Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 31/5/2018)

Following a drastic haircut, Chloe Fortin (Marine Vacth) pays a visit to her gynaecologist (Dominique Reymond), where yonic and ocular close-ups merge in an audacious match shot. Asked if she would like to consult a psychiatrist to explore the causes of her recurring stomach pains, Chloé agrees to meet Dr Paul Meyer (Jérémie Renier), who listens intently as she reveals that she is 25, lives with a cat named Milo and has struggled to find a job since she quit modelling. Although she has had a few lovers, she feels incapable of sustaining a romance and hopes that Paul can find the reasons for her abdominal pains, as a series of tests have confirmed that there is nothing physically wrong with her. 

Starting their second session with the revelation that she had dreamt about Paul, Chloé describes how she had been pregnant and had been intimidated by his insistence on examining her. As the camera crosses the 180° axis and the screen splits in two, Chloé discloses that she had always wanted a twin sister to protect her, as she has never felt any love from a mother who once admitted that she was an unwanted accident. Paul wonders if the pain she feels over this neglect might be the source of her problem and Chloé whispers that his look of quiet concern makes her feel as though she exists. 

She gets a part-time job as a gallery invigilator at a museum and sits in an alcove like a living exhibit. However, she tells Paul that she enjoys people watching and he suggests that they terminate the treatment because he has developed feelings for her. They kiss and move in together, with Chloé having an uncomfortable encounter with her landing neighbour, Rose (Myriam Boyer), when she introduces her to Milo. But a more disconcerting incident occurs while unpacking, as Chloé finds Paul's passport and discovers that his real surname is Delord. 

Over dinner, he explains that he took his mother's maiden name when he opened his practice and merely smiles when Chloé says that he knows everything about her while he remains something of a stranger. Milo stares accusingly at Chloé as she makes love and protests loudly when Paul insists on her removing him from the bedroom. She makes Paul promise to keep nothing from her, but has a sleepless night and dozes off in the gallery, where images from the Flesh and Blood exhibits meld surreally in her imagination. 

During the bus ride home, Chloé thinks she sees Paul chatting to a woman on the street and is dissatisfied when he claims to have spent the entire day at a hospital on the other side of town. Alighting at the nearest stop the following day, Chloé discovers the lookalike is psychiatrist Louis Delord (also Renier) and she makes an appointment to see him under the name Eva Martin. On arriving home, Rose inquires how she is settling in and asks after Milo. Chloé jokes that Paul isn't a big fan and Rose replies that men lack sensitivity. But there's no sign of Milo when Chloé opens the door and she is surprised to find him locked inside a cupboard. 

Entering Louis's building, Chloé sees her hexapartite reflection in the foyer mirrors and notices that he keeps a plastic plant in his waiting-room, while Paul has a real one. While Paul let her speak, Louis makes the running and challenges Chloé when she fibs about having a sister and a dead mother. However, he is intrigued when she mentions his brother and agrees to see her again if she is willing to take the consultations seriously. Nettled by his arrogance, Chloé slaps his fee into Louis hand and stalks out. Paul picks up on her tension and offers to hook her up with a colleague to continue her therapy. The next morning, he denies having a twin and explains that he uses his mother's maiden name because his father had been implicated in a financial scandal and forced to move abroad.  

Having asked Rose to mind Milo for a few days, Chloé pays a second visit to Louis, who remains brusque and sceptical. But Chloé fantasises that night about him walking in on her making love with Paul and joining in. Indeed, she even imagines herself to be conjoined twins being seduced by the siblings. So, she books another appointment with Louis, who shows her into a bedroom and fondles her before pushing her down on the bed with the promise that she will orgasm the next time they meet. He is as good as his word, with Ozon matching a close-up of Chloé's rounded mouth with an endoscopic shot of her climax. 

As she dresses, Chloé spots a slumbering cat named Danton and Louis explains how rare tortoiseshell males are and reveals that they are often dominant twins (as is sometimes the case with humans). Feeling discomfited, Chloé returns home to find that Milo has run away and is taken aback when she sees a stuffed cat on top of a chest of drawers. Rose explains that Luigi belonged to her daughter, who suffers from mental problems and has been in an institution since she was 20. 

Attending a drinks party with Paul, Chloé asks some of the other guests about patients who repress the existence of their twins. She gets tipsy and fails to recognise the female shrink she is supposed to have been seeing (also Reymond). Feeling sick on the way home, she begs Paul to pull over so she can vomit. But she thinks she sees Louis hiding in the hedgerow and runs down the road before collapsing. Paul carries her back to the car, but nothing more is said about the incident. 

When she next visits Louis, Chloé intends breaking things off. But he pounces on her when she enters and demands to know if his brother ever makes her feel this good. She is shocked that he has rumbled her and he claims to have known who she was from the outset. He explains that Paul loathes him because he always wanted to be an only child and went out of his way to drive a wedge between Louis and his parents. She suppresses a smile when Louis reveals that he is 15 minutes older than his mirror twin and came out head first, while Paul emerged feet first and caused their mother to lose a lot of blood. Louis enjoys being the dominant twin and Chloé has a dream of them wrestling in their underwear as young boys (Keisley and Tchaz Gauthier).

On the night Paul proposes to Chloé, she insists on buying a strap-on and keeps thrusting when he calls out in pain. She experiences pangs of her own during the night and discovers she's pregnant. When she breaks the news to Louis, he is confident that he is the father. But Chloé wonders whether he is the jealous one and that he feels emasculated by Paul. Louis hits her and, as she reels backwards, Chloé shatters a mirror. She vows to have nothing more to do with Louis, but he keeps calling the apartment. He even poses as Paul to pay her a visit at the gallery and give her a cat brooch for her birthday. But Chloé is furious when she realises the deception when they kiss and throws a glass of wine over Louis before storming out of the restaurant.

He grabs her as she passes and he suggests she asks Paul about their classmate, Sandra Schenker (Fanny Sage). When Paul leaves for a conference, Chloé looks through his desk and finds newspaper clippings about the Delord brothers and a love letter from Sandra. She tracks her down via the Internet and learns from her mother (Jacqueline Bisset) that Sandra had the potential to become a great actress before her accident. Fazed by seeing the comatose Sandra's face morph into her own, Chloé wants to leave. But Madame Schenker persuades her to have a cup of tea and explains how Louis posed as Paul in order to take advantage of Sandra and she tried to shoot herself after he raped her and Paul disowned her. However, when she asks Chloé if she had also fallen victim to the Debord boys, Madame Schenker accuses her of enjoying being their plaything and denounces her as a hussy. 

Fleeing in distress, Chloé fails to notice that she is being followed home and only panics when a car speeds towards her in the underground car park. On finding a package on her doorstep, Chloé is dismayed to find a jewellery box containing Danton's heart and she asks Rose if she can spend the night in her daughter's room. Spooked by Luigi and another stuffed cat in a hissing pose, Chloé manages to sleep and is awoken the next morning by Paul clutching Milo, who has made a surprise return. He explains how hurt he had been by Sandra's betrayal and claims her obsession with twins had broken his heart. When Chloé tries to defend her as the victim of Louis's cruelty, he refuses to listen and almost believes she deserves her fate among the living dead.

This exchange proves to be a dream, however, and Chloé beats a hasty retreat after waking to find Rose watching over her with a cake on her lap. Her respite doesn't last long, however, as Paul has discovered she has not been seeing Dr Wexler and Chloé grabs the gun from Paul's desk and confronts Louis. She sees Danton basking in front of a mirror and tells Louis that she knows the truth about Sandra. But he insists that she made up the rape allegation after becoming pregnant and he tuts that Chloé has proved to be every bit as hysterical. 

Chloé pulls the gun, but Louis asks if she is sure she is pointing it at him or Paul. He turns to open a door and Paul appears in an identical pale blue shirt. Unsure who is who, Chloé's confusion is magnified by the mirrors around the room and she even puts the gun to her own head before shooting one of the twins. As the survivor cradles his brother, Chloé feels an unbearable pain and sinks to the floor as he belly begins to tear and a small, bloodied hand reaches out. She's rushed to hospital, where Paul watches through the glass as she undergoes emergency surgery. 

He greets her mother (also Bisset) when she arrives and they are informed by Chloé's gynaecologist that she hasn't been pregnant at all, but has been suffering from a cyst caused by the fact she has been carrying her unborn twin. She shows them photographs of the object removed from Chloé's womb, which looks uncannily like two of the sculptures at the museum. When they are allowed to see Chloé, she asks if they have seen the foetus (which she has named Sandra) and seems to take pleasure in being a `cannibal twin'. Paul avers that the correct term is `parasitic twin' and points out that she absorbed her sister rather than devoured her. 

Having hugged her apologetic mother, Chloé drives home with Paul and asks if he ever wished he'd had a brother. As they make love that night, with Milo perched watchfully on a chair, Chloé looks across to the window and sees her twin hovering outside. She bangs on the glass, which shatters as Chloé orgasms and the flying fragments fade into the credits. 

Reuniting with Marine Vacth after her breakthrough turn in Jeune & Jolie (2013), Ozon relies heavily on the enigmatic impassivity created by her sharp cheekbones and sunken eyes to distract the viewer from the slender nature of the conceit underlying this piece of cine-legerdemain. During the twin reverie, he even summons the spirits of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) to hint at the secret cause of her physical and psychological discomfort. But even Ozon proves unable to hold back the denouement's melodramatic torrent and it's hard not to laugh out loud when the gun-toting Vacth is faced with two Jérémie Reniers in a room full of mirrors. 

Give production designer Sylvie Olivé her credit, however, as she has found some magnificent interiors for Manuel Dacosse's camera to prowl to the menacing, if sometimes manipulative music of Philippe Rombi. Editor Laure Gardette also clearly has fun with the split screens and the match shots, while Ozon and co-writer Philippe Piazzo cope admirably with the convolutions of their source by adding dashes of saucy humour and kinky eroticism to prevent the seething and oddly misogynist scenario from boiling over. Vacth and Renier generate sparks, while also exposing each other's vulnerabilities and psychoses, and they are deftly supported by Jacqueline Bisset and Myriam Boyer, as well as a pair of handsome felines. But much will depend on the viewer's ability (or willingness) to suspend disbelief, as the plot twists become more telenovelettish and the symbolism become ever more campily Freudian.

Contrivances are equally plentiful in Arnaud Desplechin's Ismael's Ghosts, as a missing wife returns to jeopardise the happiness of a film-maker expecting a baby with his new partner. This is the director's seventh collaboration with actor Mathieu Amalric and continues their habit of revisiting and slightly revising characters from earlier films. In this instance, there's no guarantee that Ismael Vuillard is the same chap who cropped up in Kings & Queen (2004), especially as Amalric also played Henri Vuillard in A Christmas Tale (2008). And, just to make things a tad more interesting, Louis Garrel cameos as Ismael's brother, Ivan Dedalus, who shares a surname with the Paul character essayed by Amalric in Ma Vie Sexuelle (1996) and My Golden Days (2015). But Desplechin isn't content with peppering the action with allusions to his own canon, as he also names the reappearing wife Carlotta after the suicide whose grave and portrait ignite the mystery in Alfred Hitchcock's reincarnation saga, Vertigo (1958).  

