Film Reviews by PD

Filippo Meneghetti’s heart-rending directorial debut is a finely wrought and tragic tale of love, loss, ageing and how the secrets we keep affect ourselves and our families. The fact that the subject matter is a lesbian relationship between two elderly women is a striking thing in itself - how refreshing to see this theme portrayed without resorting to the usual (invariably male-centred) cliches. The brief, intriguing opening sequence immediately tells we're in the hands of someone who's going to keep us spellbound, and the film lives to its promise.

The first act belongs to Martine Chevallier, who, as Madeleine, gives a commanding performance of someone lovely, fragile and vulnerable, whilst she is neatly complemented by Barbara Sukowa who dominates the second half as the panicked, grieving Nina, who nevertheless remains the strong, earthy, determined half of the couple. She embodies the exquisitely singular agony Nina experiences: the loss of a partner who never fully disappeared, remaining frustratingly out of reach just beyond their apartment doors.

The film doesn't entirely avoid melodrama, and some of the plot developments are a little contrived - a tangent involving a vengeful care-assistant is also totally unnecessary. Moreover, at just 90 minutes, the film isn't nearly long enough to explore all the (very important and universally relatable) issues it raises. But the film is at its most powerful when dealing with subtleties: tender, erotic caresses, the flickering of a glance, a hand grasped; clocks ticking and spoons clinking in an oppressive environmental pressure cooker; an ongoing eavesdropping motif via spy-holes in doors is particularly effective , introducing a quasi-thriller element to proceedings. More to come, hopefully, from a talented director.

Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful film opens with a present-day scene involving two neat skeletons being found side by side by a curious dog and its owner, who treats the find like a professional archaeologist. It doesn't take us long to realise that these are the bodies of Cookie Figowitz and King-Lu, the friendship of which the film concerns itself. Their remains are remnants of a long-gone West, namely 1820s Oregon - its mélange of business and trade, origins and ethnicities, together with its opportunities and dangers, superbly depicted. John Magaro is spot-on as as Cookie, a humble Jewish cook travelling West from Maryland with a gang of fur traders who seem to hate him, his performance beautifully complemented by Orion Lee as King-Lu. on the run from killing a man. Their friendship is quickly kindled; the men move in together out of the completely natural instinct, often shared by outsiders, to stick together. Lee takes the Western trope of the indecipherable East Asian outsider, typically a complete non-character, and imbues King-Lu with a magnetic cleverness—something intriguingly at odds with Cookie’s humility, in that it could work to Cookie’s benefit or his complete demise. Magaro, meanwhile, is an actor with the kind eyes of a saint - the scenes involving him sweet-talking a cow into relinquishing her milk are tender and totally convincing.

But the men’s friendship isn’t the only story of First Cow. It’s the seed of something larger, portended by way of William Blake in the film’s epigraph: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” This being a Western of sorts (but don't expect any 'action' - Reinhardt is in no hurry at all), tensions arise from the broader problems of commerce and ambition that beset these men. Capital, the film reveals, is sustained through intimate transactions, be they the lowly designs of propertyless men like Cookie and King-Lu, the face-to-face haggling of culture and craft between whites and Natives, or the deals people apparently make with nature and fate. King-Lu is the guy with a mind for business, who takes Cookie’s humble ideas—the man just wants to bake!—and, through acumen and risk, makes them plausible, but, inevitably, Cookie and King-Lu find themselves enmeshed in the sort of trouble that arises when the have-nots try to make a way in the world for themselves.

Throughout, Reichardt successfully undoes the traditions of Western iconography - in place of the vast and symbolic possibilities of Monument Valley as with John Ford, we get tight, local depths based on forests and local life, whilst her emphasis on specific slits of character—the holes in Cookie’s boots, the sensual waves of his honey dipper as he lovingly garnishes the oily cakes that become his trade—has the effect that untouchable horizons and broad vistas do in more traditional Westerns. At the same time, here, as with Reichardt’s other films, the characters’ lives are whittled down to spirit-shaking, material choices, decisions that at times literally set the course for the rest of their lives.

There's a few little implausible plot contrivances in the last sequence, but given what went before one is swept along nonetheless. Poignant and highly intelligent filmaking.

