Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 3/1/2019)

Much of the attention, however, has fallen on Anne's relationship with Sarah Churchill, the first Duchess of Marlborough. The first to latch on to this peculiar dependency was the French playwright, Eugène Scribe, whose 1840 stage work, Le Verre d'eau, has frequently been revisited on the screen since Mady Christians and Lucie Höflich played the monarch and her manipulator in Ludwig Berger's UFA silent, Ein Glas Wasser (1921), which was one of the many kostümfilme that enhanced the reputation of Weimar cinema. Liselotte Pulver and Hilde Krahl took the roles in Helmut Käutner's 1961 musical version, Das Glas Wasser, while Gunnel Lindblom and Ulla Sjöblom were paired in Gustaf Molander's 1960 Swedish television take, Ett Glas vatten. 

Elsewhere, a Hungarian channel teamed Judit Halász and Éva Ruttkai in Judit Halász's Saak-matt (1977), while Soviet viewers were treated to Tatyana Eremeeva  and Yelena Gogoleva and Natalya Belokhvostikova and Alla Demidova facing off in 1957 and 1979 small-screen interpretations of Stakan vody that were respectively directed by Aleksandr Usoltsev-Garf and M. Filimonova and Yuli Karasik. With the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2015 production of Helen Edmundson's play, Queen Anne, also being added to the mix, it's clear that the friendship between Mrs Morley and Mrs Freeman (as Anne and Sarah liked to call themselves) has received considerable dramatic attention down the years. 

Judging by the recent slew of reviews and articles, however, many appear to be labouring under the impression that Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, the screenwriters of Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite, have exposed a secret history of the last Stuart ruler of these islands. While this is clearly not the case, they have turned Davis's five-part Radio Four drama into a woundingly witty epigrammatic comedy, which merits comparison with such rapier romps as Patrice Leconte's Ridicule (1996), which was set in the 1780s at the Versailles of Louis XVI. 

Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) have been friends since childhood. In return for her unquestioning companionship, however, Sarah has amassed a number of key positions at court that enable her to control access to the crown. Consequently, Tory leader Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford (Nicholas Hoult), has to plead for an audience while his powdered and bewigged peers are wagering on a duck race. He is appalled that Anne has conferred a palace upon Sarah's spouse, John, Duke of Marlborough (Mark Gatiss) in gratitude for his victories over Louis XIV. But his protests are met with braying derision by his Whig counterpart, Sidney, 1st Earl of Godolphin (James Smith).

Arriving at court having landed in the mud after falling out of her carriage, Sarah's impecunious cousin, Abigail Hill (Emma Stone), asks for employment because her father has accrued ruinous debts. Initially, Abigail is the butt of cruel jokes in the kitchens. But, having been called to minister to the queen during an attack of gout, Abigail applies a herbal poultice that soothes the sores on Anne's legs and Sarah has her moved into her own room and spared her more demeaning chores. Indeed, Abigail quickly becomes a useful aide, as Sarah flits between magnificent rooms doling out favours to those in her good books and browbeats Anne into pursuing policies that suit her Whig whims. 

Abigail proves a ready student, however, and not only realises that she has caught the eye of the dashing Samuel Masham (Joe Alwyn), but she also makes sure that Anne knows that she applied the relieving ointment. Moreover, she acquires the invaluable skill of being in the right place at the right time. Thus, she is scouting the bookshelves in an upper gallery in the queen's rooms when Sarah seduces Anne in a bid to atone to offending her for dancing ostentatiously during a soirée. She also forgives Harley for pushing her down an incline during a nocturnal stroll in the garden to entertain his proposal to use her growing influence with the queen to lobby against the continuation of the expensive War of the Spanish Succession. 

Aware of her debt to Sarah, Abigail mentions his entreaty while they are out shooting and Sarah fires an unloaded pistol to remind her cousin where the  power in their relationship lies. Such is her preoccupation with orchestrating events in parliament and at court, however, that Sarah neglects the queen, whose needy mood swings pitch her into Abigail's orbit. Yet, while she recognises the benefits of having the queen's ear, she seems genuinely moved by Anne's revelation that she has named each of her 17 pet rabbits after the children she had lost with her husband, Prince George of Denmark. However, her attempt to boost the ruler's spirits with the music of a juvenile chamber orchestra backfires and Anne grabs a baby off one of her female courtiers in order to cradle it. 

While Abigail's motives for her kindliness towards the queen are left ambiguous, Harley's determination to use her for his own ends prompt him to persuade Masham to make a play for her. He also pounces upon Sarah's dwindling fortunes to prevent Anne from replenishing the war coffers by doubling a land tax that would hit the gentry hard. Consequently, when she is splattered by the blood of a bird that Abigail bags during their next shooting session, Sarah senses a shift in the balance of power from which she might not be able to recover. Her suspicions are confirmed when she finds Abigail naked in Anne's bed and discovers that she has been appointed a maid of the bedchamber after she has dismissed her for insubordination. 

