Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 4/8/2011)

As Hinant and co-directors Eric Cardot and Delphine Lehericey were given ready access to the tournament referees and their assistants, UEFA evidently hoped that this plea for tolerance would allow viewers to understand the pressures placed on the men in the middle during key games. However, as much time is spent gauging how family members react to seeing their loved ones being abused (and in some cases threatened) because of decisions made in good faith in the heat of the moment. Similarly, the film-makers wish to demonstrate that the referees are as much in competition as the national teams. Yet they fail to provide the rivals with adequate backstories or show much interaction between them. Furthermore, they don't even bother trying to identify the key figures on the assessment panels who decide their fate.

Even the title is somewhat disingenuous, as while the focus is primarily on the man with the whistle, it is obvious from the dressing-room footage of the various trios encouraging and supporting each other and the audio snippets gleaned from the microphone links that he works as part of a team. Indeed, his entire reputation is dependent upon the calls made by the colleagues waving (or in some cases not waving) their flags. So, it seems odd that Hinant should ensure the audience can recognise Massimo Busacca, Howard Webb, Roberto Rosetti and Peter Fröjdfeldt but not their respective linesmen Matthias Arnet and Stéphane Cuhat, Darren Cann and Mike Mullarkey, Alessandro Griselli and Paolo Calgagno, and Stefan Wittberg and Henrik Adren.

More thought might also have been put into placing the individual trajectories into a wider context, as those unfamiliar with Austria-Switzerland 2008 are not going to have a clue what is going on from one scene to another. Yet, notwithstanding these not inconsiderable misgivings, Referees offers a compelling insight into the stresses endured by those entrusted with preventing the overgrown and overpaid schoolboys representing their countries from ruining a spectacle gripping an entire continent by refusing to play by the rules. Indeed, the sporting aspect often seems a mere sideshow, for, as far as these middle-aged gents and their bosses are concerned, the entire event is all about the officiating and the number of adverse headlines it provokes.

From the refereeing viewpoint, therefore, the biggest talking point of Euro 2008 concerned Mike Mullarkey's failure to spot the offside that allowed Poland to open the scoring in the game against Austria and the furore that followed Webb's entirely justified award of a 90th-minute penalty when Mariusz Lewandowski manhandled Sebastian Prodl in the box. Veteran coach Leo Beenhakker accused the Rotherham policeman of trying to make a name for himself, but his peevish post-match rants seemed positively benign beside Prime Minister Donald Tusk's bid to court popularity with those denigrating Webb in vicious online tirades by announcing that he would like to kill him.

Although they were awarded a second group game - between Spain and Greece, which only went ahead after a bomb threat necessitated a changing-room search - Webb and his cohorts were sent packing before the knockout stages, which he was forced to watch with his devoted parents back in Yorkshire. However, the mood was more sombre than it was in the Rosetti household, as his wife ate pizza with some girlfriends while attempting to explain to their daughter what daddy was doing on the television. These asides are engagingly effective and it's a shame more time wasn't allocated to such off-pitch interludes. But this take us back to the rather haphazard nature of the enterprise, which is epitomised by Hinant's sudden emphasis on Spaniard Manuel Mejuta González, who missed out on the final because his homeland beat Italy in the semis and handed the assignment to Signor Rosetti.

Most football fans are going to find this a frustrating watch, as the players are reduced to supporting roles and no effort is made to provide a cogent chronology of the competition. Film buffs, on the other hand, are likely to be bemused by the milieu and blithely unaware of such ironies as the fact that Fröjdfeldt awarded a blatantly offside goal in Holland's 3-0 win over Italy and yet was selected to be fourth official for the final. Moreover, they will be unaware of the significance of such recurring characters as UEFA President Michel Platini and refereeing luminaries Angel María Villar Llona, Yvan Cornu, Pierluigi Collina, David Elleray and Hugh Dallas. Nonetheless, this remains instructive, cinematic and highly entertaining.

