Parky at the Pictures (DVD 17/11/2011)

Following Michel Mitrani's Les Guichets du Louvre/Black Thursday (1973) and Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976), this is only the third screen drama about the infamous Val d'Hiv raid. Yet, while its sincerity and historical authenticity cannot be called into question, this lavish production is imbued with the arch bittersweetness that so polarised opinion of Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997). Moreover, in striving for documentary accuracy, Bosch has a tendency to under-dramatise some events and overplay others, with the result that power and poignancy are often compromised by pathos.

Opening with newsreel footage of Hitler touring the newly conquered Paris, the scene shifts to Montmartre, where 10 year old Joseph Weismann (Hugo Leverdez) is playing with classmate Simon Zygler (Olivier Cywie) and his younger brother, Noé (identical twins Mathieu and Romain di Concetto). Jo's Great War veteran father, Schmeul (Gad Elmaleh), is confident that Marshal Philippe Pétain (Roland Copé) would never betray the Jews. But neither his wife Sura (Raphaëlle Agogué) nor Bella Zygler (Sylvie Testud) share his confidence and their suspicions are confirmed by scenes of Hitler (Udo Schenk) lecturing Heinrich Himmler (Thomas Darchinger) in his Berchtesgaden retreat about the need to expedite the Final Solution and Pétain giving his assent to Prime Minister Pierre Laval (Jean-Michel Noirey), his deputy René Bousquet (Frédéric Moulin), police chief Émile Hennequin (Patrick Courtois) and German security chief Helmut Knochen (Holger Daemgen) to begin the round-up.

Once the operation begins, Bosch turns her focus to some of its other victims, including Anna Traube (Anne Brochet), a wealthy woman who uses forged papers to secure her release from the crowded Val d'Hiv cycling stadium, and Protestant nurse Annette Monod (Mélanie Laurent), who found herself tending to the distressed with Jewish doctor David Sheinbaum (Jean Reno). But, while some help Jewish friends evade capture, bigots like the baker's wife played by Catherine Hosmalin taunt the persecuted in a scene reminiscent of one in Steven Spielberg's equally well-meaning, but flawed Schindler's List (1993).

Eventually, the detainees are transferred from the stadium to the transit camp at Beaune-la-Rolande, where the adults are separated from the children and Sheinbaum parts company with Monod, who wants to join him in the `work camp' in case she can be of assistance. Jo learns the truth about the destination of the trains, however, and, having recovered the cash and valuables his father had hidden in the washroom, he slips under the barbed wire fence to safety.

Concluding with a postwar coda that allows Monod to reunite with the handful of survivors, this is a noble and imposing account of an unpardonable crime. Olivier Raoux's production design is impeccable, with the velodrome being so meticulously recreated that it's impossible not to be shocked and moved by the chilling scale of the enterprise. David Ungaro's photography and Pierre-Jean Larroque's costumes are equally impressive. But, while Serge Klarsfeld makes a valuable contribution as historical adviser, no one seems to have coerced Bosch (who also scripted 1492: Conquest of Paradise for Ridley Scott and has recently announced a biopic of Rasputin) into improving the realism of the dialogue.

Too many minor figures also border on caricature, while Udo Schenk comes close to emulating Martin Wuttke's pantomimics in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) in his exchanges with Himmler, Rudolf Hess (Tamás Lengyel) and Eva Braun (Franziska Schubert). However, the most serious failing is the refusal to confront the role of ordinary civilians in the round-up. Admittedly, only about half of Paris's Jewish population was apprehended and those who aided the escapees merit history's gratitude. But the chance to follow Louis Malle's courageous lead in exposing collaborationist iniquity in Lacombe, Lucien (1974) has, sadly, been missed. Thus, while this epic in scale and ambition, it only tells part of the story.

La Rafle is also central to Gilles Paquet-Brenner's adaptation of Tatiana de Rosnay's bestseller, Sarah's Key. Exploring the dark misdeeds that France is still reluctant to discuss openly, this makes a laudably sensitive job of relating a melodramatic tale that spans six decades and considers the ongoing legacy of the Holocaust and the unexpected ways in which it impinges upon everyday life. Paquet-Brenner and co-scenarist Serge Joncour sometimes struggle to tone down some of the more momentous incidents, but they are well served by Françoise Dupertuis's authentic production design, Max Richter's evocative, but inobtrusive score and Hervé Schneid's deft editing, which interweaves the timelines without undue emphasis.