The glare with which Abigail regards her erstwhile benefactress before stepping into Anne's carriage reveals the extent to which she has honed her own machinatory skills. But Sarah has too much to lose to relinquish her grip and exploits a shared chocolate bath with the queen to remind her of their shared childhood antics and Abigail has to resort to poisoned tea to buy some time. However, the indisposed Sarah is dragged into the woods by her horse and is detained at a brothel while she recovers, enabling Abigail to forge an alliance with Harley (while he is pelting a naked fellow party member with pomegranates) and a marriage of convenience with Masham, who is treated to a decidedly unromantic wedding night. Excited by the prospect of a clandestine wedding, Anne blesses the union and gives the newlyweds a suite at Kensington Palace.

When Sarah fails to return, however, and search parties find no trace of her, Abigail becomes concerned that she has gone too far. However, Godolphin comes to Sarah's rescue and she returns to court with a badly scarred left cheek. She slaps Abigail's face and vows to destroy her by having her banished. But Anne is frightened by her appearance and refuses to buckle when Sarah threatens to send letters discussing their intimacy to the newspapers. Indeed, she demands the return of her fallen favourite's pass-key and holds firm when Sarah speaks to her from the secret passage linking their apartments, even though she assures her that she has only ever had her best interests at heart and has always told her the truth rather than buttering her with false flattery. 

Anne watches from her window as Sarah's coach departs from the darkened courtyard and, soon afterwards, she informs parliament that Harley will replace Godolphin as her prime minister with instructions to sue for peace with France. The deposed statesman tries to plead Sarah's cause and suggests that she writes to the queen. But, even after she finally finds the right words, Sarah has her letter intercepted by Abigail, who wipes away a tear after tossing the parchment on the fire and starts plotting to have Anne believe that the Churchills have been siphoning off war funds to defraud her. 

Deciding that discretion is the better part of valour, Lady Marlborough suggests a trip abroad to her newly returned husband, while Abigail (who toys with the idea of crushing one of the royal pets with her shoe) also learns her place when a wildly distracted Anne orders her to rub her legs and the films end on their superimposed faces fading into a blurred image of hopping rabbits.

Despite smudging the timeline and taking the odd factual liberty, this is a reasonably reliable recreation of the battle for the heart and mind of Queen Anne between cousins adopting markedly different approaches to her conquest. Sufficiently confident in her long-established hegemony to admonish the monarch for being made up like a badger to greet the Russian ambassador, Sarah Churchill commits the kind of strategic error that would never have been made by her husband of underestimating her adversary. Failing to appreciate how social and sexual humiliation had hardened Abigail Hill, Sarah mistakes her meekness for weakness and pays the penalty for her complacency. However, Abigail also comes to recognise the difficulty of consistently pleasing a fickle mistress who is nowhere near as bovinely foolish as she sometimes appears. 

Taking their cues from Davis and McNamara's icily urbane script (complete with some unnecessarily anachronistic cursing), Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman not only excel in Sandy Powell's sublime costumes, but they also have the intelligence and generosity to realise that the picture will only succeed if they play off against each other rather than against each other. Lanthimos has acknowledged a debt to Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), but Bette Davis made little effort to hide the fact that she was trying to act Anne Baxter off the screen. Instead, Weisz and Stone challenge each other to up their game, as they compete to control the over-indulged, self-pitying and pitiably vulnerable Colman, who laps up the attention that goes some way to alleviating the agony of her dynastic deficiencies and physical deterioration. 

Rouged and decadently foppish, even as they pursue the gravest matters of state, the Whigs and Tories are unquestionably held up for comparison with both the self-serving rabbles currently occupying the front benches in the Commons and the sycophants and incompetents trying to appease the equally mercurial Donald Trump. But, as he demonstrated with Dogtooth (2009), Alps (2011), The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Lanthimos is more interested in scrutinising human nature than surveying the contemporary scene. Thus, this neo-Restoration comedy has much tonally and visually in common with Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) and Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) and Nightwatching (2007). 

Production designer Fiona Crombie makes sumptuous use of the houses at Hatfield and Ashridge in Hertfordshire, as well as Knole in Kent, while the Bodleian Library once again does a sterling job standing in for the Houses of Parliament. However, cinematographer Robbie Ryan employs oblique angles and distorting fish-eye lenses to impose an aura of dislocatory claustrophobia that makes Anne's court at once imposing and inane. This unsettling atmosphere is reinforced by the soundtrack shifts between classical pieces by Handel, JS and FW Bach, Vivaldi, Purcell, Schumann and Schubert, as well as by more recent composers like Olivier Messiaen, Luc Ferrari, Anna Meredith and Elton John, who provides harpsichord accompaniment over the closing credits with `Skyline Pigeon' from the 1968 Empty Sky album.

Those who find Lanthimos to be a bit cold and calculating may still be unconvinced. But there is much to admire in this baroque blend of period formality and satirical severity and it would be an injustice if any of the female leads missed out on an Oscar nomination. It would also be intriguing to sit in on a Q&A session with the director and his principals after an outdoor screening on a balmy summer night at Blenheim. Perhaps they could show a couple of the earlier Sarah-Anne showdowns, too?

