Parky at the Pictures (DVD 8/12/2011)

Having failed to solve his money woes by selling nonagenarian mother Valeria de Franciscis Bendoni's luxurious Roman home, sixtysomething Gianni Di Gregorio returns despondently to the comfortable apartment he shares with wife Elisabetta Piccolomini and student daughter Teresa Di Gregorio. However, the conjugal side of his marriage ceased long ago and Di Gregorio wonders whether lawyer friend Alfonso Santagata doesn't have a point about seeking a mistress - especially as one of the veterans who spends his days chatting outside the local bar is having a fling with the tobacconist.

Instead, he walks neighbour Aylin Prandi's giant dog while running errands for Piccolominni (who still works and thinks he has too much time on his hands) and plays relationship adviser to his daughter's slacker boyfriend, Michelangelo Ciminale, who is as blissfully unaware that he is about to get dumped and he is reluctant to get a job and stop depending upon his parents. But Di Gregorio is a mummy's boy himself and he shoots across the city when she calls to complain of ill health. However, she is happily playing cards in the garden with her cronies and only summoned her son to serve them lunch because Romanian carer Kristina Cepraga has the day off.

Appalled by her profligacy, Di Gregorio helps himself to the food and finishes the half-empty bottles of champagne that Bendoni thinks nothing of leaving around the kitchen. Thus, he is tipsy when Cepraga returns home and he feels so bad about awkwardly flirting with her (and resenting the fact that Bendoni buys her expensive gifts while he is hard up) that he stays the night in order to bring her an apologetic breakfast in bed. He is rewarded by Cepraga revealing that she dreamt of him in a grandfatherly way and he is suitably frustrated to allow himself to be talked into sharing lunch with Santagata and twins Laura and Silvia Squizzato, who put up with the boastful tall tales and make empty promises about Sardinian invitations before disappearing in a cab.

Another emergency dash to fix Bendoni's temperamental television leads to Di Gregorio giving elderly Lilia Silvi a lift and a Sunday date with her recently separated singer daughter, Gabriella Sborgi. But, having nearly injured himself trying to do some shape-up exercises and wasted his precious pension on a new suit, Di Gregorio finds Sborgi rehearsing with a handsome young pianist and he winds up gulping wine in the garden with her mother and getting more drunk in a downtown bar with Santagata, where he laments that he cannot even get a smile out of a barmaid in return for civility. Indeed, he begins to feel so crestfallen that he takes to wandering the streets comparing himself with more decrepit male geriatrics and accepting that he is all-but invisible to the beautiful women he wishes would just acknowledge his existence.

Ironically, when he does get a date with old flame Valeria Cavalli, he realises that she has probably only agreed to see him after so many years because she remembered what an excellent cook he was. She has an early start the next morning and, so, when she falls asleep on the couch after cursing yet another call from Bendoni (whom she half-jokingly blames for them not getting married) Di Gregorio creeps away resigned to his fate. However, the saggy sexagenarian has one more surprise in store, as he slips away from Bendoni's birthday supper to buy cigarettes and finds himself so under the influence of a spiked drink foisted on him at the playfully coquettish Prandi's party that he begins to hallucinate and is still drying off from climbing into a fountain when Ciminale sparks a hilarious concluding interior montage by wondering what on earth goes on inside Di Gregorio's head.

Full of wryly wistful insights into the gulfs between the genders and the generations, this is slickly scripted and deftly played. As in Mid-August Lunch, the impish Bendoni is hilariously manipulative and her sense of patrician entitlement and thoughtless selfishness make it a little easier to sympathise with her son. But it's the director's understanding of his own expressions and gestures that make Di Gregorio's melancholic predicament seem more touching than tasteless, as he appears to admire rather than letch and wonder chastely rather than covet lasciviously. He is much aided in this regard by Gogo Bianchi's discreet photography and a puckish score by Stefano Ratchev and Carratello Mattia that emphasises the fleeting, bittersweet joys of trying to grow old disgracefully.

