A decade has passed since anyone adapted one of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's stories for the screen. But, while Stephen Frears's Chéri (2009) feels as distant a memory as Vincente Minnelli's Oscar-winning Gigi (1958), the life of the Belle Époque writer who took on a chauvinist literary establishment feels irresistible in the age of Time's Up and Me Too. Thus, Wash Westmoreland has finally been able to realise a biopic that he and late-lamented partner Richard Glatzer had been trying to stage for several years. 

With acclaimed writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz (who recently explored overlapping themes in Sebastián Lelio's Disobedience) helping polish the script, Colette represents a marked improvement on both Danny Huston's Becoming Colette (1991), which paired Mathilda May and Klaus Maria Brandauer as Colette and Henry Gauthier-Villars, and Westmoreland and Glatzer's own The Last of Robin Hood (2013), which starred Kevin Kline as the ageing Errol Flynn. Some will detect similarities with Tim Burton's Big Eyes (2014), which featured Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as painter Margaret Keane and her controlling husband, Walter. But this affecting example of artistic collaboration approaches the topics of female repression, marital abuse, sexual liberation and art's ability to shape society in an accessible and distinctive manner.

In 1892, Henry Gauthier-Villars (Dominic West) takes the train from Paris to Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye in Burgundy to visit Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) and her parents, Sido (Fiona Shaw) and Jules (Robert Pugh). It's his fourth visit of the year and `Willy' brings Colette an Eiffel Tower snow globe as a gift. But, while Sido and Jules discuss their marriage prospects after waving Willy off to the station, he rendezvous with Colette in a nearby barn and she writes to him that night of her pride at having captured the heart of her father's old army buddy. 

Within a year, the married Colette is being introduced to such members of Willy's social circle as Madame de Caillvavet (Arabella Weir) and Count Muffat (Máté Haumann) and being judged for wearing provincial attire at a soirée. She takes pity on a tortoise being exhibited on a platter and informs Willy that the demimonde is full of pretentious and talentless nobodies. However, she is fond of Veber (Ray Panthaki) and Schwob (Al Weaver), two of the numerous ghost writers that Willy employs to churn out the theatre reviews and short stories he publishes under his own nom de plume. Colette even writes his correspondence for him. But she returns to mother after catching him with a courtesan and he comes to plead for forgiveness.

As Willy is in dire financial straits, he asks Colette to attempt a novel in 1895 and she bases Claudine At School on her own experiences. However, he rejects the manuscript for being too sweet and sincere when his readers require racy storylines. Moreover, he gets jealous at when he finds Colette flirting at Madame de Caillavet's salon with her son, Gaston (Jake Graf), and his new wife, Jeanne (Janine Harouni). But he is intrigued when Colette declares an interest in Jeanne rather than Gaston and he intimates that he might be prepared to turn a blind eye if Colette chose to stray in this direction. 

Three years later, with Willy so deeply in debt that bailiffs call at the apartment. As he empties a desk about to be repossessed, however, he finds Colette's manuscript and they work on it together to replace the more literary passages with some spice. Publisher Ollendorff (Julian Wadham) is delighted with the result and the couple not only enjoy bestselling success, but also spark a vogue for Claudine and her saucy antics. Having bought Colette an abandoned house in the country, Willy locks her in the study until she has completed Claudine in Paris and, despite her fury at being exploited and having her own contribution concealed, she complies and they score another hit. 

By 1900, they are the toast of Paris and a chance meeting in the Bois de Boulogne sparks an affair between Colette and Georgie Raoul-Duval (Eleanor Tomlinson), the bored American wife of an elderly munitions tycoon. It doesn't take long before Willy makes his own move on Georgie and Colette begins writing about the ménage after she sees her husband on her lover's balcony. Georgie's husband hears about the text and offers Ollendorf a sizeable sum to torch the entire print run. But, while Colette and George squabble, Willy merely retains the copyright and offers the property to another publisher and makes plans to bring Claudine to the stage, 

The role is taken by Polaire (Aiysha Hart), who sports bobbed hair and has a North African exoticism that makes Claudine all the more irresistible to the novelty hungry public. Willy talks Colette into cutting hair flowing locks and posing for photographs, as a range of merchandise takes the name of Claudine into every fashionable home in France. During one boisterous night on the town, Colette meets Matilde de Morny, Marquise de Belbeuf (Denise Gough), who is known as `Missy' and wears men's clothing. She realises that Colette is the voice behind the books and urges her to go public, especially as Willy has become obsessed with a fan named Meg (Shannon Tarbet), who dons a pinafore dress to seduce him. 