Sixty years ago, Norway received its first Oscar nomination for Arne Skouen's Ni Liv/Nine Lives (1957). Photographed in a stark monochrome that emphasised the forbidding nature of the setting, this gripping drama recreated the remarkable feat of wartime resistance achieved by Jan Baalsrud, the cartographer-cum-commando who spent over a month in the frozen wilderness while waiting for the local partisans to smuggle him over the border into neutral Sweden after a coastal raid on the Nazi air control tower at Bardufoss had gone spectacularly wrong in the spring of 1943. Now, Dutch director Harald Zwart has revisited Baalsrud's exploits in The 12th Man, which has been scripted by Petter Skavlan (using the name Alex Boe), who was also responsible for Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg's Thor Heyerdahl biopic, Kon-Tiki (2012).

With the Germans using Norwegian ports to launch attacks on North Atlantic convoys, exiles were trained in Scotland for sabotage missions. However, Operation Martin Red in March 1943 was met with stern resistance at Toftefjord on the island of Rebbenesøya and Jan Baalsrud (Thomas Gullestad) was the only member of the party to evade capture. Having been shot in the foot, he swam by night across an expanse of freezing water to the next island of Værøy, where he is sheltered by compatriots living in remote houses by the water's edge. A midwife tends to his wounded foot and warns him that he needs to see a doctor quickly before frostbite and gangrene set in. 

Furious with senior officer Walter Wenders (Martin Kiefer) for failing to realise that there were 12 in the raiding party, Gestapo officer Kurt Stage (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) orders a manhunt and subjects prisoners to torture and prolonged periods in the icy saltwater to gauge whether it would have been possible for the fugitive to survive an attempted crossing. Such is his determination to prove his point and avoid reporting to SS chief Heinrich Himmler that he let Baalsrud slip through his fingers, Stage even plunges into the depths himself and is frustrated when he fails to last the supposed crossing time. 

Baalsrud is protected for the night by Morten Hansen (Marius Lien) and his wife, Ragnhild (Aggie Peterson), and young daughter, Margareth (Tiril Holthe Harnang). Ragnhild informs him that one of his group has already died and that the others are to be executed. But Margareth tries to cheer him up, after he tells her about his map-making travels and she makes him a drawing to keep in his pocket. A fishing boat takes him further along the coast and, after one crew member carries him ashore to keep him dry, Baalsrud is presented with a set of skis to ease his cross-country passage to Lyngseidet. 

After a week on the run, Baalsrud slips over near the checkpoint where Stage is on patrol and the German hands him his trapper hat before realising he's his quarry. He sends a plane to scour the snow-covered countryside and Baalsrud is caught in the ensuing avalanche. Waking in a snow-blind daze, he staggers on until he collapses into the hut where Marius Grønvoll (Mads Sjøgård Pettersen) lives with his sisters, Gudrun (Marie Blokhus) and Hanna (Julia Bache-Wiig), and the latter's son, Ottar (Sigurd Heine Krogh). They bandage his eyes and feet and Gudrun is asking about his travels in the hayloft on Day 13 when Stage and Wenders come to the farm to conduct a search. Fortunately, Baalsrud is able to hide from Stage, but the Grønvolls decide to move him on and transport him by sledge to a waiting boat that takes him across to a hut at Revdal. 

Dubbing his new lodging, `the Savoy Hotel', Baalsrud has nightmares about being captured and, as the pain in his foot grows worse, he begins to hallucinate and imagines himself dancing to a jazz band. As Stage (who has found Margareth's map in the snow) continues to search, the locals take pride in ministering to a man who has become a symbol of their resistance. However, Marius is prevented from returning to the hut and Baalsrud is forced to use his penknife to sever two blackened toes, one of which he presses between the planking of the wall. 

After 12 days in candlelit isolation, Baalsrud is relieved when Marius and three friends collect him on a sledge built from wood artfully hidden inside their rowing boat. The plan is to rendezvous with partisans from Manndalen, but they fail to arrive and Baalsrud is left under a large rock in a warm sleeping bag for them to find him. He draws strength from the Northern Lights glowing green in the night sky. But, a mix-up over locations leaves Baalsrud stranded and Marius has to return to the hideout with nurse Agnete Lanes (Mathilde Sofie Henriksen) to check he has survived. They are inspired by his fortitude and good humour, while Gudrun (who has developed a crush on him) can barely contain her joy when her brother brings back the good news. 

Despite the best efforts of Nils 'Nigo' Nilsen (Kim Jøran Olsen), they are forced to return to Manndalen in blizzard conditions and a desperate Baalsrud has a nightmare about the failed raid that resulted in him having to blow up a cargo of TNT. He wakes to find his foot being dressed by Aslak Fossvoll (Trond Peter Stamsø Munch) and Baalsrud tells him how the mission was betrayed by quisling Håkon Sørensen (Nikolas Steffensen Krane). However, he is determined to make it to Sweden to repay the courage of those who have helped him and he dreams Margareth pays him a visit in his cave to urge him to ensure that their sacrifices have not been in vain. 

