Parky at the Pictures (DVD 18/7/2013)

Returning with little enthusiasm for another year of struggling to inspire his adolescent charges, small-town literature teacher Fabrice Luchini is amazed when 16 year-old Ernst Umhauer not only hands his assignment in on time, but also succeeds in turning the tired theme of `what I did last weekend' into a mini epic. He is gripped as he reads how Umhauer became fixated with a little cottage as he sat on a park bench and decided to infiltrate it. On discovering that classmate Bastien Ughetto lives there with lower middle-class father Denis Ménochet and bored mother Emmanuelle Seigner, Umhauer offers to help Ughetto with his maths homework and soon finds himself accepted by the entire family.

Intrigued by the composition, Luchini shows it to wife Kristin Scott Thomas, who runs an avant-garde art gallery that is in danger of closing because times are hard and she insists upon exhibiting contentious pieces like a swastika made up from penises. She is also struck by the fluency of Umhauer's style and his ability to draw the reader into the narrative and leave them hanging on what might happen next. Having never previously noticed Umhauer because he always sat at the back of the class, Luchini coaxes him into producing a follow-up piece and, when this turns out to be every bit as enticing, he offers to give Umhauer private lessons, in which they can discuss the masterworks of literature and catch up on the latest happenings in the Ménochet household.

As he becomes more fixated, Luchini starts to imagine himself as an invisible interloper watching the scenes unfold (in a manner recalling James Stewart snooping on his neighbours in Rear Window). He sees Umhauer ingratiate himself with each member of the family in turn (like Terence Stamp in Theorem) and switch from watching the football and being a chauvinist boor with Ughetto and Ménochet (who is bent on boosting his business by forging links with China) to empathising with Seigner about how tough it is being a woman of a certain age when nobody notices you any longer and it is too late to fulfil one's dreams of being an interior designer. Scarcely able to contain himself, Luchini starts giving Umhauer writing tips and suggests ways in which the storyline might develop.

But, while he becomes more riveted, Luchini seems to lose both his critical faculty and his common sense. He never once questions whether Umhauer (who seemingly lives quietly with his disabled father, Jacques Bosc) is telling the truth or making things up as he goes along. Moreover, he fails to realise the folly of stealing some maths papers to ensure that Umhauer passes an exam and misses completely the fact that principal Jean-François Balmer and his colleagues are beginning to find his bond with the boy increasingly unsettling. But once Umhauer announces that he has succeeded in seducing Seigner, Luchini begins to spiral out of control.

Barely noticing that Scott Thomas is worrying about the make-or-break show being backed by a pair of eccentric twins (both played by Yolande Moreau), Luchini sets the class an assignment to write about their best friend. As usual, he is gripped by Umhauer's efforts. But he cannot resist humiliating Ughetto in front of the whole class and he is fired at the very moment that Umhauer talks Scott Thomas into bed. Dismayed at being cuckolded and exposed, Luchini has a breakdown. He learns that Seigner and her family have moved away and is pleased to see Umhauer when he comes to visit. But he no longer seems to know where fact ends and fiction begins.

Both amusing and appalling in equal measure, this is markedly different from Luchini's collaboration with Ozon on Potiche (2010). The humour is much less barbed and the class snipes less injurious. But, while it loses its way in the final third, this is still a lacerating dissection of provincial life that also raises some challenging meta-questions about the nature of truth, the creative process and the role of the audience (which almost chime in with Mike Figgis's discussion of the `Participation Mystique' in Suspension of Disbelief). But, clever though the screenplay is in its use of language and its analysis of privacy in the age of social media, Ozon also relies heavily on the droll designs of Arnaud de Moleron, Jérôme Alméras's prowling camera and the sly Hermannesque violins of Philippe Rombi's score.

Even more important are the performances. Ménochet and Seigner are splendid as the workaholic husband and bored housewife, while Ughetto suggests an attraction to Umhauer without making it overly overt. Scott Thomas is her usual impeccable self, with her fondness for garish objects contrasting slyly with Luchini's preference for all things classical. Yet, while he tries to persuade Umhauer to write with technical grace, he is as caught up in the plot as much as any soap opera addict and this suggestion that the calibre of a tale does not depend upon the quality of its telling offers a knowing reproach to those who turn their noses up as populist entertainments. But the star of the show is Umhauer, who keeps the audience guessing whether he is an ingratiating innocent or a manipulative sociopath, who knows exactly which buttons to press to elicit the desired response.