As diplomats at the Quai d'Orsay discuss the disappearance of Ivan Dedalus (Louis Garrel) and recall how he was recruited late in life by the treacherous Claverie (Jacques Nolot), we realise that the fevered discussion is all part of a screenplay being written by director Ismael Vuillard (Mathieu Amalric), who is under pressure to complete the project on time and within budget by his line producer, Zwy Ashomer (Hippolyte Girardot). He is interrupted at 3am, however, by father-in-law Henri Bloom (László Szabó), a famous cineaste in his own right, who has never forgiven Ismael for the disappearance two decades earlier of his vivacious daughter, Carlotta (Marion Cotillard). As they look at slides of Carlotta as a girl, Henri blames Ismael for lacking the strength to cope with her after she emerged from her father's shadow. But he still invites Ismael to a forthcoming retrospective of his films in Tel Aviv and insists he is pleased that he has found a new love in an astrophysicist named Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg).

As Ismael drops in on Sylvia on his way home and tumbles into her bed, she recalls their meeting at a party two years earlier. She had been intimidated by him and thought him uncouth for teasing her about her timidity. But he had taken her home one night and they had stopped off in a bar, where she had confessed to having a thing for married men and he had admitted to failing at fatherhood after adopting a child. Ismael had insisted on seeing her apartment and had amused her by leaving without kissing her. Now, however, they are an item and spending time at their hideaway on the coast. 

Back in the script world, Ivan meets Arielle (Alba Rohrwacher) at an airport and tells her about Elsinore Syndrome and the nightmares that torment him (and Ismael). However, we veer back into reality, as Carlotta appears on the beach and introduces herself to Sylvia. She brings her back to the cottage and Ismael is beside himself with anger for the way in which Carlotta has flitted in and out of his life and, by her return, upset Sylvia. When she wakes from a bad dream in the night, he sits with her, as she explains that she had sought anonymity in Paris, enlightenment in India and oblivion in drugs. But, during the 21 years she has been away, she had failed to find answers and now wants to settle for a while and take stock. 

As Arielle coaxes Ivan into marrying her before he is posted to Tajikistan, Carlotta and Sylvia go swimming off a secluded beach and discuss reading and religion, as they bask on the sand. Sylvia admits to being a lapsed Protestant, while Carlotta describes herself as `a renegade Jew'. Back at the cottage, Carlotta suggests that she and Sylvia are alike and baffles her by dancing to Bob Dylan's `It Ain't Me, Babe'. However, she makes no bones about the fact that she has come to reclaim her man and won't let Sylvia stand in her way, as she is still bitter from having married an older man named Alexander in India and being discarded by his family when he died suddenly. But Sylvia refuses to be deprived of her own idyll and reminds Carlotta that she walked out and has been declared `absent' and that she has no intention of stepping aside. 

After confiding in Ismael that she is jealous and doesn't know if she has the strength to wrench him away from Carlotta, Sylvia decides to leave and no amount of pleading can prevent her boarding the dawn bus. When Carlotta wakes, she disrobes in front of Ismael and lures him into bed. But he is adamant that she is his past and that Sylvia is his future and he closes up the cottage in order to fly to Israel with Henri. En route, he calls Sylvia from a payphone, but she doesn't pick up, even though he strives to reassure her that his feelings for her are unchanged. 

Flashing back two years, we see Ismael and Sylvia getting to know each other with a hesitancy rooted in their age and their suspicion they are probably wrong for each other. They kiss for the first time in front of Carlotta's portrait in Ismael's apartment and Sylvia teases him in bed about wanting to uncover the man behind the mask. But she also likes the idea of a dishevelled creative intruding upon her ordered world and they had made the most of their opposing attractions. 

Boarding the flight to Tel Aviv, Ismael is ashamed at keeping Carlotta's return from her father, as she doesn't wish to reopen old wounds. Henri has brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate the retrospective, but the anxious stewardess is unnerved by his assertiveness and fetches security when he refuses to take his seat. When challenged, Henri declares that he fought the Nazis as a teenager and survived an assassination attempt by the Algerians and Ismael tries to reassure the airline staff that this famous film-maker is not going to blow up the plane. However, when Henri accuses the stewardess of having jihadist tendencies, they are thrown off the flight and cooped up in a holding cell. 

While Henri gets to give his speech in Tel Aviv, Carlotta applies to have her official absence rescinded. However, the civil servant who interviews her informs her that her marriage to Ismael will remain null and void. Stressed by the trip and by losing Sylvia, Ismail returns to his home city of Roubaix (also home to Paul Dedalus and Arnaud Desplechin) and takes refuge in the attic of the family home. While Zwy tries to track him down through Faunia (the actress playing Arielle in the film), Ismael consults a doctor about his sleeping problems and pleads with him to find a cure that doesn't involve him being hospitalised. 

The medic used to be in Ivan's class at school and we cut away abruptly to a prison in Khodjent, where Ivan is attempting to make contact with Farias (Ahmed Benaïssa). In his absence, however, his apartment has been bugged and Arielle screams when she finds an effigy hanging over their bed. A security expert (Bruno Todeschini) finds the bugs hidden around their apartment and we see Ismael sitting alone running the scene in his head. He snoozes in the park, only for Faunia to invade his thoughts and urge him to come back to Paris to finish the film. They sleep together and she laments the fact that he is such a larger-than-life character, as she loves him, but can't cope with the extent to which his personality takes over hers. She advises him to return to Sylvia, as she alone knows how to handle him. 

Sylvia has booked time in a remote mountain observatory and Ismael remembers lying on a blanket gazing at the stars with her. Zwy has tracked him down in a bid to persuade him to finish the film. But Ismael reveals that he has lost interest in glorifying the myth of a brother who had despised him and who had died five years earlier as a petty functionary in Addis Ababa. Zwy sympathises with the fact that Ivan had been the apple of his father's eye and forced him to live with a great-aunt when he was 11, but he refuses to give up on the project and contacts the French embassy in Egypt in the hope of discovering the truth. He Skypes Ivan and is delighted to see he's very much alive. But he deeply resents Ismael making a film about him and cuts the line as Zwy asks him to speak to his brother and cajole him into saving the film.  

Having freaked out at seeing his besuited alter ego at the back door, Ismael fires a gun into the air and passes out. When Zwy finds him the next morning, he garbles an outline about Ivan's friendship in Prague with a Jackson Pollock-loving Russian named Igor (Gennady Fornin) and accidentally shoots Zwy in the arm when he gets carried away describing how Igor is killed by an exploding mobile phone and Arielle tells Claverie that she thinks Farias is trying to murder her husband. 

As Zwy conspires with the doctor who patched his wound (Samir Guesmi) to sedate Ismael and lock him in the boot of his car, Carlotta follows Henri through a Parisian shopping arcade. He is aghast to see her and phones Sylvia for advice, as he looks down on his daughter standing in the rain in the street below. Overwrought, Henri collapses and Sylvia is powerless to help him. Ismael is equally impotent, as Zwy has tied him to a bed until Sylvia can arrive to talk some sense into him. Their bedside scene is mirrored by Henri and Carlotta doing a variation on King Lear's reunion with Cordelia, as he wishes the doctor (Catherine Mouchet) would leave him alone, as he is 83 and ready to die. 

Cutting away to Sylvia sitting calmly on a chair in her home, she reveals that Carlotta disappeared again soon after Henri died and it took Ismael a while to recover from the loss of his mentor. He continues to show his films around the world, but is working on a new screenplay of his own, while waiting for Sylvia to have their baby. 

As director's cuts go, this 134-minute effort errs on the self-indulgent side, as Desplechin and co-scenarists Julie Peyr and Léa Mysius trust to luck that their sketchy plot strands can somehow be woven together into a feasible whole. Faced with a Herculean task of making sense of the movie-within-the-movie, let alone the capriciously non-linear core drama, editor Laurence Briaud should be commended for keeping things reasonably cogent until the show rolls into Roubaix. But even the most committed connoisseur will be left scratching their heads about the significance of the Igor interlude and the rationale behind Ismael's fib about Ivan's demise. Even Carlotta's account of her exile is decidedly spurious and it seems unlikely that the press wouldn't have picked up on the sudden return of the daughter of one esteemed film-maker and the wife of another. 

That said, there are some powerful moments here, including the flashback to the start of Ismael and Sylvia's relationship, Henri's meltdown on the plane and Carlotta's Dylan dance that raises all manner of Martin Guerresque questions that go unanswered. As always, Marion Cotillard is mesmerising, as the poor little rich girl who can't understand why no one is rejoicing at her prodigal return or bending over backwards to accede to her wishes. Similarly, Charlotte Gainsbourg exudes serenity as the astrophysicist with her feet firmly on the ground, while Mathieu Amalric returns once more to the well of Desplechinite angst and comes up with another engaging variation on their patentedly crumpled loose cannon. 

It would appear that Ismael's story contains more than a pinch of autobiography and self-referentiality. But Desplechin's insights into love, loss, artistic perspective and the illusory nature of cinematic truth are intriguing. Given the shifts in place, time and tone, Irina Lubtchansky's photography and Toma Baqueni's production design do much to unify the action, as does Grégoire Hetzel and Mike Kourtzer's seductive Bernard Hermannesque score. Yet, despite their best efforts, the closing reel rambles considerably and it would be interesting to see which were the 20 minutes that Desplechin initially thought he could do without when he produced his first cut for Cannes.

Having started out as an actor, GW Pabst was entirely familiar with Frank Wedekind's controversial plays, Erdgeist (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1902). Yet contemporary critics were far from impressed with his 1929 compression of the storylines, as Pabst was deemed to have sacrificed stylistic unity in order to showcase his directorial ingenuity. In `street films' like The Joyless Street (1925) and The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927), Pabst had devised a form of realism that captured the spirit of Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity that departed from the morbid gloom of Expressionism to depict the mood of defeat, division and depression that pervaded Weimar Germany as postwar reparations began to bite. But in mixing and matching his styles in Pandora's Box, Pabst was attacked for betraying Wedekind's prose and compromising his own socio-political convictions by allowing a seething study of human iniquity to descend into potboiling melodramatics. 

In Act One, Lulu (Louise Brooks) is flirting with a petty functionary in the hallway of her apartment building when she is visited by her old friend, Schigolch (Carl Goetz). He helps himself to some cash from her purse and a slug of her alcohol before asking her to dance to his harmonica. Annoyed that she has lost her old panache, he reveals that impresario Rodrigo Quast (Krafft-Raschig) wants to revive her fortunes in a trapeze act. But Lulu is forced to hide Schogolch on the terrace when her sugar daddy, magazine publisher Dr Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner) arrives at their love nest. 