Intrigued by the history of the Parisian apartment that businessman husband Frédéric Pierrot has decided to renovate, American journalist Kristin Scott Thomas delves into the history of the building and discovers that Pierrot's grandmother (Gisèle Casadesus) and father (Michel Duchaussoy) took possession of the property during the Vichy era after its Jewish occupants had been forcibly evicted. Shocked by the revelation, Scott Thomas begins to research the events of 1942 and how some 13,000 people were herded into the Velodrome d'Hiver stadium by French police.

Among them was 10 year-old Mélusine Mayance, who had lived in the apartment with parents Natasha Mashkevich and Arben Bajraktaraj and the younger brother (Paul Mercier) she had hidden in a concealed cupboard when the gendarmes and soldiers arrived. After three days in cramped and unsanitary conditions at Vel d'Hiv, Mayance was transferred to the transit camp at Beaune-la-Roland, where she befriended Vinciane Millereau after being separated from her parents. However, the girls managed to escape with the aid of a kindly guard and Mayance was sheltered by farmer Niels Arestrup and his wife, Dominique Frot, who risked arrest by calling the local doctor to attend to the dying Millereau. Mayance tells them that Mercier is still in the apartment and they agree to take her to the capital to find him. But the young Duchaussoy and his family have already moved in.

Convinced that Mayance is still alive, Scott Thomas travels to Italy, where her quest has serious ramifications for Mayance's middle-aged son, Aidan Quinn. Moreover, Scott Thomas also has to make a difficult decision of her own. She had spent years trying to conceive again after giving birth to daughter Karina Hin. But, no sooner had she ceased the expensive fertility treatment than she realises she is pregnant and is as desperate to keep the baby as Pierrot is that she should abort it.

As ever, Scott Thomas is superb as a woman caught between her journalistic instincts and her future happiness, while young Mayance leaves a deep impression as the spirited girl struggling to understand the terrible things happening around her, but unwilling to forget her duty towards her sibling. The supporting cast is equally strong, with Quinn, George Birt and Charlotte Poutrel standing out in the Italian denouement and its attendant flashbacks. But the gloss imparted by Pascal Ridao's digital imagery rather betrays the slight superficiality required to make the material accessible to the widest possible audience that also undermined Denis Villeneuve's similarly structured Incendies.

Accommodating the audience has never been a concern of Jean-Luc Godard, who is now in his eighties and has hinted that Film Socialisme will be his last feature. A `symphony in three movements', it took four years to compose and makes a fitting companion piece to Éloge de l'amour (2001) and Notre musique (2005). But while his anger at the continued folly of global society is entirely justified, Godard has allowed a certain auteuristic hubris to creep into the often thrilling clash of audiovisual styles. Consequently, this complex, challenging and often compelling picture seems designed less to investigate and chastise a troubled world than to proclaim its maker's genius.

Shifting between high-definition digital video and camcorder and phone cam footage of markedly inferior quality, Godard further indulges his penchant for avant-garde subversion by dispensing with traditional subtitles to present sloganic `Navajo English' summations of the dialogue and the copious quotations. Yet, there is something classical about the tripartite structure into which the film is divided.

`Choses comme ça' is set aboard a ship cruising the Mediterranean, while `Europa Quo Vadis' takes place in a Swiss garage and centres on a juvenile rebellion against parental authority. Each scrupulously avoids tangible narrative threads, but they still convey an impression that dark deeds are occurring beneath the surface, which is reinforced in `Nos Humanités', which collides images, ideas and sounds from a range of literary, historical and filmic sources to link the liner destinations of Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Greece (punningly billed as Hell As), Naples and Barcelona across time and space.

It has been claimed that Film Socialisme transforms ways of `seeing and understanding reality and history, fiction and documentary, images, and images of images'. But it's too abstract to alter opinions or viewpoints. The best it can do is provoke, entice and frustrate. Indeed, rather than free the audience, this confronts them with their intellectual inferiority in the face of Godard's breadth of reading, viewing, thinking and doing. It's a collage of cleverness and while it's not meant to be conclusive, it's not particularly inclusive, either. This is Godard the highbrow rather than the socialist of his La Chinoise or Dziga-Vertov phases. Thus, it only seems fair to equip potential viewers with crib notes to help guide them through the teasing intricacies of the politico-cultural mosaic.