When Willy refuses to put Colette's name on the next Claudine volume, she stalks into the streets in a three-piece suit. Moreover, she starts taking acting and movement classes with Wague (Dickie Beau) and Willy cuts a deal for her to perform with Missy at the Moulin Rouge, where they cause a sensation in 1904 by sharing the first same-sex kiss on the Paris stage. However, during her father's funeral, Colette ponders the idea of divorcing Willy, as he wants to sell the house at Besançon to clear off his debts. She is virtually living with Missy and Sido urges her to make a clean break. But she feels sorry for Willy having to scrape a living with Meg as his new scribe and goes along with his idea to make a Claudine film. 

On a tour of the provinces with Wague's music-hall company, Colette bumps into Ollendorf, who breaks the news that Willy has sold the rights to the Claudine novels for five thousand francs. Livid that Willy has gone behind her back, Colette is also heartbroken that he has failed to recognise that the books were the only thing keeping them together and she accuses him of killing their baby before walking out on him. He blusteringly tries to apologise and forbids her to leave and seeks to hurt her by having secretary Paul Héon (Johnny K. Palmer) burn the exercise books in which she had written down her memories, emotions and opinions. 

But he defies his master and Colette similarly rebels in refusing to speak to Willy after their divorce. Moreover, she uses her own name to publish The Vagabond about her acting experiences and is sufficiently lauded for her to become the most celebrated female writer in the history of French literature. A closing montage of monochrome photographs conveys her chic and steel, while her gaze reveals an intelligence, determination and vivacity that is largely absent from Keira Knightley's spirited, but typically mannered performance. Tending to set her face rather than suggest inner feeling through her eyes, Knightley looks the part without ever living it and, consequently, the film often feels more like a series of elegant tableaux vivants than an insightful psychological study. 

Having started out in the porn industry using the name Wash West, Westmoreland has come a long way since he and Glatzer debuted with The Fluffer (2001). But, while they impressed with Quinceañera (2006) and Still Alice (2014), which earned Julianne Moore the Academy Award for Best Actress, the duo have never been noted for over-stressing their socio-political message. Thus, while this flirts with modernity with its references to electric lighting, tandem bicycles and moving pictures, it plays frustratingly safe in its discussion of gender politics, with the result this adheres more closely to the Merchant-Ivory heritage strand than the punkier depictions of LGBTQ+ issues in other films made by co-producer Christine Vachon.  

Despite Westmoreland's light (fun de siècle) touch, Knighley's cause is hardly helped by the fact that Dominic West contributes such a bristling performance as Willy, as he uses the shoddy standards of the times to justify his monstrous betrayals in the boudoir and the study. Moreover, his tipsy table-top recitative about Claudine's charms leaves Knightley's supposedly salacious sarcophagus dance in the shade. Abetted by Luca Zucchetti's slick montages, the script limns the fin-de-siècle morality and mores rather more adeptly than it sketches the secondary characters, the majority of whom are paper thin. Even Missy is scarcely fleshed out and, as a result, her relationship with Colette seems inspired more by capricious whim than Sapphic passion. However, the lack of nuance is primarily down to Knightley's limitations, as, while Gilles Nuttgens's camera ensures that she looks magnificent in Andrea Flesch's costumes against Michael Carlin's nattily Impressionistic interiors, the intensity of Thomas Adès's brooding score exposes the surficial nature of her acting technique.

There was a time when the latest film by Robert Guédiguian would be assured a UK release. However, several recent outings have been confined to the festival circuit and it's good to see him return to the arthouse fold with The House By the Sea (aka The Villa). A flashback late in the story suggests that this is a sequel to the 1986 drama, Ki lo sa?, which reveals just how long Guédiguian has been collaborating with wife Ariane Ascaride and actors Gérard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. But no knowledge of the earlier film is required to enjoy a family saga that also has much to say about French attitudes to the migrant crisis and the rising tide of xenophobia that is helping to polarise political debate.

