Film Reviews by PD

Based on a 40-page short story by Haruki Murakami, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s enigmatic film is very slow and meditative, contemplating a huge range of ideas, thoughts and feelings - notably grief, betrayal and the nature of creativity. Its 3-hour running time will undoubtedly put many off, but for me it is a beautiful film that rewards our attention. At the film's heart is protagonist Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a successful theatre director-actor famed for working on experimental, multilingual productions of classic plays (he is about to embark on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, long sections of which are woven into the film very well indeed) and his increasing involvement with his driver, Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura), who becomes a sounding-board for the actor’s inner turmoil. Yûsuke’s car — his favoured red Saab —becomes a kind of confessional box on wheels as actor and chauffeur begin to bond, revealing their pains in small increments; an unlikely couple finding common ground.

Both Nishijima and Miura deliver beautifully modulated portraits of melancholy: Nishijima unlocks Yusuke via minute variations in expression and delivery, and no less superb is Miura, whose tense, gaze-dodging demeanour unfurls and relaxes once behind the wheel - as their characters bend and bond, her melancholy comes to shape and steer the film as much as his. The sense of mutual sadness is subtly underlined by the car's dull drone, the director enlivening his restrained aesthetic with not a few very sophisticated touches - Yûsuke and Misaki’s hands, each holding cigarettes, stretched out of the Saab’s open sunroof as it speeds through the night for example is quite wonderful. Powerful filmmaking.

This highly enjoyable piece stars Renate Reinsve as 30-year old Julie, who has a smile that could light up whole cities. Though the character is something of an millenial archetype, Reinsve is very good at conveying her character's forcefulness and frustration; believably rendering Julie clever enough to become anything she wants, but also naive enough to feel blindsided by the realisation that she’ll eventually have to choose what that will be.

The film's a bit soap-opera/netflix light and frothy at times, but it's so vibrant that you can't take your eyes off it for a second, with touches of vintage Woody Allen: the film is never more fun than when Julie is second-guessing herself and/or trying to keep time from slipping through her fingers. There's good chemistry with Anders Danielsen Lie as Askel, a 44-year-old cartoonist whose underground success frees her to work in a bookstore while she waits for inspiration to strike. Julie begins to write, and her pieces enjoy moderate viral success; none more so than “Oral Sex in the Age of #MeToo,” which represents one of the rare moments when the film meaningfully grapples with how vastly the internet broadened the opportunity to flirt with new jobs and fuck perfect strangers. The film also contends with time in other, more elemental ways: the fragmented nature of its literary structure allows us to feel the years slipping through Julie’s fingers, while the close-up focus of its best chapters puts isolated moments under a microscope to see how certain nights can echo for a lifetime. One such night begins with Julie spontaneously waltzing into a random party, where she meets goofy barista Eivind played by Herbert Nordrum (the chemistry is much less good, unfortunately). How intimate can they get without cheating? It’s a dangerous game for someone with such an unrequited desire for the unknown. Later, in a wonderful sequence that should resonate with anyone who’s ever asked themselves “what if?,” time itself comes to a complete standstill across the whole of Oslo as Julie runs across the city from one man to the other - this is the ever-relatable fantasy at the heart of this film: choice without consequence. By contrast, a breathtakingly-good break up scene shows us the consequences.

The ending is all a bit too neat and tidy, with Julie's artistic development left to the imagination throughout, but a slower and distinctly moving third act is somewhat deeper (a great short scene involving Askel in a heated exchange during a radio interview is really good), and engages with some moral questions from the existential morass of its circumstances and though we, as with Julie, are unprepared for this, it has the effect of leaving us on a thoughtful, meditative note. Two hours well spent.

Cathy Brady's psychological drama centres on the unspoken connection between sisters Kelly (Nika McGuigan) and Lauren (Nora-Jane Noone), who share a mutual trauma. The context is a fractious, post-Brexit Ireland, but while the film at first establishes a political framework with a blistering montage of current events in the UK, it shifts into a more personal tale about women shouldering psychic damage, and who come together to reckon with the past. Whilst there's a tad too much melodrama on show as the film proceeds, Brady’s feature debut is generally a powerful portrait of women on fire, unsure of where to go in the wake of rippling tragedy. And the film itself becomes all the more tragic once, by the closing credits, it’s revealed star McGuigan, who gives a distinctly chilling and complex performance, died from cancer while the film was in post-production in 2019.

