Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/12/2011)

With so many characters appearing in so many guises in so many times and places, it's best to restrict plot summaries to the basics. Nobleman Pedro da Silva (José Afonso Pimentel) starts the tale by recalling his unhappy childhood as a bullied stray (João Arrais) in the Catholic boarding school run by the kindly Father Dinis (Adriano Luz). However, the 14 year-old's situation changes when he learns following a bullying incident that his mother Ângela (Maria João Bastos) is the Countess of Santa Barbara and, shortly after their reunion, he learns how she was parted from his father, Don Pedro da Silva (João Baptista), because her father, the Marquess of Montezelos (Rui Morrison), disapproved of her consorting with a man of aristocratic birth but limited means.

Thanks to the scheming of her maid, Deolinda (Ana Das Chagas), Ângela steals time alone with Don Pedro. However, the Marquess hires a ruffian known as The Knife Thrower (Ricardo Pereira) to assassinate him and the besotted youth dies while seeking sanctuary with Fr Dinis. Learning the Marquess has instructed The Knife Thrower to murder the child at birth, Dinis assumes the disguise of horse thief Sabino Cabra and purchases the child for 40 coins and rears him at the orphanage, while Ângela endures a miserable marriage to the Count of Santa Bárbara (Albano Jerónimo), who confines his wife to her room and lives openly with her maid, Eugenia (Joana de Verona).

Having discovered that Ângela has escaped from his mansion with the help of his valet Barnardo (José Airosa), Santa Barbara accuses her of adultery and Fr Dinis travels to an inn where the count is recuperating from an illness to demand a retraction. Suitably penitent, Santa Barbara tells the priest how he fell in love with Ângela at first sight during a society soirée. However, she spurned his advances and it was only when her father ordered her to be more civil that he began to press his suit. On learning that she had a son, Santa Barbara had been consumed with envious rage and had imprisoned her in revenge for his sense of betrayal.

The count dies soon after making these revelations and Ângela decides to take the veil in the same convent as Fr Dinis's sister, Antónia (Vânia Rodrigues). Pedro is crestfallen by his mother's vocation, but his mentor is distracted from consoling him by the arrival of Friar Baltazar da Encarnação (José Manuel Mendes), who had been Santa Barbara's confessor. He invites Dinis to his cell, where he informs him that he had once been known as Don Álvaro de Albuquerque (Carloto Cotta), who attended the fashionable salons of Lisbon with his cousin, Paulo (Filipe Vargas).

Álvaro had been bewitched by Silvana, the Countess of Viso (Maria João Pinho), whose jealous and short-tempered husband (Marco D'Almeida) was a sworn enemy of King João I's feared and detested first minister, the Marquess of Pombal. Yet, instead of noticing Álvaro's passion for his spouse, Viso encourages him to escort her to social occasions while he plots against the government that had executed Álvaro's father for treason. Thus, when Viso rushes to court after Pombal falls in 1777, Álvaro and Silvana become lovers and flee to Venice when their affair is betrayed by prying servants. However, Silvana dies in childbirth and Álvaro asks Paulo to raise their son, while he retreats to a monastery.

Returning home by coach, carrying his mother Silvana's skull in a reliquary, Fr Dinis witnesses a duel between Don Martinho de Almeida (Paulo Pinto) and Alberto de Magalhães (Ricardo Pereira) and learns from more interlinking yarns that the latter is The Knife Thrower, who has gone up in the world and appears to have used several aliases across Europe since making his fortune (according to rumour through slavery and piracy) with the ransom that Dinis had paid to spare young Pedro's life.

In trying to ascertain the reason for the duel, Dinis discovers that Alberto (who is now married to Eugenia and living in Lisbon) is being pursued by Elisa de Montfort (Clotilde Hesme), a French heiress who had resisted his attentions before being driven by a shortage of funds to prostitute herself to him over several nights until her twin brother challenged Alberto and died of gunshot wounds following a struggle in the street. Elisa has since sought to return the money she received from Alberto (just as he is keen to return Pedro's blood money to Fr Dinis) and even pays Eugenia a visit to urge her to accept the bag of coins. But, with each refusal, Elisa becomes more determined to avenge her brother's demise and dupes social gadfly Baron Sá (André Gomes) into finding a man to fight on her behalf.