With a heavy heart, he breaks the news that he is to be married to Charlotte Marie Adelaide von Zarnikow (Daisy D'Ora), the daughter of the Minister of the Interior. But Lulu sees no reason why he still can't make love to her and she is busy flirting with him on the divan when her dog discovers Schigolch and starts barking. She introduces the shabby old man as her `first patron'. But Schön is furious with her for seeing others behind his back and storms down the stairs, just as Quast is making his way up to make his proposal. 

Despite her father's misgivings at the start of Act 2, Charlotte is devoted to Schön and unconcerned about the gossip surrounding his relationship with Lulu. She is excited about performing for Quast and comes to tell Schön's songwriter son, Alwa (Francis Lederer), about taking variety by storm. He is discussing costumes for a new show with Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts), who is attracted to Lulu, while also being aware of her reputation. Alwa also has a crush on her and is delighted when his father promises to help boost Lulu's showbiz aspirations. But he stalks out when Schön warns him not to let her steal his heart. 

As Act Three starts, Lulu is caught up in the backstage bustle of opening night. Adoring being the centre of attention, she laps up Quast's flattery, as she makes a costume change. Alwa and Augusta are also in the wings, where the stage manager (Sig Arno) is trying to bring a semblance of order to the chaos, as chorines, featured players and stagehands criss-cross the restricted space between numbers. When Schön and Charlotte arrive, however, Lulu is overcome with jealousy and refuses to dance for `that woman'. No amount of cajoling can persuade her to dance and Quast has to resort to asking Schön to use his influence. He bundles Lulu into a prop store and pleads with her to be professional and spare his blushes. But she continues to throw her tantrum and only relents when Schön kisses her. Unfortunately, their embrace is witnessed by Alwa and Charlotte and the latter traipses away in embarrassment, as Lulu makes her entrance in the nick of time and Schön informs Alwa that he will have to marry her, even though he knows he's committing social suicide.

There are still plenty of guest in attendance at the wedding reception in Act Four, however. In her white dress and veil, Lulu dances with Augusta, as Alwa looks on with disdain. The servants are amused by the drunken behaviour of Schigolch and Quast, who decide to place some flowers on the bridal bed. When Lulu slips into the bedroom to escape the attentions of Augusta, however, she is caught sitting on Schigolch's knee by the outraged groom. He pulls a gun on the old man and chases after him, even though Lulu insists that he is her father. The guests are shocked to see Schön brandishing a pistol and try to calm him down, as Schigolch and Quast beat a hasty retreat. But they follow hard on their heels and Schön is left alone. He staggers into the bedroom to see Lulu cradling a distraught Alwa's head on her lap. She has refused his invitation to run away with him, but Schön is too perturbed to read the situation. Driving his son out, he tries to force Lulu into committing suicide so he can salvage his reputation. But the gun goes off during the struggle and Alwa returns in time to see his father slump to the floor. 

Alwa sits beside Schigolch, Quast and Augusta in the courtroom at the start of Act Five. Dressed in widow's black with a veil pulled back from her face, Lulu sits in the dock and listens as her defence counsel pleads on her behalf. When the prosecutor takes the floor, Lulu attempts to make flirtatious eye contact with him and he has to compose himself. As the judges retire to consider their verdict, however, Augusta believes Lulu's prospects are so bleak that she harangues the prosecutor in front of the gallery. However, Schigolch has already decided not to leave things to fate and he causes a commotion by smashing the fire alarm and spiriting Lulu away from a five-year sentence for manslaughter in the ensuing chaos.

Relieved to be free, Lulu returns to the Schön mansion, where she reclines to read a magazine before taking a bath. Alwa is shocked to find his stepmother on the premises and tries to resist her, as she flounces around in a bathrobe. But her wiles prove too much for him and he not only kisses Lulu, but also agrees to smuggle her out of the country using Augusta's passport. 

As they board the train at the start of Act Six, Alwa keeps watch in the corridor, as the guards make their rounds. He keeps Lulu hidden in her sleeping compartment. But she needs a light for a cigarette and she pop her head around the door, only to be recognised from her picture in the papers by Marquis Casti-Piani (Michael von Newlinsky). He scribbles a demand for hush money on a torn newspaper page and Alwa realises he has no option but to pay, as Schigolch and Quast barrel along the corridor to join Lulu in her compartment. Alwa introduces her to the marquis, who presents her with an expensive box of chocolates and she beams in her inimitable manner. Eager to press his suit, Casti-Piani convinces Alwa that he only has their best interests at heart and persuades him to stay with him rather than taking his chances in Paris. 

At the start of Act Seven, Augusta arrives at the waterfront where Lulu has been hiding out on a floating casino. Gone is her lacquered black bob and she looks almost demure as she watches Alwa gambling at the card table. However, he is on a losing streak and Quast declares he is ready to report Lulu to the German police unless she comes up with the seed money for a new show. Casti-Piani is also running out of patience and makes a deal to sell Lulu to an Egyptian brothel owner. But Augusta lends Alwa some money to play with some cards hidden up his sleeve and he starts winning a bundle. As Augusta lures Quast to her cabin so that Schigolch can murder him, Lulu informs the marquis that she will soon be able to pay her debts. But Alwa is caught cheating by the casino security guard and only just manages to escape into a rowing boat with Schigolch and a disguised Lulu before the cops board the vessel and find a half-dressed Augusta crawling out of her cabin with Quast dead on the floor behind her. 

Opening in a foggy London, Act Eight sees Alwa listening to a Salvation Army band playing Christmas carol. A female soldier offers him a hot drink and asks if she can do anything to help him. But he shakes his head and returns to the draughty garret where he is living with Lulu and Schigolch. He manages to get a bottle of hooch on credit, but they can't afford fresh bread and Lulu has to walk the streets in the hope of making some money. Alwa follows her, as he can't bear the thought of another man touching her. But Schigolch insists she goes on alone, as he wants to taste Christmas pudding one last time before he dies. 

While they wander into a tavern, Lulu picks up Jack (Gustav Diessl), who has been reading a police poster warning women about the dangers of going out alone while Jack the Ripper is at large. He admits to having no money, but Lulu is charmed by him and leads him to her bedroom. Gazing up at her smiling face on the staircase, Jack lets the knife fall from his grasp and shuffles meekly after Lulu, as she beckons him inside. She finds a candle and a sprig of mistletoe in his jacket pocket and sits on his knee at the table. He holds the mistletoe over her head and requests a kiss. But, as the oil lamp peters out and the dying light flickers off the blade of the bread knife, Jack is unable to control his base instincts and he murders Lulu, while Schigolch tucks into his pudding and the crestfallen Alwa falls into line behind the Salvation Army procession. 

Many will be familiar with the story of how Pabst found his Lulu starring in Howard Hawks's A Girl in Every Port (1928) and had been so frustrated in his efforts to contact her that he had considered approaching Marlene Dietrich for a role he knew did not suit her. Even after Brooks was released by Paramount and arrived in Berlin, she preferred partying with new beau George Preston Marshall and both Fritz Kortner and Alice Roberts found working with the egregious 22 year-old something of a chore. But Pabst and cinematographer Günther Krampf found a way to frame and light Brooks in a manner that preserved her personality in the panchromatic emulsion and transformed her into a silent screen icon. She will rarely have been seen to better advantage in this 2K digital version of the Munich Film Museum's definitive 2009 cut. But, while Brooks illuminates the screen, the contributions of her supporting cast and production designers Andrej Andrejew, Gottlieb Hesch and an uncredited Ernö Metzner should not be forgotten. 

Yet, while Brooks holds centre stage in pursuing Lulu's impulses rather than her passions, the genius of the picture lies in Pabst's readiness to select a style appropriate to the tone of a scene rather than imposing a restrictive singularity. Thus, he borrows a little giddiness from French Impressionism for the breathtaking backstage sequence and draws on the dwindling Expressionist tradition for the scenes in the floating casino and the sombrely Dickensian London streets. Yet, much of the early action has the seamless grace of the Kammerspielfilm, as Pabst dots it with realist grace points that compliment the teasingly symbolic details hidden in the wondrously atmospheric mise-en-scène. At times, he invokes the deft intensity of FW Murnau and, at others, anticipates the depth and density of Josef von Sternberg. 

But it's his direction of Brooks that continues to tantalise. They would collaborate again on Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), but the novelty of talkies distracted audiences and, while Brooks struggled to rebuild her bridges in Hollywood, Pabst was unable to find a secure base after he left Germany following the rise of Adolf Hitler. Unable to find funding elsewhere, he returned to his native Austria as the Wehrmacht prepared to invade Poland and he agreed to make a couple of historical dramas for Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Pabst's reputation never recovered from his ill-considered decision. But Pandora's Box remains one of the masterworks of the late silent era, with its flaws and enigmatic allusions only adding to its fascination.

While there have been a handful of prequels centring on fictional serial killers, such as Mick Garris's Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990) and Peter Webber's Hannibal Rising (2006), the origins biopic is a rarer beast. Adapted by director Marc Meyerss from an acclaimed 2012 graphic novel by John Backderf, My Friend Dahmer draws on the artist's recollections of the Bath, Ohio classmate who went on to murder 17 young men, some of whom he consumed. It makes an intriguing companion piece to David Jacobson's Dahmer (2002), if only because lead Ross Lynch will be familiar to most for his work on the Disney series, Austin & Ally. But this stands on its own as an earnest attempt to examine the internal and external forces that turned a relatively normal kid into a psychopath. 

Riding alone on the school bus home, Jeffrey Dahmer (Ross Lynch) notices a bearded jogger through the window, along with the carcass of a dead cat. Having greeted his mother, Joyce (Anne Heche), Jeff heads out with a bin bag to collect the cat and shows a couple of passing classmates how he dissolves dead animals in acid in the shed at the bottom of his garden. As his father, Lionel (Dallas Roberts), is a chemist, he has a ready supply and Jeff asks if he can get hold of anything stronger over dinner, When his younger brother, Dave (Liam Keoth), complains that the chicken isn't properly cooked, Joyce suggests a new house rule that everybody eats their mistakes. 

She has only recently spent time in a mental institution and Lionel is determined to prevent her from finding a job and leaving the boys to fend for themselves. With his blonde mop, outsized glasses and slouching walk, Jeff is a target for bullies at school and John `Derf' Backderf (Alex Wolff) is most put out when he is forced to work with him in the biology lab. But Jeff is more interested in the specimen jars and steals a small rodent for his own experiments. However, Lionel is disturbed by the amount of time his son spends shut away and he confiscates his samples and demolishes the hut. He tries to atone by buying Jeff some dumbbells, in the hope he will bulk up and gain the self-confidence he needs to be more outgoing. But, while he works out and plays trumpet in the school band, Jeff remains a solitary soul, as he tries to come to terms with his homosexual crushes and his fixation with bones. 