The events of the film are set in motion by the return of Kelly to the quiet Northern border town from which she abandoned her sister more than a year ago. Kelly, arriving in customs like a wounded animal, appears as a feral vagabond who’s lived quite a life on the road, and can’t readjust to the life she knew before. When she shows up at Lauren’s doorstep, she’s like someone plopped into a foreign country who can’t speak the language. Lauren, meanwhile, who holds a menial job at a robotic Amazon-type warehouse nearby (the scenes here are very good indeed), has an understandably complicated reaction to Kelly’s arrival. It’s revealed that Kelly and Lauren both have a close relationship to mental illness, as their mother was deeply unwell in their upbringing, often perched on the edge of suicide and unable to cope with the demands of domesticity and motherhood, and it's that bristly attitude toward decorum and expectation has been passed on to Kelly and Lauren.

The film veers off into various implausible directions, and the political themes introduced are a tad unsubtle, but the strange dynamic between Kelly and Lauren remains convincing - a striking scene in a bar finds the women manically dancing, in animalistic synchrony, indifferent to the eyes and ears of the tiresome locals. McGuigan’s performance is loaded with contradictions, often in the space of a single scene, and it’s very absorbing stuff, whilst Noone proves an apt accomplice to Kelly’s rage, making Lauren into a broken woman who also wields power over her sister. Kelly and Lauren might not find redemption, but these two need each other, in their own strange way - although how other people handle this is anyone's guess (I felt a bit sorry for those well-meaning people around them, notably Lauren’s perplexed partner Sean). Strong stuff.

There's plenty to like in this bewildering, highly original film, but the basic problem for me is the distinct lack of chemistry between Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Kane (Alana Haim), which for me means that the sections where they're at each others' throats are a lot more convincing than any romantic connection. They're very good on their own terms - Hoffman's Gary is a successful child actor, who has wielded his limited “fame” with confidence far beyond his years, and he’s got a lot of alpha energy from having to navigate the egos of aging Hollywood stars and a revolving door of casting agents. It’s in this space that he declares to his younger brother, on the same day as meeting her, that he’s going to marry Alana someday - it's not a little creepy, but I guess that's the point. Alana meanwhile is the youngest daughter of a restrictive ex-Israeli soldier; there’s a seething anger just below the surface of all her interactions, impatient with her lot in life and the straight paths she’s uninterested in taking to achieve her goals of wealth and attention. Gary is the road not taken, the one that she knows she shouldn’t pursue but one she flagrantly does, putting her toe in, and then taking it out, for the entire length of the film.

As the two aggressively flirt and make one another jealous, Gary envelops Alana into his scattershot existence, first as his adult chaperone on his press tour trip to New York City, and then in a series of opportunistic business ventures in the Valley. Be it ahead of the trend — waterbeds, acting gigs, pinball houses, you name it — when Gary puts his eye on it, he’s immediately successful at it. Their seemingly random ventures (which apparently are all based on the real exploits of former child actor Gary Goetzman) carry Gary, Alana, and a small posse of young enablers across a summer in the Valley running breathlessly from one scheme to the next. In all the crisscrossing, Anderson does capture the time, 1973, remarkably well (I was there too, so I know), with faces shot au natural and close up so every imperfection is captured, bringing an delightfully incongruous sense of realism to all the surrealism on show. From Sean Penn and Tom Waits’ aging Hollywood alpha males setting up impromptu motorcycle jumps on a golf course to a bizarre evening with Bradley Cooper’s over-sexed Jon Peter’s buying a waterbed, you never quite know what's going to happen next.

