Parky At the Pictures (10/4/2026)

(Reviews of Dracula; The Stranger; Undertone; and Being Ola)

DRACULA.

Radu Jude is by far the most interesting film-maker currently working anywhere in the world. Since making his feature debut with The Happiest Girl in the World (2009), he has attempted a psychological thriller (Everybody in Our Family, 2012), a Western (Aferim!, 2015), a period drama (Scarred Hearts, 2016), a bleak comedy (I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History As Barbarians, 2018), a political biopic (Uppercase Print, 2020), a Golden Bear-winning satire (Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, 2021), an absurdist tale of Cinema and Economics (Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, 2023), and a neo-realist pastiche (Kontinental '25, 2025). He has also made a clutch of challenging documentaries, including The Dead Nation (2017), The Exit of the Trains (2020), and Eight Postcards From Utopia (2024).

His latest offering, Dracula, which is screening at The ICA on The Mall in London, is something of an amalgam of everything that has gone before - and then some. Exploring the historical basis for the myths that underpin the Transylvanian tourist industry, the many screen incarnations of Irishman Bram Stoker's blood-sucking creation, and the various forms of vampirism in modern society, this is a shruggingly lo-fi and gleefully excessive rattlebag of ideas and interpretations, technologies and takedowns, and ghouls and gags that add up to 169 minutes of facts, fictions, fascination, frustration, futility, and fun.

After 16 crudely animated AI-generated images of Vlad Țepeș say the line, `I am Vlad the Impaler, you can all suck my cock,' in a variey of voices, we meet a director (Adonis Tanța), who is suffering from creative block while trying to make a film about Dracula. He promises what follows will be different, even though he is working with a miniscule budget and substandard technology that he doesn't entirely trust.

He whisks us off to a dinner theatre venue, where a flamboyant MC (Tanța) sets the scene with a song before introducing us to Vampira as Mina (Oana Maria Zaharia), who is promptly seduced by Uncle Sandu as Dracula (Gabriel Spahiu) and consoled by Jonathan Harker (Tanța again). An abrupt cut ends the show and we see the MC auctioning off the sexual favours of his co-stars, while a caption informs us that debaucheries that would have made Roman emperor Heliogabalus blush are taking place in the Pink Salon. However, despite his victim role-playing to her foul-mouthed heart's content, Dracula can't raise to the occasion and she wants her money back. In a bid to make amends, the MC hands out stakes and sends the patrons off into the night to hunt down the Count and Mina.

Cutting back to the director, he apologises for the shoddiness of the film so far and announces that he is now using the improved `Dr AI Judex 0.0' software for the new first chapter of the film, `Eutrophia'. An old American woman comes to a clinic to undergo the rejuvenation treatment pioneered by Romanian biologist, Ana Aslan. She listens to spiel about the celebrities who have stayed at the facility, including Lillian Gish, Charlie Chaplin, Salvador Dalí, Steven Spielberg, and Nicolae Ceaușescu. On deciding to see a film, she watches Doru Nastase's epic Vlad Țepeș (1979), with Vlad himself emerging from the screen to demand oral sex before wheeling the woman back to her room to steal her money.

We return to the cabaret restaurant to see the diners given medals for capturing the vampires. But Uncle Sandu is lectured by the owner for letting her down in the Pink Salon and Vampira tries to speak up for him. She also tells Uncle Sandu that they should run away. Meanwhile, the director has a play with a horror classic in `Nosferatu/Murnau', as he intercuts clips from the 1922 vampire saga with adverts for tourism and penis enlargments.

Admitting to Dr Judex that he doesn't really like that sort of thing, the director next recreates the Romanian language scene from Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) in `Hollywood'. In fact, this is a montage of tawdry vampire porn images with accompanying moaning and we don't linger long, as we return to the restaurant, where Mina and Dracula discuss their escape plan before giving the diners the slip by hiding up the clocktower as a storm breaks. Sandu confides that he had mental health issues and was grateful when the boss first took him in, but he now feels trapped in his lot.

The director tells Dr Judex that he wants to show a scene of Dracula returning to his family home in `The Homecoming'. However, it has been turned into a tourist attraction and he wanders among the visitors as the guide tells of how Vlad got his impaling nickname and how he treated women, the poor, boyars, and Turks in the same barbaric way. When the guide said he impaled rats with sticks when he was in prison, Vlad protests and is ejected from his own home.