The dramatis personae on the Costa deck include SOE agent Robert Maloubier, the neo-Keynesian economist Bernard Maris, the Marxist philosopher Alain Badiou, the American musician Patti Smith and her guitarist Lenny Kaye, the former tennis player Catherine Tanvier, the Swiss improvisational actor Christian Sinniger and the French-Senegalese actress Nadége Beausson-Diagne. The soundtrack contains music by Betty Olivero, Arvo Pärt, Anouar Brahem, Tomasz Stanko, Alfred Schnittke, Paco Ibáñez, Bernard Alois Zimmermann, Giya Kancheli, Werner Pirchner, Ernst Busch, Thierry Machuel, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Chet Baker, Barbara, Gabriella Ferri, Jona Baez, Alain Bashung and Chloe Mons and Mima.

Among the writers cited are Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Curnier, Roland Dubillard, Hannah Arendt, Otto von Bismarck, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lily Brunschwig, Jean Giradaudoux, Jean Tardieu, Charles Péguy, Louis Aragon, Stéphane Rullac, Henri Bergson, Georges Bernanos, Denis De Rougemont, Christa Wolff, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Fernand Braudel, Claude Simon, Neal Gabler, Luigi Prandello, Paul Ricoeur, Samuel Beckett, André Malraux, Claude Levi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, William Shakespeare, Martin Heidegger, François De La Rochefoucauld, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Curzio Malaparte, Jean Genet and Zoë Oldenbourg. Some of these names won't be readily familiar and one wonders if Godard intends the intrigued to Google them when they get home. Even then, however, it's by no means certain that background reading will make the maestro's intentions any more apparent, even if it presages a second or third viewing.

The film clips are marginally more accessible, having been culled from Roberto Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (1954), John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Claude Lanzmann's Tsahal (1994), Dominique Chapuis and Patrick Baberis's Roman Karmen (2001), Pier Paolo Pasolini's Medea (1969) and A Thousand and One Nights (1974), Orson Welles's Don Quixote (1955), Françoise and Florence Mauro's Simone Weil, l'irrégulière (2008), Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), André Malraux L'Espoir (1945), Youssef Chahine's Adieu Bonaparte (1985), Bryan Goeres's Face of Terror (2004), Jacques Tourneur's The Giant of Marathon (1959), Udi Aloni's Local Angels (2002), Jason Connery's The Devil's Tomb (2009), Godard's own Weekend (1967), Jean-Daniel Pollet and Volker Schlöndorff's Méditerranée (1963), Nanni Loy's The Four Days of Naples (1962), Karel Prokop's Le Vieil homme et le désert (1988), Karin Albou's Wedding Song (2008), Robert Rossen's Alexander the Great (1956), Agnès Varda's The Beaches of Agnès (2008), Gavriil Yegiazarov's Burning Snow (1974), Michelangelo Antonioni's Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004) and a French newsreel entitled The Greek Civil War (1945).

In and of itself, this information will make little or no difference to the average viewer's appreciation of Film Socialisme. None of the pieces of music, poetry, prose or cinema are named on screen and only specialists in each field will be able to identify them. But listing them might help reduce the audience's sense of insignificance at being bombarded with so much conspicuous learning.

It might also be useful to know that it's pretty much open season on speculating about the meaning of the imagery and the allusion. Some have suggested that the liner could represent Noah's Ark or the Argo, while others reckon it's a fond hark back to past motion pictures set aboard ship. The opening dialogue refers to Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) and could be taken to link the present scene with France's colonial past or suggest that future scrambles for territory could be driven by water shortages rather than greed for gold, raw materials or trading opportunities.

The passengers seem equally symbolic, with the holiday-makers and staff obliviously providing the perfect cover for those with guilty secrets. The ports of call have also been consciously chosen and not just because they played their part in the key events of the 20th century. For example, Barcelona and Odessa were the embarkation point and destination of the Bank of Spain's gold reserves in 1936 and Godard fashions a loose narrative that intimates that the travellers may include spies, war criminals, collaborators, bureaucrats, diplomats, cops and capitalists sponsoring the oppression of the developing world for its most expedient exploitation. Moreover, Athens manages to link both the beginnings of Democracy and the potential ruination of the Pan-European dream, as Godard puns on the debt we owe it and the debt we may well inherit from its current crisis.