It's now May and the snows are starting to melt. Moreover, Stage is becoming increasingly fraught, as he has filed a false report that Baalsrud has been accounted for and he is dismayed to see his feat being extolled in a Nazi newsreel. On Day 59, Baalsrud is placed on another sleigh so that the Baal brothers can smuggle him across the frontier with their reindeer herd. Four days later, they lash him to the strongest animal and make a charge to cross at Kilpisjärvi. In his haste to leave the Savoy, however, Marius had left Gudrun's scarf behind and they are captured when they return to retrieve it. Thus, Stage is able to intercept them and interrogate them, as Baalsrud hurtles towards safety. 

Were it not the truth, the climactic miracle involving a doughty white reindeer and Christophe Beck's pulsating score would feel faintly preposterous. But Zwart stages the dash for Sweden with a Hollywood flourish that will have Manchester United fans believing more fervently than ever in messianic Norwegians. A fade to black takes us back to Shetland, where Baalsrud meets the recruits he is preparing to train in order to end the madness and closing captions inform us that Stage was executed for war crimes in 1947, while Marius and Agnete raised five children on the family farm and Gudrun finally married in the 1960s. 

As befits a reluctant hero who always believed that those who sheltered him displayed the greater courage, Baalsrud is self-effacingly played by Thomas Gullestad. But, while he suffers with disconcerting conviction, his character is so sketchily drawn that he becomes something of what Alfred Hitchcock would have called a MacGuffin. Despite being suitably hissable, Jonathan Rhys Meyers is similarly unable to flesh out Kurt Stage, as too little is made of both his sadistic brutality and the dilemma he faces about making a false report to the Nazi hierarchy. Indeed, considering this is essentially an Arctic thriller, there's little sense of jeopardy, as Zwart and Skavlan place more emphasis on Baalsrud's superhuman survival instincts than the peril faced by himself and his protectors. 

Given that the Dutchman has One Night at McCool's (2001), Agent Cody Banks (2003) and such superfluous retools like The Pink Panther 2 (2009) and The Karate Kid (2010) on his filmography, this represents a marked improvement. Geir Hartly Andreassen's photography is exceptional and he ably conveys the implacability of the landscape and the magnitude of the task facing Baalsrud's deliverers. However, while he overdoes the visual trickery in suggesting his disorientation, Zwart makes effective use of the confined spaces in the cabin, under `Gentleman's Rock' and in the cave. But those familiar with Ni Liv - which was voted the greatest Norwegian film of all time in 1991 - will continue to plump for the original and the best.

The National Film Theatre launches 2019 with a two-part retrospective examining the modernist tendencies of Michelangelo Antonioni and, to help promote the season, the BFI has sent The Passenger (1975) back into cinemas. Scripted by Antonioni, Mark Peploe and Peter Wollen, this existential thriller retains a disconcerting sense of unease that feels as relevant in its discussion of identity, fate, perception and clashing cultures as it did four decades ago. The story requires considerable concentration, as Antonioni had delighted in obfuscation since L'avventura (1960). But this works best when seen in conjunction with the other two pictures that Antonioni produced for MGM and Carlo Ponti, Blow-Up (1966) and Zabriskie Point (1970).

While in Chad to interview rebel fighters in the ongoing civil war, American television journalist David Locke (Jack Nicholson) gets friendly with fellow hotel guest David Robertson (Charles Mulvehill). In order to complete his documentary, Locke heads into the desert, only for his Land Rover to get stuck in the dunes and he has to walk back to the hotel. Stumbling up to his lodging, he is dismayed to find that Robertson has died of a heart attack in the adjacent room. Seizing the opportunity to escape from his own dismal routine, Locke decides to switch identities and listens back to a tape recording of their first conversation (complete with a single-shot balcony flashback) while exchanging their passport photos under a grinding ceiling fan. Then, posing as the Englishman, Locke checks up on flights to Europe and reports his own demise at the reception desk. 

Back in London, Rachel (Jenny Runacre) is shocked to learn of her husband's death and feels worse than ever about the fact that she had been cheating on him with Stephen (Steven Berkoff). She contacts Locke's friend at the BBC, Martin Knight (Ian Hendry), in the hope that he can put her in touch with Robertson and she can learn something about her spouse's final hours. But `Robertson' has flown to Europe and uses the deceased's appointment book to track down a German contact (Manfred Spies), who introduces him inside a small church to Achebe (Ambroise Bia), who is acting as an intermediary between the Chadian rebels and the arms supplier for whom Robertson had worked. He presents the paperwork he had found in Robertson's locker and apologises for the fact that some anti-aircraft guns aren't available. When Achebe seems satisfied, the German hands over an envelope full of cash.