This very watchable piece starts as a straightforward revenge tale, but director Emerald Fennell has an awful lot of tricks up her sleeve, exploring Cassandra’s vigilante campaign from different angles, such as her relationship with her parents, who've all but given up on her, and what happens when, in the midst of a non-too subtle tale of 'all men are bastards', one of her targets shows genuine remorse for what he’s done, or, even more poignantly, when Cassandra meets a man she actually likes. Shifting tones keep us going despite the various plot implausibilities (and there are rather too many of these for comfort), and also of interest is the fact that Cassandra is not simply a righteous avenger.

The fact that a film with such disturbing elements is so accessible is a testimony to the cleverness of the writing, and it's a plain as day that questions over 'rape culture' deserves some serious treatment - the film works very hard at making us think: consent, or lack thereof, is obviously foregrounded, but academia’s leniency toward male students accused of rape and assault is another important one. One of the film’s most provocative if rather under-explored elements is its interrogation of alcohol and the role it plays in consent; Cassandra hates men who victimize drunk women, but isn’t above drugging a drink if it’ll assist in her mission. Meanwhile, Carey Mulligan successfully portrays plays Cassie as a woman who’s been robbed of joy, leaving her exhausted and distrustful.

Unfortunately, there's quite a few weaker elements which rob the film of some of its potential power. To begin with, a lot of the psychology portrayed here remains on the highly superficial side. Cassie’s motivations are questionable - she coaxes out men's worst impulses to prove to herself, and to us, that all men are terrible, and the film's conclusion—not only are men just as bad as you always thought they were, they’re worse—is an all-too easy one to reach, not a hard one. And whilst we're invited to be her accomplice there's some highly questionable tactics - in one particularly strange sequence, Cassie lures a teenage girl into her car for what looks to be a nefarious purpose, and whilst Fennell resolves the episode in a jaunty way—not even Cassie would go that far— the scene still leaves a bad taste, flirting disturbingly with the idea that it’s fine to corrupt innocent girls as long as the goal is to punish bad men. At times this laudably feminist manifesto (women are indeed angry for good reasons) rather undermines itself by being overly cynical without being particularly perceptive. So all in all a film which has a lot of punches but doesn't always land them all effectively.

This very entertaining 'sci-fi' piece stars Theo James who is very impressive as George Almore, an obsessive robotics specialist living in a remote security facility whole he works on an AI project. There's many highly intriguing elements, including impatient bosses, eerie operatives, security issues and whatnnot, but especially George's relationship with his 'companions' J1 and J2, robot prototypes for the supposed goal - to develop an AI sophisticated enough to process senses and experience emotions. The sections involving George's interaction with J2, in particular, are wonderful - J2 clearly feels emotions such as loneliness, jealousy, need for affirmation etc (the drop of J2's metal head communicates a surprising amount of teenage-like interior pain which is very touching indeed) but George turns a blind eye to these, given that she's just a means to an end.

Unfortunately, however these fascinating threads are largely abandoned in favour of another, much weaker unifying theme. For needless to say, George's real goal is a different one, and it doesn't take us long to work out what it is - and therein lies the film's main problem, with all the interest generated by the other elements being sidelined in favour of it, and whilst the twist-plot ending certainly comes as a surprise for me it's all a bit of let-down given what came before. For me, the director has therefore successfully assembled a fantasy world with a strong convincing cast, but the ideas raised - what people owe their children, the limits of our control over others' lives, the sacrifices that come with love, are largely buried. That said, it's beautifully made and highly watchable, with some great moments.

“I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. “Not the same thing, right?

This truly remarkable piece is an understated yet devastating film about the delicacies of that distinction. An adaptation of a non-fiction book by Jessica Bruder, it uses Frances McDormand's Fern as a lens through which to question the very nature of the American Dream. The subculture sensitively depicted here concern many people near retirement age but without the option or inclination to retire, and, instead of struggling to sustain what they once had, have whittled down their needs. They’re refugees of the last recession, of rising housing costs, of a threadbare safety net — though director Chloé Zhao never reduces them to by-products of a callous capitalist system. Through choice or necessity, they’ve traded career grinds and the lure of the property ladder for a precarious but carefully guarded kind of liberation.