But for me it all gets to be too much about halfway (it's long, and it felt like it). Gary and Alana's teasing and baiting, hurting then almost ferally defending one another goes from intriguing and hilarious to predictable and wearing - for while Alana does occasionally vocally question the weirdness of her spending so much time with a boy like Gary, the film isn’t interested in seeing either of them develop - in fact, Anderson seems most interested in just watching them repel and attract each other ad nauseum as they navigate their way amongst a never-ending line-up of truly awful people. You can see what Anderson is trying to do - get us to root for a messed-up dynamic because it’s so skilfully framed like a Hollywood ending, but for me I was ultimately rather glad to be released.

The latest from Almodovar involves two intertwining thematic strands of motherhood and exhumed Spanish history. There are an awful lot of promising threads, but for me none of them are developed in much depth, although very strong performances from leads Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit do a lot to make the film engaging, with their expressive emotional range and controlled discipline through which they put over their director’s rather forced writing. Cruz's Janis bonds well with Smit's much younger Ana from the start: this is partly via their artistic natures, but also through the lack of paternal presences - their opening sequence is very effective as Janis’s boss at work, a surrogate mother figure, and Ana’s own single mother Teresa step into the maternity ward. The film definitely makes us feel the pain of women — in childbirth, in disappointment and in loss — intensely. Unfortunately, so much then happens from this point which strains credulity and only “works” in that sort of soap-opera world which is fine if you want gentle melodramatic escapism but is rather incongruous in a piece which (rightly) takes itself very seriously. Moreover, a sudden, third-act shift in their relationship throws the film right off balance because it suddenly seems to lose interest in the ramifications for its two main characters whom we've come to care about so much.

Nevertheless, the film is undeniably well-meaning: stemming from a sincere desire to address the most fraught aspect of his nation’s civic history whose aftermath produced almost 40 years of fascist rule, the film is successful in scanning the contemporary notion in Spain that its legacy and afterlife haven’t been properly examined; silence abounding as the country now enjoys its relative liberal prosperity.

If you enjoyed Souvenir Part One, and admire Joanna Hogg's work in general, then you're in for a big treat here, for this is her most accomplished feature to date. Deeper, funnier, far more imaginative and personal than its predecessor, The Souvenir Part II is a filmmaker working at the peak of her powers, for if it's Hogg’s most personal film, it is also her most ambitious, straddling genre and form to present a story about grief but not necessarily about grieving.

In one of many brilliant scenes, a quiet drama is built around the accidental smashing of a ceramic sugar bowl, and aptly enough, the second chapter of this semi-autobiographical brace is a film about picking up the pieces. At its heart, The Souvenir Part II is a portrait of a young woman getting to grips with a broken life in general and her nascent creativity in particular. After the death of her heroin-addicted lover Anthony at the end of the first film, Honor Swinton Byrne’s film-school student Julie Harte — the J.H. initials suggest the director’s alter-ego — is at a turning point in her filmmaking. Jettisoning her project about working-class life in the Sunderland docks, Julie decides to make a version of her relationship with Anthony. His absence looms large as Julie attempts to make sense of her grief, reconciling the man she loved with the reality of his addiction and untimely demise. It’s an uncomfortable if inevitable position, but Julie displays a drive and determination previously absent as she drifted through life, coasting on her privilege. There are still moments that highlight her good fortune, yet she doesn’t take it for granted now she understands the fragility that surrounds her. Meanwhile, Hogg, ripping from her own time at film school, paints a painfully believable portrait of student filmmaking, the sense of rivalry, squabbles — there is a wonderfully convincing argument in the back of a minibus — and the idiosyncratic, indecisive process of a young filmmaker failing to share their vision with the cast and crew. Julie also takes her first steps in the professional film world through vividly realised pop-promo shoots and reuniting with flamboyant filmmaker Patrick, whom she met briefly in the first part. Patrick is an egomaniacal auteur who compares himself to Scorsese (an executive producer on both Souvenir films) and dismisses praise during editing (“That’s marvellously generic.” “You’re forcing me to have a tantrum”), yet finds notes of pathos in a third-act meeting with Julie in Soho in the rain.