Another teacher mentors a promising pupil in Niels Arden Oplev's rite of passage, We Shall Overcome, which has its basis in fact, as it was inspired by events in the Danish director's own youth. But, while it may prompt more sensitive adolescents to reappraise their attitudes towards their classmates, this disappointingly formulaic Euro kidpic lacks the grit and guts that has characterised Oplev's subsequent outings, Worlds Apart (2008),  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009) and Dead Man Down (2013).

During the summer of 1969, 13 year-old Janus Dissing Rathke's farmer father, Jens Jørn Spottag, and nurse mother Anne-Grethe Bjarup Riis buys a television set to keep Rathke and younger sisters Annie Roed Frederiksen and Karen Skov Petersen occupied while she tries to sort out her suddenly precarious situation. While viewing, Rathke becomes a huge admirer of the recently assassinated Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King and his opinions on tolerance and injustice. But he soon comes to experience plenty of the latter when he transfers to a new school and incurs the wrath of martinet headmaster, Bent Mejding.

Even though Riis has been hired as the nurse to school doctor Kurt Ravn, she is powerless to prevent Mejding from taunting her son on account of his long blonde hair. However, he finds an unexpected ally in newly qualified teacher Anders W. Berthelsen, who more in tune with the times than his colleagues and urges his students not to judge people on their looks. But even he can do nothing to protect Rathke when he is caught in the girls' changing rooms and has his ear so badly tweaked by Mejding that it requires stitches. Bethelson encourages Riis to take Mejding to court for assault. But Rathke refuses to discuss the incident, as he had been lured off limits by Sarah Juel Werner and he is reluctant to get her into trouble as her father (Peter Hesse Overgaard) is the chairman of the school board.

Furious at having his authority challenged, Mejding fires Riis and demotes Rathke to the remedial class. However, he has learned the art of passive resistance from Dr King and he not only changes his name to Martin, but he also shaves his hair into a mohawk style and starts refusing to co-operate with Mejding's regime. Moreover, some of his classmates begin to take his side.

Laudably presenting the reality that fulfilling a dream is not always easy - especially when the grown-ups are so set in their blinkered ways - this may get kids thinking about attitudes and actions that they may well recognise from their own everyday experience. But Oplev and co-writer Steen Bille make repeatedly clumsy use of 60s references that will be lost on the majority of younger viewers and will mean more to their grandparents than their parents. Moreover, they are also over-reliant on clichés and caricatures, with Mejding's villainy being almost cartoonish (especially as capital punishment had been outlawed in Danish schools) and Rathke's crusade being simplistically rooted in cherry-picked doctrines that he scarcely understands. Lars Vestergaard's 16mm photography is appealing, but Manon Rasmussen's costumes are as arch as Søren Skjær's production design and reinforce the sense that this is a picture trying too hard to make an epochal decade relevant to today's kids.

Bernardo Bertolucci was once among Europe's most politically trenchant auteurs. He ruthlessly dissected left-wings ideologies in The Conformist and Italy's Fascist past in The Spider's Stratagem (both 1970). But, while later outings like The Dreamers (2003) flirted with the events of May 1968, Bertolucci seemed more interested in the emotional lives of his young characters than their beliefs and the same is true of Me and You, which sees him return to his native tongue for the first time in 30 years and make a miraculous (and highly courageous) return behind the camera after enduring a decade of back problems following unsuccessful surgery to repair damage incurred during a fall. Given that he was confined to a wheelchair, it is understandable that Bertolucci should limit much of the action to a single location. Yet this never gives the impression of being canned theatre and demonstrates that the 73 year-old is still a consummate film-maker, even if he is no longer the firebrand acolyte of Jean-Luc Godard who first burst on to the scene 51 years ago with The Grim Reaper.

Fourteen year-old Jacopo Olmo Antinori lives with mother Sonia Bergamasco in a Roman apartment that his (seemingly estranged) father bought on the cheap from a recently deceased countess. He is a studious lad, but sufficiently troubled to require regular sessions with wheelchair-bound psychiatrist Pippo Delbono. Indeed, while dining out with Bergamasco, he embarrasses her by asking if she would procreate with him if they were the last people left on Earth and she is, therefore, relieved to grant permission for him to do something normal like go on a school skiing trip.