Maurice (Fred Ulysse) has become tired of seeing the houses being sold around the Mediterranean fishing village where he has run a brasserie named Le Mange-Tour for much of his life. When he suffers a debilitating stroke, son Armand (Gérard Meylan) summons siblings Joseph (Jean-Pierre Darrousin) and Angèle (Ariane Ascaride) to his bedside. She is a successful actress and has not been home in many years, while he has recently retired and is reluctant to accept that his May-December romance with fiancée Bérangère (Anaïs Demoustier) is coming to an end. 

Their return coincides with Yvan (Yann Trégouët) popping in to see parents Martin (Jacques Boudet) and Suzanne (Geneviève Mnich), who are fretting about their future because the children of their late landlord have tripled their rent and they refuse to let Yvan pay it for them, even though he is making excellent money as a doctor. He has always had a crush on Angèle and drops in to say hello before he leaves. They have just eaten one of Maurice's signature dishes and Yvan informs them that he will be in a waking coma for the rest of his life. Bérangère asks if she can have a ride on his motorbike and Angèle notices a spark between the pair that Joseph tries to laugh off with a made-up Chinese proverb that is typical of his droll humour. 

When they're left alone, Armand tells Angèle that Maurice has insisted on her having a 25% greater share of the inheritance than her brothers. However, she is angry that he is trying to buy her forgiveness and retreats into the bedroom in which her young daughter, Blanche (Esther Seignon), had been staying before she drowned while in Maurice's care. She cries all night and tells Joseph that she plans to leave as soon as she can. But she is pleased to see fisherman Benjamin (Robinson Stévenin) when he chugs into port with his meagre catch and she wanders back to chat to him later in the day because he has been besotted with her since seeing her act on the stage in Marseilles. She insists that she merely provides a means of escape after a tiring day and quotes poet Paul Claudel. 

Meanwhile, Joseph and Bérangère have an argument because she is tired of his despondency since being fired from a management post and forced to take early retirement. Armand and Angèle also have cross words when he tries to assure her that Maurice did nothing wrong on the night Blanche died, as he was building the villa on the brow of the hill when she woke up in an armchair and slipped down to the water's edge to find a missing cuddly toy. He also reminds her that both he and their father have been racked with guilt ever since the incident and that they have always been hurt by her refusal to communicate with them. 

As trains rumble over the viaduct above the inlet and army jeeps cruise around the area on the look out for migrants seeking a port of entry, Joseph wanders into the hills where Armand is cutting back the brush to ensure there is a pathway for firefighters after a summer of wild fires. He is sad that the once-thriving community has dwindled away and that so many of the homes are holiday lets. But he is determined to keep the restaurant open and serve simple food at fair prices. Joseph admires him and wishes it was so easy to keep the past alive, as he has been forced to come to terms with changing attitudes in the city and been left behind as a relic.

They find Angèle dipping her toes into the water and she gets a shock when a baby octopus latches on to her leg. Meanwhile, Martin and Suzanne admonish Yvan for trying to set up a direct debit to pay their rent, as they want to be self-sufficient and not be a burden on their son. Sitting on the balcony with Maurice, Joseph thinks back to this proud man playing Santa in the village and teaching the children to rejoice in sharing a big tree by the harbour that they could all see rather than hiding individual ones in their own homes. He begins to cry, as he knows that such ideas have no place in modern France. But Bérangère has little time for his sentimentality and offers to use her PR agency to boost the profile of Le Mange-Tout so it can make a handsome profit.

Towards evening, Martin and Suzanne come to see Maurice and whisper that they are going to blaze a trail for him to follow. As they go home to overdose on pills, a storm begins to blow up and the army returns because a broken boat has been found near the shore. A black soldier (Diouc Koma) asks the siblings to keep an eye out for strangers and reminds Joseph that he risks his life on a pittance so that he can enjoy his cosy bourgeois existence. He is nettled by the insult, but Benjamin seeks to lighten the mood by recalling Angèle's performance in Bertholt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan. But he oversteps the mark while walking Angèle back to the villa and she slaps his face when he protests his undying love and tries to kiss her. 

