makes evocative use of light and confined space in this often disturbing depiction of urban alienation that sees the masochistic Del Carmen enter into a dangerous liaison with the sadistic, but otherwise genial Gustavo Sánchez Parra, who shows her considerably more affection than either the whining mother with whom she has interminable telephone conversations about her failure to make something of herself (which prompt her to invent a network of adoring friends) or the insecure brother (Marco Zapata), who travels from the provinces to seek her solace whenever his love life hits the skids.

When not working unenthusiastically on assignments for an editor she never sees, the 25 year-old Del Carmen hides behind her net curtains to spy on her neighbours. She envies elderly couple Ernesto González and Bertha Mendiola their cosy closeness and frequently masturbates while watching Ireri Solís with her boyfriend. But Del Carmen is not short of male company, as she regularly dolls herself up to lure a lover back to her apartment for kinky sex sessions that invariably end in disappointment and the sound of a closing door.

But Sánchez Parra seems different. He may turn up when it suits him and disappear for days on end. But he understands her needs and, even after he has used and abused her, he is content to cuddle up on the sofa with her and watch television. Yet even his devotion is tested by an extreme request that Del Carmen insists has to be granted on 29 February in order to exorcise the ghosts that have been tormenting her since she was 12 years old.

Echoing the works of both Tsai Ming-liang and Bruno Dumont and with the minimalist aesthetic provided by Juan Manuel Sepulveda's muted photography and Alisarine Ducolomb's cramped sets intensifying the dramatic tension, this is both shockingly intimate and coolly detached. Some of the sequences with Sánchez Parra teeter on the gratuitous and make for distinctly disconcerting viewing. But Del Carmen's courageous performance ensures that it is a surprisingly tender treatise on trauma, isolation, addiction and self-esteem.

Heitor Dhalia's attitude to adultery, adolescent angst and the unfathomable power of hormones is equally sensitive in Adrift. But the story of a 14 year-old girl's confused attempts to hold her parents' marriage together in 1980s Brazil is so formulaic that it's difficult to rouse oneself from admiring the coastal scenery to care much about the characters. Moreover, the camera spends so long lingering over lithe teenage bodies in the skimpiest of swimsuits that one is unwelcomely reminded of such dubious pictures as Gérard Lauzier's Mon Père, ce héros (1991) and Larry Clark's Kids (1995).

Laura Neiva is spending the summer in the idyllic backwater of Buzios with parents Vincent Cassel and Débora Bloch and younger siblings Izadora Armelin and Max Huzar. Cassel is a womanising novelist struggling with both a book based on his alcoholic wife's affair with a younger man and her insistence that he flogs the rights to a past bestseller to a disreputable TV producer because they need the cash. While Cassel takes comfort in the arms of American tourist Camilla Belle, Neiva begins her own journey of sexual discovery by kissing beach buddy Daniel Passi, flirting with bartender Cauã Reymond and resisting the advances of rich slacker Gregório Duvivier.

Neiva also watches Cassel and Belle together at her secluded house and rifles through her father's draw to find photos of his mistress and a revolver. But she only comes to understand the real reason for Bloch's decision to leave after a painful heart to heart that convinces Neiva that the time has come to lose her virginity.

Ricardo Della Rosa's photography couldn't be more luminous (particularly in the many magic hour shots), while Antonio Pinto's Nymanesque score washes over proceedings like a gentle tide. Even the performances are laudable, with Cassel coping admirably with the Portuguese dialogue in essaying a charming rogue devoted to a bogus domestic myth, while Bloch mournfully suppresses guilt and betrayal and Neiva shifts artlessly between innocence, curiosity and caprice. But everything plays out in such a predictably tasteful manner that one is left wishing for a touch of the dangerous emotion that prompted the crime of passion that briefly intrudes upon the family's discreet disintegration.

A similar air of refinement pervades Hammad Khan's Slackistan, a profile of indolent twentysomethings that presents a very different view of Islamabad from the one in the news bulletins. Borrowing heavily from Richard Linklater's Slackers (2002), this is a determined departure from the masala-style Lollywood tradition and, if the performances are inconsistent, the dialogue occasionally cumbersome and the pacing often overly languid, this debut feature still provides a fascinating insight into the attitudes and aspirations of Pakistan's affluent, American-educated over-class.

It's been a year since the restoration of democracy and Shahbaz Hamid Shigri and his pals are faced with deciding what to do with their lives after graduating from college. Shigri wants to become a film-maker. But he can't find a suitable subject and his hopes of studying Robert De Niro movies are thwarted by the fact there isn't a single cinema open in the capital and that his local DVD pirate can only offer him Meet the Fockers instead of Mean Streets. Consequently, his expensive camera remains in its box and he cruises the city with the chirpy Osman Khalid Butt in the Mercedes belonging to best friend Ali Rehman Khan's father.