Hogg’s control of her filmmaking palate is very impressive throughout. Around Julie’s filmmaking exploits, Hogg adds in different textures. Post Anthony, Julie has three very different relationships with three very different men, and there are also beautifully played scenes with Julie and her parents, perfectly toggling between affection and reserve, whilst a very clever late sequence is a trick mirror of sound and images, drawing from the past to make sense of the present. But this is Honor Swinton Byrne’s film. No longer in the shadow of Tom Burke’s overbearing Anthony, she comes into her own here: still a quiet, delicate presence, but one that is absolutely absorbing. Hogg is very successful at creating something honest and true from the fabrication of filmmaking; about living with tragedy, about finding your own voice and ultimately about growing up. And questions of what compels us to make art – and what purpose art should serve – linger after the credits roll. Very strong stuff indeed.

Kenneth Branagh’s curiously nostalgic piece is every bit the contradiction in terms that it sounds like: you can sort of see what he's trying to do - give a bittersweet picture of the beginnings of the 'Troubles' through a 9-year old's eyes , but despite some powerful scenes the whole thing is so drenched in sentiment that it's very difficult to take seriously. In stark contrast to so many films about or informed by the violence that plagued the city during the latter half of the 20th century, 'Belfast' ultimately opts for romanticism over realism at every turn. It's also a film that wants desperately to be a work of art, but it takes more than black and white cinematography and an affecting central character to bring this off successfully.

The opening sequence is pretty good - Jude Hill as Buddy sword-fighting an innocent swarm of other children in a frenzied street scene interrupted by a mob of angry Protestants looking to cleanse the neighbourhood of the remaining Catholics. Jude Hill as Buddy is all a bit one-dimensional throughout, but there are strong performances from Jamie Dornan as his all-too absent father, who balances his excellent performance between the decency of a man who refuses to raise a fist to his neighbour and the fragility of one who’s concerned about the well-being of his wife and sons, and Caitríona Balfe as Buddy’s similarly beautiful mother, pictured with the elegance of an adult trying to picture what his mother looked like in her prime, and in whose mouth is put the film’s most pivotal speech. There is an irritating Judi Dench as Buddy’s spicy grandma (her Irish accent is worse than mine), but she is offset by the wonderful Ciarán Hinds as her ailing husband of 1,000 years (and Buddy’s confidant). “There’s only one right answer,” Buddy says when talking to his grandpa about the brewing Troubles. “If that were true,” his grandpa replies, “people wouldn’t be blowing themselves up all across this town.”

Branagh creates a vivid sense of Buddy’s home life — warm, chaotic, rooted to the soil — and of a city whose rapid descent into violence threatens to smash the idyllic snow-globe that is his world. There's a great touch of a bellicose, Wellesian minister at his church scaring the boy into drawing a literal road map that divines heaven from hell, a striking (presumably autobiographical) detail in a film full of them, and an underwritten thread in a film that doesn’t have many (Buddy has an older brother and sister, but the characters' only purpose is as supplements to Buddy, which is a shame). And there's some lovely scenes as Buddy and his family watch such classics as 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' (where the film is momentarily in colour), attesting to cinema’s transportive and inspiring nature; Branagh shrewdly conveys how films are intimately enmeshed with our memories of the past. But because the film underplays the tensions and grievances of the Troubles for such a long stretch of its running time, scenes that attempt political profundities are less an acknowledgement of truths that can no longer be shielded from a child than simply intrusive melodrama.

The film is soundtracked by an incessant string of Van Morrison songs that strain to convey some of the happy-go-lucky childlike energy that’s missing from so much of the camerawork. It’s a telling detail of a very personal film that — despite shimmering with the essence of Branagh’s love — sorely lacks a point-of-view or a sense of cohesion. All in all, lots of charm, but rarely convincing - a retreat from reality rather than an engagement with it.

This very short, tender and dreamy film concerns the relationship between sheltered and isolated 16 year-old Claudia (Markella Kavenagh), left traumatised and vulnerable after the death of her mother, and Grace (Maiah Stewardson), who seeks Claudia out to check on her wellbeing. The connection between the two young girls is instant and intense, leading to Claudia discovering something of the the joys of the world beyond the four walls of her house and the woodlands on her doorstep. Inevitably, however, their shared idyll rests on borrowed time.