Despite Vincent Lindon's previous liaison with Princess Caroline of Monaco, he and Sandrine Kiberlain were never a typical celebrity couple. Both descended from Polish Jews, they worked together on Jean-Pierre Ronssin's L'Irrésolu (1994) and Benoît Jacquot's Le Septième ciel (1997) before marrying in 1998. Subsequently, they co-starred in Pierre Jolivet's Filles uniques (2003) before drifting apart off screen. They have reunited, however, for Stéphane Brizé's Mademoiselle Chambon, which intriguingly exploits their history in a poignant tale of restrained passion and proletarian propriety that is perfectly suited to his rugged taciturnity and her deceptive passivity.

Audaciously filled with lingering silences, this considered adaptation of Eric Holder's novel brings a new sensitivity to a familiar scenario and even alludes to David Lean's classic study of urbane adultery, Brief Encounter, in its train station finale.

Lindon is a builder in an unnamed provincial town, who takes pride in both his craft and his family. Married to factory worker Aure Atika, he is close to son Arthur Le Houerou and ailing father Jean-Marc Thibault. But he becomes distractedly smitten following a chance meeting with Kiberlain (who is Le Houerou's teacher) and offers to do odd jobs simply to be around her. Taken by his craggy courtesy, the prim Kiberlain slowly begins to reciprocate his feelings. But neither acts upon them and it's only when Atika watches the expression on her husband's face as Kiberlain plays some Elgar for Thibault's birthday that she realises her relationship is in danger.

Using Antoine Héberlé's camera to dwell on the spaces between Lindon and Kiberlain and the confused signals they send each other, this is delicate drama that not only explores how opposites attract, but also how deep emotions can be conveyed by more than mere physicality. Kiberlain offers tantalising glimpses of the fiery passion that burns beneath the freckled fragility of her demure exterior, while Lindon gauchely attempts to appreciate classical music and not look out of place in her tastefully decorated rooms, as he struggles to contain his own feelings, while also facing the prospect of losing his father.

However, Atika's revelation of a second pregnancy tilts the climax towards melodrama, as Lindon and Kiberlain finally have to resort to actions and words instead of meaningful looks. But while the railway platform finale is ably acted and edited, it feels like an onrush of gratuitous sentiment after so much exemplary discretion.

Danish actress Paprika Steen also struggles to prevent her directorial debut from descending into melodrama. Despite being written by the experienced Kim Fupz Aakeson - whose credits include Annette K. Oleson's Minor Mishaps (2002) and In Your Hands (2004) and Pernille Fischer Christensen's A Soap (2006) and A Family (2010), as well as Susanne Bier's acclaimed Dogme95 outing Open Hearts (2002) - Aftermath keeps pushing the limits of plausibility and not even the earnest performances of an admirable cast can stop it from becoming increasingly detached from the realism so carefully established by Erik Zappon's gritty photography and Peter Grant's sombre production design.

Ever since their teenage daughter was killed in a motoring accident, social worker Sofie Gråbøl and architect Mikael Birkkjær have found it hard to cope. The slightest mention of family enjoyment can cause them to launch into a dinner party tirade or storm out of bereavement counselling sessions after accusing those mourning parents and partners of knowing nothing of the crushing agony of losing a child. However, friends and work colleagues try to excuse their often outlandish behaviour as they recognise their pain and are keen to be as supportive as possible.

However, the couple stop talking to each other, with the consequence that Birkkjær has little idea that Gråbøl is becoming increasingly besotted with the possibly abused baby of addict mother Laura Christensen and she scarcely realises that he has suspended from his job for making racist remarks to a Japanese client. As the strain becomes unbearable, Birkkjær devotes his energies to an obsessive search for the woman who had driven the car that took away his daughter. She is middle-aged estate agent Karen-Lise Mynster, whose desperation to find love prompts her to accept dates with some highly dubious lonelyheart contacts. However, her riskiest assignation turns out to be with Birkkjær, who stalks her for several days before posing as a house buyer so he can unleash the sadistic assault that Mynster almost accepts (on realising who he is), as she has long felt the need of punishment so she can deal with her guilt and shame at being drunk at the wheel.