They hook up at a shisha café with gal pals Aisha Linnea Akthar and Shahana Khan Khalil. But Shigri has never quite managed to pluck up the courage to tell Akthar how he feels about her and contents himself to quizzing Khalil about her crush on the detestably superficial Rafey Alam. However, things come to a head when Akthar announces that she intends moving to Boston to be with an American-Pakistani she has been dating long distance and Khan reveals that he has been borrowing money from thug Khalid Saeed and now only has a few hours to pay it back or face the direst consquences.

Making slick use of its locations, this is an invaluable window on to a world that will be utterly unfamiliar to non-Islooites. The problems faced by Shigri's clique are hardly original, but their setting is and it's intriguing to view these privileged, westernised youths succumb so entirely to petty self-preoccupation that they are scarcely aware of the poverty that exists in the next neighbourhood, let alone the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism or the goals of the Taliban.

Certain scenes smack of contrivance, including Shigri accusing one of the servants of stealing his camera and the final showdown with Saeed and his posse. The use of trendy tunes on the soundtrack also occasionally feels self-conscious. But the blend of everyday melodrama and cynical wit is suitably low key and if the British-based Hammad Khan (who also wrote, produced and photographed this low-budget picture) sometimes overdoes the captions, wipes and jump cuts, he nevertheless deserves great credit for tackling such a compelling topic in so disarming a manner.

Sadly, Congo-born Jean Van de Velde is much less successful in broaching the more serious issue of child soldiering in The Silent Army. Despite the best of intentions, this is an unfortunate muddle of narrative improbabilities, shallow rhetoric and gung-ho heroics that pales beside Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire's Johnny Mad Dog (2008) in exposing the nightmare that kidnapped children are forced to endure in war-torn states across central Africa. Cinema can do much to alert audiences to scandals like this and Van de Velde is right to castigate the morally bankrupt outsiders who seek to profit from such conflicts to procure cheap commodities. But a message of this significance has to be stated with more trenchancy and conviction than this showcase for a debuting Dutch pop star is able to muster.

Marco Borsato runs a restaurant in the capital city of an unnamed African state. When his wife Ricky Koole is killed in a car crash, he is left to raise nine year-old son Siebe Schoneveld alone. So, when the boy pleads with him to find best friend Andrew Kintu after he is abducted by warlord Abby Mukiibi Nkaaga, Borsato agrees to drive into the heartland, as Nkaaga used to be one of his best customers when he was Minister of Defence and he might be willing to listen to reason.

Ignoring the advice of charity worker Thekla Reuten and French photojournalist Peter Van den Begin, Borsato treks into the jungle and is lucky to avoid a landmine in the road. However, he makes contact with Nkaaga's troops, who escort him to the camp, just as arms smuggler Adrian Galley arrives with a new consignment that he hopes to trade for gold mined by Nkaaga's enslaved workforce.

Much of Borsato's mission is, frankly, ludicrous. He has no military training and seems willing to endanger the lives of others simply to locate his son's pal. Moreover, he has only the flimsiest understanding of Nkaaga's cause and his plea to release all the juvenile soldiers compounds the already inadequate action movie denouement by introducing a patronising note of political naiveté. Indeed, it's only a relief that this revised edit removed the climactic plane journey home that had closed the original version on an even more triumphalist, white-knuckle note.

What makes this all the more disappointing is the fact that the sequences of the kids being snatched and inducted into Nkaaga's force are deeply disturbing. The atrocities they are compelled to commit - from Kintu butchering his own father at gunpoint to the slaughter of an entire church congregation - are also hideously authentic. It's just a shame that Borsato's scenes were subject to the same restraint and cogency.

An uncomfortable hint of exploitation also enervates Jason Massot's documentary Road to Las Vegas, which follows four years in the lives of African-American couple Maurice and Vanessa Melton, who leave their home in Anchorage, Alaska after God appears to Vanessa in a dream and urges her to make a fresh start. Setting out with only $290 in their pockets and accompanied by five of their 11 children, the pair criss-cross the States for many months before finally deciding to put down roots in the Nevadan gambling capital.

As with any actuality of this kind, the viewer is always somewhat wary about the methods of production used and the extent to which incidents were fortuitously captured by the camera or were outlined and then improvised for its benefit. Maurice and Vanessa are certainly at ease once Massot begins rolling, as is her mother Bernice, who contemplates her daughter's reckless spirit while fishing on the banks of a picturesque Alaskan lake. Moreover, everyone seems fine with washing their dirty linen in public, whether it's Maurice discussing his drug problems and his period spells in the slammer or Vanessa defending the infidelities she feels entitled to after the traumas to which her husband has subjected her during their 16-year marriage.