There’s an intriguing darkness at the outset of this story - a rumble of dysfunction in the relationship between Claudia and her mother, a novelist and eccentric recluse who taught her daughter that there is “nothing but pain” in the world beyond their isolated existence. Her mother had so successfully protected Claudia that when she dies, in a deliberate act which nearly claims her daughter’s life as well, the authorities are not even aware of Claudia’s existence. Director Katie Found leans heavily on the use of colour when it comes to exploring the impact of Grace on the life of Claudia - Clad in a pink tutu, with a wardrobe that seems to consist mainly of zinging extrovert primaries and plastic jewellery, Grace injects a burst of energy and positivity into the washed-out sadness of Claudia’s home. Stewardson is a charismatic presence, who perhaps seems more at ease in her role than Kavenagh as the damaged and introspective Claudia.

The adult world is represented by a pair of concerned but lackadaisical policemen, who seem remarkably laid back about the death of Claudia’s mother, and by Grace’s mother, a stridently one-note antagonist with an emotional register which is stuck somewhere between rage and bitterness. And then there’s Claudia’s late mother, who appears to her daughter to dispense prickles of guilt about the pleasure she has found in her relationship with Grace. The love nurtured between the two girls feels all the more precarious when juxtaposed with the uncaring world around them.

The premise takes a huge suspension of disbelief, but ultimately this is a gently moving piece which avoids the usual cliches in coming-of-age/gay-themed films. More to come, hopefully, from a talented director.

This one offers us a reminder of how difficult it is to put the Gawain tale onto the screen, for whilst there are some very powerful scenes here and whilst it is certainly visually stunning throughout, overall I'm coming away that much of this was a confused mess, I'm afraid. For writer-director David Lowery tries far too hard at giving us a unique take with 'epic' dimensions - including a mix of ghosts, giants, temptresses and mysterious beasts, with each dream-like detour prolonging Gawain's march to the inevitable showdown and the ultimate test of his mettle and manhood. Occupying practically every scene, Patel makes a striking and relatable hero, but he spends much of the time as baffled as the audience is likely to be, for the psychological themes on show are in the end far too vague to be truly thought-provoking. The film's sheer originality is certainly striking, but we still await a film version that does justice to this astonishing work.

Writer-director Zeina Durra’s short but slow-burning film is a beautifully meditative, history-laden piece, one that asks us to consider how we reconcile our past experiences with our present state, and in turn how we wish our future to be.

Andrea Riseborough is pitch-perfect as the memory-haunted Hana; she's one who can decompress the present in the usual ways: rest, have a drink, commiserate with the friendly manager, even hook up with (and then avoid) a chatty American tourist, but on visiting Luxor’s temples and tombs, however, she feels the pull of past civilisations that struggled with life and death and sought to memorialise birth and rebirth. And when she runs into archaeologist and one-time lover Sultan (a suitably low-key Karim Saleh), their rekindling of a meaningful emotional and intellectual connection amid the beauty of ruins appeals to her past 'self' whilst at the same time bringing her reluctantly toward new choices.

Zelmira Gainza’s evocative location imagery is a bit predictable, whilst the soundtrack is an irritating distraction, but Durra is on solid ground in focusing on a psychological narrative in which the digging up of feelings is a gradual, contemplative journey, something sensed rather than made explicit. Riseborough is great at revealing her multi-layered personality, and her slow-walked reveal of a resilient woman’s vulnerabilities meshes well with Durra’s delicate attention to the antiquity and spiritual mystery around her. in a very modest, quiet mature way, this is impressive stuff.

French director Céline Sciamma's beautiful, very short piece deals with some profound themes with a light touch. It focuses on the connection between an 8-year-old girl, Nelly (the perfect Joséphine Sanz), and her mother, Marion (Nina Meurisse), through a simple leap of imagination. Nelly is a bright and empathic child whom Sciamma first introduces in the retirement home where her grandmother had lived until quite recently and where Nelly’s mother is also saying goodbye. Sciamma subtly — but very discreetly — conveys the change in this young family’s life and the individual healing that each of them do to move forward, and of course at a time when Nelly's identity is still in formation. Sciamma is remarkably skilful at banishing the intellectual noise of adulthood, prioritising sensation and the emotional intuition by which we steer as children, and a very clever magical-realist plot device (involving Sanz's real-life twin sister Gabrielle - also excellent) is very well used to evoke the act of wondering what our own parents went through when they were themselves children. Sciamma gives Nelly the chance to find out, and the plot device serves as both an extension of Nelly’s natural desire to understand her mother and a chance to work out certain things she can’t quite say to her, and to investigate where her mother’s melancholy may have originated.

