Parky at the Pictures (DVD 22/11/2012)

Departing from the Czech traditions established by Jirí Trnka and Jan Švankmajer, this treatise on the recent history of the region once known as the Sudetenland employs the monochrome rotoscoping technique used to such good effect by Christian Volkman in Renaissance (2006). However, the look owes much to the bestselling trilogy of graphic novels by Jaroslav Rudiš and Jaromír 99 and it took Lunák four years to condense and animate the material from White Brook, Main Station and Golden Hills, in collaboration with cinematographer Jan Baset Strítežský and editor Petr Ríha. But the result is well worth the wait, as this is a haunting account of the events that scarred Czechoslovakia in the years between 1938 and 1989.

Alois Nebel (Miroslav Krobot) is a train dispatcher at the remote station of Bílý Potok, a village in the Jesenik mountains on the Czech-Polish border that seems permanently shrouded in mist. A quiet man in his late-forties, Nebel would rather keep the company of railway timetables than that of subordinate Wachek (Leoš Noha), his father Old Wachek (Alois Švehlík) and Šokin (Jan Sedal), the bartender at the local pub with a shady past in Prague. However, his isolation leaves him prey to flashbacks to the period immediately after the end of the Second World War when the Germanic residents of the Sudetenland were forcibly ejected by the newly liberated Czechoslovak authorities for treasonably provoking the Munich crisis that led to the division and defeat of the country by the Nazis. In particular, as he hears news on the radio that a woman has been killed by her axe-wielding son, he is bothered by the vision of Dorothe (Tereza Vorísková), who was carrying a baby as she was buffeted around amidst the chaos.

Nebel's well-being is further jeopardised by the fall of the Berlin Wall in October 1989 and the arrival soon afterwards of The Mute (Karel Roden), who has escaped back behind the Iron Curtain bent on avenging his maltreatment 35 years earlier. Against the backdrop of the Velvet Revolution, Nebel suffers a mental breakdown and is taken to the asylum where The Mute has been held since his capture. Wachek delights in subjecting the fugitive to electro-shock therapy in order to ascertain information about his past, but he refuses either to speak or abandon his mission.

After a prolonged period of incarceration, Nebel is allowed to leave and discovers that much has changed in Václav Havel's Czech Republic. Most pressingly, Wachek has taken over his job and, so, Nebel travels to the capital to ask his employers for a new posting. On arriving at Prague Central Station, he learns that the state railway company no longer exists and finds himself being drawn into the orbit of toilet attendant Kveta (Marie Ludvikova) and Olda (Ondrej Malý), a thief who has his finger in every pie and makes the most of each passing opportunity. Nebel is taken with Kveta (who loves order and is keen to find herself another railwayman after losing her dispatcher husband in an accident) and they spend hours sitting on platform benches watching the people and the engines go by. But, despite spending an idyllic Christmas with Kveta and sensing that she is his soulmate, Nebel knows he has to return to Bílý Potok to do right by The Mute and teach the Wacheks their long-overdue lesson.

Evocatively played by actors whose personalities have been wholly retained within the sharply etched graphics, this is a measured and often mesmerising drama that offers fascinating insights into the Czech psyche over the last 70 years. Containing echoes of Jirí Menzel's Closely Observed Trains (1966) and Milós Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), the story keeps leaving gaps that force the audience to make assumptions that are not always born out by events. But it is the noirish visuals that most impress here, whether it's the way in which the fog swirls and rain, snow and lightning bolts descend from the leaden skies or the manner in which a locomotive suddenly bursts into the frame or fireworks erupt over the city skyline. Accompanied by Petr Kružík's atmospheric score, this is a magnificent debut and a compelling treatise on the extent to which the past is never really over.

Adapted from a fact-based novel by Carlo Bonini, ACAB sees Stefano Sollima make the transition to features after establishing his reputation with the TV series Romanzo Criminale. The title is an acronym for the slogan `All Cops Are Bastards' and it should be noted that the film caused quite a stir in its native Italy, with football fans conducting a banner campaign that accused the producers of peddling propaganda lauding the Reparto Mobile riot police, who are detested in many quarters for their brutality and corruption and are known by the nickname `La Celere'. Screenwriters Daniele Cesarano, Barbara Petronio and Leonardo Valenti refuse to duck these issues and even for characters expressing a kind of remorse for the infamous Diaz School massacre that occurred during the G8 meeting in Genoa in 2001, but they clearly empathise with the celerini and, consequently, this makes for compelling, if frequently disconcerting viewing.