Elsewhere, Egypt and Naples were the scene of resistance to respective Napoleonic and Nazi invaders and Godard seems to have named the Martin family in the central garage section after a Maquis cell responsible for smuggling POWs and guerilla fighters across the Vosges and the Swiss border. The subsequent electioneering also makes reference to `Liberate and Federate' and this appears to allude to the campaign of socialist intellectual Silvio Trentin for the formation of a United States of Europe. However, Florine (who, like her brother Lucien, takes her name from a Balzac novel) sticks to the trusted revolutionary tenets of `Liberty, Fraternity and Equality' as Godard ruminates on everything from the ruling and the ruled, the agricultural and the industrial and the creative and the service sectors to adults and children, films shot on celluloid or video (or in the Academy ratio or widescreen) and ideology and individuality. Yet, quite where the donkey and the llama fit in is anybody's guess.

Godard's cinema has always been political and elegiac. But, even more significantly, it has always sought to push the boundaries of an artform and a means of communication that too often contents itself with merely entertaining. If Film Socialisme is to be his last screen statement, then it is a typically bold and combative one - especially as it's final utterance is a title card reading `No Comment'. Even the games he played with trailers that compressed the entire picture into a couple of minutes are trademark Godard. But, for all its energy and iconoclasm, this is a work of elitism not emancipation and, as such, it seems to contradict the passionate, cineaste desire to reclaim the moving image from commercial mediocrity and return it to the audience that prompted him to switch from critic to film-maker half a century ago.

Clearly Godard has no intention of going gently into that dark night and the fleeting, bittersweet joys of trying to grow old disgracefully are amusingly explored by Pierre Salvadori in Beautiful Lies, which presents the ever luminous Nathalie Baye with the kind of role that most Hollywood actresses of a certain age would kill for. As a mother embroiled in her daughter's muddled revivifying scheme, Baye exudes vulnerability, sensuality and effortless elegance. Moreover, she demonstrates a sure comic touch that allows this droll ménage to overcome its core contrivances and intrinsic chauvinism.

Audrey Tautou has just opened a hairdressing salon with Stéphanie Lagarde in the sunny southern coastal town of Sète. Receptionist Judith Chemla is nervous of people, but business is brisk and handyman Sami Bouajila is a real find. However, soon after he sends Tautou an anonymous love letter, she discovers he is a highly qualified linguist and becomes intimidated by his intellect. As the awkward silences become more deafening, Tautou has to deal with mother Nathalie Baye's growing despondency at ever winning back the affection of her estranged artist husband, Daniel Duval. Consequently, Tautou decides to retype the billet doux and send it to Baye in the hope it will boost her self-confidence.

Unfortunately, Baye's initial euphoria turns to dejection when she fails to receive a second missive and she becomes more convinced that her admirer has lost his ardour on reading the laboured late-night efforts that Tautou composes under the influence of alcohol. However, matters take an unlikely turn when Tautou sends Bouajila to the post-box and, when he runs out of stamps, he decides to deliver the letter addressed to Baye in person and she follows him all the way to the salon in her night clothes and bare feet.

What ensues is a series of excruciating encounters, as the emotionally stunted Tautou fires the hapless Bouajila and rehires him to romance the libidinous Baye. However, she then realises she is also becoming attracted to him and is dismayed by witnessing her mother attempt to kiss him on the bonnet of her own car. Her feelings are further flustered by the chance discovery that Bouajila was the author of the original letter and she has a tearful exchange with him at the salon unaware that Baye and Chemla are listening on the other side of a curtain.

As one would expect, the loose ends are neatly tied in a cosy conclusion that even allows Baye (who has finally accepted that it's time to forget Duval) to rediscover her vocation as an artist's muse. But this easy resolution typifies the arch slickness of Salvadori and Benoît Graffin's screenplay, which devotes much more time to the intricacies of the storyline than the nuances of character. Thus, while the narrative pieces slot neatly into place, it remains difficult to warm to the curiously neck-tattooed Tautou, whose actions veer from the well-meaning and misguided to the reckless and spiteful without any real thought for their impact on anyone including herself. Bouajila also makes an unconvincing transition from discreet devotee to Machiavellian lothario, as he loses patience with Tautou's inconstancy and exploits Baye's fragility to get back at her. Yet Baye retains her actorly poise, as she follows a gauchely girlish attempt to flirt with Bouajila with a considerably clumsier (but successful) bid to seduce him. Such antics are par for the bedroom farce course and Salvadori keeps them brisk and risqué. But, for all its wit and slickness, the film is detrimentally short of charm.