At his desk, the director tells Dr Judex to drop the silent intertitles between scenes, as they look old-fashioned. He orders a love story, `Just So!', which is set in the 1960s and borrows from the style of Romanian novelist, Nicolae Velea. A truck driver named Duminica (Tanța) keeps losing at backgammon at the end of a day's driving past a field with a scarecrow. While loading up one day, he spies agricultural student Adina Gheorghe (Alexandra Harapu) and offers her a lift with her egg boxes. He picks her up the next day and kisses her on the third, as she wheels her bike along a country road and he tries to get to know her. She likes him and they meet every day. One morning, he notices she is sad and she tells him that her favourite horse at the collective farm had been killed because they bought a tractor and the meat was fed to the chickens, which were run over by the tractor. Confused by this political parable, Duninica informs Adina that he is married and she jumps out of the cab and impales herself on a spike. Despite trying to get help and finish his shift, Duminica despairs and drives the truck into the lake, so he can float around with Adina wihout anyone bothering them.

Shrugging, the director is disappointed at the lack of romance in the story, but decides to follow Vampire and Sandu, as they double back from the diners to hide in their digs. The camera listens to some of the chasers pausing to discuss how Russia and America use political violence to attain their goals. They ponder whether it's right to torture a terrorist to save lives and wonder whether war criminals should be forgiven in return for vital information, such as Dr Yoshimura Hisato, who was part of Unit 731, which conducted experiments on Chinese prisoners.

While Sandu and Vampira lay low and discuss the origins of Romanian towns, the director orders Dr Judex to create a silent past influenced by Carl Theodor Dreyer or Samuel Beckett. This is `Fangs of the Vampire', which sees Vlad the Impaler seek Dentist Caligari because he has toothache. When he refuses to treat him, Vlad yanks out the fang with some pliers. However, the director is miffed becaus the film should have been monochrome not colour and curses Dr Judex for letting sound slip into the end of the clip. Seeking something more uplifting, he commissions a short musical sequence. But he hates `A Ballad' because it was a bawdy piece that opines that the best phallic shape should resemble a duck's head. Dr Judex protests that he has caught a virus and needs to be sent to Silicon Valley for repair.

On his return, Dr Judex agrees to produces something based on the first Romanian vampire novel, G. M. Amza and Al. Bilciurescu's Vampirul (1938). `Vampire' starts as Corneliu Cociu (Tanța) comes to an inn to ask directions to the castle of Baron Wirth (Lukas Miko) and learns that there are vampires in the vicinity. Undaunted, he survives a crash in a horse buggy and meets his host and learns his duties as lawyer and librarian. That evening, Cociu meets the Baron's niece, Countess Ermina of Kollovrat (Andrada Balea) and takes an immediate shine to her. However, she is bitten by a vampire and the priest (Serban Pavlu) denounces the villagers for believing in a myth. Cociu goes hunting with his gun and is overcome in the graveyard by a cloaked figure, but the villagers declare he was drunk and scratched his neck when he fell over.

Ermina visits the priest to tell him that she had considered becoming a nun and renouncing her inheritance before she met Cociu. Now she's in love and walks with him in the spring woods and feels safer when he shoots the vampire when it jumps out to menace them. They declare their love for one another. But the vampire has not been vanquished, as it bites the innkeeper after giving him a lecture about his suspicions that the baron or the priest are the culprits because they alone have the leisure to commit the assaults. Cociu comes to the inn to hear the story (complete with `terrifying' demons surrounding the innkeeper), but is called away when a messenger informs him that Ermina has gone missing. Finding chloroform on a rag beside the bed, Cociu senses human intervention. But he is captured by the vampire in the woods and tied to the bars in the dungeon, as an entranced Ermina fellates the vampire under his cape. But Cociu gets free and guns down the vampire to discover he was the priest all along.

While the director appreciated a properly told story, he regrets that there wasn't any lesbian action. But Dr Judex tells him that he's not programmed to think that way because neither Donald Trump nor Elon Musk would like it. Shrugging, the director wants to get back to his fugitives story and we see them escape from the clocktower after a slow-motion fight.

Resting near the site of a proposed Dracula theme park, Vampira tells Sandu that it was a government scam to sell shares and then default on them. She was in Berlin for the launch when the brochure made an accidental reference to Karl Marx's Das Kapital and this become the title of the next vignette, as the director seeks to prove a point about blood-sucking Capitalism.