But the film goes further than this, having a fable-like quality worthy of John Steinbeck, dealing with the bigger issues of life and death, love and loss. It takes a while for Fern to firm up into a character rather than a narrative vehicle, but when she does, she emerges as a fascinatingly contradictory figure, being someone who’s still in mourning and in whom the desires for connection and freedom are constantly at war. She hasn’t been abandoned, either by strangers or those who know her — throughout the film, people offer to take her in, but that is never what she wants. Through the nomads, who cross paths and help each other but never try to hold on to one another too tightly, Zhao is able to examine the idea of wide-open frontiers without nostalgia or the need to preach: shots of Fern, a tiny, determined dot out there on a stunning panorama, are breathtaking and elegiac, worthy of some of the great directors. She is a woman eking out the life she wants to lead, a woman who has gone searching for her soul in a country for which this is deemed irrelevant, and if you don't cry during the last sequences then there's something truly wrong with you. Compelling viewing.

This is one of those drama/fantasy things, the basic theme of which is a family guiding a young child through his father’s terminal illness.

The fantasy element comes from the “hero’s journey,” an odyssey on which the dying father accompanies the boy (in the boy’s imagination) to help him transition to the new world that won’t have his father in it. The film is rooted in reality largely because it’s a continuation of writer-director Mark Webber’s experiments with casting real families (principally his own) and friends in his work and letting those relationships inform the films, so here veteran actress Teresa Palmer is both real-life and film wife, whilst the child is his real-life son, Bodhi Palmer, who delivers a remarkable, truly guileless performance. The basic problem however is that that the fantasy and real-life worlds are not very well woven together, with the former being much more engaging than the latter, which is rather cloying and cumbersome by comparison. So, watchable enough but for me the construct doesn't quite come off.

Mmm - I tried very hard to like this one - one of those that attempts to deal with some serious themes (loss, grief, desire for familial connection etc) by being self-consciously 'charming', but for me I'm afraid pretty much everything, whether script, or production, or acting, all fell a bit flat. The self-mocking styling of the film (a promising construct) stands awkwardly, separately, from the dialogue, which is realistic by comparison, but this, which includes an abundance of soap-opera style cliche, only serves to distract the audience from what's going on rather than reinforce any emotive power the film might have (although to be fair there are some very good moments en route when the syrupy strings get put away and the characters engage with their respective pasts). Meanwhile, the performances just seem to lack depth and nuance to me, and add to all this an American-style saturation of sentiment throughout, I'm coming away thinking this one ends up not saying very much, sadly.

The heart of this one by young Ukranian Nariman Aliev, is a father-and-son-bonding tale unfolding against the backdrop of a fraught road trip from Kyiv to Russia-annexed Crimea.

As the film opens, Kyiv college student Alim (an affecting non-pro) and his father Mustafa (the impressive Akhtem Seitablayev), newly arrived from Crimea, are paying a visit to one of the capital’s morgues to claim the shrapnel-pocked body of Alim’s older brother Nazim, one of many Ukrainian soldiers killed in the conflict with Russia. Even though Nazim lived in Kyiv with his Ukrainian Orthodox wife Oleysa, the fierce Mustafa brusquely insists on taking his son’s body back to Crimea for a Muslim burial next to his mother’s grave, and won’t allow Oleysa to travel with them. A complicated backstory of familial estrangement is hinted at (it’s the first time Mustafa and Oleysa have met; Mustafa doesn’t know what Alim is studying; Oleysa talks about Mustafa being dangerous), but is never further elaborated or explained. Regardless of what may have happened in the past, there is definitely a gulf that is greater than generational in the relationship between the street-smart Mustafa and the now-citified Alim. Symbolizing this, they have only one shared language: Crimean Tatar, a Turkic tongue not related to Slavic languages. Like many Crimean Tatars of his generation, Mustafa grew up in Uzbekistan, where his relatives were deported in 1944. He learned Russian in school and Soviet ways of doing business. As Mustafa drives south and west with Alim, we see this style in operation as he tries to get his way with bribes or brute force. Meanwhile, teenager Alim wasn’t even alive during the Soviet period. And he speaks fluent Ukrainian, the tongue in which he converses with everyone else except his father. As Mustafa and Alim encounter and (often less credibly) solve many problems en route to Crimea, a wary mutual respect grows between father and son. But at the same time, it gradually becomes clear that Mustafa’s intense rush to bring Nazim’s body to the homeland is not just about the Muslim tradition to bury the dead as soon as possible.