The Rome-based unit under scrutiny is led by Marco Giallini and comprises loyal lieutenants Pierfrancesco Favino, Filippo Nigro and Andrea Sartoretti, as well as new recruit Domenico Diele, who lives in a rundown neighbourhood with his mother Alessandra Antinori. The latter has transferred to the Reparto Mobile to get a pay rise and resolutely refuses to discuss his work with his friends. However, as he gets his hands dirty, Diele acquires a grudging respect for colleagues who may have their demons (they lock him in a van with a tear gas cannister to initiate him into the cabal), but who also display considerable courage while under attack from protesting Sardinian trade unionists, tenants being evicted from council housing, ultra football fans looking for a rumble, squatting migrant workers and the xenophobes besieging a Romanian gypsy camp after a local woman is raped.

The last case has particular ramifications for Giallini, as 16 year-old son Eugenio Mastrandrea has run away from home to join a neo-fascist skinhead gang that preys on immigrants and their confrontations strains his relationship with cop wife Roberta Spagnuolo. Nigro is also going through a sticky patch at home, as he is divorcing from Cuban wife Eradis Josende Oberto, who has not only claimed their apartment, but also denied him access to his young daughter, Giulia Smaldone. Increasingly fraught, he ends up bellowing at the parliament building he is defending during a demonstration and asks why he should bother trying to uphold a law that seems to perpetuate injustice. Yet it is the same system that looks likely to protect Favino when he is charged with assaulting a football supporter who happened to be in the wrong place during a scuffle.

However, many have been dismayed by the way in which Sollima and editor Patrizio Marone cross-cut between Favino's court appearance and Paolo Carnera's visceral scenes of fully tooled riot police wading into an angry crowd to meet aggressive provocation with brute force. As Giallini's stabbing while trying to keep rampaging football hooligans apart demonstrates, the celerini are required to place themselves in danger and it isn't always easy to play by the rules in the heat of the moment. But, by intimating that many in the ranks are poor, white right-wingers who could just as easily be part of the mob, Sollima proves less successful in humanising his anti-heroes than Maïwenn Le Besco was in the recent French drama, Polisse. Thus, while this has been slickly assembled and it concludes with vigilante retribution being punished, it remains a picture whose political stance makes it very difficult to admire.

Staying in Rome, but switching to a very different kind of picture, pop video veterans Antonio and Marco Manetti follow up their excursions into horror, comedy and giallo with the science-fiction thriller, The Arrival of Wang. Largely set in a single room, the action relies heavily on Noemi Marchica's production design and Alessandro Chiodo's photography to sustain the suspense of a situation that requires a leap of faith. However, it is the performances that ensure this retains its intrigue until the denouement that can only be described as anti-climactic.

Translator Francesca Cuttica is left with little option when government agent Ennio Fantastichini arrives on her doorstep and promises her a small fortune if she will accept an unusual mission. Agreeing to be blindfolded, Cuttica is whisked out of the city to a secret location and led to a darkened room and instructed to translate the replies to the questions that Fantastichini poses to his prisoner. Uneasy at being placed in such an invidious position, Cuttica thinks of the cheque and begins a conversation with a Mandarin speaker (Li Yong), who is not only courteous and intelligent, but also seemingly co-operative and honest.

However, Fantastichini is furiously dissatisfied with his answers and urges Cuttica to emphasise the gravity of the stranger's predicament. And that's when Cuttica discovers she is speaking with an extraterrestrial, whose protestations that he has come in peace may well be true. But Cuttica feels she can no longer take his word at face value, especially as she suspects that Fantastichini may well be seeking information that could either foil an invasion or prevent a catastrophe.

