Girls Behaving Badly

Dividing the action into segments entitled 'Circumstances' and 'Consequences', Téchiné concentrates on unemployed, rollerblading twentysomething Emilie Dequenne, who lives in the Parisian suburbs with child-minder mother Catherine Deneuve. Having failed to land a secretarial post with the law firm run by her father's Jewish army buddy, Michel Blanc, Dequenne hooks up with aspiring wrestler Nicolas Duvauchelle, who finds them a job as live-in caretakers of a warehouse that acts as a front for a drug smuggling operation. However, Duvauchelle is arrested after he is knifed by a desperate customer and Deneuve consults Blanc about defending him. But it's Dequenne's account of her assault that most intrigues Blanc, especially when it causes such a media storm that the president himself rallies to her cause.

Having delineated Dequenne's backstory with such meticulous realism, Téchiné proceeds to marginalise it in order to explore the relationships between the other principals and show how domestic travails are not exclusively the preserve of the lower classes. Despite working with feisty ex-daughter-in-law Rona Elkabetz, Blanc is estranged from son Mathieu Demy, who prefers flitting around the world on politically contentious assignments to getting to know his 13 year-old son, Jeremy Quagedebeur. Moreover, like Deneuve, Blanc is widowed and lonely, and he is hurt when she stands him up at a concert at St Eustache.

Yet while Téchiné succeeds in linking the families' fates, he struggles to deliver a convincing denouement, as Dequenne and Deneuve are invited to Blanc's country retreat and Quagedebeur shames Dequenne into admitting her fabrication during a thunderstorm tête-à-tête in his annexe bedroom. As ever, Téchiné tackles a thorny issue with a commendable mix of unflinching commitment and canny equilibrium. But while Julien Hirsch ably captures the characters' contrasting milieux, the action often seems to drift, especially when focusing on Demy and Elkabetz. Moreover, the ebullient Dequenne never seems so detached from reality or sufficiently crushed by her various vicissitudes to explain such a flagrant and ultimately high-profile lie. Thus, while this is always acute in its insights into modern French politics and culture, it's less persuasive as a human drama.

Two more teens find a situation spiralling out of control after a reckless scheme backfires in Lindy Heymann's Kicks.

Liverpool fans Kerrie Hayes and Nichola Burley meet outside the gates at Anfield as they strain to catch a glimpse of star player, Jamie Doyle. Mostly left to her own devices by a night-shifting mother and looking much younger than her 15 years, Hayes cheerfully tags along to a club with the more sophisticated Burley and waits for her outside when she's refused entry by a bouncer. Bound by the ambition to become WAGs, the pair quickly become inseparable, with the bourgeois Burley dressing the elfin Hayes in her cast-offs and Hayes reciprocating by showing Burley a hole in the wall at the team's Melwood training ground so they can spy on their idol at will.

Their innocent crush becomes more sinister, however, when it's announced that Doyle will be transferring to Madrid at the end of the season and the heartbroken twosome decides to convince him to stay. Having already sneaked into his gated apartment block to steal an mp3 player from his car, they waylay the tipsy Doyle outside a bar and convince him to let them drive him home. Tempted by what he considers to be just two more willing groupies, Doyle agrees, only to repent at leisure after he is blindfolded and taken to the remote trailer on the Sefton coast owned by Hayes's soldier brother.

Unfortunately, at this juncture, Heymann and screenwriter Leigh Campbell (who was reworking an unrealised script by Laurence Coriat) rather run out of ideas of what to do next. Having had Doyle fail in his bid to goad his kidnappers into putting on a sex show, they depict Hayes toying with the notion of shooting him in the foot with her sibling's pistol. But common sense prevails and the cursing Doyle is allowed to leave before the picture ends with the pair pondering their fate while gazing over the Mersey estuary at dawn.

Despite capturing something of Merseyside's obsession with football and the extent to which dead-end teenagers are seduced by the media's coverage of celebrities and their luxurious lifestyle, this is socially alert and eagerly played. But it's also fatally undermined by the situation's sheer implausibility and the banality of the denouement's irksome lack of drama.

In many ways, Grace Kelly also fell prey to the temptations of a fabled existence when she abandoned Hollywood to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco in April 1956. A season of her films is currently in residence at BFI Southbank in London, with Dial M for Murder (1954) and High Society (1956) each showing in extended runs.

Alfred Hitchcock was struggling with a project called The Bramble Bush, a mistaken identity yarn about a crook who steals a murderer's passport, when he agreed to direct Frederick Knott's adaptation of his own stage success. He was never particularly fond of the film. Yet it remains one of his most bleakly amusing and it also reveals a good deal about his approach to film-making.

Knott's play had premiered on the BBC in March 1952 before running for 425 performances in the West End and a further 552 on Broadway. It was a neatly constructed affair, although hardly original, as it bore the influence of both the real-life case of ex-RAF office Neville Heath (who had been executed for the murder of two women) and St John L. Clowes's thriller, Dear Murderer, which had been filmed by Arthur Crabtree with Eric Portman in 1947.

Warners had acquired the rights for £30,000 from Sir Alexander Korda (who had originally paid a mere £1,000 for them) and Hitchcock made few alterations to Knott's screenplay. Indeed, Hitch seemed to be more interested in setting himself technical difficulties than in teasing the audience. As he had demonstrated with Rope (1948) and would do again with his next picture, Rear Window (1954), Hitchcock saw no need to open out the action for the sake of it and relished the chance to play claustrophobic games with the décor of a single set.