Suddenly flush with money, but still intrigued by Robertson's exotic lifestyle, Locke removes the false moustache he has been sporting and follows the dead man's itinerary by travelling to Barcelona. While mooching around the city, however, he almost runs into Knight, who is searching for Robertson in the hope he can tell him something about his friend's demise. Hiding behind a street stall selling caged birds, Locke ducks into a building designed by Antonio Gaudi and gets talking to a young architecture student (Maria Schneider). He confesses he is living on the edge and she is amused by his aura of mystery. Thus, when he asks her if she will go to his hotel to collect his belongings so he can avoid Knight, she readily agrees and they drive off into the country together in his open-top car. 

While Locke and the Girl sleep together in a chic hotel, Rachel watches covert footage of a revolutionary leader being assassinated, as well as her husband's  interview with a Western-educated witch doctor (James Campbell) who is insulted by his patronising line of questioning. She takes receipt of Locke's belongings and is playing the taped conversation with Robertson when she opens his passport and is taken aback by the stamped photograph of a complete stranger. Realising that her husband is in danger from the enemies Robertson has made with his gun-running, Rachel flies to Spain to warn him, while Locke and his `passenger' head to the small town of Osuna near Seville. He is concerned for her safety after they are questioned by the police and he suggests that she meets him in Tangiers to throw their pursuers off the track. 

But the Girl remains loyal and, having deflected the cops, books them a double room in the Hotel de las Glorias. Locke is grateful, but tries to persuade her that she would be better off alone and she wanders into the street while he takes a nap on the bed. The camera peers through the bars on the window, as the Girl wanders across the dusty square, as a taxi pulls up and an African man (Jean-Baptiste Tiemele) gets out and strolls into the hotel. A boy plays with a dog, as the camera passes through the iron bars and turns back on itself as a police car carrying Rachel draws up. She follows some uniformed officers into the hotel and sees her husband lying motionless on the mattress. Turning away, Rachel claims not to know the man, who is identified as Robertson by the Girl. As dusk falls on the hotel, the camera takes a last look at the scene, as guitar music plays on the soundtrack bearing a resemblance to Anton Karas's zither theme for Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949).

Such is the dexterity of the in-camera flashback and the penultimate seven-minute plan séquence that much of the assessment of this intriguing picture has been dominated by the plaudits for Antonioni's artistry. Luciano Tovoli's camerawork is often inspired and it's fascinating to learn how Antonioni had production designer Piero Poletto build the Hotel de las Glorias from scratch and fit the bedroom window with hinged bars so that the gyroscope-steadied camera could pass through and be transferred from a ceiling track to an external crane. But, following on from Antonioni's own digression into documentary with Chung Kuo Cina (1972),  this is also a tense psychological drama that reflects both the destabilisation of the Developing World and the powerlessness and indifference of the old imperial powers and the United States. 

Moreover, the presence of film theorist Peter Wollen among the scenarists confirms that this is also a conscious attempt on Antonioni's behalf to break with the conventions of the classical Hollywood narrative and place greater emphasis on images than on dialogue. That he embarked upon it with one of the biggest stars in the world - who was about to win the Oscar for Best Actor for Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) - says much for the Italian's subterfugal audacity, as he questioned the very nature of acting in having Jack Nicholson assimilate his character by staring into the comatose Charles Mulvehill's eyes before embarking upon the ultimate `Method' challenge. 

Darkly deadpan, Nicholson is never forced to justify his reckless decision and he seems to wander through the convoluted scenario with the assurance of a sleepwalker. It's harder to understand why Maria Schneider's student would be so drawn to him on such a short acquaintance and her readiness to help someone patently up to his neck in an identity crisis contrasts with the self-serving confusion of adulterous wife Jenny Runacre (who bears a marked resemblance to Antonioni's longtime muse, Monica Vitti). 

Forever shifting perspective to prevent the audience from getting to know (and, therefore, attempt to understand) Nicholson, Antonioni and co-editor Franco Arcalli make frequent use of doubles, spirals and symbols connected with flight (none more dramatic than the top shot of Nicholson with his arms outstretched as he hangs out of the cable car gondola as it passes over the sea). Reinforcing the sense that this daredevil act of aerialism could end in tragedy at any moment, this image reminds viewers of the slenderness of the thread by which we are ourselves suspended and that moribund reality is often a wiser option than macho fantasy.

Two decades have passed since The New Eve (1999) allowed UK audiences to become acquainted with French director Catherine Corsini, who was making her third feature after Poker (1987) and Lovers (1994). Yet, while subsequent titles like La Répétition (2001), Leaving (2009) and Summertime (2015) were shown here, The Very Merry Widows (2003), Les Ambitieux (2006) and Three Worlds (2012) were not widely distributed. The vagaries of the British distribution system are always somewhat baffling. But, such is the potency and poignancy of Corsini's adaptation of Christine Angot's semi-autobiographical bestseller, An Impossible Love, that is would seem that a retrospective at somewhere like the Ciné Lumière is long overdue. 