As the new term begins in autumn 1977, Jeff shocks his classmates by feigning a convulsive fit in the locker corridor. Derf laughs at him with buddies Neil (Tommy Nelson) and Mike (Harrison Holzer), but they are sufficiently impressed by his display to invite him to sit at their table during lunch. Indeed, Derf even suggests that they start a Dahmer Fan Club and offers to become Minister of Propaganda by drawing his antics. The quartet starts `doing a Dahmer' whenever the opportunity arises, while Jeff disrupts a library lesson by making moaning noises. When Penny (Katie Stottlemire notices how Derf keeps sketching Jeff, she asks if she could pose for him. But Jeff insists that he could draw her and gets her to lie down on the classroom floor (while the teacher dozes on his desk) and draws a corpse outline around her in red crayon.

When the gang calls round to the house, however, Jeff keeps them outside, as Joyce has started to show symptoms of her old anxiety and he is too embarrassed to let them see her. When Derf does get inside, he is taken aback by her mania and beats a hasty retreat. He is also alarmed when Jeff slices open a fish that he has told him to throw back when they go angling together and when he does a Dahmer in the grocery store where Derf works as a bagger. Consequently, he suggests that they restrict their epileptic activities to non-adult situations, although he is wholly in favour of Jeff photobombing the pictures that Neil takes of the different leisure clubs for the school yearbook. 

Jeff keeps watching the bearded jogger from the bushes at the side of the road and is dumbstruck when he turns out to be Mike's GP, Dr Matthews (Vincent Kartheiser). He is equally shocked when class stoner Figg (Miles Robbins) accompanies him to the woods to cut up animals with his pocket knife and he produces his father's revolver and begins playing Russian roulette. Refusing to have anything to do with guns, Jeff keeps hold of the knife and uses it to dissect the next bit of roadkill he finds. 

During a school trip to Washington, DC, Jeff finds himself sharing a motel room with the only black kid in his class, Charlie Smith (Dontez James). As they watch TV, Jeff wonders whether their insides are the same colour and Charlie looks at him askance. The next day, Jeff calls the White House from a payphone and astonishes his friends when he tells an aide (Lauren Rhodes) that they are from the school paper and would love to look around. They bump into Vice President Walter Mondale (Tom Luce), who asks Derf, Neil, Mike and Penny what they want to do when they leave school, When Jeff says `biology', Mondale clasps his hand and wishes him well. 

On arriving home, Jeff is crushed to discover that Lionel has moved into a motel, as he can no longer cope with Joyce's shifting moods. However, the jolt prompts him to book an appointment with Dr Matthews and he rather enjoys the experience of sitting in his underpants and only becomes self-conscious when he is asked to lower them for a hernia check. But his pals notice that Jeff is becoming increasingly reticent around them and wonder whether they are exploiting him for their own amusement after Mrs Woodward (Maryanne Nagel) uses a black marker to obscure his face in the yearbook pictures. 

Having continued to trap squirrels and collect carcasses, Jeff lures a dog into the woods and prepares to slit its throat with Figg's knife. However, he loses his nerve and steals from Joyce's purse in order to buy booze. He looks out of the rear window, as his parents bicker over their divorce documents in the motel car park, and returns home to imagine himself spooning on his bed with Matthews's lifeless corpse. But, even though he has withdrawn from the Fan Club, he agrees to a swan song flip-out at the shopping mall and the camera circles him in a slow-motion close-up that suggests this is no longer entirely an act. The watching Derf also feels uncomfortable, as a group of classmates who have paid for the privilege follow Jeffrey (as he now insists on being called) as he jumps on benches, lurches into stores and knocks plates off the tables in a café. 

Neil had refused to witness the event and he apologises to Jeffrey at the school prom. He has asked Bridget (Sydney Meyers) to be his partner, but he has only gone to prove to the others that he could get a girl to accompany him. Consequently, after a half-hearted attempt at a dance, he stalks out and scarfs a burger in his car. But this bid for normalcy comes shortly after he had waited in the bushes with a baseball bat to jump Matthews and he had smashed the bat into a tree on realising that the doctor must have changed his route. 

Barely acknowledging Joyce when she informs him that the divorce has been finalised, Jeffrey creates a shrine to a dead animal in the woods and scares a couple of young kids out for a walk. The rumour around school is that a coven of witches is operating there and nobody links the episode to Jeffrey. He has been left at home alone for the summer, as Joyce (who has not sought custody of her first born) has taken David to stay with her mother. Lionel has given him his red Volkswagen for a graduation present, but Jeffrey continues to trudge along in his inimitable manner and Derf is surprised to come across him on a lonely road late one night. He offers him a lift home and explains that he is going to Pittsburgh to study art. In an effort to leave on good terms, he presents Jeffrey with some of the drawings he has made of him. But he rejects them and insists that he will only forgive him for making him look such a freak if he comes inside for a last beer. 

Feeling uneasy in the darkened house, Derf makes his excuses and sees Jeffrey clutching a baseball bat in the headlights, as he reverses out of the drive. After spending the night drinking, Jeffrey takes some beers from the fridge and heads off in his VW. He sees the shirtless Steven Hicks (Dave Sorboro) hitching after attending a concert and offers him the chance to keep partying. As the vehicle merges into traffic, the scene fades and a caption reveals that Dahmer took his first victim home on 18 June 1978 and confessed to taking 17 lives when he was arrested in July 1991. 

Flipping the nostalgia that Richard Linklater mined in Dazed and Confused (1993) and taking the high-school rite of passage into its darkest territory since Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) and Antonio Campos's Afterschool (2008), this is a mercifully unsensational account of the troubled youth of one of America's most notorious killers. Played by Ross Lynch with a sombre taciturnity that allows Meyers to empathise with the geeky Dahmer without ever excusing him, the inexorable descent into murderous insanity is thoughtfully placed in a context of domestic dysfunction, institutional indifference, peer exploitation and sexual suppression. Yet, by focusing exclusively on the months before Dahmer's first crime, Meyers and Backderf avoid having to identify when and where the grim fascination with bodies, bones and death originated and why it eventually manifested itself in such pitiless and gruesome brutality. (They also bend the truth in places, hence the opening caption `Based on a true story'. Dahmer and his pals only got to watch Walter Mondale working, for example, and didn't get to meet him in person).

Clearly Backderf's relationship with Dahmer has left its scars and Meyers deftly picks up on the fact that family members and classmates alike will have pondered on their own associations since he was caught and beaten to death in prison in 1994. Thus, while Lynch dominates the picture, the ensemble playing is creditably oblivious to the disturbing thoughts raging behind his placid facade. Alex Wolff and Tommy Nelson standout as the nerds who boost their own stock by cruelly playing Svengali with the largely unsuspecting Lynch, who seems happy to have someone to tag along with after years of awkward isolation. But it's clear from the climactic scene in Woolf's car that Jeffrey is very much on the periphery of his own clique, as he has no idea about his friend's plans for the future and it's only when he sees the cartoons of him as a messed-up superhero that it conclusively dawns on him that he has been the butt of the joke rather than a key perpetrator. 

Besides the 360° shot during the mall escapade, Daniel Katz's camerawork is steadily unobtrusive, as it picks up on the superbly judged details in Carla Schivener's costumes and Jennifer Klide's production design (although it helps enormously that Meyers was able to film in Dahmer's childhood home). The choice of period music is well complimented by Andrew Hollander's score, while Coll Anderson's sound mix subtly hints at the cacophony intensifying in Dahmer's brain. But there's nothing kitschy or gimmicky about this unsettlingly compassionate portrait of a psychotic as a young man. Indeed, it's the mundanity of Dahmer and his milieu that makes his hideous fate all the more chilling.

By losing on penalties to Brackley Town in the recent FA Trophy final at Wembley, Bromley did their bit to boost a film about the worst season in the team's 126-year history. However, by arriving in cinemas to coincide with the World Cup rather than the non-league showcase, Steve M, Kelly's The Bromley Boys looks set to slip through the cinematic net. This is a shame, as there's much to like about this amusing adaptation of Dave Roberts's memoir of the Kentish club's travails during the 1969-70 Isthmian League campaign, when The Lilywhites could justifiably be called the worst team in England. 

Having disrupted a camping holiday by running around with a tent on his head when England won the World Cup in July 1966, 11 year-old Dave Roberts (Brenock O'Connor) pleads with parents Donald (Alan Davies) and Gertie (Martine McCutcheon) to be allowed to watch Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham United. However, his limping father detests football and Dave is forced to settle for supporting his local team, Bromley, after his mother knitted him a scarf in the wrong colours and slipped it under the door of a bedroom whose walls are covered in football cuttings and whose floor is dominated by a Subbuteo pitch.

Pretending to be going on a cub scout outing (even though he was three years too old), Dave cycles off on his Chopper bike to watch Bromley prepare for the 1969-70 season with a friendly against West Ham. He watches in awe as star striker Alan Stonebridge (Ross Anderson) arrives at the shabby Hayes Lane ground moments before chairman and self-made millionaire Charlie McQueen (Jamie Foreman). However, he is disappointed when he doesn't recognise a single player on the West Ham bus and realises they have sent a team of hopefuls rather than World Cup winners Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and Martin Peters. Declining autographs, Dave looks on in horror as Bromley take a pasting and a mixture of newspaper headlines, reports written on a trusty Brother typewriter and Dave's off-screen narration (delivered rather bizarrely by Alan Davies) informs us that this pattern continued until Christmas.

In February 1970, however, Dave befriends three fellow sufferers in Roy Oliver (TJ Herbert), Derek Dobson (Ewen McIntosh) and Peter Batchelor (Mark Dymond) and they join forces to campaign for the removal of manager Dick Ellis (Gareth Hale). When Dave turns up at the ground with a heavy coat covering his `Dick Out' t-shirt, however, he finds himself sitting between Ellis and McQueen, who is accompanied by his Russian girlfriend, Anoushka (Anna Danshina), and teenage daughter, Ruby (Savannah Baker). Thus, he hears McQueen sacking Ellis before half-time and rushes off to tell his pals. Following an impromptu interview with goalkeeper Tony Soper (Danny Midwinter), Dave overhears Ellis warning McQueen against gambling the club away and has to take refuge in the chairman's office. 

Rootling through McQueen's desk, Dave finds some files on the squad and is puzzled by a note appended to Stonebridge's folder suggesting he is going to be transferred to Man U. Disturbed by Ruby looking for her dad, Dave introduces himself and tries to cheer her up when she becomes tearful in discussing relations between her parents. But Dave is keen to tell Peter, Roy and Derek his news and rushes off to hold a hastily convened fan club meeting in a parked car before a Sunday league match. His fellow addicts are stunned by (and a little bit sceptical about) the news of Stoney's imminent departure for Old Trafford. But their fears are confirmed when McQueen responds testily to a question about transfer plans during a press conference at the ground. 