By contrast, style takes precedence over substance in Laure Charpentier's moody melodrama Gigola, which credibly recreates the sights and sounds of Paris in 1964 without resorting to the nouvelle vague gambits that had so recently transformed French cinema. Working from her own novel, Charpentier (who also cameos as the club owner) makes evocative use of Óscar Sempere's chic production design and Giorgos Arvanitis's acute cinematography. But the plotting is overly deliberate and, while the performances are as polished as the period décor, an air of superficiality pervades proceedings that never quite flicker into life.

The daughter of opium addicted Thierry Lhermitte and his prim wife, Marisa Berenson, 15 year-old Lou Doillon falls in love with teacher Ana Padrão. But, after three years of secret passion, her heart is broken by Padrão's suicide and she vows never to love again and heads for the capital to throw herself into a hedonistic lifestyle to ease the pain. Basing herself at the Chez Moune nightclub in Pigalle, Doillon allows herself to be pampered by grateful clients like Marisa Paredes and sets herself up as Marie Kremer's pimp in the face of threats from Sicilian gangster Eduardo Noriega.

Rossy de Palma, Arly Jover, Virginie Pradal and Taïra Borée are all happy to accept the sartorially slick, but emotionally cold Doillon's protection. But she has no one to look after her and even after she survives an accidental overdose, she refuses to heed the advice of her married psychiatrist (also played by Ana Padrão), who rejects her advances, but suggests she forgets about the past and begins looking to the future by having a child.

Better at depicting the power games played by wealthy lesbians and their paid paramours than the seedy viciousness of the Parisian underworld, this has the feel of a sophisticated soap opera. When not fleecing Paredes to keep her in the lap of luxury, Doillon devotes herself to urging Berenson to prevent the shiftless Lhermitte from frittering away the family fortune and attempting to lure Padrão away from her husband. But, while the club scenes are saucily authentic (and liberally laced with chichi cabaret numbers), the liaison with Noriega rings hollow and even the triumphant return to her tuxedo-clad persona as the credits roll feels a little forced.

The mood is much more authentic in Christophe Honoré's adaptation of his own novel, Close to Leo (2002). Originally made for French television, this is less accomplished than notable theatrical outings like Ma Mère (2004), Dans Paris (2006), Chansons d'Amour (2007) and Le Belle personne (2008). Indeed, it demonstrates the tendency towards melodrama that informed Making Plans for Lena (2009) and Man at Bath (2010) and which has prevented the prolific, talented, but inconsistent Honoré from reaching the front rank of contemporary French film-makers. Nonetheless, this Breton saga tackles a sensitive issue with admirable discretion and coaxes affecting performances out of a creditable cast.

On being diagnosed HIV+, 20 year-old Pierre Mignard informs parents Dominic Gould and Marie Bunel and teenage sibling Rodolphe Pauly and Jérémie Lippmann. But everyone agrees that 12 year-old Yannis Lespert is too young to process the news and he is kept out of the loop. However, he overhears the conversation and decides not to let on what he knows, as covert discussions are held about possible courses of treatment in Brest and Paris.

The frustration of being marginalised begins to tell, however, and Lespert and buddy Louis Gonzales get into a couple of scrapes that persuade Mignard to let his brother accompany him to Paris so he can explain what is going on. Despite his good intentions, however, the trip doesn't go well and Lespert returns home sadder and wiser as a result of his experience and the devastating realisation that things can never be the same again.

Capturing the intimacy of family life with a naturalism that is wholly persuasive, Honoré touchingly reflects the supportive response to Mignard's shock news. But, having dwelt so lovingly on the domestic scenes - most notably in the deeply poignant moment when Mignard weeps in his father's arms after a stay in hospital - Honoré rather rushes the road movie section, with the consequence that the relationship between Mignard and Lespert lacks the necessary intensity. Moreover, because the novel was written in 1996, when a positive test was still essentially a death sentence, Honoré allows the story to drift towards a tragic climax that is not entirely convincing.

The tone and pace are better judged in Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film. Adapted from a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, this is a far cry from the episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and House that allowed Campanella to follow up the impressive Son of the Bride (2001) with the little-seen Moon of Avellaneda (2004). But while it didn't deserve to beat Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon to the Oscar, this is still a meticulously made drama that owes as much to cinematographer Félix Monti's exceptional close-ups and Lucila Robirosa's ageing make-up as the compelling performances of Ricardo Darín and Soledad Villamil.