Sciamma’s tone is playful but never twee, and by casting the sisters Sciamma benefits from the bond that already exists between these girls, which reads here as a kind of instant complicity: a messy crepe-making scene in particular is absolutely wonderful. We sense that Sciamma has asked them to participate in a very personal exercise, but one that’s open-ended enough for them to project themselves. In our children, we often see reflections of the children we once were, we just need a little magic to access those same memories. In doing so, “Petite Maman” definitely casts a very effective spell indeed.

I watched it. And then watched it again. An astonishing accomplishment. I love its intensity, its honesty; I speak as someone who has lived with deafness and the specific issue of Cochlear implants.

Ritz Ahmed is compelling as Ruben, and the film takes its time in revealing a humane portrayal of someone coming to terms with a radically new and unwelcome conception of self, and in doing so delves with some depth into the dilemmas involved in the prospect of a miracle cure - and, dare i suggest, the struggle to redefine oneself in the face of a massive and unexpected change that could be applied to many different situations. For our relationships define ourselves, and Sound of Metal is careful in expressing this, most notably by moving through the muffled, disorienting sounds of Ruben’s experience to the alienating clarity of his partner, Lou. The tragedy of Ruben is of course in chaining himself to his old way of being, for he remains set on the implants that he believes will restore his old life, even as he sacrifices everything in its pursuit: Blake: “He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy / He who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity’s sunrise”. Without a trace of sentiment, Sound of Metal makes a case for acceptance and for embracing the inevitability of unpredictable change. Compelling viewing.

Banned from filmmaking in Iran, director Mohammad Rasoulof returns to the great moral themes that underlie all his work in this generally powerful film, or should we say films - for we get four unrelated stories here, linked only by the central theme of the death penalty and to killing in general, each of which broadcast the message (with varying degrees of subtlety) that Iran’s authoritarian regime can be opposed and resisted, in spite of the powerful influence it exerts on people’s lives. Perhaps the four tales suffer from being narratively uneven, but it's compelling viewing nonetheless.

The first episode is a perfectly balanced and crafted little jewel that, by being the most understated, is perhaps the most hard-hitting of the four, and which might have done better as the culminating final tale. It concerns a day-in-the-life of Heshmat, an average middle-aged man with a well-trimmed beard and an impassive face. Beautifully acted without any undue emphasis, it makes its point with a shock of recognition. The second tale, titled “She said, you can do it”, is set in a prison dorm in which a soldier has been ordered to hang a prisoner the next morning by pulling the stool out from under him, but his conscience won’t let him do it. In this highly theatrical setting, he struggles to find a way out of killing, talks to his girlfriend on the phone, trying to find someone to pull strings and transfer him out. The various moral dilemmas he faces are portrayed quite well, but then this sequence veers off into a highly improbable resolution which rather ruined it for me. The third story: “The Birthday” also involves someone involved in military service, but this time he's on a three-day leave, the action centring around his meeting his fiancee and her family. Compared with the conscientious objector of the previous episode, this segment voices a more common attitude toward following military regulations, but once again the action feels a tad forced to me. Meanwhile, one would expect the final segment, “Kiss Me,” to build on and consolidate the previous three, but it rather fails to end the film with a satisfying conclusion, as sadly it’s the weakest of the four, involving as it does a 'big secret' which, by the time we get to realise what it is, the power of the premise is somewhat dissipated.