Too busy fretting about his beloved team to realise that Ruby likes him, Dave manages to headbutt her while describing his hat-trick for Derek's team. But he receives a blow of his own when his parents decide to install him as a boarder at his school in Sevenoaks, as headmaster Mr Travis (Daniel Hill) is concerned that he is leading classmates astray by urging them to attend Bromley home games. Distraught at being confined to his dormitory on match days, Dave is forced to follow Bromley's fortune from a distance, as they score only three goals in losing 10 games in a row. 

With eight fixtures left, Dave takes the drastic step of sneaking out of school in his pyjamas to watch a night game. Peter remains dubious about the Man U transfer story and asks Dave to get some proof. He gets a job in the snack bar to get him into the inner sanctum and renews acquaintance with Ruby, who informs him that she wants to be a doctor and that her teachers at the local comprehensive have high hopes of her securing a university place. Dave finds himself going to the same school after Travis expels him for breaking curfew. But his plans to take her to the pictures go awry when he finds evidence that convinces him that Leeds have put in a counter offer for Stoney and that McQueen is going to discuss the deal with DR - who can only be Don Revie. 

Having managed to get himself locked in the changing room with Ruby, Derek and Peter (after Roy gets arrested while on lookout duty), Dave reconciles himself to the fact that Stoney's transfer might bring in enough money to save Bromley from bankruptcy. But the team needs a miracle to avoid coming bottom of the league, having amassed only 16 points from 35 games and having a goal difference of minus 86. Unfazed by the discovery that midfielder Herbie Lane (Adam Deacon) is his new geography teacher, Dave is crushed when McQueen bars him from the ground for spending the night in the dressing room with Ruby. However, he gets to see Anoushka present McQueen with Don Revie's phone number and accepts Ruby's invitation to a party at her house the following Saturday.

Beating the Hayes Lane ban by travelling to Wycombe, Dave is delighted to get a lift back to Kent from Stonebridge. He mentions that McQueen is considering selling him to Carshalton and Dave assures him that he's much too good for them. Thrilled to be presented with a pair of his hero's boots, Dave gets home and dresses in his tightest pants for the party. He kisses Ruby while they dance. But, when McQueen makes a speech about her future, Dave realises that the notes he had found in his desk related to the universities in Manchester and Leeds not their respective Uniteds. Thus, he has to break the news that the TV rumours surrounding Stoney's big-money move are all based on a misunderstanding and that Bromley's future is anything but secured. 

Sitting on the floodlit pitch, Dave muses on the mess he's caused. But Stoney comes to join him and promises him that things will work out. This gives Dave an idea and he rushes back to McQueen's house to urge him to pawn his car and place a bet on Bromley winning their last game against table toppers Enfield. He also asks him to let him give the team talk, as no one knows the club better than he does and McQueen reluctantly agrees (although Ruby wants nothing more to do with Dave for ruining her life). 

Ignoring Donald's orders to stay away from the ground (and the ill omen of treading on a Subbuteo centre forward), Dave cycles to the ground in a sheepskin coat alongside McQueen, who is bearing up after Anoushka walked out on him. However, the players are in no mood to listen to a kid who can't get his tactics straight and Dave is so dismayed at messing up his big chance that he hurls his father's briefcase (which he had brought with him to make him look important) against the wall. It bursts open and cuttings detailing Donald's glittering schoolboy career spill out. Dave discovers that his dad's dislike of the game stems from a leg break that ended his career and he is sobbing in the showers when the team comes in for half time. Stoney feels sorry for him and tells the others to listen, as Dave delivers a speech from the heart about turning things round in the last 45 minutes so that he has somewhere to spend his Saturdays next season. 

Amazingly, they turn around a 0-1 deficit to win with a last minute Stonebridge free kick and there are wild celebrations on the pitch. Ruby forgives Dave everything and his parents show up in time to see their son being hoisted on to the shoulders of the Bromley players. As the scene fades, Dave reaffirms Bill Shankley's maxim that football is the most important thing in life before a series of captions introduce us to the handful of real people behind the principals. 

Anyone who has ever commentated while playing solo Subbuteo will recognise a kindred spirit in Dave Roberts. As will those who have turned out in all weathers to support their team, as it languishes in the lower reaches of the league without the first idea of where the next win is going to come from. But, while this affectionate adaptation of Roberts's autobiographical tome makes for irresistible footballing nostalgia, it's not always as effective in terms of its storytelling. 

For example, production designer Kay Brown should be lauded for such lovely details as the inclusion of some square-based Table Association Football 4-2-4 players alongside their Subbuteo counterparts and the Isthmian League that Dave had appended to the league ladders that had been given away as a free gift with the first issue of Shoot in August 1969. But authenticity isn't such a priority for screenwriter Warren Dudley, as no one called Don Roberts has ever played for England at youth level. Moreover, he has Bromley win their final game against the now defunct Enfield to avoid being relegated when they actually finished bottom of the table with 10 points, having lost all but seven of their 38 matches (winning only three) and conceded 111 goals while scoring a mere 28. They did remain in the division. But, seemingly it wouldn't have made for such cinematic spectacle unless the underdogs had shown their mettle when it mattered most. 

Notwithstanding the need to massage the facts to heighten the drama, Dudley also has the 15 year-old Dave in the same class as Ruby at Langley Park, when she is supposedly applying to university (which is something she wouldn't normally have been doing for another two years). Such slips matter not a jot in the grand scheme. But resound with the thud of a brown leather football and undermine an otherwise enjoyable romp that is winningly scored with a smattering of period hits and played with plenty of gusto by a lively ensemble. Alan Davies may not be on peak form, but Martine McCutcheon is typically affable as the gold-hearted mum conspiring to help son indulge his passion. Moreover, Brenock O'Connor is suitably nerdy in his Buddy Holly specs and ill-fitting threads, while Savannah Baker makes a charming foil, as her twee bookworm keeps trying to follow footie-related conversations that mean absolutely nothing to her.

Curiously, there's mention of another Langley Park in the week's other football film, Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones's Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager. Robson was born in the Durham mining village and the values instilled in him there stood him in good stead during a career as both player and manager that spanned 54 years. With the 2018 Word Cup just a fortnight away, many will think back to the moment when Robson had to hold back his disappointment to console the England players who had just been beaten on penalties by West Germany in Italia 90. But, as this fine tribute demonstrates, the genial Geordie should be remembered for a great deal more. 

Nine months after a life-saving operation to remove a malignant melanoma from inside his nose, Bobby Robson became the manager of Barcelona. He was following the great Johan Cryuff and hired a young José Mourinho as his assistant coach-cum-interpreter. Among the players he inherited was Pep Guardiola, who had come through the ranks at the Nou Camp and knew inside out a club that Robson had only seen from a distance and played against a couple of timed during his spell at Ipswich Town .

We flash back to 1969, when TV interviewer Gerald Sinstadt asked the new man at Portman Road what ambitions he had for a club that many felt was in terminal decline. Although largely untried as a manager, Robson did things his own way and developed a youth policy that produced so many outstanding talents on a restricted budget that even Sir Alex Ferguson was impressed. In 1978, Ipswich won the FA Cup for the first and only time in its history in beating Arsenal by a Roger Osborne goal to nil. But Robson was just getting started.

The faith in youth demonstrated in Suffolk prompted Robson to bring the young Ronaldo to Catalonia from PSV Eindhoven and the Brazilian immediately proved his worth with a stellar performance on debut in the Spanish Super Cup against Atlético Madrid. When Ronaldo scored his famous solo goal against Compostela, Robson put his hands on his head in amazement at what he had just witnessed. and Guardiola jokes about his teammates admonishing him for refusing to pass. Yet, key to Robson's success with a team that included Luis Figo, Hristo Stoichkov, Gheorghe Popescu and Laurent Blanc was his relationship with Mourinho, who had made a huge leap to find himself on the Barcelona bench. 

Back in 1981, Robson had relied on direct communication to guide Ipswich to a UEFA Cup triumph over AZ 67 of Alkmaar. Centre back Terry Butcher recalls him being an inspiration in the dressing room. But he also admits that he could be tough in order to get the team to play his way and Robson was convinced that a squad that included John Wark, Mick Mills and Arnold Mühren was the best in Europe at the time. 

While he ran the club with the blessings of the Cobbold family, things were very different at the Nou Camp. President Josep Lluís Núñez ruled the roost and proved lukewarm in his support of Robson after the fans started to complain about his brand of football. Unbeknownst to Robson, Núñez had plans to replace him at the end of the season with Dutch coach Louis van Gaal and, consequently, he felt unable to accept an approach from Newcastle United chairman, Sir John Hall. According to Robson's wife Elsie and son Mark, he would have quit had he known about the scheming behind his back. But he felt duty bound to honour his two-year contract, especially as the club was still progressing in the Copa del Rey and the Cup Winners' Cup. 

The tenacity that Robson demonstrated at this time had first surfaced when he had been forced to abandon his boyhood dream of turning out at St James's Park and join Fulham in 1950. During spells at Craven Cottage sandwiching a stay at West Bromwich Albion, Robson became an effective midfielder, who scored twice against France in collecting the first of his 20 England caps in 1957. He made the squads for the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, but injury saw him lose his place to a young Bobby Moore. 

Two days after England were eliminated from the 1982 World Cup, Robson took over as national manager from Ron Greenwood. He knew it was going to be a challenging assignment, but hopes were high when the squad set off for Mexico in 1986. But poor results against Portugal (0-1) and Morocco (0-0) left England on the verge of elimination. However, as Gary Lineker recalls, the manager's belief in his players and himself, coupled with a change of formation, resulted in a 3-1 win over Poland, with Lineker scoring the hat-trick that changed his life. 

An easy 3-0 success over Paraguay in the next round pitted England against Argentina just four years after the countries had fought over the Falkland Islands. Lineker remembers the added frisson before the game, which was settled by two strikes by Diego Maradona. The second was a mazy run that is still ranked among one of the finest in World Cup history. But the first saw Maradona punch the ball past Peter Shilton and Robson countered his claims that the `hand of God' had intervened by stating that the `hand of a rascal' had cost Maradona any chance of being remembered for his sportsmanship.

Courage may not be the characteristic one necessarily associates with Bobby Robson, but he displayed it in abundance during his time with Barcelona. Not only did he undergo a second operation on his nose, but he also endured frequent savagings in the press. Stung by being described as `the worst coach in the world', he vowed to fight on and was vindicated on 12 March 1997 when - following a 2-2 draw in the away leg - Barça came back from 0-3 down in the quarter final against Atlético Madrid to win 5-4 on the night. Both Ronaldo and Guardiola speak about how Robson's passion had inspired them during the interval, while Ferguson notes that it's the way you respond to adversity in football that defines a man and his career. 