Vlad takes over a computer game company and strolls around the office with a robot, which projects images from Giambattista Della Porta's 1586 tome, De humana physiognomonia, to suggest that human faces offer an insight into the personality traits that people often share with the animal they most resemble. This early example of racist profiling goes unchallenged, even though the workers are affronted to be compared to donkeys and pigs (but not cats). However, when he increases the hours and reduces overtime, the workers decide to strike and Vlad mocks them for playing politics. As this was the scene of a 1933 strike in which the workers were gunned down,, the zombified shooters are sent in to finish the strikers. But they meet fierce resistance and Vlad is staked by the toughest woman worker. For once, the director is pleased with the story and notes that it has a Frankensteinian subtext, as everything has been pieced together. He also allows Sandu and Vampira to be betrayed by those offering them sanctuary. But he wants a last digression to give the audience the love story that have craved.

The result is `The Tale of All Tales (1878)', which is derived from the writings of Ion Creangă and opens with a peasant sewing maize in a field. Jesus Christ and St Peter go past and they exchange words. When the harvest comes, the peasant finds he has an abundance of penises in his field and fears ruin. But a female neighbour shows him how he can make money from them and he allows a widowed customer to try one out behind his stall at the market in order to make a sale. News spreads and a priest comes to confiscate one woman's purchase, only for it to overpower him and sodomise him with such force that he gets to like it.

Delighted with such a sacrilegious story, the director asks Dr Judex to come up with a social media presence for Dracula, as we see Sandu escape from under a stake to leap through a window and Vampire bash people over the head in silent slow-motion with a bottle and a fruit bow. In `Dracula TikTok', we see Vlad with a Romanian flag ranting into a phone on a selfie stick. His views are less than enlightened.

Eager to fit in one last story, the director is seemingly unconcerned that Sandu has been cornered in a cemetery and staked `Murder on the Orient Express' style by the chasers, who revels in getting hit by the spurting blood. As they wander away, one of the killers quotes the line by Austrian playwright Johann Nestroy that was cited at the start of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations that progress always seems smaller than it looks. Unimpressed by Dr Judex's references to Ukraine, Gaza, and Trump's neo-fascism when he asks for a tale that reflects our times, the director suggests something about a street cleaner and looks into the camera to tell the audience that if they think they could do better, they should pick up a quill and stop griping.

`New Slice of Life' follows a bin man on his rounds. When he refuses to take construction rubble, the owner tries to belittle him by saying he knows nothing about Trecento art. Partway through the round, he asks to be dropped off so he can watch his daughter participate in a school ceremonial in the playground. A security guard makes him move back from the fence, as the staff don't want someone in a dirty hi-viz jacket close to the kids. But he holds his ground and explains that his wife is in hospital and he wipes away a tear as his daughter finishes a recitation with only the slightest stumble.

Ending at the unlikeliest juncture, this dizzying, occasionally dazzling concoction is bound to divide opinion. As was often the case with the portmanteau films that were so popular with European auteurs in the 1950s and 60s, this is very hit and miss. But it also feels like a millennial throwback to such stridently different pictures as Peter Brook's Marat/Sade (1968), Francine Parker's F.T.A. (1972), and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life (1971-74), in which intent mattered as much as content and brevity often proved to be the soul of wit. Obviously no film that runs for just short of three hours can claim to be brief, but Jude rattles through 15 vignettes, as well as the linking cabaret story and the discussions between the director and Dr AI Judex 0.0, who is voiced by Jude himself. So the time passes swiftly enough and, to quote the old maxim, if one storyline misses the target, another will quickly follow.

It is something of a relief when the focus settles for some 50 minutes on the Kollovrat scenario, even though it feels a bit spun-out. But Jude's speed of thought challenges the audience to keep up, while also staying on the lookout for the throwaway gags and satirical snippets that dot the action. Those more au fait with recent Romanian history will spot more than most, but the digs at some of the clowns wielding power in the United States are always welcome.

Gabriel Spahiu and Oana Maria Zaharia do well to keep the linking story afloat, although it sometimes treads water, despite amusingly updating the `angry mob' trope from all those Universal and Hammer horrors. But it's Adonis Tanța who excels in numerous roles, including the alter ego director, who makes no bones about his narrative choices, even though he occasionally expresses reservations about the way his AI device has carried out his instructions. Some of the generated material is splendidly slipshod, as though Jude were highlighting the fact that computers can only do so much where artistry is concerned. But the `DAIY' graphics reinforce the sense of kitsch that seeps into the scariest vampire movies.