Sá persuades Martinho to do the deed, but his failure prompts Dinis to visit Elisa in the hope she will drop her vendetta. She is surprised to learn that Dinis knows more about her than she suspects, as he was brought up in France following Paulo's death. Having survived when his protector was guillotined during the Revolution, he served in Napoleon's Grand Army with Benoit (Julien Alluguette), with whom he shared a devotion of Blanche (Léa Seydoux). However, having rescued Ernesto Lacroze (Melvil Poupaud) from a Portuguese firing squad during the Peninsular War, Benoit became enraged by his friendship with Blanche and hid his rival's letters after he returned to the colours. Eventually, Ernesto was killed and Blanche married Benoit. But, having borne him twins - Elisa and Arthur - she withdrew to the hunting lodge on his estate, where she died in a fire, despite Dinis's efforts to save her.

However, as the story jumps forwards several years, the adult Pedro returns from his studies in France to become entranced by Elisa and she talks him into challenging Alberto de Magalhães to a duel. Although he had always refused to give opponents satisfaction, Alberto agrees and they meet with swords at dawn. However, he is too quick for his youthful adversary and disarms him before cajoling him into accepting an olive branch rather than continue with pistols. But, the humiliation of failing to vanquish Elisa's foe proves too much for Pedro and he spends the remainder of his life travelling in Africa and South America, where he begins dictating this sprawling saga to a hotel servant.

As the plot touches upon war, treachery, spiritual anguish, prostitution, honour, faith and social duplicity, chameleonic characters come and go at a dizzying rate that seems to spur Ruíz on to take the increasingly convoluted events at an even more breakneck lick. Ably abetted by a superb cast and an intricate, if occasionally operatic script by Carlos Saboga, Ruíz keeps André Szankowski's HD camera gliding through Isabel Branco's glorious sets to the accompaniment of Jorge Arriagada's swooningly romantic score. He even makes charming use of the toy theatre that Ângela bought Pedro for scenic transitions and to emphasise the dramatic gravitas of key scenes. Moreover, he also delights in leaving on mystery unsolved, as Fr Dinis avoids satisfying Ângela's curiosity about the non-fraternal relationship between Sister Antónia and his high society alter ego, Sebastião de Melo.

Many will compare this supremely controlled, but irresistibly accessible and engrossing picture with Ruíz's majestic Proust adaptation, Time Regained (1999). But he seems more intent on paying tribute to Manuel De Oliveira - who adapted Castelo Branco's Ill-Fated Love in 1979 - than referencing his own oeuvre. Yet the asides on memory, status, duty, hypocrisy, caprice and coincidence have a familiar ring and the ever-mischievous Ruíz appears to revel in gently lampooning the conventions of the heritage movie by allowing the temperature occasionally to come close to tele-novelettish fever pitch. There's no question that this makes enormous demands on the audience. But those willing to pay close attention will be handsomely rewarded by the magisterial swan song of an under-appreciated master.

By contrast, Daniel Auteuil makes his directorial debut with The Well-Digger's Daughter, a remake of Marcel Pagnol's 1940 Provençal drama that was so well received in his native France that the veteran actor was commissioned to revisit the Marseilles trilogy of Marius (1931), Fanny (1932) and César (1936) that established the novelist-cum-playwright as a major force in sound cinema. Few seem better equipped for the job, as Auteuil became a star 25 years ago in Claude Berri's adaptations of Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (both 1986), which sparked a wave of heritage cinema across the Channel that also included Yves Robert's charming Pagnol duo of La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère (both 1990).

Reworking the script of the 170-minute original, as well taking a key role, Auteuil plays it rather safe in allowing cinematographer Jean-François Robin to bathe the southern countryside in a nostalgic glow that also taints Bernard Vezat's production design, Pierre-Yves Gayraud's costumes and Alexandre Desplat's score. Even the performances seem a touch too cosy, especially when compared to the coarser naturalism displayed by Raimu, Fernandel and Josette Day in the Pagnol version, which was made just as French fears of defeat by the invading Nazis became a terrible reality. Nevertheless, this is a workmanlike effort that should entice those pining for the heyday of Merchant Ivory.