Antinori has no intention of going on the holiday, however, and uses the money to buy books, provisions and an ant colony in order to enjoy a week's peace by holing himself up in the basement of the apartment block. He pays a dutiful visit to bedridden grandmother Veronica Lazar in her nursing home before hunkering down among the bric-a-brac left behind by the impecunious countess. However, he is not alone for long, as his 25 year-old photographer half-sister, Tea Falco, blunders into the basement intent on going through cold turkey so that she can move to the country with boyfriend Tommaso Ragno. Antinori orders her to leave, but she refuses and threatens to tell Bergamasco where he is hiding, even though she loathes her for luring her father away from her own mother, who is a shoe seller from the southern region of Catania.

Despite his initial fury, Antinori agrees to share his food and even edges his bedding closer to Falco's after they get to know each other better during a series of cosy chats. However, he is disturbed by her groaning in the shower and they get into a fight and smash the formicary when she cries out for sleeping pills. The next morning, Antinori sneaks out of the building and breaks into Lazar's house in order to steal some sleeping powders. On his return, he finds Falco with Ragno, who gives her money for one of her photos from a collection entitled `I Am a Wall' and leaves. That night, as the ants have infested their supplies, the pair creep into the apartment while Bergamasco is asleep in front of the television and raid the fridge. Falco also takes some cigarettes and stands over her stepmother with a scowl and Antinori has to stop her from lashing out.

When Antinori dozes off, Falco calls dealer John Paul Rossi and eagerly shoots up. Having clearly failed to kick her heroin habit, there is a hollow ring to Falco's promise to stop taking drugs when she leaves the next day. However, Antinori's vow to cease hiding away seems equally specious, especially as Bertolucci halts his preparations to return to mundanity with a freeze-frame that recalls the image of Antoine Doinel at the end of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959).

Bertolucci took his tale from a novella by Niccolò Ammaniti, who also provided the source for Gabriele Salvatores's I'm Not Scared (2003), in which a father conspires in the kidnap and underground imprisonment of his son. But there is nothing sinister about Antinori's voluntary incarceration. Indeed, even the hint of incestuous attraction between the half-siblings vanishes almost as soon as it appears. Yet this isn't merely a shaggy dog story, as Bertolucci suggests that Italian youth has been left to sort out the social and economic problems it has inherited from parents born around the time of the postwar Economic Miracle. However, as we are shown so little of the wider milieu, it is difficult to appreciate the gravity of this bequest and, as a consequence, the political critique seems a touch toothless.

The absence of any sense of oppression or enclosure similarly enervates action in which platitude is too often passed off as profundity. Fortunately, Antinori and Falco overcome the sketchiness of their respectively self-contained and self-obsessed characters to spark well together, while Bertolucci and cinematographer Fabio Cianchetti make astute use of the restricted space and the detritus artfully arranged by production designer Jean Rabasse. Franco Piersanti's string score is also effective, although the soundtrack is also packed with numbers by the likes of The Cure, Arcade Fire and Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the most intriguing inclusion is `Ragazzo Solo, Raggaza Sola', an Italian reworking of David Bowie's 1969 hit, `Space Oddity', which boasts lyrics by Mogol and loosely translates as `Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl'. Such blatancy rather sums up this comeback. But, while it may not rank among Bertolucci's more significant works, his return is most welcome and one hopes that he remains fit enough to tackle something more challenging in the not too distant future.

A father attempts to impose his aspirations upon his family in Matteo Garrone's Reality, a dissertation on the impact that reality television and minor celebrity are having on ordinary Italians at a time of political and economic uncertainty. A far cry from the grim realism of his study of the Neapolitan underworld, Gomorrah (2008), this feels more like a throwback to the late neo-realist pairing of Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951) and Federico Fellini's The White Sheik (1952), which respectively centred on a fanatical stage mother and a starstuck photo-romance reader. The TV studio sequences also recall Fellini's Ginger and Fred (1986), but the overriding mood resembles the commedia all'italiano gems produced by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pietro Germi in the 1960s to celebrate the growing confidence of the lower classes during the so-called miracolo economico.

Fishmonger Aniello Arena is something of a card. When not chattering to his customers, he is involved in a petty mail-order scam to help wife and mother of three Loredana Simioli make ends meet. He is also a massive fan of Grande Fratello, the Italian version of Big Brother, and loves being the centre of attention. Consequently, he shows up at a family wedding in drag and is bowled over to meet Raffaele Ferrante, who has becomes a minor celebrity since surviving 116 days in the GF house. Niece Giuseppina Cervizzi is convinced that Arena would make a wonderful contestant, but aunts Nunzia Schiano and Rosaria D'Urso agree with cousin Nando Paone that he is better off saving his talents for his family and friends.