It isn't often that this column gets scruples about so-called spoilers. A film cannot be properly evaluated unless its entirety is open to discussion. But, in the week that The Mousetrap celebrates its 60th anniversary in the West End, it seems appropriate to make an exception in the case of this teasing treatise on appearances, duty, prejudice and doing one's duty. As with all good sci-fi, the storyline is clearly allegorical. But, ultimately, the Manettis opt for a Twilight Zone approach rather than anything more sinister and, thus, fritter a more than promising premise.

The conflicted Cuttica, the fearsome Fantastichini and the mercurial Li impress throughout, as does Juliet Essy Jospeph as the African woman who discovered the alien hiding in her home. However, it isn't always obvious whether these scenes are flashbacks or testimony or simply visions being experienced by the creature that has been designed with laudable restraint by Maurizio Memoli. What is more apparent during the sometimes interminable interrogation is where Cuttica's sympathies lie and her sentimental weakness is deftly exploited before the final twist whose ambiguity will frustrate as many as it fascinates.

Also set in an enclosed space, Lola Doillon's sophomore outing, In Your Hands, also has serious trouble ending. Changing tack dramatically from her 2007 teen saga, Just About Love, Doillon is so intent on creating a thriller in the mould of Guillaume Canet's Tell No One (2006) and Philippe Claudel's I've Loved You So Long (2008) that even she hired their female star, Kristin Scott Thomas. However, in attempting to bookend a prolonged flashback with consequent action, Doillon dissipates all tension before arriving at a denouement that is not only melodramatic, but also deeply flawed.

As the story opens, obstetrician Kristin Scott Thomas leaves a nondescript house in the Parisian suburbs and rushes to a nearby garage. She attempts to return to work, as though nothing had happened, but finds it impossible to forget her ordeal. Indeed, she is contemplating reporting the matter to the police when Doillon takes us back to her abduction at knife-point by Pio Marmaï, a grief-stricken widower who is out to avenge his wife's death, two years earlier, when Scott Thomas had attempted to carry out an emergency caesarian.

Unable to bear living with the daughter who is now being raised by her grandmother, Marmaï keeps his captive in a windowless basement room with a rickety iron bed and makes no attempt to communicate as he delivers her meagre meals. However, as the days go by and Scott Thomas becomes increasingly convinced that, despite his hissed threats and occasional fist-flailing outbursts, Marmaï is not going to hurt her, she tries to lure him into a conversation to ascertain why she is being held. Yet, while she gains his trust, she keeps looking for opportunities to escape and it's only when she is free that she comes to appreciate the agony he has experienced since his wife's death.

Driven by the memory of the sexual frisson she had felt in his presence, the divorced and childless Scott Thomas begins to stalk Marmaï and eventually brings him back to her apartment, where they sleep together. However, she is overcome with disgust at giving herself to a man who had caused her so much distress. Yet, even after she betrays him to the police, Scott Thomas still feels compelled to try and warn him and there is palpable pain in the glance they exchange as Marmaï is led away.

Doillon (who is the daughter and wife of acclaimed directors Jacques Doillon and Cédric Klapisch) stuffs this treatise on the Stockholm Syndrome with simmering Freudian symbolism about mother-son relationships. She is superbly served by leads who each feels themself to be the victim and whose respective transition from fear and fury to fervour is credibly done. However, the action becomes increasingly implausible once Scott Thomas begins pursuing Marmaï and their climactic coupling and separation smacks of soap operatics.

With Mathieu Vadepied's camera largely being confined within Stéphanie Guitard and Stanislas Reydellet's forbiddingly claustrophobic set, this might have been better suited to the stage than the screen. But, even there, the problem of the resolution would remain, as it did in another recent Scott Thomas vehicle, Pawel Pawlikowki's The Woman in the Fifth.

Philippe Le Guay adds a storey and a few more females for The Women on the 6th Floor, a genial comedy that opts to focus on the lighter side of a dark period that saw thousands of Spaniards fleeing into France to escape the totalitarian tyranny of Generalissimo Francesco Franco. Also known as Service Entrance, this is always highly likeable, even though it is also somewhat insubstantial.