Marius Panduru's cinematography is crisp and skittish, as is Catalin Cristutiu's editing, while Sebastian Zsemlye's sound design is both playful and immersive. But Andreea Popa's eye-catching production design and Ciresica Cuciuc's costumes are perhaps more crucial in allowing Jude to slip between so many plotlines and digressions with archness and conviction. Dana Bordea's make-up and Rebecca Akoun's special effects are also commendable for the way in which they comment on the aesthetic clichés that have congealed around Dracula on screen.

Such self-reflexivity is evident throughout the film, as Jude pays fond homage, scathingly mocks, and wearily mourns the dumbed-down state of cinema and society. From the opening salvo featuring the grotesquely rendered and vulgarly voiced AI Vlads, it's clear that the resource-hungry technology that capitalism is using to control thought and action is sucking the creativity of artists and the objectivity of audiences. It would be all the more depressing if Jude hadn't laced his scattershot missive with so much scabrous wit and cutting insight. It's just a shame he opted not to tighten things up, as the bagginess and the tendency to over-explain in case the viewer has missed how clever he is being will make this feel like an ordeal for some, when it should have been a real treat.

THE STRANGER.

Surprisingly few films have been made from the works of Albert Camus. Alongside Luis Puenzo's The Plague (1992) and Gianni Amelio's The First Man (2011), Felipe Cazals's Bajo la metralla (1983) and Rajesh Touchriver's Raktham - The Blood (2019) were both adapted from the 1949 play, The Just Assassins, while David Oelhoffen's Far From Men (2014) was based on the short story, `The Guest'. The most-filmed novel, however, is L'Étranger, which was made as Lo Straniero (1967) by Luchino Visconti and Yazgı (aka Fate, 2001) by Zeki Demirkubuz. The latest version has been directed by the estimable François Ozon, who has adhered closely to the text in The Stranger, while making some deft post-colonial changes.

Following a travelogue about the attractions of Algeria, Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) is escorted to a crowded prison cell. When asked what he has done, he replies without emotion, `I killed an Arab.' Some weeks earlier, he had received a telegram informing him of the death of his mother (Mireille Perrier) and he had secured permission from his employer to attend the funeral. Borrowing a tie and a black armband from a café-owning friend, he had travelled by bus to the care home where his mother had spent her last three years.

Having walked across country from the nearby town, Meursault remains impassive, as the director (Jean-Benoît Ugeux) hints that he had fallen behind with his payments. But he makes no offer to meet the arrears and is shown into the mortuary, where his mother is lying in a simple wooden coffin. The caretaker (Jean-Claude Bolle-Reddat) asks Meursault if he wishes to see the body, but he says there's no point. During the overnight vigil, he struggles to stay awake, as do the few friends who have come to pay their respects.

Surprised to be told about his mother's fiancé, Perez (Joël Cudennec), as the priest gives the blessing, Meursault follows behind the small horse-drawn hearse to the church in town for the requiem. Perez struggles to keep up on his walking stick, but Meursault doen't go to help, even when he sees him meandering across a verge at the side of the dusty road. He is aware of the old man's distress during the service, but he doesn't shed a tear - and stays sitting during the prayers because he is so indifferent to the faith in which he was raised.

Returning to Algiers to sleep, he sees neighbour Salamano (Denis Lavant) beating his elderly dog. As it's Saturday, Meursault decides to go to the beach and runs into former workmate, Marie Cardona (Rebecca Marder). They bathe in the sun-dappled sea and he lies with his head on her stomach, as they rest on a swim raft. She touches his arm, as they soak up the sun in deckchairs and offers her condolences when she sees the armband on his jacket.

Unconcerned, he suggests a trip to the pictures, where she laughs at Fernandel in Le Schpountz! (1938) but he doesn't. He does put his arm around Marie, however and they kiss while everyone around them roars with laughter. She comes back to his rooms and they sleep together, but she's gone before he wakes.

Monday comes and Meursault resumes work and takes his office mate to lunch to return the tie and armband. On his way home, he sees neighbour Raymond Sintès (Pierre Lottin) being jostled by some Arabs on the street. Over blood sausage and wine, he learns that one of the men is the brother of Djemila Hamdani (Hajar Bouzaouit), the mistress Sintès believes is cheating on him. He asks Meursault to write a letter for him to invite her for a date, so he can sleep with her and dump her. He gets drunk and says nothing when Sintès shrugs off the news of his mother because everyone dies.

Meursault and Marie swim in the sea again and walk in the dunes. After sex, she asks if he loves her and he sniffs that it doesn't matter. They are interrupted by a furore from Sintès's flat and a gendarme is called. He slaps the cigarette out of his mouth when Djemila accuses him of striking her. When Marie asks if Sintès is a pimp, Meursault claims not to know, but she leaves because he doesn't condemn the violence towards a woman.