The film's strongest suit is definitely the impressive cinematography by Anton Fursa. He frames the characters in tight closeups when in Kyiv and in the car, but as they approach Crimea, beautiful yet austere shots of the natural surroundings become more prominent. Particularly unforgettable are the visuals during the climactic scene that depicts Alim literally burdened by the weight of Tatar tradition. Aliev also cleverly eschews a music track, instead making strong use of diegetic sound and sound design.

There's quite a few problems: it's very short on character development and narrative depth, and there's is a decidedly male chauvinist undercurrent - women, whether Olyesa or a mechanic’s granddaughter Masha, being rather-too casually depicted as temptresses who lure Mustafa’s sons into trouble. Although Alim at first seems shocked by his father’s treatment of Oleysa and attempts to stay in touch with her by phone, he later abruptly dismisses her, which leaves a rather bitter taste. Nevertheless, the desire of Aliev to highlight the plight of Crimean Tatars (both historically and currently), and the mixed feelings of love and resentment between father and son — and their pride in their Tatar heritage and homeland — come through loud and clear.

This one's a terribly sentimental tale of overdue bonding between father and son over repairs to a Tuscan villa packed with memories, the main interest being Liam Neeson's role as Robert, a former toast-of-the-town, now-struggling artist. Both Neeson and his real-life son Micheál Richardson do ok with a painfully thin, pedestrian script and there's the occasional funny line, but for the most part this is a fluffy, banal piece which does not succeed in making us engage with either father or son. Annoyingly also, it simply sidelines the potentially interesting female characters - expat estate agent Kate (Lindsay Duncan - she's worth more than this), and local restaurateur Natalia, who is the all-too convenient romantic interest for Jack, tiresomely sketched as the 'dream girl' to balance Kate's 'strong woman'. Although to be fair, the film doesn’t do much more for its main male characters, wasting away the story’s emotional real-life echoes - the on-screen pair’s tearful confrontations around grief and locked-away memories seem puzzlingly forced here. Harmless enough I suppose, but it's never a good sign that some great shots of the countryside are what you'll remember most. Mercifully short.

A rare look at a Korean family trying to make a go of it in 1980s Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical, low-key piece is warmly observant and gently humorous but also doesn't shy away from the enormous strains the struggle places on the family. It's a very specific context but also universally relatable.

The opening shot of the family arriving at their new home—a dilapidated trailer sitting in the middle of a field - neatly subverts the white-picket-fence American Dream, and we're immediately aware that things are going to go very wrong between horrified wife Monica (Yeri Han) and her defiantly optimistic husband Jacob (Steven Yeun) for whom this marks a step up from the humiliation of working in a chicken hatchery. Jacob has big dreams of building out a small farm on his land, composed of Korean vegetables to cater to the growing Korean immigrant population in America, but the strains this puts on the relationship with Monica provides much of the focus of the film and is very well-handled. Another key development is, after a marital bust-up (neatly accompanied by the children making paper aeroplanes with 'don't fight' written on them - we've all been there), the arrival of Monica's mother, Soon-ja (Yuh-Jung Youn) from South Korea. Not your conventional grandmother, the cursing wily matriarch only adds more conflict: young David, in particular, resists her presence with all the (considerable) ammunition at his disposal. While predictably, the two misfits eventually form a bond, Minari expands upon this rather clichéd connection between grandmother and grandson (yes, Ozu’s Tokyo Story does come to mind) to tackle more substantive issues of what it means to cultivate a better life and what it takes for relationships to survive and thrive, even in the worst of times.

Chung's affection for his characters, and the Arkansas farmland where he grew up—always shines through, and there’s never a moment where you don’t root for and care for each family member. There’s even a certain fondness for Will Patton’s Paul, a batty evangelical farmer with stringy hair and big glasses, who carries a giant cross on Sundays ('this is my church' he says), a wild detail that could only come from real life (as apparently, Chung remembered it from his youth). He's neatly contrasted with the po-faced regular churchgoers who, for all their going-on about Jesus and the Second Coming and whatnnot, don't ever seem to lift a finger to help.

There's some less successful touches - young David's potentially serious medical condition is all a bit superfluous and not very well treated, and the significant new adversity which provides an anchor for the third-act climax is all a bit heavy; the film is also insufficiently clear about showing how the family crisis is resolved at the end. However all in all a very highly-accomplished, totally absorbing piece.