Arena is working when Simioli notices that Grande Fratello auditions are being in a Naples shopping mall and calls him to hurry over. However, he gets held up in traffic and things are wrapping up by the time he eventually arrives. Distraught at missing his opportunity, Arena spots Ferrante, who remembers him from the wedding and persuades the producers to give him a shot. Much to everyone's delight, Arena gets through to the second round at the famous Cinecittà studios in Rome. Boasting to barista buddy Ciro Petrone that he has what it takes, Arena convinces himself that he has wowed the judges and is a certainty for selection.

Moreover, he believes that undercover agents have been sent to spy on him in everyday situations to ensure that he has the right stuff. Consequently, he keeps taking things from home to give to beggars and the homeless and Simioli and Paone find it impossible to reason with him, especially after he builds his own diary room. He also announces that he is going to sell his business and dedicate himself to being a star. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he is crushed when he fails to make the cut and asks a couple of complete strangers in the nearby cemetery what he has to do to get on the show.

Despite his evident breakdown, Simioli can no longer tolerate her husband's antics and moves out. Paone remains loyal, however, and coaxes Arena into helping out with his church charity group to keep himself occupied. However, when a party goes on a pilgrimage to Rome, Arena sneaks away from a torch-lit Good Friday prayer session outside the Colosseum and makes his way to the Grande Fratello house. Security is lax and he wanders into the studio and on to the set. Sitting down on a bench in the garden, he waits to see what will happen next.

A reformed camorrista who was prevented by the authorities from acting in Gomorrah, Aniello Arena makes a splendidly wide-eyed dreamer in this affectionate lampoon of populism and the common man. Frequently recalling the beloved Italian clown Totò, he throws himself into the role, with his eagerness to please hitting just the right blend of geniality and neediness. He is ably supported by Loredana Simioli as the wife who understands his dreams, but wishes he would stop deluding himself and grow up.

But one cannot help feeling that the time to satirise reality television has long gone - after all Peter Weir's The Truman Show was released 15 years ago and the form has scarcely acquired much additional cultural kudos in the interim. Missing the incisive wryness that a Nanni Moretti might have brought to the subject, Garrone seems too fond of Arena's character to make him look more than mildly ridiculous. Why else, for example, would he allow him to reach the GF set in the last reel, where he will almost certainly achieve his 15 minutes in the spotlight, even if he is hauled away before the cameras start rolling.

This parting shot that anything may yet still be possible partially echoes the fairytale opening, as the camera seems to float above the city to the accompaniment of Alexandre Desplat's charming score, as it follows a bedecked horse-drawn carriage through the streets to a kitschy wedding palace. Yet, elsewhere, Garrone, production designer Paolo Bonfini and cinematographer Marco Onorato emphasise the mundanity of Arena's living and working conditions and the scene in which he skulks in the corner as the rest of the family gather to watch the launch of Grande Fratello hints fleetingly that events might take a much darker turn. But the rose-tinted cosiness soon returns and, with it, goes any chance of this holding up a mirror to a country whose current political superstar is a second-rate stand-up comedian.

Given that it was released in theatres around the time that Jorge Bergoglio was elected Pope Francis I, Pablo Trapero's White Elephant benefited considerably from a sudden fascination with all things Argentine. A certain distance, however reveals this film about a saintly priest working with the poor of Buenos Aires to be rather conventional in terms of character and plot. Nevertheless, it provides a fascinating insight into the relationship between the Catholic Church and the municipal authorities backed by over the last four decades by both militarist and democratic regimes. Once again demonstrating the empathy with the lower orders that made Lion's Den (2008) and Carancho (2010) so effective, this confirms Trapero as one of Argentina's most influential film-makers. But one can't help wondering what has happened to the edginess that made Crane World (1999), La Bonaerense (2002), La Familia Rodante (2004) and Born and Bred (2006) so cuttingly compelling.

The action opens dramatically, with liberal priest Ricardo Darín having a brain scan in a Buenos Aires hospital. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Amazonian jungle, Belgian missionary Jérémie Renier is being hunted down by paramilitaries and he weeps at own his cowardice as he cowers in the marshes while the villagers who had been sheltering him have their humble dwellings torched before they are pitilessly slaughtered. Exhausted and afraid, Renier is taken to a medical outpost and Darín travels across the country to bring him back to the Hidden City, a shanty town at the heart of the capital that has grown up around a half-completed hospital that is known to the locals as the White Elephant.