As narrator Chantal (Jehnny Beth) takes up the story in the central provincial town of Châteauroux in 1958, Rachel Steiner (Virginie Efira) is a 26 year-old secretary who lives with her mother (Catherine Morlot) and younger sister, Gaby (Iliana Zabeth), and is considered past the ideal age for marriage. However, while lunching in a café with her best friend, Nicole (Coralie Russier), Rachel meets Philippe Arnold (Niels Schneider), a Parisian translator at the nearby US Army base, who sweeps her off her feet at a dance. He introduces her to literature, art cinema and sex. But, while he meets Rachel every day from work and hires cars to take her away for the weekend, Philippe has no intention of marrying the half-Jewish Rachel, even though he professes his love for her. 

On their last day before he returns to Paris, Rachel becomes pregnant in a woodland glade and has to content herself with letters until Philippe agrees to meet her for a holiday during the summer. They nearly drive off a winding coastal road when the bonnet of his rented car flies up, but he doesn't regard the close call as a sign that their destinies are entwined and Rachel gives birth to Chantal (Ambre Hasaj) alone in Châteauroux in February 1959. Indeed, she has to travel to Paris to give a letter to his father (Didier Sandre) because he has relocated to Strasbourg without leaving a forwarding address. Eventually, he agrees to spend some holiday time with her and they sleep together while he gets to know the three year-old Chantal. But he drifts away after his mother's suicide and it's only when Rachel loses her own mother soon after Chantal (Sasha Alessandri-Torrès Garcia) turns six that he pays them another visit. Unfortunately, he has come to break the news that he has married a German doctor's daughter and Rachel orders him to leave. 

Unable to afford repairs to her mother's house, she moves into an apartment on a new estate and promises Chantal that they will be happy. She shows her old photographs of a happy trip to Nice with Philippe and, even though she is disappointed that he has never recognised her as his own, she ensures that her daughter has a good opinion of her father. Seven years pass before she hears from him again, however, by which time Rachel has a new job at a psychiatric hospital and Chantal (Estelle Lescure) has become an intelligent teenager, who is thrilled by a school trip to Venice. When Philippe suggests a meeting in Strasbourg, Rachel agrees and Chantal is overwhelmed by his charm and compliments, as he shows them around his adopted city. 

On the last morning, however, Philippe comes to Chantal's room as she is packing and her expression has changed from adoration to anguish when Rachel comes to collect her. Nothing is said and Philippe recognises Chantal as his child shortly before they move to Reims for Rachel's new job. It's a wrench leaving Gaby and Nicole behind and Rachel is diagnosed with depression after she starts arguing with Chantal, who has come to see her mother as a provinciale after spending cultural weekends away with Philippe. For a while, Rachel perks up after she meets Franck (Gaël Kamilindi), an aspiring photographer from Mauritius. However, he is more interested in the 15 year-old Chantal and they become lovers. Moreover, he informs Rachel that Philippe has been abusing Chantal for years and, while her mother opts against raising the subject, she decides to sever all ties with her father around the time of her 16th birthday. 

He had written to express his disappointment at the estrangement, but respects her wishes, as Chantal (Jehnny Beth) has a daughter of her own with Cédric (Arthur Iqual). Rachel has also married Alain (Simon Bakhouche) and proves indifferent when Chantal breaks the news that Philippe is in hospital with Alzheimer's. She is more concerned for her daughter when she calls with the news that Philippe has died, as she had come to realise how important he had remained for Chantal after she and Alain had bumped into them at the Rodin Museum. 

But, shortly their bereavement, Chantal become irritated when Rachel questions her decision to leave Cédric and five years pass after she abruptly orders her mother to leave in the middle of supper. They reunite in Paris, when Chantal asks why Rachel had never suspected the incestuous abuse she had endured. Rachel regrets being blinded by her own feelings of rejection and is surprised when Chantal suggests that Philippe had treated them both so badly because he was punishing Rachel for being Jewish and lower class. However, she has finally realised that he cannot be allowed to dictate the terms of their relationship and the film fades with mother and daughter vowing to make the most of the time left to them. 

As one of France's most provocative writers and media commentators, Christine Angot is no stranger to the dark themes explored here and in Claire Denis's Let the Sunshine In, which she co-scripted. But, even British viewers unfamiliar with her oeuvre will recognise the plangent pain permeating this intense and often disconcerting saga. Yet, while it makes sense for Corsini and co-writer Laurette Polmanss to have the adult Chantal narrate events (and, thus, reinforce the Angot connection), the linking passages often feel more intrusive than instructive, especially for those unaware of the fact that Jehnny Beth (who acted under the name Camille Berthomier before becoming the singer of the post-punk band, Savages) is consciously mimicking Angot's look, character traits and delivery style.

Moreover, it seems odd to give the often-estranged Chantal such detailed knowledge of her mother's past, as well as such a keen insight into her psyche. Nevertheless, the increasingly impressive Virginie Efira gives a poised performance as the small-town girl whose readiness to accept the defects in both her lover and her child occasionally blinds her to the truth about their personalities and their relationship. Niels Schneider is equally assured as the self-serving intellectual cad, even though he sometimes seems a touch too impassively internalised, while newcomer Estelle Lescure capably switches from being gushingly accepting to spikily capricious, as Chantal learns to deal with her hideous secret. 