This bouncebackability was in evidence after Robson announced before Italia 90 that he would be joining PSV Eindhoven as soon as the tournament ended. The press branded him a traitor, when he had actually been informed by the FA that his contract would not be renewed after eight years in charge. Elsie and Mark reflect on the fake news they had to deal with in the run-up to the competition. But Robson kept his focus on the job, as he knew he had a match winner in Paul Gascoigne. He called the maverick midfielder `daft as a brush', but he knew how to get the best out of him and he set up the winners against Egypt in the crucial group game and Belgium in the Round of 16. He also played a pass that led to Lineker being fouled in the penalty area against Cameroon and he hugged Robson after the game and thanked him for his trust. Gazza claims to have felt safe under Robson's tutelate and Lineker remains touched by the bond they forged. 

Mischievously enjoying reports that fans back home were dancing in the streets, Robson planned a semi-final showdown with the Germans in Turin. A fluke deflection put the old foes 1-0 up before Lineker equalised to send the game into extra time. During the break, Robson had taken Gascoigne to one side to urge him to ensure that his teammates reached the final after he picked up a second booking and a suspension. Chris Waddle had hit the post during the additional 30 minutes, but the game went to spot kicks and Robson admitted later that he was confident that the likes of Lineker, Peter Beardsley and David Platt would score. A camera was trained on Robson's face throughout the shootout and his expression when Stuart Pearce had his kick saved shows his mindset shift, as he realises that he is going to have to console his players rather than celebrate with them. His eyes moisten as Chris Waddle blazed the ball over the bar, but Robson knew this wasn't a time to feel sorry for himself and he left the bench to be a leader. 

Following this typically English setback, Robson won consecutive titles with PSV before spending a year with Sporting Lisbon and two more with Porto. It was in Portugal that he first encountered Mourinho, who followed him to Barcelona to witness Robson embrace Catalan culture and food. Guardiola comments on his appetite for new tastes and the affection both men still feel is readily evident. Ronaldo also remains grateful for bringing a sense of calm at a time when he was being feted as the best player in the world. Yet, at the end of a season that saw a 1-0 Cup Winners' Cup success over Ajax followed by a 3-2 Copa victory over Real Betis, Ronaldo was sold to Inter Milan for a world record fee and a bitter, betrayed Robson was moved upstairs after being named UEFA Coach of the Year.

Unwilling to spend Saturday afternoons shopping, Robson accepted the Newcastle job at the age of 66. Alan Shearer credits him with healing a divided dressing room, as he scored five in an 8-0 drubbing of Sheffield Wednesda in Robson's first home game. Elsie felt pleased to be home and her husband was proud to be managing the team he had watched with his father. He didn't always get to spend the time he wanted with his family, but he needed to be in football and was aware of the price that had to be paid. This single-mindedness could sometimes manifest itself in a hardness that wasn't always seen by fans who regarded him as an avuncular figure. But Robson knew what it took to command the loyalty of his teams and bring them success. 

Yet, having taken Newcastle into the Champions League and to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup in 2004, John Hall and Freddy Shepherd reacted to unrest among some of the overpaid and pampered younger players by sacking their manager. Ferguson was bemused by the decision, but Robson took the dismissal with customary dignity, even though he knew it would bring down the curtain on his career. He channelled his energies into keeping an eye on Gazza and launching the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation after he survived a fifth battle with cancer. However, surgeon Huw Davies opted not to tell him that a lung infection would shorten his life, as he knew his patient well enough after treating him over 15 years. But Robson revelled in leading a team again and worked tirelessly to raise funds for a research centre that he hoped would become his longest lasting legacy. 

Five days after being wheeled on to the pitch at St James's for a 2009 charity match between England and Germany, Sir Bobby Robson died at his home in County Durham at the age of 76. Gazza wells up as he recalls him urging him to play well. Guardiola applauds his achievements in four countries, while Lineker considers him the best English manager of all time. Most movingly, Mourinho claims that his impact will continue to be felt, as a person only truly dies when the last person who loved them disappears. 

There's little more to be said about a wonderful man and a fine film. Veteran TV journalist Gabriel Clarke's script deftly flits between the various stages of Robson's career to reveal the man behind the manager. Editor Steve Williams also makes an exceptional job of linking the footage and those hoping to see the clip of Robson dancing in his blue suit will be rewarded in the closing montage. However, there's a new treat in store for devotees, as he drops the Cup Winners' Cup while showing it off to the Barcelona fans and polishes it with his sleeve in the hope that no one had noticed. It sums up a man of great charm, humour, instinct and integrity.

Sir Ian McKellen entered his eightieth year on 25 May and Joe Stephenson anticipated the landmark with McKellen: Playing the Part, a documentary chronicle of a 57-year career that follows hard on the heels of Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Joan Plowright looking back on their own past deeds in Roger Michell's Nothing Like a Dame. At times feeling like a living obituary, this blend of reminiscence and reconstruction draws anecdotes from a 14-hour interview that saw McKellen being artfully lit by Eben Bolter while sitting in a red library chair. But, while the monochrome flashbacks can occasionally feel a little arch and Peter Gabriel's score infuriatingly overdoes the triumphalism, the archive material is adroitly employed to celebrate McKellen's achievements, while also scrupulously avoiding any mention of his private life. 

Reflecting on his childhood in Wigan, McKellen avers that he realised early on that living meant playing variations on oneself in order to fit it. He changed his accent at school and enjoyed dressing up as Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas Beacham. On one occasion, his mother helped him to put on his clothes back to front so that he gauge people's reaction. But the young McKellen (played in dumbshow by Milo Parker) also learned how to observe, whether watching stallholders making their pitches at the weekend marker or George VI and Queen Elizabeth paying a meticulously choreographed visit. He also had his first inklings about his sexuality when he encountered the hunks who worked on the funfair that used to take over the town square. Yet, even though he got an erection at nine watching Ivor Novello perform at the local theatre, McKellen channelled his urges into acting and admits now that his suppression of his instincts was probably unhealthy. 

When the family moved to Bolton when he was 12, McKellen started frequenting its three theatres and talked his way backstage to meet the nomadic players who made light of their tough existence to entertain in godforsaken places. Inspired by them, he began putting on plays of his own and he was always grateful that his mother blessed his ambitions before she succumbed to breast cancer. Despite failing the entrance exam, McKellen landed an exhibition at St Catharine's College, Cambridge after performing a speech from Henry V during an interview with a crusty don and worked hard to lose his Lancastrian accent while acting in 23 plays in three years, alongside the likes of Derek Jacobi, Corin Redgrave, Trevor Nunn and Michael Burrell. But it was a national review of his performance as Justice Shallow in Henry IV, Part Two that persuaded him to become a professional actor. 

Away from his father and stepmother, McKellen felt free to explore his homosexuality (at a time when it was still illegal) and fell in love for the first time with an American actor Curt Dawson. He spread his wings by working in rep in Ipswich and learned valuable lessons in how to act without fear while playing Aufidius in Tyrone Guthrie's production of Coriolanus at the Nottingham Playhouse. Shortly after his father had attended the first night party, he was killed in a car accident and McKellen remembers having to perform that night in a play with a coffin on the stage. As we see the twentysomething actor (Scott Chambers) strutting his stuff before the footlights, McKellen muses on the need to be fresh and alert to revive the spirits of patrons who have spent the day working and are entitled to nothing but one's best. 

Having come close to playing Noël Coward in Robert Wise's Star! (1968) and missed out on co-starring with Gregory Peck when snow caused the cancellation of David Miller's The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling (1966), McKellen decided against setting great store by films. Instead, he joined Maggie Smith and Albert Finney in Laurence Olivier's Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Vic. However, he realised competition within the National Theatre Company was stiff and he accepted a 1969 touring package of Richard II and Edward II that thrust him into the front rank of up-and-coming actors. 

We see TV footage of these productions and a profile of the rising star, as McKellen muses on the fact that he dwells in a world of passing strangers, as he would always rather play to packed houses in the provinces than go stale in the West End's tourist theatres. Consequently, he established the Actors Company with Edward Petherbridge in order to select plays and directors rather than keep having to be cast and follow ideas and orders without much input. He felt stardom was something of a burden, especially when one young fan slit her wrists in his presence. But this made him more aware of the power he had over audiences and the impact he could make on them with his performances. 

During a 1976 production of Macbeth with Judi Dench at The Other Place in Stratford, McKellen realised he preferred intimate venues and being able to make a direct connection with the spectators. But such small-scale ventures also prepared him for film and television and he concedes that he is unimpressed by many of his earliest screen roles, as he had yet to learn how to downsize for the camera. They also showed him how to have fun on stage without the audience knowing, as he describes how Dench had enlivened one performance by making each member of the cast hide a red sticker about their person and spend the play spotting them. 

Another performer who always made him laugh was Sean Mathias, but McKellen stops short of discussing their romance. He does, however, reveal that Mathias accompanied him to New York, where he saw his name in lights for the first time and won a Tony as Salieri in Amadeus in 1981. Yet their relationship remained secret, as McKellen didn't come out until he was 49 and looks back with some embarrassment that his press utterances while headlining Bent (1979) were about civil rights and not the gay struggle. However, a combination of the AIDS crisis and Clause 28 saw him emerge as an activist and he joined forces with Michael Cashman in setting up Stonewall. He directed The Equality Show and debated gay rights with Tory grandee Ivan Lawrence with David Frost. 

Although he had convinced himself that movies didn't matter, McKellen came to realise that a crew was there to help him perform while making Richard Loncraine's Richard III (1996) and his experiences on that picture as writer and producer gave him a new respect for cinema. He suggests that Magneto from the X-Men franchise and Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings series were also show-offs. although he draws an interesting comparison between the former and Malcolm X, as he was more militant in his defence of the mutants than Professor Xavier's Martin Luther King. He enjoyed making the Tolkien films, as he liked being on the Middle Earth sets and lapping up the spectacular scenery around New Zealand. But he did have a meltdown after a long day of green-screening and cursed that this was not why he became an actor. 

He is more proud of playing gay director James Whale in Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters (1998), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor, although the found round of interviews that followed a trial. Yet it wasn't until he played a caricatured version of himself opposite Ricky Gervais in Extras (2006) that he recognised that he also adopted different personae whenever he was interviewed. He admits to editorialising himself during these conversations and is aware that he has often come across as pompous or patronising in advocating his political causes and arch in promoting his films. 

As he grows older, McKellen becomes increasingly preoccupied by death and reveals that he once spent a pleasant evening arranging his funeral and memorial service. He remembers sobbing at the end of his run of Waiting for Godot (2009), as he feared he might never go on stage again. As he has never had a family, he has always been able to invest all his energies in acting and he muses on the extent that this has made him the actor he is. But he feels protective towards the younger generation and visits schools to share his experiences of being a gay teenager. While he may not be an expert in anything other than acting, he has come to realise he is a communicator like the teachers and preachers in his family and that his purpose is less to entertain than to help make the world a better place. 