According to Amnesty International statistics, Iran was responsible for more than half the world’s recorded executions in 2017. The number has since dropped, but the country continues to kill its citizens at alarming rates. It’s significant that Rasoulof seems so unconcerned with charges against the film’s condemned criminals. They are humans, after all. Rather than agreeing with the soldiers, the film is a challenge to all those who passively accept their role in the machine, calling on them to question the sentences they carry out — as well as those levied against their neighbours. “I refuse to kill a living thing,” pronounces Darya in the last story (played by the director’s daughter, an interesting casting choice). But is she ready for the truth? Are any of us? The truth, the film clearly understands, is more complicated than its title: There is evil in the world, and it corrupts us when we don’t take a stand. What would we do in the characters’ shoes? Intriguing stuff.

Nir Bergman’s tender piece is a warm, multi-faceted look at how autism plays into parent-child co-dependence.

The set-up centres on dad Aharon , beautifully played by Shai Avivi, and his young adult son Uri (a thoroughly convincing Noah Imber). Aharon, separated from wife Tamara, has given up a lucrative career to become a full-time carer for Uri, who is on the autistic spectrum (it is never explicitly spelled out but it isn't necessary). Uri’s life is marked by unbreakable routines: watching Charlie Chaplin on a portable DVD player, eating only pasta stars, not stepping on the lines in the pavement, etc. The conflict comes when Tamara, realising that at some point Uri will need to fend for himself, enrols him in an assisted living facility. Although Uri is scared and reluctant to go, it is Aharon who cannot sanction the move and, convinced he is best placed to raise his son, the pair go on the run. The ensuing 'road trip' avoids the usual comedic cliches or schmaltzy father-son moments, and drawing inspiration from her own family, screenwriter Dana Idisis crafts an understated connection, keenly observing the realities of dealing with an autistic child, be it through the novel coping strategies employed to make life manageable, or simply by the need to stay quiet. It makes 'Rain Man' feel artificial and forced by comparison and that's quite a compliment to all involved, for Imber pays Uri as a rounded person, not just someone with a disability, and Avivi is superb as a patient, caring father who starts to realise the limits of his love. Whether it is his low-level but constantly on-guard state of alertness —his panic in a scene where Uri goes missing is palpable — or quietly delighting in his son laughing at City Lights, he gives 'Here We Are' a big heart without a trace of sentimentality, and that's quite something.

For an hour or so, 'Dune' is mesmerizing, throwing off seductive glints of treachery as it presents the tale of Paul Atreides (an admirably restrained Timothée Chalamet), the gifted scion of the House Atreides, whose father is leading what looks to be an opportunity, though one that’s fraught with peril. This first section draws us into Herbert's world slowly but successfully, and hopefully will get many scurrying back to the books. There’s also much to admire in Patrice Vermette’s production design, particularly the Zen elegance of the aristocratic Atreides household on their beautiful oceanic home planet of Caladan and the Arrakis stronghold Arrakeen, a sprawling structure that combines ancient Egyptian and Aztec influences. The costumes by Jacqueline West and Robert Morgan also are full of eye-catching touches, from the gauzy gowns of Paul's mother Jessica and other women billowing in the desert wind to the utilitarian body-cooling “stillsuit” developed by the Fremen for survival in the desert, whilst the techy stuff is also really good, notably the giant Harkonnen harvesters raking the sands like desert beetles as monstrous sandworms tunnel up to the surface to swallow everything in their path, and the splendid wasp-winged choppers known as ornithopters, buzzing through the skies.

BUT. What the film doesn’t do is shape Herbert’s intricate world-building into anything really meaningful. For the history and complex societal structure that are integral to the author’s vision are condensed into a blur, cramping the mythology, whilst the layers of political, religious, ecological and technological allegory that give the novel such exalted status get mulched in a terribly thin, superficial screenplay (have these people actually read it all? or are they simply not clever enough to transfer it to screen?) - far too much of the dialogue could have been written by George Lucas, which is fine if you're 12 years old but I was hoping for so much more. Meanwhile, far, far too much of the latter stages of the film are dominated by Star Wars / James Bond style chase scenes which are both predictable and mind-numbingly tedious, whilst the sadly inevitable Lord of the Rings style portentous, subtle-as-a-flying-mallet score is among the most intrusive I've heard for many a moon. Only part one, of course, so jury out, and enough of interest to send me back for more, but if it's going to be more of the same then I'm afraid I'll probably be sensing a missed opportunity here.