Anyone familiar with John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952) will know that the traditional way of resolving any Irish family feud is with a good old-fashioned donnybrook. However, times have changed since John Wayne and Victor McLaglen upheld the honour of the Thorntons and the Danahers in Innisfree, as Knuckle director Ian Palmer discovers on encountering the Quinn McDonaghs of Dundalk and their Joyce cousins from Mullingar. Palmer first met these feisty, but fair-minded Traveller folk when he was asked to video the wedding of Michael Quinn McDonagh in 1999. During the course of his stay, he was shown a challenge tape sent by the Joyces and was so gripped by the taunts and bad-mouthing that he asked if he could record the ensuing bare-knuckle duel. Soon installed as the feud's (un)official chronicler, Palmer set about trying to discover its origins and the reasons why it continued in spite of repeated calls for a truce.

Based in London and Oxford, the Quinn McDonaghs and the Joyces had long worked together in England. But relations became strained in the early 1990s when Curly Paddy Quinn McDonagh was jailed for his part in the manslaughter of Brian Joyce outside a Peckham pub. The situation worsened following the death of Tim Joyce in Dublin shortly afterwards and, amidst a flurry of trash tapes, the boxing bouts began. Fought in the absence of kinfolk and refereed by neutral families, the fights were governed only by three rules - no head-butting, biting or punching below the belt - and were made all the more interesting by the placing of substantial side bets.

Over the next 10 years, quarter was neither given nor asked. Yet, for all the vitriolic eloquence of self-styled `King of the Travellers' Big Jim Joyce, James Quinn McDonagh emerged as the most feared pugilist. But, while he retired undefeated in 2004 (after conquering Paddy `The Lurcher' Joyce and Brian's son David), his brother Michael earned a certain notoriety after his 1999 contest with Paul Joyce was halted for biting. Now, a decade later and with the women from both sides confiding in Palmer that they think the ongoing barney has served its purpose, Michael and Paul are being lined up for a rematch in Hemel Hempstead.

What started out as a study in misguided machismo clearly became something of an obsession for Palmer, who admits as much after filming an eager, but inexpert showdown between Big Joe and fellow grandfather Adie McGinley. But, when James is lured back into the fray (after recovering from a gunshot to the leg) by the prospect of a €60,000 purse for defeating Davy Nevin, Palmer and co-cameraman Michael Doyle are back on the sidelines to capture the action, as well as Spike and Ditsy Nevin attempting to justify the tussle by complaining about upturned horse caravans, wedding day punch-ups and insulting boasts about Quinn McDonagh invincibility.

In a closing summation, James hopes that his sibling's climactic and somewhat underwhelming draw with Paul will lead to a much-needed rapprochement. But, while there is so much pride and potential profit at stake, Palmer suggests that there is little likelihood of an end to hostilities, just yet. Indeed, one wouldn't bet against the HBO fictional remake of this documentary sparking a fresh wave of shenanigans.

Incisive in its insights into the way the bouts are initiated and mediated, this is a gruellingly compelling corrective to the picture painted in Kris McManus's Travellers. There is nothing romantic or even particularly sporting about the fisticuffs on display, with Ollie Huddleston's astute editing emphasising the extent to which raw, stubborn courage counts for much more than boxing skill. But the real fascination lies in the tapes to which Palmer was granted unique access and the contrast between the wild, drink-fuelled accusations they contain and the surprisingly civilised manner in which the scraps themselves are conducted.

Shifting the scene Down Under, a single mother struggles to know what's best for her children in Julie Bertuccelli's The Tree, a sincere, if slight adaptation of Judy Pascoe's popular novel Our Father Who Art in the Tree. Marking Bertuccelli's return to direction seven years after her moving debut, Since Otar Left, this fails to overcome the backstory deficiencies that might have explained the magnitude of the grief affecting Charlotte Gainsbourg and her brood after the sudden death of husband Aden Young.