Saying much, but actually revealing very little about himself or his art, McKellen plays this particular role with great skill and self-awareness. He knows what he doesn't want to reveal (maybe the undisclosed material remains buried in the unused 12 and a half hours of the interview) and gives the snippets he is willing to share sufficient significance to hold the audience captive. This is, therefore, a splendid display of smoke and mirrors that touches on a few career highlights and offers the odd insight into acting and being human, while keeping the really personal stuff closely under wraps. 

One suspects that rights issues might have limited the number of clips from McKellen's imposing filmography, but he seems averse to discussing individual productions outside X-Men and Lord of the Rings. He also says next to nothing about the collaborative nature of acting and how he builds a rapport with his co-stars to best serve his character. Similarly, he avoids the subject of being directed or how he responds to criticism. But, in favouring the pensée over the anecdote, McKellen gives the impression that he is delving beneath the surface and extemporising with admirable honesty. Yet if this film teaches us anything, it's that he prepares thoroughly for each role and nothing has been left to chance in this guarded, if undeniably genial and rewarding portrait. He may avoid overt luvviness, but Ian McKellen is always on and evidently revels in playing this part of a lifetime.

Swedish documentarist Göran Hugo Olsson has proved himself the master of the archival actuality with The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) and Concerning Violence (2014). However, he didn't have to spend as much time rootling around the vaults for the material in That Summer, as most of what he needs is contained in the cans of 16mm film exposed by Lee Radziwill and photographer Peter Beard in and around the Long Island home of ageing socialite Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her spinster daughter. Olsson has slipped in some Super-8 snippets shot by Andy Warhol and diarist supreme Jonas Mekas for Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol (1990) and This Side of Paradise: Fragments of an Unfinished Biography (1999). But, essentially, he has stuck with the footage that anticipated Grey Gardens (1975), the vérité landmark that was produced three years later by Albert and David Maysles, in collaboration with Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer. 

Given that Radziwill is the sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and that Big Edie and Little Edie (as they were known) are their aunt and cousin, this record of an aristocratic twilight retains its irresistible allure. The Maysles were so aware of the pair's appeal that they recycled their out-takes into The Beales of Grey Gardens (2009), while, that same year, Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore played the eccentric recluses to excellent effect in Michael Sucsy's acclaimed teleplay, Grey Gardens, which was co-scripted by the director and the estimable Patricia Rozema. Yet the Edies are at their most natural and least guarded while on camera for the first time, which makes this repackaging of the glorified home movies recorded in the summer of 1972 all the more intriguing. 

In a prologue filmed at Montauk on 16 January 2016, Peter Beard shows pages from a book of photos, as he remembers the good times he shared with the likes of Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, Karen Blixen and Mick and Bianca Jagger. He also tenders a few wildlife and supermodel shots and keeps asking if they are registering okay on film. We then cut back 44 years to the footage taken by Beard, Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Albert Maysles and Vincent Fremont of Lee Radziwill, Peter Beard, Warhol and Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale.

Accompanying excerpts from Sofia Coppola's 2013 interview with Radziwill, Beard narrates in DVD commentary mode over the footage. Together, they recall how they had first met when Jackie Onassis had invited Beard to Scorpios, while he was working on his book, Longing for Darkness. They had gone cruising on Aristotle Onassis's yacht, The Christina, and spent some time in Kenya, where Radziwill and Beard had formed a firm friendship based on her need to spark off fresh ideas.

The Bouvier clan regularly visited Montauk, where they rented a property near the beach to host such artistic celebrities as Warhol, Mekas, Capote, the Jaggers and Paul Morrissey. A home movie clip shows Warhol filming on the shore and Radziwill ducking in behind him to get her own shot of somebody buried in the sand. We see Warhol and Beard photographing Evelyn Kuhn with a skull and Beard reveals in voiceover that while anyone can try to create images, only a few succeed in avoiding the mundane. He revels in the fact that accidents can play such a significant role in the creation of a masterpiece.

In the summer of 1972, Beard and Radziwill started to make a film on life in the Hamptons and agreed to shoot scenes with Big Edie and Little Edie at  Grey Gardens. Albert and David Maysles were hired as part of the crew. We see shots of them with Radziwill's children, Anthony and Anna, and she describes how wonderfully eccentric the Beales were. Beard explains that they had been holed up in their ramshackle home since the Hurricane of 1938 and had become so reclusive and eccentric that he had doubted whether the project would ever get off the ground. But Radziwill used her powers of persuasion and filming began in June 1972, only for the footage to be shelved and presumed lost before it resurfaced 45 years later. 

Reel One opens with Big Edie talking on a garden bench with Radziwill about how the locals had been trying to evict them because Grey Gardens had fallen into disrepair. She notes that while Little Edie isn't one for dusting, she is otherwise neat and clean and admits that it shook them when outsiders attempted to tell them how to live their own lives in their own home. Little Edie shows off the cellar, where she had been storing empty cat food tins in coal sacks because the binmen wouldn't wade through the overgrown gardens in order to collect them. 

As the Beales are no longer on the Social Register, they feel snubbed and it's interesting to eavesdrop on Big Edie phoning a neighbour to tell her about Radziwill's East Hampton project and having to explain that she is her niece and Jackie O's sister. During the call, a man hauls bags away from the basement, while Little Edie sits in an armchair. She describes how she had bought in the Bloomingdale's sale and dubbed it `the Chair of Disappointment' because nobody had ever sat in it.

Radziwill keeps trying to coax Big Edie into singing because she has a fine voice and this talent crops up when Radziwill goes to interview a female neighbour, whose mother had been a promising opera singer before she met her husband. The first reel ends at this point (with the woman not being identified, but saying how abominably the community had behaved towards the Beales) and we see a series of Beard's monochrome photos showing the black mould on the walls of Grey Gardens and how the cats had the run of the place. In voiceover, he describes how the locals had ganged up on the Beales and had sent the fire brigade to spray some of the lower rooms with their hoses in a bid to clean them up and make the women feel unwanted and uncouth.

Reel Two opens with Big Edie giving Radziwill permission to film from the balcony and Little Edie accompanies her. She explains how they had allowed the garden get overgrown before introducing cats Bigelow and Teddy Kennedy, who were respectively named after one of her mother's former suitors and Jackie's brother-in-law (before he got fat). Beard tries to take pictures of the cats and concedes in voiceover that the house was a shambles, with 30 sacks being filled with feline faeces during the summer tidy up. However, Onassis had agreed to pay for the renovation of Grey Gardens and Radziwill is seen meeting with Salinger the contractor to discuss the installation of running water and electricity. 

Attorney William vanden Heuvel gives an interview to a bearded reporter, in which he expresses surprise that the Beales had been harassed because  nobody had registered an official complaint about the state of the property.  He confirms that the there isn't a rodent problem and jokes that the Beales are the envy of their neighbours because have a family of resident raccoons.

Radziwill briefs a man named Olsen about the upholstered furniture that she thinks he should remove and destroy. But she consults Little Edie about the things that could go into storage during the renovation. Little Edie shows them a hut in the garden that has been named after the song `My Adobe Hacienda'. She comes up close to the camera in her green scarf with a golden leaf pedant pinned to it and enjoys playing to the gallery. She can't remember the lyrics, but the recollection amuses Radziwill, who ends Reel Two by bidding farewell to Big Edie and promising to return after the weekend.

Beard recalls enjoying the visit enormously and suggests that the Edies lived in a dream world and were quite content with their lot and each other's company. He opens Reed Three by berating the petty-minded neighbours, who loved to persecute them and make them feel afraid that they were going to be turfed out. A man and a woman come on a tour of inspection and Radziwill has Salinger outline his planned improvements. The unnamed woman is a little sheepish in front of the camera. But Mr Simon, the man with the clipboard, is full of himself, as he strides around passing judgement. Big Edie chats with the woman and makes sure she sees a portrait of her in her heyday finery and bids her farewell with the reassurance that she doesn't hate her as much as she used to do.

Meanwhile, Little Edie pops in and out (as she is always looking for either her pants or her make-up) and Big Edie remarks that timing is the secret to making a great picture. She sits Simon down to ask if he is impressed with the way things are changing and he admits it's a lot better than it was and looks forward to the time when he can make social rather than business calls. Face to face with Big Edie, he is highly deferential. But Little Edie keeps fretting because she can't find her eyeliner and is reluctant to pose next to Big Edie's portrait, as her mother keeps rattling on in the background about how her envious daughter can't abide being seen alongside her erstwhile elegance. Interestingly, neither woman mentions Little Edie's younger brothers, Phelan and Bouvier.

Having waved off Radziwill and William, Little Edie comes back inside to complain about people who rake up the past. She considers it the cruellest thing a person can do. Big Edie is on the phone to Lois Wright and they chatter away before Little Edie takes over to say how exhausting it has been having people scrutinise them. Radziwill meets a chap outside a windmill. who ungallantly informs her that her father was a ladies' man who had a different woman on his arm each time he stayed in a rented apartment nearby. 

Big Edie sings a song in French, as the camera roves around the cluttered room and past her portrait. She answers the phone while still warbling and tells the caller with droll wit that she is broadcasting. She then tucks into some coffee ice cream, which she says is the best thing she has tasted in her long life and jokes that it might make the camera crew more charming if they risked putting on three ounces to try it. Big Edie gets sidetracked talking about `dead water' that has had all the minerals removed so that it's no fun to bathe in. But she then rants at Little Edie for not giving her a tissue to clean her sticky fingers. They seem to enjoy the bickering and Radziwill opines that they muddled along in their own little bubble, which would seem downright peculiar to anyone looking in from the outside. Yet Beard declares that he felt privileged to have spent time in their home, as it was like going back in time and sampling a bygone age. 

Reel Four opens with Radziwill and her children watching a pair of raccoons sneaking out through a hole in the decking to fetch pieces of bread. Big Edie is in bed and gives Anthony some sunflower mix to feed to them and Little Edie calls it hippie food and mentions something about the raccoons being sick when they ate a cake with icing. 

Little Edie puts on her make-up and keeps a mirror in front of her face. She says that her uncle, Jack Bouvier, had put her off men because he was such a louse and Big Edie opines that she shouldn't have committed incest with him. Little Edie denies this and protests that he was such a womaniser that she lost all respect for him in particular and men in general. Big Edie chides her for buying so much make-up in a fruitless bid to improve her looks and find herself a husband. Once again, there's an edge to the banter, but neither seems overtly put out and they continue to prattle as the camera rolls.

Radziwill comes calling and each Edie complains that she is looking frightful without her lipstick on. Teasingly, Radziwill says they remind her of her father, as he was a vain man. Little Edie hides under a pillow and announces that she is ready to go to Australia. But Radziwill reassures Big Edie that she has brought her daughter up well and she jokes that it's a miracle that she hasn't murdered her yet. They duet on Kurt Weill's `September Song' before the reel ends.