She accepts his apology and a bunch of flowers the next morning and is amused when he drops to one knee to declare that the fates want them to be together. They are disturbed, however, by the news that Suzanne and Martin have committed suicide. Fresh from chatting to her lover on Skype, Bérangère had noticed a shellshocked Yann standing on the balcony and she had rushed up to see him. Joseph had blundered in on them embracing and they had quickly been joined by the others. Moved by the fact the couple had died holding hands and left a note in which they had urged Yvan not to been sad, everyone but the doctor had lit a cigarette and stared out into the bay, where a well-dressed man in sunglasses is surveying the higgledy-piggledy properties from a small launch.

A cutaway to Angèle, Armand and Joseph in happier times with Blanche's father (Pierre Banderet) and, that night, as she sits with Maurice, she tells her brothers that Pierrot had left her because she had gone against his wishes in leaving Blanche with her family. Consequently, she has spent the last 20 years alone blaming herself for losing her lover and her child. Needing to feel loved, she wanders along to see Benjamin. He is learning his lines for an amateur production and is surprised to see her. Touched by the framed posters of her on his walls, she kisses him and asks him to draw the curtains and dim the lights before they sleep together. 

Angèle and Benjamin go out in his boat the next day and Armand and Joseph can't resist a smile as they realise what must have happened. Bérangère is also pleased for Angèle, even though she has just broken up with Joseph, who admits that he no longer has the energy to keep up with her. She pops in to say goodbye to Yvan and they agree to hook up next time they're in London and kiss. While their sister is out fishing (with Marseille shimmering in the distance across the bay), Armand and Joseph go into the hills to clear the undergrowth. As they work, they see a small girl (Haylana Bechir) taking water and meal from the feeding station that Armand leaves for the birds and rabbits. They follow to see her feeding her younger brothers (Ayoub Oaued and Giani Roux) and realise that they must have survived the boat wreck. 

The brothers bring the children back to the villa, where Angèle digs out some of Blanche's clothes for them to wear. When Armand learns from the soldier that any kids found will either be deported or taken to an orphanage, they decide to look after them and Angèle tells her agent to cancel her upcoming tour. Armand follows the girl into the hills and sees her tending to the stones covering the grave of her baby brother, Hiner, and breaks up the shelter they had constructed so that the troops can't find it. 

Before she leaves, Bérangère gives Angèle the notebook in which Joseph had started his memoirs about being a union leader in a factory and she urges her to make him finish or that history will be lost forever. They embrace as Joseph waves her off and thanks her for her beauty and vivacity. That afternoon, the siblings go to the viaduct and shout out each others names. The echoes amuse the migrant children, who call out the name of their lost brother. Up on the balcony, Maurice turns his head in the direction of the voices. 

One would need a heart of granite not to be moved by this closing sequence and its poignancy raises questions of the critics who have attacked this film for its sentimental contrivance. This is a study about belonging and the fact that the Syrian girl repeats her mother's saying about taking root where one dies challenges the bigotry of those who would return the migrants to whence they came. Indeed, the screenplay is full of reminders that the Soixante-Huitard generation still has a part to play in the shaping of the country's destiny and that their ideology should not be dismissed so lightly by the populists seeking to change the future by rewriting the past. 

As ever, Guédiguian (in this instance co-scripting with Serge Valletti) makes his points with a restraint that chimes in with the relaxed nature of the performances. Gérard Meylan is the most understated of the stock company, but he exudes a quiet decency that contrasts with Jean-Pierre Darrousin's weary cynicism and Ariane Ascaride's wounded bitterness. Her romance with the adoring Robinson Stévenin is charmingly judged and much more convincing than Anaïs Demoustier's impulsive yearning for Yann Trégouët. However, it's intriguing to watch her playing Darrousin's lover after being cast as his daughter in Anna Novion's Les Grandes personnes (2008) and Guédiguian's The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011). 

It would be easy for Guédiguian and cinematographer Pierre Milon to settle for postcard views of Calanque de Méjean. But they use the harbour and the cluttered buildings surrounding it to reinforce the themes of depopulation, tradition, class, memory, age gaps and the passage of time. No one in British cinema has chronicled a region with such a sense of acuity and continuity and it's a shame that more of Guédiguian's L'Estaque canon is not available on disc. This is very much a reflective picture that consciously echoes its predecessors and, even though this doesn't always integrate its flashbacks and political subtexts as seamlessly as it might, it will leave many hoping that there is much more to come from a director who turned 66 on 3 December.