Making his third picture with Le Guay after L'Année Juliette (1995) and The Cost of Living (2003), Fabrice Luchini turns in a typically polished performance in this genial romantic comedy that is set in the drolly downbeat Paris of 1962, but is consistently coloured by the oppressive nature of the Franco regime in neighbouring Spain. Shying away from a profound discussion of either the legacy of the Civil War or France's post-colonial problems in order to focus on buttoned-up bourgeois attitudes and the liberating effects of multiculturalism, this may seem a little trite to those who prefer their socio-political satire to be more incisive. But the breezy presence of a splendid Hispanic supporting cast and plenty of trademark Luchini schtick makes this eminently watchable nonetheless.

Having inherited his stockbroking business and the luxurious apartment block in which he resides, Fabrice Luchini has rarely been troubled by the real world. However, when faithful retainer Michèle Gleizer pushes her luck once too often (in complaining about plans to redecorate the lodging until recently ruled over with a rod of iron by Luchini's tyrannical mother), Luchini and prim wife Sandrine Kiberlain quickly find they can't cope with the chores, even though young sons Camille Gigot and Jean-Charles Deval are away at boarding school.

After a couple of days of dirty dishes, they decide to hire Natalia Verbeke, who can cook eggs to perfection and, unbeknown to Luchini, lives with aunt Carmen Maura on the sixth floor of his building, along with several other Spanish domestics, including the pious Berta Ojea, Nuria Solé, Concha Galán and feisty Communist Lola Dueñas. Luchini soon comes to know everything about them, however, as his obsession with Verbeke sparks a desire to sample all things Spanish - from paella and flamenco to language and politics.

But he gets the chance to grow even closer to them when Kiberlain throws him out on becoming convinced that his prolonged absences can only mean he is having an affair with a socialite client. Naturally, in rubbing shoulders with the lower orders, and exotic foreigners to boot, Luchini takes a turn for the better. However, with Verbeke determined to return home and find her missing son, there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

Somewhat patronising the maids by having them slave away to the jaunty strains of Dalida's rendition of `Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini', Le Guay and co-scenarist Jérôme Tonnerre come close to conspiring with cinematographer Jean-Claude Larrieu, production designer Pierre-François Limbosch and composer Jorge Arriagada in creating a neverland of cavernous luxury and garret penury that is populated by Franco-Spanish caricatures.

Kiberlain's stressed provincial is most frustratingly trivialised, as she is unflatteringly contrasted with the sensual, fiery or matronly exiles who cosset Luchini, while she strives to keep up with chic friends Marie-Armelle Deguy, Muriel Solvay and Audrey Fleurot. But realism is forever at a premium in a picture that is consistently easy to enjoy, yet keeps throwing up disquieting statements and stereotypes.

The scene switches from the capital to the west coast for Jacques Becker's Welcome Abroad, a gentle adaptation of an Eric Holder novel that completes an unofficial trilogy of pictures centred around unlikely friendships. But, while Conversations With My Gardener (2007) explored class through the growing bond between Daniel Auteuil and Jean-Pierre Darroussin and My Afternoons With Margueritte (2010) used the bookish encounters between Gérard Depardieu and Gisèle Casadesus to consider culture and companionship, this age-gap road movie concentrates on creativity and kindred spirits, while scrupulously avoiding any hint of the controversy that might arise from an older man taking a vulnerable girl under his wing.

Despite the support of wife Miou-Miou and best friend Jacques Weber, sixtysomething painter Patrick Chesnais has lost his spark. A year has passed since he last attempted to work and his growing conviction that he has achieved nothing of value prompts him to get in the car and drive. He has no idea where he is heading or what he is searching for. But a half-hearted suicide attempt persuades him that he is not ready to die just yet and his decision is vindicated a few miles along the road on a rainy evening when he offers a lift to Jeanne Lambert, a 15 year-old who has just been thrown out of the house by her stressed mother and wishes to get as far away as quickly as possible.

An awkward meal cements the friendship, with the feisty Lambert believing she can trust the curmudgeonly Chesnais. They are amused by the suspicious nature of Xavier Gallais when they check into his hotel, but decide they stand more chance of being left alone if they rent a chalet on the beach. However, the isolation forces them to converse and it gradually becomes clear that Lambert has to return home to try and patch things up with her mother and that Chesnais has to accept that he made the conscious decision to devote himself to his art rather than allow himself to be distracted by fatherhood and that he now has to live with his choices and make the most of his talent in the time left to him.