Sintès asks Meursault to tell the cops that Djemila disrespected him. As they walk to a bar, they see Salamano searching for his dog, which has given him the slip. Later that night, he knocks on Meursault's door because he's concerned the anima will wind up in the pound and he won't be able to afford to reclaim it. But Meursault offers no solace and wishes the old man good night before closing the door. The next day, he's offered a job in Paris, but shows little enthusiasm for it. He responds in the same manner when Marie suggests they get married and he agrees because it will please her, although he categorically states that it means nothing to him.

Getting home, he finds Salamano on the stairs. He's been told his dog has probably been run over and Meursault invites him in for a glass of wine. Salamano relates how he was given a puppy after his wife died and they grew old together, even though they both had terrible tempers. Now, he feels lonely again and tells Meursault that his mother had loved the dog. As he leaves, Salamano hopes that the dogs won't bark in the night, as he will think he can hear his own and worry that it's time to put ointments on its sores. He tells Meursault that getting old is a dreadful thing.

Nervous because he's being followed by Djemila's brother and his pals, Sintès asks Meursault to spend time with him at the beach. Marie comes with them, although she is unnerved by the group of four Arabs watching them from the corner. She tries to jolly Meursault along by dragging him off for a swim, but he is more sullen than usual, especially when Djemilia's brother and a friend confront them on the beach and Sintès gets cut by a knife blade. Marie asks Meursault to take her home, but he joins his neighbour on a walk along the beach. They find the youths waiting around a corner, but Meursault orders Sintès to hand over his gun to stop him doing something foolish. The sight of the weapon causes the Arabs to run and the friends return to the beach chalet. However, Meursault feels compelled to retrace his steps and he finds the brother, Moussa (Abderrahmane Dehkani) sunbathing beside a small spring in the rocks. His gaze scours the man's vested torso, but he has to shield his eyes when the sun glints off his flick knife. Disorientated by the glare, Meursault shoots the Arab and fires four more shots after he falls back. In voiceover, he declares that a hot wind seemed to envelope him and he felt his body stiffen. But he has no remorse for what he has done, even if he doesn't entirely understand his motive.

Waking in the night in his cell to see a rat scurry across the floor, Meursault is relieved to be moved into a single cell. He can see the town from a small barred window and he reads a newspaper article hidden under his pillow. When his lawyer (Jean-Charles Clichet) calls,, he warns that the prosecution know they will struggle to convict him for killing an Arab, so they are goint to play on the fact that he showed no emotion at his mother's funeral. When he rejects the lawyer's plan that he claims to have been hiding his feelings, Meursault says he can't lie. Similarly, he tells Marie that he won't play games when she assures him that he'll be acquitted and he outlines the true-crime story he's been reading about a Czech innleeper and her daughter, who murdered a wealthy guest without recognising him as the prodigal son made good.

In a letter, Marie asks why he has jeopardised their happiness, but she loyally comes to court, as does Djemila. The judge (Christophe Malavoy) asks if he regrets his crime, but Meursault gives a half-hearted answer that brings a murmur of protest from the Arabs in the court. The prosecutor (Nicolas Vaude) mocks the claim that Meursault had come across Moussa by accident and that he hadn't intended to fire five bullets into him.

Meursault is more curious about the process of the trial than he is about the evidence given by the home director, Perez, and the caretaker. The café owner speaks up for him and claims it's sad that Meursault should have suffered such a misfortune. Salamano makes it sound as though Meursault was kinder to his dog than he was to his own mother, although he does explain that Catherine and her son had simply run out of things to say. Marie testifies that they had met a year ago and were due to marry. But the prosecutor dwells on the fact that they had met at the baths the day after the funeral and had gone to see a comedy at which Meursault had laughed. Flustered, Marie swears that the shooting could only have been an accident because he never lies. Sintès is next to be called and he bounds into the witness box proclaiming Meursault's innocence.

The judge tells him to stick to the questions being asked, but he laughs off suggestions that he is a pimp who beat Djemila because she was one of his prostitutes. When the prosecutor claims Meursault is an accomplice because he wrote the warning lette to Moussa, Sintès claims it was merely a coincidence. However, when the defence questions why the prosecution is trying to link the funeral with the shooting, the advocate states that he is trying to proved that Meursault had buried his mother with the heart of a criminal.