As Britain becomes the latest country to be targeted by boat people, Gabrielle Brady's Island of the Hungry Ghosts joins a raft of cinematic documentaries chronicling the global migrant crisis that includes Gianfranco Rosi's Fire At Sea, Guido Hendrikx's Stranger in Paradise (both 2016), Ai Weiwei's Human Flow and Orban Wallace's Another News Story (both 2017). Expanded from her 2017 short, The Island (which can be found online), this is more a poetic meditation than a piece of reportage. But, in its own quietly disconcerting way, this sincerely made film proves just as indelibly hard hitting. 

Located in the Indian Ocean some 930 miles off the western coast of Australia, Christmas Island measures 135 square kilometres. It is home to fewer than 1500 people of mixed Chinese, Malay, Indian and Australian ancestry. But its population has been swelled since 2008 by the residents of the Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, which was built by Canberra to cope with the influx of refugees seeking to start a new life on the world's biggest island. In June 2010, the average figure of 800 or so residents rose sharply to 2400, although numbers slowly started to decrease after 50 souls were drowned (including 15 children) after a boat struck the rocks north of Flying Fish Cove in December of that year. 

Brady notes that Christmas Island is also occupied by some 40 million red land crabs, whose annual breeding migration from the jungle to the beach is not only abetted by the authorities - who close roads to ensure the creatures pass through safely - but also celebrated by the locals, who perform various rituals to appease the `Hungry Ghosts' who wander the tiny territory by night seeking a permanent home. This irony is not lost on Poh Lin Lee, a trauma counsellor at the detention centre, who lives on Christmas Island with her husband, Arthur Floret, and their two daughters, Poppy and Albertine. We see them searching for pumpkins in the  hills and encountering a giant crab that is scuttling through the undergrowth - like the asylum seeker shown escaping through the jungle under cover of darkness in the opening reconstruction. 

Shot to resemble a horror film, with loud animal noises on the soundtrack, this attempt to convey the desperation of the detainees contrasts with the calm therapy sessions that Poh Lin conducts with an unnamed African woman and a Middle Eastern man, who has been on Christmas Island for so long that his voice has acquired a pronounced Australian twang. Both are erudite and considered, as they run their hands through a sand box that Poh Lin uses to help them focus their minds and explore their issues. The woman uses a range of model figures to recreate the village she left behind, while the man plants some plastic trees to achieve a scene of tranquility that contrasts with the anxiety he feels at having left his loved ones behind some four years ago. 

Despite her serenity during the sessions, Poh Lin brings her troubles home with her and she tells her husband about seeing a man who survived a recent boat wreck. It annoys her that the Centre staff withhold information about residents so that she never knows how long she anyone's treatment will last or whether she is having a beneficial effect. A translator helps her mediate with a woman with a headscarf who is on the island with her son and she reminds her that it is not against the law to seek asylum or try to find safety away from political or military danger. But she also wishes that the Australian authorities would sometimes remember this is dealing with those under their care. 

These sentiments are contrasted with wildlife warden Azmi Yon riding on a quad bike to escort traffic through a column of crabs crossing one of the island's main roads. On her way home, Poh Lin stops to sweep the creatures off the tarmac and the care she takes mirrors her compassion for her patients, as their plight often reduces her to tears in the washroom and she confides to a colleague that it is soul destroying to watch people deteriorate because their recommendations are almost always ignored. As we see her run her fingers through the sand, we hear a male voice describe how he was placed in a cage after participating in a protest against callous treatment and he grew so desperate that he sewed his lips together and inspired some 20 others to follow his example. 

An elderly Chinese couple venture into the jungle to tidy up the graves of the first settlers on the island. They worked in the mines and the state of the undergrowth suggests they have largely been forgotten. While others burn offerings outside the jagged concrete blocks of the Centre, Poh Lin and her family head into the wilderness to pitch camp and send up a paper lantern to guide the Hungry Ghosts. However, she is preoccupied by the news that state employees face two years' imprisonment if they make any public utterance about the conditions in which the migrants are being kept. She hacks her way through the bush with a machete to gaze down on the camp below. It covers a large area, with its dark roofs keeping a lid on its secrets. 