Regardless of Massot's tactics, the Meltons certainly have it tough on landing in Vegas and spend several days sleeping in a rental car at the airport and risking their meagre resources at the nearest casino in order to eat. But Vanessa eventually lands a construction job and Marcel, Maurice Jr, Isis, Malcolm and Zeke move into a nice home, along with the family dog. However, it's not long before Vanessa begins dating co-worker Darren and the emasculated Maurice resumes his crack habit. Indeed, shortly after Massot catches up with them again, Maurice has attacked Vanessa with a knife and started living rough on the streets and not even the death of his brother in prison can pull him out of the downward spiral.

The situation has deteriorated further by the middle of the Meltons' third year in their brave new world, as the kids have gone back north to live with their sister Shelana, Maurice has been jailed for eight months for stealing from an undercover cop and Vanessa has moved in with her new man, Andy. Yet, when her cousin dies, Maurice manages to pull himself together and accompany her to the funeral in Portland, Oregon and they are an item again by the time the recession costs Vanessa her job and home and Maurice's brother Lloyd falls fatally ill. However, there is no guarantee of a happy ending, as Maurice wants to stay in the North Carolina countryside where he was raised, while Vanessa still feels drawn by God's promise and the bright lights of Vegas.

It's impossible not to feel like an intruder or a voyeur at several points during this discomfitting odyssey. Furthermore, it's far from easy to retain much sympathy for a damaged, delusional and self-absorbed twosome, who often bring misfortune upon themselves and their long-suffering offspring. Yet they never quite alienate us entirely and few would begrudge them a last shot at happiness after all they have endured. But the nagging suspicion remains that in using the Meltons to expose the fallacies of the American Dream in times of boom and bust, Massot (who claims to have produced a 21st-century Grapes of Wrath) has traded on their poverty and misery as shamelessly as the reviled host of a daytime chat show. He clearly feels for their plight and admires their tenacity and dysfunctional devotion. But what these people need is help not the glare of a spotlight.

Finally, a pair of low-budget British pictures prove even less effective. Yet one suspects that both brilliantlove and Fathers of Girls could have been improved considerably with a couple of rewrites, as each is technically sound and turns around a reasonably intriguing premise.

Ashley Horner's brilliantlove opens provocatively in the manner of Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004) by focusing on the all-consuming lust of slacker Liam Browne and taxidermist Nancy Trotter Landry, who live in a lock-up garage and spend much of their time copulating. Browne likes to photograph Landry in the throes of passion. But, when he accidentally leaves some snaps in the pub, they are found by pornographer Michael Hodgson, who invites the couple to stay with wife Arabella Arnott at his luxury home in the country, while he strikes a deal with gallery owner Cliff Burnett to exhibit Browne's pictures.

The only trouble is, Browne forgets to tell Landry that he is intending to put her body on public display and she seeks sanctuary with aggressively protective dad Stephen Bent after slapping Browne's face in front of the assembled pseuds at the show's opening.

Horner and cinematographer Simon Tindall film the sex sequences with a raw urgency that is erotically effective in conveying the infatuation that is so cheapened by Hodgson's callous commodification. But Sean Conway's dialogue too often sounds like something from a tenth-rate porn flick - most notably during the execrable gallery scenes. Moreover, it frequently exposes the limitations of a cast that struggles to convince, with the honourable exception of Landry, who manages to convey a spiky vulnerability whether cavorting naked for Browne's lens or agonising over his thoughtless betrayal.

Problems with the script and the supporting performances also undermine Ethem Cetintas and Karl Howman's Fathers of Girls, which saddles Ray Winstone with some of the worst lines of his career, as a Wiltshire solicitor bent on discovering who supplied the drugs that killed his beloved daughter, Lois Winstone. Yet, this also has its moments, as Winstone hits upon a twisted means of wreaking his revenge.

Initially angry with boyfriend Luke Kempner for not protecting his princess, Winstone quickly comes to realise that it was fellow fashion student Chloe Howman who led her astray by introducing her to James Hillier, the dealing doorman at the Salisbury nightclub owned by her father, Glen Murphy. Having staked out the premises and clumsily befriended Howman at the library, Winstone lures her into his confidence. But it is only when he realises how much Howman means to Murphy that he devises his sordid payback.

Cetintas and Howman make decent use of their picturesque locations, but too many scenes seem to have been inserted to pad out the story to feature length. Winstone's visits to the club are unnecessarily strung out, as is the sequence in which he cooks Howman supper after she offers to unpack the suitcase he supposedly couldn't face opening.

Even more expendable is Winstone's encounter with Roger Kitter, his daughter's palmist neighbour, who gossips camply about her increasingly erratic behaviour in the months before her death. But Winstone himself fails to create a credible character, whether he's muttering threats or tips about tea making under his breath or winning Howman's trust and affection with creepy displays of manly grief and cornball chat-up lines.