Darín has just retired, but he keeps thinking back to his time as a Buenos Aires court investigator in the mid-1970s. One case has always disturbed him and he decides to re-examine the evidence in order to write a novel. Touched by the devotion of widowed bank clerk Pablo Rago, Darín had always suspected that the immigrant workers who were charged with the brutal rape and murder of newlywed teacher Carla Quevedo were beaten into confessing and, while going through some old photographs, he becomes convinced that he has found the culprit - as his eyes give him away.

Busting Javier Godino proves more difficult than Darín and long-time assistant Guillermo Francella had anticipated, however, and even when they get their man, the newly installed military dictatorship is prepared to cut a deal if he becomes a government agent.

While revisiting the facts, Darín decides to call on judge Soledad Villamil to show her his manuscript and ask for some advice. The Cornell-educated Villamil had made no secret of her affection for Darín when they were younger, but his insecurity at romancing a superior had driven her into the arms of another. But, even though Villamil urges Darín to find another subject for his book, it's quickly clear that old feelings linger and the story becomes as much a romance as a thriller.

In fact, the frequent flashbacks to the 70s also give this a political edge, as the sins of the Junta are once again exposed for censure. But the regime's tyranny and corruption matter less for Campanella than the difficulty of securing justice across the decades and the ease with which bureaucracy can obscure the truth. He even comes up with a dazzling metaphor for this, as Darín and Francella search for Godino in a packed football stadium, with the brilliance of the technique reinforcing the concept of conspiratorial evasiveness.

This sequence would grace any Hollywood blockbuster. But Campanella also excels at more intimate set-pieces, whether it's Francella providing some bibulous comic relief, Rago reliving his loss or Darín and Villamil flirtatiously discussing the capriciousness of passion and recollection. Yet, for all the surface polish, structural slickness and earnest sincerity, this always feels rather calculating and simplistic. Campanella strives to make points about the Argentinian mindset that allowed the March 1976 coup, but only fleetingly captures the actual state of the nation. Moreover, he fails to make sufficiently revealing contrasts between the country on the cusp of a CIA-inspired calamity and the imminent Millennium.

Nevertheless, Darín makes a compelling protagonist, whose banter with Francella is eclipsed only by his crackling chemistry with Villamil. One suspects that without the specificity of its backstory, this would be ripe for a Hollywood remake. Maybe they could set it in the days before the stolen election of 2000 and stage the climactic chase amidst the chaos of 9/11 instead of a football match.

Aktan Arym Kubat kicks against the system in an altogether gentler manner in The Light Thief, the fourth feature by the Kyrgyz auteur who had already released Where's Your Home, Snail? (1992), The Adopted Son (1998) and The Chimp (2001) under his Russian name, Aktan Abdykalykov. In addition to directing, Kubat also takes the title role in a gentle, folksy satire on the corruption, nepotism and exploitation that existed under the detested regime of President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who came to power in the 2005 Tulip Revolution and was ousted in a 2010 coup shortly after Kubat completed his picture.

Known to everyone as `Mr Light', Kubat is the sole electrician in a remote town near the southern border. He has grand plans to harness the wind gusting across the steppe to power an Aeolian generator he has constructed in his backyard. But, in the meantime, he contents himself with fiddling the meters of neighbours who cannot afford the prices charged by his employers.

Kubat has four young daughters with long-suffering wife Taalaikan Abazova, who fears for their future when he is arrested on the insistence of a visiting company agent. However, he is released following the overthrow of President Askar Akayev in Bishkek and informs Mayor Asan Amanov that he is ready to quit his job and look for new opportunities elsewhere. Moreover, he drunkenly confides in best friend Stanbek Toichubaev that he feels so emasculated by his detention that he wants him to sleep with Abazova in the hope of giving them a son.

Having survived a reckless attempt to eradicate his female genes with a jolt of electricity from an overhead cable, Kubat returns to doing good deeds and rescues a small boy who has climbed to the top of a tall tree. However, everything changes when Amanov dies while arguing with shady urban politician Askat Sulaimanov, who is desperate to secure a lucrative land deal with some Chinese businessmen. Kubat feels he should honour Amanov's memory by opposing the transaction. But when Sulaimanov gatecrashes the wake and proposes Toichubaev as the new mayor, Kubat has his loyalty tested, especially when his friend offers him the opportunity to wire the yurt that is to be used to entertain the visiting dignitaries.