Renier is shown around by Darín's trusted associates, Walter Jakob and Mauricio Minetti, and is dismayed by the grinding poverty of the 30,000 residents and the threat their ramshackle homes face from repeated flooding. However, he doesn't quite get the entrenched nature of the rivalry between the different clans within the settlement, even though social worker Martina Gusmán explains the situation on a visit to the housing project on which everyone is co-operating, even though the council has fallen behind with its payments and the specialist construction workers are threatening to quit unless their wage arrears are met.

Ashamed of his unworthiness in the face of such suffering, Renier breaks down in confession and Darín urges him not to give up hope and to pray for guidance about what his new mission should be. Keen to make a good impression, Renier attends a drug counselling session and is delighted to get a laugh by teaching the chirpy Federico Barga and his pals some French swear words. However, he also learns about the feud between gang leaders Pablo Gatti and Susana Varela and, when he hears that the former's nephew has been killed in a street fight, he ignores the advice he has been given about not venturing into the shanties and is given safe passage into Varela's stronghold to retrieve the body.

Accompanying Renier through checkpoints and labyrinthine passageways, Jakob helps him carry the corpse in a wheelbarrow. But Darín is furious with Renier for breaching protocol and dealing directly with the druglords and he sulks at being reprimanded in front of his new friends. He throws himself into his duties and is distributing donations with Gusmán when they are caught in a gun battle and have to squeeze into a confined space for cover. A combination of lust and relief lands them in bed together. But they are soon inseparable and Renier admits that he would have liked to have had a family.

Gusmán is touched by his affection for Barga, who goes into rehab to beat his habit and is delighted when Renier comes to visit him. However, things are not going as smoothly on the building site, with the workers close to walking out. Gusmán discovers that the diocese has a stake in the company and pleads with Darín to convince Bishop Raul Ramos into helping out. But he is keener to get Darín to find proof of miracles so that a case can be made to Rome for the beatification of Carlos Mugica, a priest who worked in the slums in the 1970s and was murdered for his pains. Yet, even though Darín meets an old lady who claims to have been cured by Mugica, Ramos is reluctant to discuss industrial matters when he comes to the Hidden City to consecrate Julio Zarza as a new priest.

Shortly after this celebration, the police raid the enclave and Gatti is arrested. A seething Barga comes to the presbytery and threatens Darín's life for betraying his boss. But it turns out that Jakob is an undercover cop and Darín is distressed for trusting a man whose decency disguised his purpose. Moreover, he is powerless to defend him and is fully aware that Barga is responsible for his murder. The police also suspect Barga and use the unrest following the withdrawal of the contractors as an excuse to launch a second raid, which is repelled by residents barricading themselves into the site and announcing that they will finish the accommodation blocks themselves.

Gusmán supports the campaign. But her resolve waivers when she learns that Darín has collapsed during the stand-off and been rushed to hospital. He begs Renier to decide between Gusmán and God, as he wants him to take his place at the Hidden City, and he has to steel his courage when Gusmán tells him she has had enough of being overworked and under-appreciated. But, when Darín discharges himself to return to his parishioners, Renier knows where his duty lays and he helps him try to get the wounded Barga to a hospital on the other side of a police barricade. Despite Darín's entreaty for everyone to remain calm, shots are fired and Renier is bundled into the back of a squad car.

Several months later, he is released from an enforced retreat in a Patagonian monastery and Gusmán comes to meet him. They go on a march in memory of Darín and, as the picture ends, Renier sits in his empty office and wonders how he can possibly fill his shoes.

Exposing the corruption and lethargy of those at the top of the civic and church hierarchies, this is a hard-hitting and well-intentioned saga that is played with laudable conviction. However, while the script seeks to touch on as many contentious issues as possible, Trapero fails to prioritise them. Moreover, clichés undermine every aspect of the storyline, with Darín's incurable illness being as predictable as Renier and Gusmán's irresistible affair and the eruption of police-gang violence. Much more might have been made of the tenets of Liberation Theology and the comparison between Mugica (who operated under the Junta) and Darín, who finds that things have scarcely improved in the Kirchner era. But Trapero shies away from political and philosophical debate in focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of mere mortals, as they try to survive in what is essentially a hell on Earth. 

Exposing the corruption and lethargy of those at the top of the civic and church hierarchies, this is a hard-hitting and well-intentioned saga that is played with laudable conviction. However, while the script seeks to touch on as many contentious issues as possible, Trapero fails to prioritise them. Moreover, clichés undermine every aspect of the storyline, with Darín's incurable illness being as predictable as Renier and Gusmán's irresistible affair and the eruption of police-gang violence. Much more might have been made of the tenets of Liberation Theology and the comparison between Mugica (who operated under the Junta) and Darín, who finds that things have scarcely improved in the Kirchner era. But Trapero shies away from political and philosophical debate in focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of mere mortals, as they try to survive in what is essentially a hell on Earth. 