Rather frustrating viewing, sadly, because there's little effort to make this feel like a film - instead, it's like sitting through one of those cinema tie-ins from the NT, only here, perhaps because there's no audience, the whole things falls rather flat. The shooting consists of shots of the whole stage with close-ups of the actors here and there, and the result is very tired eyes and brains (I had to watch it stages - in the cinema I would have fallen asleep, and I'm a fan of this sort of thing).

The material is of course rather topical - sheer boredom from being at home with the ensuing tensions between family members, the all-too present prospect of environmental destruction, the dread of ageing, the frailties and frustrations of love - human experience never changes, but a truly dreadful translation which sounds to me like someone trying to shoehorn their own interpretation onto proceedings means that you're forever trying to guess what this is rather than being absorbed into Chekhov. Toby Jones and Richard Armitage are fine actors, but it requires a huge suspension of disbelief to identify with them here, and the staging and pace are so staid that the only effect is to try our patience: the (essential)humour all but lost. And whoever instructed the woefully miscast Aimee Lou Wood (an impossibly young and attractive Sonia) to be nodding and shaking her head during the last speech needs to watch it over and over again to make sure they never do this again. A big disappointment, I'm afraid.

This disturbing psychological drama from Kosovan documentary maker Antoneta Kastrati is a very painful, sombre meditation on lingering wartime trauma.

The film takes place in a sleepy rural corner of western Kosovo 10 years after the Balkan wars have ended, but the scars of conflict still shape the psychic landscape. Kastrati presents contemporary Kosovan society as suspended in limbo between the old world and the new, between science and superstition, where smartphones and YouTube videos co-exist with beliefs in witches and demons, fortune tellers and faith healers. There's quite a few horror-film-style touches used to illuminate central character Lume’s fractured mental state which are a bit hit-and-miss (much more effective is a scratchy VHS tape depicting the exhumation of wartime casualties), with echoes of Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Look Now, but of course the real 'horror' is how Lume is treated rather than any of the spells or exorcisms she is subjected to.

Zana is also about the inner wounds of patriarchy and misogyny, which are relentlessly (and often not very subtly) depicted. Even in her most despairing depths, Lume is rejected by family on all sides, demeaned by her husband and harshly judged by her peers, her social standing reduced to her duty as a baby-breeding machine, although Kastrati is careful to avoid placing the blame on mono-dimensional villains: Lume's husband Ilir, for example, evidently has tender and protective feelings for his wife despite their unbalanced gender roles. Nevertheless, the film remains a powerful indictment of how Lume's family see her role,; the fact that Lume seems to slowly losing her mind is agonizingly believable in these circumstances.

The plot is a little disjointed and repetitive, but Adriane Matoshi’s quietly devastating performance conveys a lot with very little, her impassive features revealing submerged grief with scant trace of melodrama. Lume is clearly intended to be emblematic of an entire generation of Kosovan women still scarred by wartime trauma, and in a heartbreaking last word, Kastrati ends with a dedication to her mother Ajshe and sister Luljeta, both killed in the conflict 20 years ago.

This one concerns the life and work of Mary Anning, whose contributions to palaeontology influenced Darwin. It depicts a middle-aged Anning, played by Kate Winslet, being acclaimed for her work but being also overlooked within the scientific community. She lives a modest life on the Jurassic coast, spending most of her days searching for fossils to sell to tourists in order to support herself and her mother. But the mundane routine of her life is disrupted by the arrival of a young middle-class woman, Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), who has been instructed to convalesce by the sea by her husband, Roderick. The pair quickly develop an intense relationship that changes their lives.

The film is beautifully shot and unsurprisingly well-acted, but, watchable as it undoubtedly is, I'm coming away thinking Mary Anning has been sold short here. Yes, it makes us painfully aware that Anning was getting a raw deal in professional terms, and that, as well as being female, one of her major disadvantages was her working-class roots. But unfortunately there is very little exploration of this due to the central focus on a romantic lesbian relationship, of which there is absolutely no historical justification beyond (presumably) an inference from the fact that Anning never married.