We return to Beard making a Karen Blixen collage on the floor of his Montauk home. He recalls taking the Queen Mary to Britain before meeting the author in Copenhagen and claims that sailing on a liner is infinitely preferable to flying. He doesn't see the Beales as sad, as they had perfected the art of clinging on to the past on their own terms. Captions reveal that the Maysles returned to Grey Gardens after Beard and Radziwill had abandoned their project. Big Edie had died three years later and Little Edie decided to sell the house and move to Florida, where she passed away in 2002. The estate is currently for sale at $20 million. 

There's not much to add in summation, as this is essentially a filmic footnote that will primarily be of interest to those already au fait with the Grey Gardens scene. Olsson edits discreetly to retain the integrity of Radziwill and Beard's imagery, but he fails to explore the way in which the pair worked or how their collaboration with the Maysles siblings broke down. Moreover, he largely leaves viewers to draw any conclusions about the extent to which the Beales were being exploited here or by the Maysles or whether they were egomaniacal exhibitionists grateful for the opportunity to commune with the wider world after their extended periods of solitude. The bookend segments with Beard are a tad self-conscious, but his voiceover provides some useful context. But this stubbornly remains a nostalgic curio rather than a priceless social artifact.

There have been a few documentaries about the Glastonbury Festival, including Nicolas Roeg and Peter Neal's Glastonbury Fayre (1972), Robin Mahoney, William Beaton and Matthew Salkeld's Glastonbury the Movie (1996) and Julien Temple's Glastonbury (2006). Now, with this being a gap year in the event's long history, comes Sofia Olins's Lost in Vagueness, a memoir of the fabled after-show wonderland that was operated by Roy Gurvitz on the periphery of the festival between 2000-07. One suspects that only regular attendees during this period will have any knowledge of this sideshow and few will have any recollection of its infamous hedonism. Consequently, this is almost the dictionary definition of niche cinema and is strictly for pseuds and the chatterati.

Having run away from home to escape a tyrannical Jewish father, Roy Gurvitz spent two decades with the travelling community. In 1986, he gravitated towards the Glastonbury Festival that had been launched by farmer Michael Eavis in 1971. He started by running a café named Top Turns. But, after the success of a ballroom dancing sidebar and a casino, he was entrusted with providing alternative entertainment for festivalgoers and, in 2000, he devised Lost Vagueness as a showcase for countercultural activity. As collaborators like Jim Hudson, Chris Tofu, Kaye Dunnings, Debs Armstrong and Leila Jones recall, Gurvitz could be difficult to work with. But he had energy and vision and Eavis later claimed that attractions like the Chapel of Love helped save and reinvigorate Glastonbury at a time when it looked as though it was running out of steam. 

The boom that followed the revival, however, prompted Eavis to bring in Melvin Benn to co-ordinate the event and his frequent contretemps with Gurvitz came to a head over a bar located inside an aircraft fusilage in 2007 and he left never to return. But, as Jones relates, the LV brand had also changed considerably since its inception and she was not alone in being uncomfortable with Gurvitz seeking corporate engagements and even attending international trade fairs in order to court clients. So, as Shangri-La replaced Lost Vagueness in a Somerset field, Gurvitz's loyal underlings sought pastures new and he was left to carry on as best he could.

The fact that Olins fails to reveal what he has been up to for the last decade rather sums up her would-be insider view of the ultimate outsider. She has certainly spent considerable time with Gurvitz since becoming an LV devotee. But she struggles to get past the barriers he has erected, just as sister Janis Sinclair was unable to track him down for over 20 years after he left home. Ex-partner Emma Hirst posits that Gurvitz persisted with LV to prove to his doubters (and himself) that he could be a success on his own maverick terms. But Olins opts not to pursue this line of inquiry with her volatile and unquestionably egotistical subject, who is given an easy ride in the interviews that punctuate the frenziedly edited clips of cabaret, burlesque and carnival acts performing to mostly intoxicated and sometimes bemused revellers.

No attempt is made to place these acts in an aesthetic or historical context and, as a consequence, the snippets tumble in on each other with little rhyme or reason. Similarly, there are no onlooker vox pops to help us gauge why Gurvitz's blend of eroticism, satire, spectacle and subversion came to be such a kitschily, cultishly iconic part of the Glastonbury scene. Thus, the audience coming cold to Lost Vagueness is left to take Olins's word that this haven for underground legends like Empress Stah and Mouse has the cultural significance she claims.  

Photographer Josef Koudelka turned 80 in January. He has spent over half his life working for the Magnum agency since his pictures of the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring were smuggled out of his native Czechoslovakia and published in the Sunday Times under the initials `P.P.' (for `Prague Photographer') in order to protect his identity. Having lived behind the Iron Curtain for 32 years, Koudelka knows all about barriers. So, when French photographer Frédéric Brenner invited him to join a project called `This Place', Koudelka opted to photograph the wall that separates Israel from the Palestinian Territories. Former assistant Gilad Baram tagged along to watch his mentor work and the result is the studied and deceptively revealing documentary, Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land, which is showing in London this week under the auspices of Dochouse. 

Himself an accomplished photographer, Baram knows a good image when he sees one. He also recognises he is in the presence of greatness. Consequently, he keeps his camera still and allows Koudelka to move inside a frame flanked by the gigantic slabs that form the Wall. In the first set-up, he bobs in and out of shot, as he tries to line up an image of a rain-soaked access road between two slabs of wall with a watchtower abutting a gate. Smiling, as he turns around after the telltale click, Koudelka is pleased that he and Baram have the picture they wanted. 

As he labels a reel while sitting between two monstrous barricades at Al Walaja, Koudelka curses the Israelis for scarring a landscape that can never be returned to its pristine state. He watches as slabs are added to a new stretch and chats to a local lad in an Inter Milan shirt. Always on a watching brief, he takes up his position near a Bethlehem checkpoint and ignores repeated loudspeaker warnings in Hebrew to move away from a fence that forms part of the Qalandiya zone near Ramallah. Eventually, Baram advises him that he is incurring the wrath of the soldier on duty, but he doesn't back off until he has secured his shot. Koudelka proves equally intransigent when a member of a patrol appearing to be arbitrarily denying access to pedestrians asks him to stay behind a cordon. Unsurprisingly, he is amused when the soldier asks him if he speaks Russian.

Similarly, while driving along, Koudelka takes the first snap he can get through the windscreen after Baram asks him to lower his camera while driving towards a checkpoint. An amusing incident occurs when a soldier calls a civilian supervisor to intervene when he discovers that Koudelka doesn't have a press pass. Sporting payot, the official explains that the problem lies with photographing people rather than the landscape. But, when Baram mentions that Koudelka works for Magnum, Yoav the trooper knows the name and shakes hands with the celebrated shutterbug and allows him to complete his shoot without further hindrance. 

Eavesdropping on a tourist party visiting Rachel's Tomb, Koudelka takes pictures of a gnarled tree with the Wall in the background and a mural of what the view of this holy site used to look like before it was encased to protect visitors from terror attacks. Forming part of a montage of widescreen monochrome vistas, this one image sums up the entire tragedy of the situation and the two peoples trapped inside it. The Wall looms large in every composition. Yet, when Koudelka is allowed to visit a mock-up of a Palestinian settlement at an IDF training facility known as `Detroit', the lack of fortifications adds a grim irony to the pictures he takes under the watchful eye of a friendly young soldier. 

Lying in the dust, Koudelka photographs a hillside village through the coils of a razor-wire fence. He also sits in a field full of wild flowers to shoot some Gormleyesque metal soldiers forming a phantom line of defence against an unseen enemy. Turning to Baram, he admits to never having been in a war zone and hopes things stay that way. Yet, as we see images he once took of Eastern European Gypsies, he muses that he was lucky to have been raised in such an oppressive country as Czechoslovakia, as it made him appreciate the freedom to wander and photograph whatever he wanted. He suggests that he has retained the anger of a nomadic Gypsy, as he keeps moving around in order to avoid having to conform. 

An elderly Palestinian in a keffiyeh named Abu Ali shows Koudelka around the ruins of his village. Some boys follow him as he walks along a parched ridge to photograph an Israeli settlement on the horizon. He has spent several years visiting such sites and he is always amazed by how quickly they change. When he ventures into the Judean Desert, however, he is relieved that nothing has been done to destroy its forbidding beauty and he jokes that he can understand why Jesus kept coming here. Koudelka doesn't believe in God, but he notes the irony that the deity who awarded the Promised Land to the Israelites also cautioned them not to steal. 

After we see stark shots of impromptu barricades in the narrow streets of Hebron, Koudelka meets a Palestinian woman who agrees that the wall has imprisoned two sets of people. Over shots from Prague in 1968, he reveals that he was proud of his nation for showing such unity in support of a noble cause. But he never felt animosity towards the troops because they came from across the Warsaw Pact and, as a soldier himself at the time, he knew he could be posted anywhere across the Soviet empire to crush sedition. 

Having photographed a military monument in the mist over the Golan Heights, Koudelka battles a downpour to take some pictures at a guard post, More metal figures give the place an embattled feel and he is eager to leave. When he returns to the Wall on a finer day, a tag reads `Free Wales!' on one of the slabs. The barrier snakes away into the distance with small communities nestled either side. When he fails to find inspiration inside an unfinished edifice, Koudelka returns to the Memorial to the 679th Reserve Armoured Brigade, which had seen action during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. He holds up the snap he took the last time he was there and points out the road that has since been constructed. 

Over a shot of some contact sheets, Koudelka admits that he was uncertain about working in Israel, as he still had many projects to complete in Europe. But he felt he could offer an outside perspective and persuade people to take a fresh look at a shifting situation. As the film ends, he tries to photograph two Israeli soldiers pointing at the view from Mount Gerizim above Nablus. They ask what he is doing and seem satisfied that he is merely taking pictures. 

Rather frustratingly, Baram only lists the places visited by Koudelka during the closing credits. He also fails to date the sequences, which prevents the viewer from getting an accurate impression of just how much things have changed during the four-year assignment. But such minor flaws scarcely detract from this compelling account of a journey in which Koudelka learnt much about the Arab-Israeli crisis and his own past. By keeping his own camera reasonably static, Baram is able to study a master at work, as he surveys the landscape and seeks the most telling angles and distances from which to shoot. 

The encounters with soldiers, residents and tour guides are flecked with wry humour and resigned poignancy. But it's the lingering close-ups of the views of places like Al'Eizariya, Shab Al Dar, Abu Dis and Beit Jala that make the deepest impression, as they expose the cruel realities of daily life in an no man's land designed to prevent any kind of dialogue or rapprochement. Moreover, as Koudelka departs, the likelihood of the Palestinians ever staging a Velvet Revolution of their own seems as impossible as it must have seemed when he fled into exile in 1970.