Directing efficiently, but more impersonally than usual, Corsini keeps the story moiling across the decades. She is ably assisted by Toma Bacqueni's production design, Virginie Montel's costumes and Jeanne Lapoirie's camerawork, as well as by Grégoire Hetzel's restrained score and Fréderic Baillhaiche's steady editing. Yet, for all her shrewd insights into the changing nature of French attitudes towards gender, class, race and sexuality, Corsini self-deprecatingly allows Angot's voice to ring out loudly and clearly.

There have been a few landmark movies since Victor Halperin launched the undead sub-genre with White Zombie in 1932. Among the most notable are
Jacques Tourneur's Val Lewton-produced chiller, I Walked With a Zombie (1943), George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978), the Spanish duo of Jorge Grau's The Living Dead At the Manchester Morgue (1974) and Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza's [Rec] (2007), Peter Jackson's Braindead (1992), Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later (2002), Robin Campillo's Les Revenants (2004) and Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland (2009). Many would credit Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004), as a turning point in zomcom history. But its plodding plotting and humdrum humour are exposed by the invention and audacity of writer-director-editor Shinichiro Ueda's debut feature, One Cut of the Dead. 

Director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) is furious with leading lady Chinatsu (Yuzuki Akiyama) for needing 42 takes to show convincing terror at being stalked by the zombie being played by her lover, Ko (Kazuaki Nagaya). During a break, make-up artist Nao (Harumi Syuhama) tries to reassure the stressed actress that she is doing her best and that Takayuki is being unreasonable. As they are filming in a disused water filtration plant, Nao confides that the Japanese military used the premises for secret rejuvenation experiments and the pair are spooked when they hear what sounds like a shriek coming from outside. 

As the camera follows the boom operator outside, we see assistant director Kasahara (Hiroshi Ichihara) being attacked in bright sunshine by a real zombie he mistakes for an extra. His arm is wrenched off and tossed back inside, where Nao is wondering whether it's a realistic prop before Kasahara comes looking for it. Ko manages to usher the assistant and another zombie outdoors, but Takayuki is delighted by Chinatsu's response to the attacks and he urges the cinematographer to keep filming so that he can get some authentic fright reactions. 

On hearing someone calling for help at one of the doors, Chinatsu lets them in and, when they turn out to be a ravening monster, Nao decapitates them with a single swing of an axe and urges the lovers to make for the car. Once inside, however, they discover that Kasahara has the keys and Chinatsu has to fight him off and flee along a dark corridor with a twisted ankle in order to get hold of his satchel in the hope of finding the car keys. Ko rescues her from an ambush and Nao allows them back inside the plant via the back door.

As Chinatsu is limping and has a cut on her calf, Nao decides she is a threat and chases her with the axe. Bursting through the door, Chinatsu seeks sanctuary on the roof and is relieved when Koo overpowers Nao and buries the blade in her skull. However, with Takayuki still following her to capture her expressions, Chinatsu hides out in a tool shed. While cowering behind a barrel, she realises that the gash on her leg is actually a special effect and she peels it off with a sigh of relief. But she is quickly confronted by another zombie and hurtles into the sunlight to find her boyfriend. 

He is still on the roof and Chinatsu finds herself re-enacting the scene she couldn't get right, with Takayuki urging her to feel the fear. She beheads Ko and turns the axe on her director (in a savage off-camera assault) before stumbling through the grounds of the filtration plant. Suddenly, the title and closing credits appear on screen and the brilliantly bravura first act ends, with Chinatsu standing in a pentagram daubed on the roof and looking up impassively into the camera. 

A call of `Cut!' takes us back a month, as Takayuki is approached by two executives from the newly formed Zombie Channel, Shinichiro Kosawa (Shinichiro Osawa) and Yoshiko Sasahara (Yoshiko Takehara), to make an hour-long live film in a single take. He thinks they're joking, even though he has earned a reputation while making ads and pop promos for being `fast, cheap, but average'. But they are deadly serious and we pass through the opening credits for Ueda's film before we discover that Takayuki and wife Harumi (Harumi Shuhama) have a daughter named Mao (Mao), who has just lost her job with a film crew for mishandling the mother of a little girl required for a crying sequence. In a bid to cheer her up, Takayuki casts her favourite actor, Kazuaki Kamiya (Kazuaki Nagaya), in his zombie movie after seeing her reaction to a TV interview. 

Despite Nao having misgivings about the project, Yakayuki signs up and meets Kazuaki and pop star leading lady Aika Matsumoto (Yuzuki Akiyama) at the run through. However, he is wholly unimpressed with the actors cast to play the dorky assistant Hiroshi Yamanouchi (Hiroshi Ichihara), alcoholic cameraman Manabu Hosoda (Manabu Hosoi), diarrhoea-suffering sound man Shunsuke Yamagoe (Shuntaro Yamazaki) and the pair playing himself, Daigo Kurooka (Satoshi Iwago), and his make-up woman, Mai Aida (Kyoko Takahashi), who has had to bring her baby into work because she couldn't find a carer. While they take a break because the infant is bawling, Aika reveals that her agency won't let her be covered in blood or vomit, as it will be bad for her pop princess image. Kazuaki also has a problem with one of the zombies using an axe, as the undead are not supposed to be able to handle tools. 