Directing steadily, but always more focused on the actors than the camera, Steen does well to retain the audience's sympathy for a rather resistible pair. However, as nothing is shown of their personalities before the crash, it's difficult to gauge the extent to which the trauma has transformed them and, as with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, it isn't always easy to condone actions that - even though motivated by grief - seem selfish and reckless. Gråbøl and Birkkjær work hard and Mynster does a touching line in remorseful desperation. But the Christensen storyline is allowed to drift, while a subplot involving Birkkjær's boss Søren Pilmark and his wife Lena Endre feels utterly redundant.

Sadly, almost the entirety of Laurent Bouhnik's Q seems superfluous. Supposedly a hard-hitting exposé of the way in which sex has been devalued by its flagrant misuse in advertising and the wider media, this is nothing more than a piece of glossy exploitation that strings around a wafer thin plot a series of graphic encounters that are as erotic as fifth-rate internet pornography Any insistence that this is a snapshot of the impact of recession upon modern youth can be disregarded as the protestations of a controversialist seeking to invest what is essentially charmless smut with some socio-artistic credibility.

Ever since her father died, 20 year-old Déborah Révy has been running away from reality. Boyfriend Johnny Amaro tries to be sympathetic, but his reluctance to satisfy her sexual needs sends her in search of strangers and she finds two willing volunteers in Gowan Didi and Patrick Hauthier. The former is a mechanic in a Channel coast town that has been hard hit by the economic downturn. But it's the slump in his amorous fortunes that most bother Didi, as girlfriend Hélène Zimmer is too afraid of disappointing parents Jean-François Gallotte and Christine Martin to go all the way. Hauthier is also frustrated, as wife Christelle Benoît is still suffering from the after effects of an unnamed trauma and refuses to go beyond foreplay.

Amaro also has things on his mind, as he and pals Fabien Ara and Johan Libéreau are feuding with middle-aged bruiser Brice Fournier. However, Bouhnik doesn't bother offering an explanation for the lads spraying graffiti on Fournier's flat walls or the subsequent chases through the adjoining streets. But plot clearly matters not a jot to Monsieur Bouhnik, who seems to think that the odd snippet of conversation provides an adequate context for Libéreau's broken romance with Léticia Belliccini and that a few random meetings in beach huts, bars and ferry boats are sufficient to have Didi, Hauthier and Zimmer eager to gratify the manipulative Révy's every whim.

Linking these risibly superficial episodes are numerous intrusions into a changing room, which are photographed at groin height and accompanied by unattributed gossipy exchanges, as some showering girls discuss their sex lives with a frankness that Bouhnik presumably finds emancipating. Few, however, will see this as anything more than prurient voyeurism of the most adolescent kind and dismiss this entire picture as a softcore embarrassment.

Apparently, Bouhnik found his cast by advertising for amateurs and professional, aged between 20-40, who would be willing to participate in the filming of non-simulated sex scenes. Evidently, there are enough wannabes desperate enough to flaunt themselves in front of a camera in order to seize their 15 minutes in the spotlight, as just about every named character indulges in some form of groping, gulping or groaning. But the teasing glimpses presented by Bouhnik, cinematographer Dominique Colin and editor Valérie Pico are very tame compared to those in more genuinely subversive pictures like Catherine Breillat's Romance (1999), Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi's Baise-Moi (2000), Bertrand Bonello's The Pornographer (2001) or Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs (2004). Thus, self-regarding treatise on impulse, passion, purity and the physical and psychological benefits of intimacy is doomed to become a cult curio among aficionados of dismal screen sex.

Disappointing though it is to see a veteran of 13 features producing such demeaning fare, it's considerably more dispiriting for admirers of the Czechoslovak New Wave to see Juraj Jakubisko making his English-language debut with such a negligible effort as Bathory - Countess of Blood. Having trained at the famous FAMU film school in Prague and worked with Alfréd Radok on the pioneering Laterna magika light show, Jakubisko so upset the authorities with his first three features - Crucial Years (1967), The Deserters and the Nomads (1968) and Birds, Orphans and Fools (1969) - that See You in Hell, Friends (1970) was withheld for two decades and he was banned from directing for 11 years.