Such confinement intensified the action and he further heightened it by his mischievous use of 3-D (the NFT print is flat, unfortunately). Whereas most directors settled for hurling a few objects towards the camera to give the viewer a visceral thrill, Hitch used the extra dimension to highlight props and angles and, thus, create a more dislocated atmosphere. He employed colour in a similar way, gradually removing warmer hues to emphasise the chill of reality closing in around Grace Kelly.

Ray Milland oozes suburban malice. But Kelly simpers occasionally as the abused adulteress, while Robert Cummings is blandness personified as her beau. The star turn, however, is John Williams's disarmingly dapper detective, who senses that there's more to Kelly's self-defensive assault on a nocturnal intruder than meets the eye.

High Society also owes much to a previously produced work. Transferring from its triumph on Broadway, The Philadelphia Story (1940) had restored Katharine Hepburn to the Hollywood hierarchy and finally quashed the reputation for being `box-office poison' that had dogged her since an article in Picturegoer in 1938.

Ironically, the MGM musical was also in the commercial doldrums when it produced this variation on Philip Barry's class satire in a bid to stem the tide of rock`n'roll. But the story of blueblood Tracy Lord's inability to choose between fiancé George Kittredge, ex-husband C.K Dexter-Haven and Spy magazine reporter Mike Connor couldn't work the oracle twice. Teenagers were more interested in Elvis Presley's debut, Love Me Tender, while not even the first teaming of those former bobbysoxer icons, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, could prise their parents away from the television.

Yet producer Sol C. Siegel's went all out to impress with his first outing for MGM since his move from Fox. He induced Cole Porter to compose his first original screen songs in eight years with an advance of $250,000 and offered similar fees to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra (who nicknamed each other `Nembutal' and `Dexedrine'), with the latter consenting to a supporting role in order to work with his idol.

Indeed, he even roused himself from the cocky lethargy that otherwise stifled his performance for their duet on `Well, Did You Evah?' - which had first been performed by Betty Grable in the 1939 stage version of DuBarry Was a Lady - and Crosby proved equally animated on `Now You Has Jazz', on which he was reunited with Louis Armstrong for the first time since Pennies from Heaven (1939).

But Crosby was most eager to renew acquaintance with Grace Kelly, with whom he'd begun an affair in 1952, while his wife Dixie was dying of cancer. The fling had continued during the making of The Country Girl (1954), but any hopes of rekindling the flames were doused by her announcement, a month before shooting began, that she was going to marry her Prince Charming. Indeed, the picture became something of a grotesque parody of their situation, particularly as Rainier was invited to the set on the day that Crosby and Kelly had to do a little smooching. No wonder he later banned the film from the Principality, claiming it `wasn't quite the thing'.

Under Charles Walters's expert stewardship, the five-week shoot was enjoyably relaxed. But the casual atmosphere encouraged a dramatic slackness that was exacerbated by John Patrick's screenplay, which lacked the wit and bite of the source.

Porter's score also missed the causticity of yore. But he produced pleasing ballads for Crosby (`I Love You, Samantha') and Sinatra (`Mind If I Make Love to You') and a catchy catalogue song for Sinatra and Holm (`Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?').

But the highlight was `True Love', which he had written for his wife, Linda Lee Thomas, who had died in 1952. Walters had planned to dub Kelly's vocals, but Crosby insisted on a proper duet and it became Porter's first million-selling recording. It spent 28 weeks on the Billboard chart and 22 on Your Hit Parade. But even though it earned Crosby his 20th gold disc, the rock revolution meant that it failed to reach No.1.

While most critics commended Porter's contribution, they were less than enthusiastic about the picture itself, which confirmed MGM's shift away from dance to more song-centric fare. Many shared Hollis Alpert's Saturday Review contention that the cast exhibited a `glum cheeriness' that only confirmed unflattering comparisons with the zestful charm of The Philadelphia Story, which had easily exceeded its $5.8 million gross (on a $1.5 million budget). Yet, High Society has gradually acquired classic status, thanks to repeated TV screenings. But while it certainly has an air of effortless polish, it remains short on real style.

The contrast between the sophistication of this expert craftsmanship and the crudity of Italian television couldn't be more marked, as Erik Gandini explains in Videocracy. Harking back three decades to the game show that introduced a softcore element to small-screen entertainment, this sets out to be a treatise on the extent to which Silvio Berlusconi - the Prime Minister who owns the powerful Mediaset empire and has responsibility for the state broadcaster RAI - uses such dumbed down sensationalism as the modern-day equivalent of the bread and circuses beloved of his ancient Roman forebears to establish his own cult of personality. However, having established his thesis, Gandini suddenly changes tack and, by focusing on three wannabes desperate to become tele-celebrities, he begins to exploit the very crass tactics that he so despises in the country's venal programmers.

He is particularly cruel to Ricky Canevali, a lathe operator who lives with his mother and hopes that his unique blend of Ricky Martin music and Jean-Claude Van Damme karate moves will propel him to the top. The girls who parade themselves for talent scouts in shopping malls in pathetic bids to become a veline (or glamorous assistant to a game or chat show host) are depicted with similar disdain. Yet their desire to escape their humdrum lives is no less valid than that of paparazzo Fabrizio Corona, who takes compromising pictures of A listers and offers them the first chance to buy them for exorbitant sums, or super-agent Lele Mora, who boasts that he is so powerful that he can take any loser and transform them into a star.

The fact that Corona gets jailed for extortion and then uses his incarceration to increase his profile says much about the contemporary media scene. But Gandini ignores the loftier aspects of Italian culture, along with the complexities of a political system that enabled Berlusconi to be elected for a third term in 2008. He could also have made much more of the potential dangers of so much control over the hearts and minds of the populace being in the hands of one man. But Gandini, who is now primarily based in Sweden, seems more interested in his trio of absurd aspirants and their desperate delusions.