Returning from transporting a cabin across the bush on a flatbed truck, Young expires at the wheel after stopping to give eight year-old daddy's girl Morgana Davies a lift home. But, while her unworldly mother takes to her room in abject despair, Davies becomes convinced that her father's spirit has come to reside in the Morten Bay fig tree that towers over their drought-parched property and burrows into the garden of snooty neighbour Penne Hackforth-Jones. Realising that the family needs money, older brother Christian Byers dismisses her fancy and takes a job at nearby lumber yard. But younger sibling Tom Russell is more willing to believe and he takes to sneaking out to converse with the tree, while Davies sets up camp in its branches.

Eventually rousing herself after eight months of solitude, Gainsbourg finds a job with plumber Marton Csokas and quickly responds to his tactful solicitations. However, when he offers to cut down the tree, Csokas incurs Davies's wrath and even toddler Gabriel Gotting starts talking to express his misgivings. Moreover, the tree itself begins to intervene in the family's lives, with a branch crashing through the window and slamming into Gainsbourg's bed. But an even more dramatic act of nature finally settles the tree's fate.

Imbuing the action with supernatural charm and wisely refusing to speculate about the true nature of the inexplicable occurrences, Bertuccelli directs this unusual melodrama with considerable delicacy. Nigel Bluck's cinematography and Olivier Mauvezin, Nicolas Moreau and Olivier Goinard's sound design are crucial to the heightening of the unsettling atmosphere, while the poised performances keep things rooted in realism.

Yet, for all its intimacy and restraint, this never quite convinces. More might have been made of the family's bliss before Young's demise to justify Gainsbourg's disturbing abnegation of her maternal duties and reinforce the children's disapproval of what they deem to be an inappropriate relationship with the concerned, but uncomprehending Csokas. Moreover, too little time is spent on the reaction of the brothers to their father's death and the eccentric behaviour of both their mother and sister. But, even though Grégoire Hetzel's score is a touch too coercive, this remains a poignant study of learning to live with loss that is worth seeing alone for Morgana Davies's exceptional display of feistily fragile innocence.

Finally, Jean Renoir evidently had enormous fun revisiting the scene of the childhood in French Cancan (1954), which is reissued this week in a glorious new print. His first film on home soil since he had outraged a nation on the verge of war with La Règle du Jeu in 1939, this is a billet doux to both fin de siècle Paris and the work of Renoir's painter father, Auguste.

On a jaunt to the White Queen in the Bohemian quarter of Montmartre, impresario Jean Gabin is so struck by laundress François Arnoul, as she cavorts with baker beau Franco Pastorino, that he offers to pay for dance lessons and make her a star. Arnoul is suspicious, but intrigued. But Gabin's diva mistress Maria Félix is furiously jealous at his flirtation and hopes that lecherous prince Giani Esposito will lure her into his bed.

Such is Gabin's obsession with Arnoul, however, that he acquires the old dance-hall and announces he will replace it with a magnificent new venue that will become home to that most daring of dances, the cancan. However, a celebration to mark the start of construction is marred by a fight between Félix and Arnoul, which prompts the former to acquire the deeds to the site to thwart Gabin's plans. Desperate to save the Moulin Rouge, Arnoul promises herself to Esposito and is rewarded on opening night with the news that Gabin has a new paramour. Yet she recognises the wisdom of his advice to forget him and dedicate herself to the dance that will make her famous.

Forming part of the theatrical trilogy that also comprised Le Carosse d'or/The Golden Coach (1952) and Eléna et les hommes/Paris Does Strange Things (1956), this was a shamelessly joyous evocation of the era and its ethos. Surviving attempts at tinkering by producer Louis Wipf, it proved to be a sizeable commercial success. Max Douy's sets and Michel Kelber's photography are splendid and the picture certainly benefited from the imposing swagger of Gabin and the sensuality of Arnoul and Félix. However, it did no harm to have Édith Piaf cameo as Eugénie Buffet alongside Patachou as chanteuse Yvette Guilbert and André Claveau as songwriter Paul Delmet.