Returning in 1980 with Build a House, Plant a Tree, the Slovak provocateur developed a loyal following with such challenges to the Communist and democratic systems as A Thousand Year-Old Bee (1983), I'm Sitting on a Branch and I'm Fine (1989), It's Better to Be Wealthy and Healthy Than Poor and Ill (1993) and An Ambiguous Report About the End of the World (1997). But, while Bathory reportedly commanded the biggest budget for any film previously made on Czech soil, it lacks the focus and control of Jakubisko's earlier investigations into the blurred delineation between fantasy and reality and does little to increase our knowledge or understanding of the Hungarian countess whose mythical bid to counter ageing by bathing in the blood of her 650-odd victims earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific serial killer.

Born in 1560 to an important Transylvanian family, Erzsebet Bathory (Anna Friel) had married Ferenc Nadasdy (Vincent Regan) while still in her teens. Her husband, however, spent much of his time away fighting the advancing Ottoman Turks and she found consolation in the High Renaissance artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Hans Mathieson), who had been abducted by Nadasdy while campaigning in Italy. However, she soon tires of him and becomes a disciple of Darvulia (Deana Jakubiskova-Horvathova), a wise woman with predictive and possibly magical powers, who convinces Erzsebet that she can prolong her youth by bathing in water reddened by some special herbs.

Soon afterwards, however, Nadasdy is killed in battle and Erzsebet inherits his estates. At a time when women were entitled to little protection under the law (particularly when they were Protestant in a still largely Catholic country), her right to the valuable lands was challenged by County Juraj Thurzo (Karel Roden), who attempts to besmirch Erzsebet's reputation by replacing Darvulia's potion with a powerful hallucinogenic drug that sufficiently deranges her to convince her she is responsible for the death of a maid. But Thurzo isn't content with accusing her of a single crime and starts spreading the bathing rumour that has sustained the previous screen versions of a life that ended with the countess being walled into her castle and left to perish.

Jakubisko clearly doesn't think much of the `historical' image of Bathory and has narrator Brother Petr (Bolek Polivka) emphasise the notion that legends become most deeply entrenched in the absence of hard facts. However, this sprawling biopic often strains at both authenticity and credibility, despite some imposing battle sequences and a palpable sense of time and place that is reinforced by the excellence of FA Brabec and Jan Duris's cinematography, Jaroslava Pecharova's costumes and Karel Vacek and Jan Zazvorka's often amusingly anachronistic production design, which allows Jakubisko to include such eccentric items as gigantic chess pieces and the clockwork roller skates invented by the positively Da Vincian Brother Petr.

The biggest problem is the pomposity of the script and the jumble of accents delivering the often florid dialogue. However, it doesn't help that the laudably earnest Friel (who replaced Famke Janssen shortly before shooting began) is often distant from the centre of attention or that scenarios like her affair with the famously homosexual Caravaggio seem more novelettish than seriously revisionist. Thus, while this seems to have the noblest of intentions (even if Jakubisko succumbs to including the blood baths as an excuse to disrobe Friel), it would always be the weakest link in a triple bill comprising Peter Sasdy's Countess Dracula (1971), with the sublime Ingrid Pitt, and The Countess (2009), a more openly feminist tract that was directed by its star, Julie Delpy (and which should also be available on disc in this country).

Finnish director Jalmari Helander attempts to debunk another myth in Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Following the success of his online shorts Rare Exports, Inc. and The Official Rare Exports Inc Safety Instructions, Helander made an accomplished feature debut with this rattling Yuletide yarn. Ditching the Coca-Cola vision of Santa Claus to return to the more sinister Scandinavian image of yore, this will delight younger audiences reared on Roald Dahl and JK Rowling and should also keep their parents amused, too.