At her next session, Poh Lin tries to console a young man who has been separated from his mother and has become distressed by her deterioration since they were forced apart. He asks who would inflict such pain on a woman who has already had a hard life and Poh Lin can only sit in supportive silence as he pours out his heart. The sound of his sobs are contrasted with the clicking of crab claws as they teeter across the road, with the camera dropping to ground level to join the relentless throng. But the clamour has become too much to Poh Lin and she tenders her resignation because she no longer feels able to do her job in the face of the Centre's obstruction and obfuscation. Thus, she packs her life into cardboard boxes and moves away, leaving the island to the crabs, the locals and the migrants she feels she has betrayed. 

In fact, the Christmas Island Immigration Reception and Processing Centre was shut down in October 2018, with the fate of the remaining residents being kept from the pressure groups who had been lobbying for its closure. Obviously, Brady was unable to mention this, but one wonders what impact her admirable film had on the government's decision. It might have been nice to learn a little more about Poh Lin's ultimate destination, but it would appear from trawling online that she has become a freelance social worker, care trainer, blogger and film consultant having worked in every part of the world except the Americas. She is clearly an exceptional individual and one can only wish her well in her endeavours. 

Sadly, one can only speculate on the fate of those seen undergoing narrative therapy and sandplay and therein lies the tragedy that Brady succeeds so ably in highlighting. Working with cinematographer Michael Latham, editor Katharina Fiedler and sound designer Leo Doigon, she tellingly contrasts the confines of the Centre and Poh Lin's office with the tangled jungle and windswept coastline, while also switching between migrants and crabs to emphasise the different approaches taken towards humans and crustaceans. Eerily counterpointed by Aaron Cupples's unsettling score, the footage largely speaks for itself, so there is no need for captions or interviews. Notably nobody from the Centre appears before the camera, but they leave behind a scarring legacy and a few more restless spirits to roam this singularly unfestive island.

If the thought of a bracing dip sends cold shivers down the spine at this time of year, spare a thought for the bathers who build their lives around their visits to the watering holes on Hampstead Heath. As Patrick McLennan and Samuel Smith reveal in The Ponds: Still Waters Run Deep, there is much more to regular plunges than keeping physically fit. According to those who frequent the Highgate Men's Pond, the Kenwood Ladies' Pond and the Hampstead Mixed Pond, swimming in these living waters is also good for the mind and spirit. 

It's late winter when Dan Fawkes the lifeguard opens the Highgate Men's Pond and pals David and Jim and 73 year-old Chris Ruocco come to strip off in the outdoor changing area and dive into the 9° water. Tom Kearney, one of the founders of the East German Ladies' Swimming Team, raises the concept of `zhivaya voda' or `living water' by explaining that everyone who swims in the ponds draws on their life force while also making a reciprocal contribution. 

As an authority on the history of the ponds, Caitlin Davies reveals how organised bathing began in the 1880s when women were allowed to swim in the men's pond at certain times. However, segregated bathing became the order of the day following the inauguration of the Kenwood Ladies' Pond in 1920. But she prefers to use the Hampstead Mixed Pond, even though she is delighted that the Heath can boast the only `ladies only' swimming pool with female lifeguards anywhere in the world. 

Spring sees the four members of the Kenwood Slappers chattering excitedly about their reasons for swimming, while an unnamed woman in her seventies describes how she vowed to swim on her birthday in February to regain a sense of pride in her body. Two friends suggest that swimming has helped members of their circle cope with divorce, job issues, illness and bereavement and Carrie Longton proves their point, as she started coming to deal with the loss of her mother and sister to breast cancer and she has just returned for her first swim since a mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. 

Various elderly gentlemen enthuse about the pleasures of the mixed pond, which is only open from May to September, and they all insist that their visits and the friendships they have made have helped them stay young and invigorated. Riding over from Camberwell on his motorbike, Oliver Perritt similarly testifies to the life-affirming benefits of a daily swim, while an unnamed blind man avers that he forgets his condition when he's in the water, as the combination of the shock to the system and the exhilaration of being free kicks in. Another chap takes a cold shower before hitting the pond in memory of the visits he used to make with his father in the 1970s when weightlifting macho men and sunbathing homosexuals occupied different parts of the lido.