The repetitious use of Michael Nyman's insistent and rather bombastic score hardly helps matters, although Guillermo Nieto's cinematography and Juan Pedro de Gaspar's production design are exemplary. But what most lets this sincere picture down is the lurching tonal shift from social realist drama to high-octane thriller and, while Trapero stages the police crackdowns with chilling authenticity, too many of the villainous on either side of the law are ciphers. Consequently, this lacks the potency of such Brazilian studies of criminous penury as Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund's's City of God (2002).

Moving north, rough treatment of a different kind informs the week's second feature from Latin America. Following on from Japón (2002), Battle in Heaven (2005) and Silent Light (2007), Post Tenebras Lux (which translates as `light after darkness') is the fourth outing by the admired Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas, who won the Best Director prize at Cannes for this uncompromisingly achronological and often infuriatingly obscure reverie. Given that Reygadas spent some of his schooldays in Yorkshire and later worked as a lawyer for the European Union in Brussels, this could be considered vaguely autobiographical. It could also be described as an expressionist experiment were it not for the fact that one key scene name checks the French Cubist Marcel Duchamp, while others refer directly to the American landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church and obliquely to the Soviet film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky. Thus, it seems wisest to avoid seeking definitive meaning in this visually striking mélange and to surrender instead to its perplexing, but enticing dream logic.

Having grown up in the city as part of a large middle-class family, Juan (Adolfo Jiménez Castro) has installed wife Natalia (Natalia Acevedo) and their children Eleazar and Rutilia (Eleazar and Rutilia Reygadas) in a large house in the remote village of Morelos. Two year-old Rut is first seen wading through a waterlogged field surrounded by dogs, horses and cows as bolts of lightning rip through the twilight sky, while her older brother is the only member of the household to see a glowing red demon with human genitalia and a forked tail roaming the house at night carrying a workman's toolbox.

If these images suggest that the children are frightened of their father, they seem to have good cause if the scene showing him punishing one of his dogs is anything to go by. However, anger management doesn't appear to be an issue when he agrees to accompany recovering alcoholic handyman El Siete (Willebaldo Torres) to a meeting promoting a 12-step self-help programme. Yet, while Juan sits impassively as he listens to the confessional testimony of neighbours who all seem to hail from dysfunctional families, he later admits to El Siete that he is addicted to internet porn.

Bizarrely, this revelation is followed by footage of some English schoolboys preparing for a rugby match and this gives way to Juan recalling (or perhaps imagining) a visit to a unisex sauna in Brussels, where Natalia draws many admiring glances from the men sprawling naked around the Duchamp Room before she is brought to a shuddering orgasm by a stranger. This lasciviousness is soon thrown into relief, however, by a heated argument involving Juan and Natalia, in which he criticises her taste in curtains before accusing her of frigidity.

As we begin to wonder whether Juan is entirely in control of his faculties, we are treated to views of a family gathering at which he is surprised to see that his children have aged. Some time later, he catches El Siete and an accomplice trying to steal computer equipment from the house and gets shot in the chest when he tries to intervene. As he lies in bed, Juan thinks back to his happy childhood and, as Natalia sings Neil Young's `It's a Dream' at the piano, he begins to regret that neither his personality nor his life have not turned out the way he might have hoped.

As El Siete goes in search of the wife and children he has not seen for many years, we learn that Juan has died. The closing sequence returns us to the English playing field, as the members of the side beaten in a close match reach the conclusion that they will do better next time if they improve upon their teamwork.

Lustrously photographed by Alexis Zabé in the Academy aspect ratio, this has much in common with Léos Carax's Holy Motors, in that its pleasures come from finding a way to navigate through the bemusing content rather than deriving any deep message from it. Doubtless, Reygadas has points to make about contemporary Mexican society, family life and the impenetrable blur that everyone's hopes, fantasies and regrets eventually become. He will even have his reasons for the inclusion of the computer-generated caprine demon. But while it is possible to detect themes explored in earlier works - such as the disquiet felt at the intrusion of potent outsiders - what matters most here are the meticulously composed vistas, which make disconcerting use of distorting haloes to convey the deceptive solace of beauty and the depressing reality that not only can life never match up to our expectations, but that even fond memories can also occasionally prove treacherous.