Tweenager Onni Tommila lives with his reindeer hunting father Jorma Tommila near Lapland's Arctic border with Russia. Times are tough and a bleak Christmas seems guaranteed when a wolf is blamed for the brutal depletion of the herd. However, Onni and best buddy Ilmari Jarvenpaa know that the real reason for the slaughter lies in the nearby mountain, where they witnessed a mysterious excavation taking place under the tightest security.

Jorma sets a trap to catch the predator, but is amazed to find he has only captured a snarling old man (Peeter Jakobi), who is so feisty that he has to be locked in the slaughterhouse and approached with extreme caution. However, having read up on the traditional Santa - who delighted in punishing the naughty rather than rewarding the nice - Onni suspects he knows the identity of the captive. But he is distracted by the discovery that every child in the village has disappeared, along with all manner of heating appliances.

Building to a rousing climax, Helander shifts the action from the wilds to a downtown warehouse where Santa's grizzled helpers are attempting to thaw him from a huge block of ice found deep in the mountain and Onni has to devise an audacious helicopter stunt to lure them away from their master and ensure his permanent demise.

Concluding with the gag that launched the cult shorts, this is a darkly comic fantasy with a Gremlins-like mix of magic and malevolence. Mika Orasmaa's imagery and Torunn Anfinsen and Liv Ask's production design give the action a blockbuster feel, but this is also a thoughtful (if not always reverential) insight into life in a declining macho milieu. Helander imbues proceedings with a Joe Dantesque sense of mischievous wonderment and it would surprise no one if his next movie was made in Hollywood.

Few will be surprised that José Padilha was recently announced as the director of the forthcoming remake of Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop (1987). Since first coming to international attention with the documentary Bus 174 (2002), Padilha has won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Elite Squad (2007) and broken all Brazilian box-office records with its sequel, Elite Squad: The Enemy Within. Obviously intent on countering accusations that the original picture had a right-wing agenda, Padilha has switched his attention from the gangsters and dealers of Rio de Janeiro's notorious favelas to the crooked cops and politicians who build their reputations in pursuing the drug lords, while also lining their pockets with their confiscated contraband.

As before, the central character is Wagner Moura, a captain in the special operations unit, Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE). However, he is anything but the hero of the opening sequence, as he struggles to control a riot at Rio's brutal Bangu 1 prison. Despite his failure, Moura is promoted to the post of Under-Secretary of Intelligence and he vows to crack down on the colleagues who abuse their position to infiltrate the gangs and become their protectors. But, as he delves into this bureaucratic cesspool, Moura discovers the trail leads directly to governor Julio Adrião's office and realises that he now has enemies in the corridors of power, as well as the poverty-ridden streets.

Moura is also under pressure from the media. However, crusading journalist Irandhir Santos is also married to Moura's ex-wife, Maria Ribeiro, and he deeply resents the fact that teenage son Pedro Van Held is being raised by a smug, left-wing intellectual. Yet Santos turns out to be an unexpected ally as Moura takes on ruthless major Sandro Rocha and lieutenant colonel Milhem Cortaz, who have flushed the lowlifes out of the favelas and replaced them with henchmen loyal to their own secret cadre.

The voice-over narrative has always been a contentious tactic. It became a staple of film noir in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s, but it is invariably dismissed by modern critics as a lazy method of storytelling. Padilha and fellow scribe Bráulio Mantovani rely far too heavily here on Moura world wearily filling in missing pieces of expository information and the screeds of subtitled print frequently distract the viewer from the visuals respectively photographed and edited with such panache and pace by Lula Carvalho and Daniel Rezende. Moreover, Moura's musings contain little psychological insight and seem as much intent on demonstrating Padilha's liberal credentials as revealing his hero's attitudes and emotions.

Moura delivers another imposing performance and is well supported by Santos, Rocha and Cortaz, who make suitably cynical and snarling adversaries. Indeed, in many ways, this is a slicker picture than its predecessor, with set-pieces like the opening helicopter swoops, the nocturnal ambush and the climactic gun battle with Cortaz being impressively choreographed. But, while the screenplay packs in references to local scandals, many of the nuances will elude non-Brazilian audiences and, without a firm grasp of the socio-political undertones, this runs the risk of being just another shoot `em up actioner.