As the Phoney War drags on and France waits for its German neighbour to make a move, well-digger Pascal Amoretti (Daniel Auteuil) prepares to celebrate the 18th birthday of his daughter Patricia (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), who has returned from being educated in Paris to help him and older sister Amanda (Emilie Cazenave) raise their younger siblings Isabelle (Coline Bosso), Marie (Chloé Malarde), Léonore (Brune Coustellier) and Roberta (Illona Porte). Pascal's underling, Félipe Rambert (Kad Merad) has a crush on Patricia and asks his boss for permission to court her by taking her to the nearby air show in his new car. However, Patricia has literally been swept off her feet by pilot Jacques Mazel (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who had carried her across the stream as she brought her father his lunch in the hills outside Salon.

Jacques is the son of shopkeeper André Mazel (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and his wife Marie (Sabine Azéma), who frets in a gushingly maternal manner about the danger her little boy will be in once the fighting starts. However, Jacques appears fearless as he loops his plane over the cheering crowds at the aerodrome and then lures Patricia back to his room after she has mendaciously told Félipe that she is going to visit an estranged aunt. She resists his clumsy attempts at seduction, but, when the now tipsy Félipe's car fails to start, she succumbs to Jacques's advances as he takes her home though moonlit backroads on his motorbike.

When Jacques fails to keep an assignation at a remote chapel - and Marie decides against delivering the note he had hastily written explaining that he had been called back to his squadron - Patricia is forced to conceal the fact she is pregnant from her highly conservative father. However, when she eventually breaks the news, he dismisses Félipe's offer to marry her and packs her off to stay with her Aunt Nathalie (Marie-Anne Chazel) after the Mazels decline to have anything to do with her and accuse the crude labourer of trying to blackmail their respectable family.

Félipe also goes off to war, only to return with a minor wound and the news that Jacques has been presumed killed in action. Already dismayed by the capitulation of his country, Pascal is determined to uphold his principles and continues to shun Patricia and her new-born son. But the prospect of giving the child the Amoretti name prompts him to travel by bus to the neighbouring valley and invite Patricia and his grandson to return home.

This rather chauvinist strain runs throughout the film, with Jacques treating Patricia as a plaything, his parents considering her a gold-digging strumpet and Pascal regarding her as a possession to be disposed of as he sees fit. Only Félipe shows her any respect and even he is more interested in her housekeeping skills than her hopes and dreams. Back in 1940, this emphasis on the status of the French male would have been highly emotive, as the nation had just suffered a humiliating defeat. But Auteuil removes this aspect from the story (along with the famous sequence in which the villagers gather around the radio to listen to Marshal Pétain urging the vanquished to co-operate with the victors) and, consequently, it runs the risk of condoning outmoded attitudes and alienating a sizeable proportion of the potential audience.

Similarly, Auteuil tones down the bantering byplay between Pascal and Félipe, as he seemed to realise there was no way he and Murad could compete with the brilliance of Raimu and Fernandel. Indeed, for those familiar with the Pagnol picture, it seems to keep intruding upon proceedings and demanding comparison. Those new to the story should be swept along by it, however, especially towards the droll denouement when Jacques returns unexpectedly and Pascal mounts a last bid to preserve the Amoretti name before all ends happily - or as happily as anything can at the start of what will be nearly five years of occupation.

Despite the impressive cast, this is less an ensemble piece than it first appears. Darrousin and Azéma are somewhat marginalised - although his downplaying makes an amusing contrast with her showier turn - and even Merad and Bergès-Frisbey often seem like foils to Auteuil's tour de force. But this is never a vanity piece and he shares the close-ups around with laudable generosity. Moreover, he imbues a potentially melodramatic situation with an authenticity and humanity that captures the spirit of French cinema in the poetic realist era and whets the appetite for the forthcoming waterfront triptych.