An air of inevitability pervades this dry comedy and Kubat's fate is sealed the moment he decides to disrupt the erotic floor show being staged to entice the Chinese into putting pen to paper. But the belly dancing routine and the described untying the camel ritual to which he takes exception are nowhere near as shocking as the game of kok boru that involves horsemen charging around a field in pursuit of a traumatised goat and there's a grim irony in that he finds himself the quarry in a grotesque climactic parody. Yet not all is gloom and doom, as the breeze snaps the chain tethering Kubat's generator and the hesitant flicker of a bulb adorning his garden wall suggests his sacrifice may not have been in vain.

The significance of several scenes will elude those unversed in the intricacies of Kyrgyz culture and politics. But Kubat's naive underdog geniality remains highly appealing and there's a Capraesque universality about his refusal to permit the abuse of country's hard-won freedoms. Moreover, his relationship with Abazova is genuinely touching, even though she spends more time chiding him for his daydreaming than exhibiting the affection with which she bathes him in a tiny tub on the kitchen floor after his release from prison.

The intimacy achieved in this sequence contrasts with the vastness of the vistas evocatively photographed by Khasan Kydyraliyev and the towering top shots that Kubat uses to emphasise the negligibility of individuals in the grander scheme of things. But the parting shot of the glimmering filament suggests that capitalism may not have it all its own way after all.

Following the failure of the Green Revolution, the strict codes dictating life in Iran have been quietly reinforced and Asghar Farhadi examines their use and abuse in A Separation, the first feature from the Islamic republic to win the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Sparked by a divorce plea, a dereliction of care and a miscarriage, this densely plotted and morally complex drama exposes fissures on several levels of Iranian society.

When bank clerk Peyman Moadi refuses to emigrate, wife Leila Hatami moves back with mother Shirin Yazdanbakhsh and begins proceedings for a divorce and custody of their 10 year-old daughter, Sarina Farhadi. Frustrated by losing control in his own household, Moadi hires Sareh Bayat to look after his father, Ali-Asghar Shahbazi, whose advancing Alzheimer's means that he requires constant supervision.

Unknown to Moadi, the devout Bayat is pregnant and has to bring four year-old daughter Kimia Hosseini to the apartment, as she has not told conservative husband Shahab Hosseini that she is working alone with a man who is not a relative. However, he finds out about the arrangement after Bayat is rushed to hospital after Moadi pushes her into the corridor after discovering that she allowed Shahbazi to escape on to the street. Moadi is sufficiently concerned to come to the emergency room. But the unemployed Hosseini takes this as a sign of bourgeois guilt and, when Bayat loses her baby, he presses charges of manslaughter and Moadi counters with accusations of wilful neglect.

All now turns on whether Moadi knew that Bayat was pregnant. He insists that her chador had hidden any physical manifestations and denies overhearing a conversation about gynaecologists between Bayat and Farhadi's teacher, Merila Zare'i. But, as judge Babak Karimi tries to ascertain the truth, it becomes increasingly clear that lies are being told on both sides.

Using Mahmood Kalari's restless camera to place equal emphasis on what is and isn't said, Farhadi reveals the envy and suspicion that pervades a nation that is nowhere near as united as its leaders would have the wider world believe. He also considers notions of justice, honour, truth and duty and how patriarchal predominance in both the domestic and judicial spheres affects the status of the wives and daughters caught up in the show of strength between males divided by class, cultural inclination and attitude to religion.

The performances are excellent - with Moadi and Hosseini and Hatami and Bayat sharing the Berlin acting awards. The director's daughter also impresses as the intelligent tweenager whose loyalties lie with her father until she realises that he has lied to her and the glance she exchanges with Kimia Hosseini in the courthouse corridor sums up the sorry situation. But Bayat stands out, as the clash between piety and poverty prompts her to deceive her husband and bring a law suit she suspects may be false. Indeed, the godliness that persuades her to call a helpline to seek advice about washing Shahbazi after he soils himself ultimately prevails when Hatami asks her to swear on the Qu'ran before making a blood money payment.

Some may find the plotline a touch melodramatic. But those familiar with documentaries like Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini's Divorce Iranian Style (1998) will recognise the authenticity of what might seem legal contrivances, while Farhadi's insights into the invidious position occupied by the secular middle-class reaffirm those in such trenchant earlier outings as Fireworks Wednesday (2006) and About Elly (2009). Consequently, this is both a compelling piece of storytelling and an astute assessment of the problems that ordinary people are forced to deal with on a daily basis while the theocratic hierarchy continues to deny they even exist.