Lee wants to portray two lonely women united by the constraints of their gender within a patriarchal society - but while this is may well be a laudable aim, it plays havoc with what we know of Murchison, who, far from being restricted in opportunity by a controlling husband, was in fact the impetus behind his career. Interestingly also, the real Murchison was about a decade older than Mary, whereas her the age difference is switched so that Anning is the senior of the pair, which is very odd. Worse still, Mary was emphatically NOT some kind of misanthropic outsider. She maintained a number of close female friendships and professional relationships throughout her life, notably Elizabeth Philpot, who built on Anning's work. Philpot does appear (played by Fiona Shaw), but here she takes the form of a local villager whose relationship with Anning is somewhat strained, Philpot's charm and warmth serving as a mirror to Anning's aloofness; predictably, there is a suggestion that Philpot is a former lover of Anning, and that this is the source of the tension between the two. I find this a shame, because we have no indication that this was the case - quite the contrary in fact.

Perhaps a more historically accurate (or at least plausible) film would not have received the attention that this has got. And of course it's perfectly possible just to ignore the fact that it's based on Mary Anning and just let the tale stand in its own right. But I still find it a bit of a pity that the 'real' Anning is lost amongst the passion: surely a tale of the dawn of science meets female enablement would have been of interest? It says a lot about us, I fear, that we just can't let Anning's intellectual achievements speak for themselves.

This latest offering from Roy Andersson is typically bleak, and even his trademark humour is in noticeably short supply here, although to be fair the film is not without brief snatches of joy amidst the rubble.

The film is narrated by a young woman who 'remembers' certain people from an undefined future (beyond the grave?). What follows is a series of vignettes or poetic fragments of varying degrees of absurdity and scope, with a priest's crisis of faith one of the few linking threads, although certain themes reoccur often, notably the way people become so engrossed in their own concerns that the essence of eternity is hidden from them. A man whose car breaks down on a lonely road fails to see the extraordinary sight of a flock of migrating birds wheeling overhead — much less the majestic plain that surrounds him under a canopy of sky; a dentist who has become dependent on the bottle stares glumly into his glass at the bar, unwilling to turn around and look at the sight of snow falling while ethereal voices sing “Silent Night.” “Everything is fantastic!” another man prompts him, but the dentist doesn’t even try to engage with him.

Andersson's trademark minimalist, austere style, eschewing conventional character development, plot, traditional editing, camera movement etc is once again very effective here, although few of the scenes here stick in the mind as much as some of the others in his so-called 'trilogy about being a human being' series. That said, it's still clearly an impressive piece of work.

This film, Henry Blake's debut feature, deals with the delicate subject of how an introverted 14-year-old boy is lured all too easily into the world of county lines drug trafficking.

Harris Dickinson and Ashley Madekwe both cede the spotlight to young lead Conrad Khan, who delivers an outstanding performance of unnerving stillness and tightly coiled anguish. 18 at the time of filming, he convincingly plays the younger Tyler, a taciturn social outcast in the pupil referral unit he sporadically attends. Belittled and bullied in class, he’s the man of the house at home, effectively parenting his young sister Aliyah while his single mother Toni (Madekwe) works menial night shifts and sleeps off the days.

Blake’s economical script doesn’t dwell on the history that took Tyler out of school but it's clear enough that he hasn't had much of a chance, with limited support from the authorities and the over-burdened Toni. Rudderless, isolated children like Tyler are easy prey for dealers seeking county lines runners, who apparently are often targeted out of pupil referral units. Blake, who spent some time working in a PRU, plainly knows his terrain here, and when Tyler is defended from bullies one evening by imposing “entrepreneur” Simon (Dickinson), viewers will sense the grooming machine in motion well before the teen, Dickinson subtly mirroring Tyler’s sloping body language and terse, congested speech to suggest how he, too, may once have been in the boy’s uncomfortable skin, cyclically recruited in the same predatory way. A crisp jump to six months later, meanwhile, shows how fast the process can be. Fully immersed in grim drug-mule duty, a hardened Tyler has gone from withdrawn to stone-blank, a transition that Khan navigates with considerable restraint. Between the film’s portraits of hemmed-in masculinity, meanwhile, Madekwe offers a moving study of imperfect motherhood that is far more easily punished than assisted.

There's quite a few weakness: some scenes are a little heavy-handed, and the stylised camerawork doesn't always come off, whilst the score is an irritating distraction; the ending, moreover, is perhaps more convenient than it is convincing. But overall there's a lot of humanity here and the director has done very well to highlight such an important, difficult subject so powerfully yet so sensitively.