The son of Jean Renoir's longtime assistant Jacques Becker (who was a fine film-maker in his own right), Jean Becker has always been prone to sentimentality. Now, in his 80th year, he strives with co-scenarist François d'Epenoux to give the dialogue an edge. But the nature of the story and the fact that both Chesnais and Lambert need to reach epiphanies that will enable them to return to their loved ones ensures that this always teeters on the bathetic. The soundtrack certainly plays on the emotions and it is very much to the credit of Chesnais (who similarly found a new zest for life in Stéphane Brizé's Not Here to Be Loved, 2005) and the debuting Lambert that this manages to be so poignant. But, while Becker displays his customary understanding of human nature, he settles here for superficial feel good rather than philosophically demanding drama.

A couple more 15 year-olds discover the vagaries of the adult world in Bouli Lanners's The Giants, a summer rite of passage that seems like a mischievous exercise designed to meld such contrasting authors as Mark Twain and Stephen King or SE Hinton and Enid Blyton. However, Lanners and co-scenarist Elise Ancion (who also designed the costumes) are less gifted storytellers and, while this Belgian saga has its amusing and insightful moments, it frequently feels fragmented and too often strains for effect.

Left at their late grandfather's tumbledown country pile by a mother who periodically checks up on them by mobile phone, Martin Nissen and his 13 year-old brother Zacharie Chasseriaud are more bothered about being bored than running out of provisions. However, things take a turn for the better when they crash grandpa's car into the scooter-riding Paul Bartel, who is none the worse for the accident and eager to enlist his new pals in a scheme to escape from his thuggish brother (Karim Leklou) by running away to Spain.

The trio initially content themselves with a boat ride down river, which is followed by an expedition to an empty holiday home that results in them getting drunk and experimenting with the peroxide they find in the bathroom. Suitably emboldened, they decide to score some dope off local dealer Didier Toupy, who cuts an eccentric figure alongside girlfriend Gwen Berrou. But he is a shrewd operator and persuades Nissen and Chasseriaud to lease him their granddad's house for three months and they compound the error by selling off all of the furniture.

Realising they now have nowhere to stay, the siblings take refuge in a riverbank shack and are forced to break into another residence when it collapses around them. Kindly Marthe Keller, who has a Down Syndrome daughter, takes pity on them and invites them out of a downpour for tea. But, when the boys return home to collect Toupy's unpaid rent, they discover he has hired Leklou as his bodyguard and the ensuing showdown culminates in them fleeing by boat and Nissen tossing his ringing phone into the water as a defiant symbol of his new-found maturity and independence.

Departing slightly from the wry realism that informed his first two directorial outings, Ultranova (2004) and Eldorado (2008), Lanners intriguingly seeks to recast the traditional adolescent adventure in a very modern idiom. Thus, while Nissen, Chasseriaud and Bartel get themselves into some pretty harmless scrapes, they also steal, curse and dabble with drink and drugs in a way that Tom, Huck and the Famous Five would never have dared. Moreover, they discover that they can take care of themselves when threatened physically and one is left to wonder at the close how these essentially nice kids will turn out after such transformatory experiences.

Despite Leklou being irksomely one-note in his bruising villainy, the young cast is splendid, with Chasseriaud particularly impressing as the naive tag along responding to each new development with a charming mix of incredulity and acceptance. Jean-Paul De Zaeytijd's lustrous views of the verdant environs (which are actually in Luxembourg) and the score by the indie combo The Bony King of Nowhere are also noteworthy. But, while Lanners generates plenty of picaresque nostalgia in ruminating on the folly of youth, the boisterous storyline rings hollow too often for it entirely to convince.

The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, of Anne Fassio's My Lucky Star, a horsey melodrama that has its roots in old chestnuts like Clarence Brown's National Velvet (1944) and Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), which was a remake of the director's own 1934 outing, Broadway Bill. Set in the verdant Norman countryside and with a soaring score by Sébastien Souchois to match Antoine Roch's lustrous visuals, this is an old-fashioned beating the odds story that is given a modern twist by the harsh realities of the global recession.