Many will also look forward to Argentinian editor and documentarist Pablo Giorgelli's second outing after seeing the highly impressive Las Acacias, which won the Camera d'or at Cannes for Best First Feature Largely shot inside the cab of a lorry hauling lumber from Asuncion del Paraguay to Buenos Aires, this is a charmingly unconventional romance, as not only does middle-aged trucker Germán de Silva fall for thirtysomething single mother Hebe Duarte during the course of a compellingly uneventful journey, but he also becomes besotted with her five month-old daughter Nayra Calle Mamani, who gives what has to be the most expressive performance by an infant in screen history.

Having loaded up in the depths of a Paraguayan forest, Da Silva sets off on what appears to be a lonely odyssey. He is clearly a man used to his own company and barely notices the scenery beyond his windows. However, having stopped at a service station to freshen up in the toilets, he spots Duarte coming towards him across the car park carrying a baby and a couple of heavy holdalls. He establishes she is the woman he has promised to deliver to her cousins for his boss and climbs into the cab without offering Duarte any assistance as she struggles with her luggage.

At the border, Da Silva again leaves Duarte to her own devices, as he clears his cargo and enjoys a large lunch. Once on the Argentinian side, he collects his passengers and they travel in silence for several miles before he finally asks about the wide-eyed and hugely curious Mamani. Duarte curtly informs him that the girl has no father and he shruggingly reveals that he has a son he hardly ever sees and they say little else before they are pulled over for a random police search.

Suddenly feeling protective of Duarte, as she is asked for her papers and her bags are searched, Da Silva helps her back into the cab and they exchange quietly reassuring smiles until Mamani breaks the mood by crying with hunger pangs. Jolted back into the real world, Da Silva pulls into a café and is asking the waitress about bus times when Duarte returns from changing a nappy and they hurriedly purchase some snacks before resuming their journey in a renewed silence.

After a while, Da Silva asks about Duarte's plans for the future and she says her cousins are going to try and find her work in the city. Offering her a sip of his mate tea, he watches her as she eats and drifts off to sleep with Mamani nestling in her arms. Something about them has touched him, yet, when he makes a detour to deliver an overdue birthday present to his sister, he is slightly nettled by her presumption that he is Mamani's father (even though they looked very much like a family unit as they sat beside a nearby lake stroking a friendly dog who had plonked itself between them).

As the darkness falls, however, Da Silva begins to wonder whether settling down might not be such a bad thing and he playfully prods Mamani in the tummy as her mother dozes and she grabs his finger trustingly. However, driving for several hours has begun to take its toll and Duarte wakes in time to catch Da Silva nodding off and she is still looking at him reproachfully as they pull into the nearest services for the night. She calls her mother from a pay phone and leaves Da Silva holding the baby, who is so delighted at being dandled in mid-air that she sneezes adorably as he pulls faces for her.

Next morning, Da Silva oversleeps, but remains in good humour as he showers and sees Duarte chatting to Mamani in their native Guarani. He asks her to teach him a few words as they hit the road again and timidly confesses he has not seen his son for eight years since giving him a bicycle on his fourth birthday. Duarte gives him a sympathetic look that convinces Da Silva they have made a connection. But, when they stop for lunch, he gets jealous when she strikes up a conversation with a Paraguayan trucker and he remains sulky until they reach the outskirts of the capital.

As Duarte won't let him smoke in the cab, Da Silva pulls over and says he has to think. He is still pensive as she leaves him holding Mamani again so she can call her cousin for directions. But will he summon up the courage to ask her if he can see her again and, even then, will this fiercely independent woman allow herself to be looked after? Judging the denouement to perfection, Giorgelli teasingly allows the ambiguity to linger, but few will imagine anything other than a happy ending. Indeed, the first-timer hits the right note consistently throughout this delightful road movie, whether he and editor Maria Astrauskas are timing cuts between half glances and tentative expressions or he and cinematographer Diego Poleri are opening out the one-shots inside the claustrophobic cab to suggest the strangers becoming more like a couple by depicting them side by side in a single frame.

Such subtle shifts fully entitle him to the beginner's luck of finding such a photogenic and inquisitive baby as the wonderful Mamani, whose intelligent eyes and infectious smile will melt the hardest hearts. But he is also splendidly served by newcomer Duarte and veteran character actor Da Silva, who make the most of the sparse dialogue while speaking volumes with their body language. Indeed, it's hard to think how this utterly enchanting picture could be improved.