Tom returns with his East German Ladies and he jokes that surviving a winter swim makes you superhuman In fact, he is lucky to be alive after being hit by a bendy bus on Oxford Street and being in a coma for two weeks. He recalls how he felt that he had lapsed back into his coma after returning to the underwater darkness, but he is now at peace with the existential singularity of letting his body relax into the pond and perform its healing magic. Chris agrees that swimming makes his life worthwhile, although he clearly enjoys playing the trumpet and working in the Kentish Town tailor's shop that is full of signed photographs of the celebrities he's dressed. Having lost his father at five, he has worked since taking his first paper round. But he always finds time for a dip.

An anonymous gentleman explains that he has nicknamed the ponds Turner, Constable and Pre-Raphaelite and a Berkeleyesque top shot rises high above the water to take us into the summer, as queues form to swim and the ponds become the place to be seen. A woman with a degenerative disease enthuses about the pain relief she gets from being in the water, while a younger woman delights in the soothing power that the ponds have. 

Bodies bask in the sunshine, with some coming to show off and others coming with children and picnics to spend some quality time. One dad is proud that his teenage son has become a regular swimmer, while David Cole brings a 15kg vest to show how much weight he has lost since he started taking swimming seriously. He is back as autumn falls, as are Tom and his East German Ladies, who dive in en masse from the jetty, with the exception of one chap who watches them go and then sheepishly descends a metal ladder. 

One of the bodyguards muses on the fact that he occasionally has to pluck out people who have let the ambience get the better of them and jumped in without being able to swim. He notes that in many of these cases, the rescued body is too embarrassed to show any gratitude. By contrast, Carrie couldn't be happier that the ponds are so close at hand and she is extremely grateful to be alive to enjoy them. 

Winter comes and a trio of unnamed East German Ladies takes the plunge with snow on the ground and ice covering part of Highgate Pond. They admit that their hands are numb, but swear by the sensation, which is shared by a young bloke who jokes that the ducks show more respect to those who brave temperatures of 9°. The scene couldn't be more picturesque with the sun glinting through the bare trees and skating along the ice. No wonder a man who came to swim on the day his partner died to help him cope felt sufficiently moved to write a poem about the ponds, while Oliver remarks on the intensity of the peace he can't find anywhere else. 

A highlight of the season are the Christmas Day Races, as mixed bathing is permitted in Highgate and Dan the lifeguard claims it makes the occasion more special. As Chris plays carols on the trumpet, Oliver and his girlfriend joke about his fierce competitive spirit, while Tom reveals that his family was told he would survive on 24 December and that he feels this is the day of his rebirth from his coma. The races are watched by well-wrapped onlookers and local newspaper shutterbugs capture the moments for the front pages. 

New Year's Day sees another healthy turnout among the Kenwood Ladies' Pond Association, with the Slappers being joined by various anonymous women, who are happy to welcome transgender swimmers and joke about body image. A trio performs a song reviewing the year just gone, while others look forward to 2018 in the hope that the #MeToo campaign can have a genuine impact. For others, it's more about achieving personal goals and keeping their children heading in the right direction. But, for Carrie, it's a chance to start living again after her ordeal, while, for Tom, it's an opportunity to make good on the promise he made in hospital to make the most of the time left to him. As he concludes, if you don't start living when you're alive, when are you going to?

Written by Patrick McLennan and photographed and edited by Samuel Smith - with additional footage from Kenwood by Sue Turton and Cadhla Kennedy Ko - this is an invigorating documentary that benefits greatly from Jasper Thorn's sound mix and Dai Watts's jaunty score. The views of the ponds, particularly the close-ups of the ducks and the aerial shots showing their closeness to the London skyline, are wonderfully evocative across the seasons. But it's the people that make the film and it's a tiny bit frustrating that so many of those interviewed felt unable to give their names for the viewer to latch on to. They've clearly given permission for their image to be used, so why not identify themselves or use an alias? Similarly, why were Tom and Chris the only ones to be interviewed away from the ponds to give let viewers form an impression of them in their natural habitats?

It's a small point, but it helps keep the audience at a distance and induces an awkward sense that we are unwelcome snoopers who are being kept outside the inner circle. This was not the case with something like Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane/s Three Miles North of Molkom (2008). But, with its snippets of old, monochrome footage, this remains an enjoyable experience and leaves one wondering when someone is going to get around to making an actuality about Parson's Pleasure.