Since losing her mother, Fleur Lise has thrown herself into her work at the stud farm her father Christophe Lambert runs with his old friend Claude Brasseur. She loves all the horses, but her favourite is Marquise, a young mare that she was allowed to rear herself. However, the cost of maintaining the farm and a run of bad luck means that Lambert and Brasseur have run up debts and wealthy neighbour Samuel Labarthe is more than interested in acquiring the property.

Lise is determined to help her father and convinces him that Marquise has the makings of a harness racing champion. He agrees to help her train the horse and they soon make enough progress to enter an event. But Labarthe is bent on sabotaging their efforts, as his son Nicolas Robin has ambitions of his own. Naturally, Lise overcomes the obstacles placed in her path and even nurses Marquise through the life-threatening illness that is almost de rigueur for equine pictures. Yet this is an easy effort to like, even though it could easily have foregone the romantic subplot involving Antoine Berry-Roger. Lise makes a spirited heroine and Lambert and Brasseur provide genial support in the face of Labarthe's snootily hissable villainy.

Another animal hogs the limelight in French novelist Sylvain Estibal's directorial debut, When Pigs Have Wings. Set on the Gaza coast and blending whimsical wit with cautious critique, this arrives on disc at an unfortunate time, as the current stand-off between Israel and Hamas is no laughing matter. However, Estibal adroitly highlights the absurdity that underpins the intractable enmity between Jews and Muslims and it is only his tendency to over-egg his political points that prevents this from meriting comparison with the works of Israeli Eran Riklis and the peerless Palestinian, Elia Sulieman.

Fisherman Sasson Gabai has clearly offended the fates. While his rivals reel in impressive hauls, the best he can manage is the odd sprat and lots of jetsam. Seagulls delight in targeting him and he owes money to short-fused shopkeeper Khaled Riani. Even the Israeli Defence Force seems to be in on the joke, as it has commandeered his roof because it looks out on to a road the top brass insists is a strategic thoroughfare when in fact, it is something of a dead end. Wife Baya Belal tolerates his misfortunes, but she is less than enamoured by the presence of soldiers Ido Shaked and Thierry Lopez, especially as they sing incessantly and interrupt her favourite Brazilian soap opera whenever they pop in to use the bathroom.

Gabai's fortunes change, although admittedly not for the better, when he lands a 110lb Vietnamese pig. He has no idea how it got into the sea, let alone survived, but he hauls it into his boat and wonders what to do with a beast he is forbidden by his religion even to touch. Cunningly attaching a couple of woolly patches, he hides the pig in a flock of sheep and hopes that local United Nations official Ulrich Tukur will take it off his hands. He is too stressed to get involved, however, and Gabai is forced to ask Lebanese barber Gassan Abbas if he can get hold of a gun. This being a war zone, Abbas is able to lay his hands on an AK-47 without difficulty. But Gabai cannot bring himself to slaughter the creature and Abbas suggests that he contacts nearby Russian-Jewish breeder Myriam Tekaïa to see if she will purchase the pig.

Despite negotiating numerous checkpoints, Gabai seems to have had a wasted journey. But Tekaïa strikes a deal to buy vials of sperm for insemination and an amusing sequence follows in which Gabai procure the precious fluid only for an officious Palestinian policeman to confiscate and quaff it under the impression it is medicine. It's not long, however, before somebody spots him passing parcels through Tekaïa's fence and Gabai (who has achieved a measure of celebrity) is accused of collaborating with the enemy by the local jihadists. His punishment is to carry out a suicide mission and he and the pig are fitted out with matching jackets.

Even though the tone turns more serious in the final third, this is still a comedy and Estibal devises a farcical finale that sees Gabai being asked for his autograph as he tries to evade the angry zealots bent on martyring him. Yet, for all its inspired moments, this never quite coalesces. The performances are splendid, with the Iraqi-born Gabai building on the reputation forged in Eran Korilin's The Band's Visit (2007). Ulrich Tukur also makes the most of a choice cameo, while Belal's exchanges with Shaked while watching the telenovela have a bittersweetness that epitomises Esbibal's tonal dilemma throughout the picture, as neither the satire nor the political comment are as trenchant as they might be. Nevertheless, he makes solid use of his Maltese locations in demonstrating the obstacles imposed on the Palestinians to make daily life as pettily difficult as possible.