Despite acclaim for the little-seen Green Fish (1996), Peppermint Candy (1999), Oasis (2002) and Secret Sunshine (2007), former teacher, novelist and Minister of Culture and Tourism, Lee Chang-dong has never been considered one of Korea's major film-makers. But, with Poetry, he finally merits his place among the elite.

Ever since her daughter left to work in Pusan, sixtysomething Yoon Jung-hee has raised grandson Lee David on welfare in a small apartment in a town outside Seoul. He's a sullen, ungrateful youth who expects to be waited on and left to his own devices. Yet Yoon dotes on him and feels guilty at asking him to play badminton with her when the doctor suggests some gentle exercise might alleviate the tingling in her right arm. However, Yoon also tends to live in her own little world, even though she has a job as a part-time carer to stroke victim Kim Hee-ra, who lives above daughter-in-law Kim Gye-seon's convenience store. Thus, she almost surprises herself when she signs up for Kim Yong-taek's poetry class at the local community centre and soon finds herself striving to tap into the creativity he insists that everyone possesses.

Deciding against telling her daughter that she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Yoon begins contemplating apples and trees in search of inspiration. She amuses her classmates with her naive questions and proves equally willing to speak her mind when she starts attending readings with accomplished woman poet Kim Hye-jeong and the lewd Kim Jong-goo, a police detective who is recovering from a car crash that occurred shortly after he was demoted for uncovering corruption among his colleagues in the capital. But the law threatens to intrude closer to home when Yoon learns that David and his five pals have driven Kim Hera to suicide by serially raping her at school.

Led by Ahn Nae-sang, the fathers of the other culprits act quickly with school principal Choi Moon-soon to suppress the story and arrange a compensation payment to the victim's widowed mother, Park Myeong-sin. However, Yoon can't afford her share of the 30 million won and is reluctant to ask her daughter to pay as she doesn't want her to think she's incapable of caring for David. Consequently, she throws herself into her poetry in a desperate bid to find beauty and consolation in the chaos raging around her and even bungles a visit to appease Park by becoming distracted by the taste of the apricots she grows on her humble farm.

Yoon is admonished by Ahn for discussing the case with prying journalist Hong Seong-beom and attracts Kim Jong-goo's sympathy after crying during a drunken poetry session. But, even though David has expressed no remorse for his crime, she knows she has to protect his future and asks Kim Hee-ra for a loan in return for the sexual favours she had granted him during his bath-times. However, there is one last twist in the tale before Kim Yong-taek reads out Yoon's poem on the last day of term.

Bookended by ominous shots of the Han River, this is a quietly devastating study of Korean mores and the casual attitude to violence shared with Japanese society. Yet, while Lee focuses on Yoon's quixotic quest for lyricism and significance, he never lets her escape the gnawing knowledge of grandson's barbarism or her own proclivity for eccentric behaviour. She may dress smartly in floral jackets and cute hats, but the demure Yoon consistently withholds the truth, delays making inconvenient decisions and even strips naked with a Viagra-fuelled lech. Thus, even though Lee reveals nothing of her past, one is left with the suspicion she once had plenty of admirers and knew how to manipulate them to her advantage.

Returning to the screen after an absence of over 15 years and intimately captured by Kim Hyun-seok's fluid camera, Yoon is exceptional, whether she's struggling to understand the complex poetic process or coping with the mounting problems of being an elderly lady in a patronisingly patriarchal milieu. But it's her eschewal of easy sentiment that makes her character so credible and her somewhat contrived situation seem more natural. The callously uncommunicative David also impresses, as he reacts more effusively to being told to turn down his music or clear up his mess than he does to being confronted with his grievous misdemeanour. Yet Lee avoids inter-generational platitudes and explores the recurring theme of militant masculinity with more subtlety than the debuting Yoon Sung-hyun managed in another story sparked by a suicide, Bleak Night (2010).

Nevertheless, Lee doesn't always succeed in accommodating the eponymous poetics into the action, with the open-mike sessions and the direct-to-camera student descriptions of moments that made them happy adding little to the Sirkian narrative until Yoon recalls a cosy childhood incident that exposes how vulnerable and alone she now feels as she faces losing her reasons for living. However, Lee redeems himself with an elegantly poignant coda that makes neat use of montage to illustrate Yoon's parting verses and reinforce the bond she feels with the dead girl whose photograph she stole from the church porch during her funeral service.