Yakayuki tries to look as if he's in control, as he takes the cast and crew through the storyboards and rehearses some camera moves with cinematographer Taniguchi (Takuya Fujimura) and his assistant, Saki Matsuura (Sakina Asamori), who keeps making suggestions about using zoom shots and offering to operate the handheld rig because he has back ache. Meanwhile, Harumi is learning self-defence from a video course (which encourages the use of the word `pom' whenever executing a move) and Mao tells her that she should take up acting again because she always gets bored when she attempts a new hobby. 

Back on the set, Shunsuke checks with assistant Junna Kurihawa (Ayana Goda) that there will  be adequate toilet facilities at the location, while Kazuaki keeps finding flaws with the script. Yakayuki also gets chatting to Manabu, who is attempting his latest comeback after problems with alcohol. He is touched by his struggle and sobs into his own hooch that evening, prompting Harumi to exploit the fact he is feeling vulnerable to ask him for a favour. 

Having persuaded her husband to let her and Mao watch the shoot, Harumi finds herself being cast as the make-up lady and Yakayuki has to step in and play the director after Daigo and Mai (who are secretly having an affair) are involved in a car crash en route to the location. Meanwhile, Manubu gets the shakes just before the broadcast begins, while Shunsuke gets the trots. Taniguchi also has back spasms and Saki offers to take over the camera, but he insists he is fine. Shinichiro and Yoshiko are fine with the switches and commend Yakayuki on his intensity in the scene in which he admonishes Chinatsu for requiring 42 takes. 

It doesn't take long for things to start going wrong, however, as Manabu finds a bottle of booze and is too drunk to respond to his cue. Therefore, Harumi is forced to improvise the business with Nao showing Chinatsu and Ko her self-defence moves (complete with the exclamation, `Pom!'). But Yakayuki gets Manabu upright in time to attack Kasahara and the liquid that sprays his face is genuine vomit, which leaves the actor playing the AD squealing in distress as he is fitted with his severed arm. Shunsuke then tries to bale out of his scene because he needs the loo and Yakayuki has to block his path, while remaining in character and relying on assistant Junna and continuity clerk Miki Yoshino (Miki Yoshida) to keep the show on the road. 

However, when Miki starts to flounder, Mao jumps in and suggests that Shunsuke should be turned into a zombie to take advantage of the fact that he is moving awkwardly having just soiled himself. He blunders through a door in time to have his head sliced off and Saki gets her chance to take over the camera when Taniguchi puts his back out and she makes extravagant use of shaki-cam and zooms during Chinatsu's fight with Kasahara over the car keys. 

Meanwhile, Mao reveals that her mother had to quit acting because she would lose herself in roles and ditch the script. As she speaks, Harumi knocks Yakayuki out of the way to charge on to the roof after Ko and Chinatsu and Saki has to keep the camera fixed on the latter screaming while Yakayuki incapacitates his wife and leaves her with an axe buried in her head to keep her from ruining the last part of the film. Using cue cards to give the actors instructions, he gets round the fact that the crane for the final shot has been pushed off the roof by forming the cast and crew into a human pyramid and passes the camera to Mao at the summit to get the top shot down on to the bemused Chinatsu. 

As the show ends, producer Yoshiko claps her hands in glee at how well it all went, while the cast and crew beam at each other with relief. Having had the pyramid brainwave, Mao shows her father a treasured photograph of her younger self holding a camera while being perched on his shoulders and he grins with pride. The credits roll and we see shots of Ueda's crew beavering away behind the scenes to position dummy corpses, apply fake gore and guide the camera around the set to ensure that, while this may be fast and cheap, it is anything but average. 

Played with unassuming alacrity by a cast that never betrays the fact it's in on the joke, the action slows down a touch in the central section following the impeccably choreographed 37-minute `found footage' opening. But Ueda is wise to take his time over setting up the characters and situations that pay such rich dividends in the prolonged reveal, which feels like a magician delighting in letting the audience in on the secrets of a particularly extravagant trick.

Abetted by the committed thesping of Harumi Syuhama, Takayuki Hamatsu and Yuzuki Akiyama, the nimble camerawork of Takeshi Sone and canny make-up effects created by Kazuhide Shimohata, Ueda has created one of the boldest, slickest and most amusing horror comedies of recent times. Such is the deftness and intricacy of the conceit that a single viewing does insufficient justice to the ingenuity of the structure and the precision with which the gags are set up and executed. As writer and editor, Ueda has complete control over the organised chaos unfolding on screen and it will be fascinating to see what he comes up with for his notoriously tricky second picture.