At the end of the session, Marie and Djemila find themselves alone and the former offers her condolences. But Djemila says that Moussa has been forgotten during the case because he is only an Arab and she scoffs when Marie insists that Meursault is a decent man who simply wishes to live in peace. The prosecutor expresses similar misgivings in his summation, when he notes that the prisoner has shown no remorse for a premeditated crime because he is a monster who believes the rules of society don't apply to him. He calls for his head and there is a shocked murmur in court. When the judge asks Meursault to explain his actions, he merely states that he was affected by the bright sun and there is uproar. His defence counsel speaks eloquently on his behalf in insisting he reacted instinctively to see the knife that had stabbed his friend. He also dismisses the lack of tears at the home and states that he had cared for his mother as long as he could and that no blame should be placed for him putting her in a home that is subsidised by the state.

The words blur as the throb of the ceiling fan distracts Meursault, who is called back into court after the jury has deliberated. Despite the reassurance of his lawyer, he is sentenced to death. As he returns to prison, he peers out of the window of the van and seems to notice the Arab world in which he has been living so joylessly for the first time. Back in his cell, he has a dream of seeing his mother beside a guillotine on a mound in the wilderness. She tells him how his father had once been distressed by witnessing a public execution and Meursault turns and accepts his fate. When Marie visits, he says he doesn't know if he has missed her as they have no connection now their bodies aren't intertwined. He reveals that he staves off boredom by conducting a mental inventory of the things in his rooms and has come to believe that everyone who lives for a day would have enough memories to survive 100 years in prison. Also he claims to have come to terms with the fact that he will have to die and that others will live after him, so why not now. Speaking in a whispered monotone, Meursault urges her to love other men and forget him, as he would in her place. She pulls her hand away from the bars of the cage in which he's sitting, but reminds him that he could still be pardoned, but he is not holding his breath.

After repeated requests, the chaplain (Swann Arlaud) is allowed to visit on the day set for Meursault's execution. He insists he doesn't believe in God and has sought His face in the walls for months to no avail. As he rejects the concept of sin, he can only accept that he has been punished by a court and must face the consequences. The chaplain says he feels sorry for his deep despair, Meursault rejects his attempt to hug him. Aware his time is short, he orders him to leave so he doesn't waste what's left to him on prayer and God. His life might not have been perfect, but he owns what he did, even though he has been condemned for not crying at his mother's funeral and not for killing a man.

When the chaplain implores him to open his heart, Meursault leaps on him and the guards have to intervene. They are ushered out by the cleric, who refuses to give up on a man he can see is in pain, as he rants about the absurd nature of existence and how it has handed him one fate rather than another. Disappointed in himself for failing to help, the chaplain leaves and Meursault lies on his bunk and thinks about his mother. He believes he was right not to cry for her, as she had found love to make her twilight time bearable and he realises (as he pictures Marie naked on the beach) that he had also had moments of happiness in his own life. Wondering whether he would be greeted by a hate-filled crowd, he waits for news of an appeal the chaplain is convinced will come. Meanwhile, on a clifftop overlooking the sea, Djemila visits her brother's grave, on which his name is inscribted in Arabic (something that was missing from the source text).

This final humanising touch is typical of the way in which Ozon re-sites this 1942 novel for a post-colonial audience. The Cure's 1978 song, `Killing an Arab', also does its bit as the credits roll and drown out Fatima Al Qadiri's score, which appears to pay teasing homage to Serge Gainsbourg's `Je t'aime...moi non plus', which was released in the same year that Visconti miscast Marcello Mastroianni as Meursault. Benjamin Voisin is much better suited to the part, as he not only photographs exquisitely in monochrome, but also embodies the nihilist narcissism of Tom Ripley, the role that Alain Delon played in René Clément's Purple Noon (1960), in the year that Camus died.

In addition to giving the victim of the shooting a name, Ozon also conveys the growing sense of identity among the Algerian people in the late 1930s. Influenced much more by Kamel Daoud's The Meursault Investigation (2013) than Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937), he ends the opening archival clip, with its patronising commentary, with still photographs of indigènes slogans supporting the National Liberation Front. The Adhan is also heard at regular intervals during the action, which makes for a contrast with Meursault's anti-Catholic rant in his cell and suggests that the French grip was not as tight as the complacent attitudes on display in the courtroom would have us believe. As Camus sought to avoid taking sides in the independence debate, Ozon has imposed his own notions (and those of many of his audience), yet without tipping the book's delicate Dostoyevskian balance.

Just as Voisin excels as the pied-noir anti-hero whose outsiderdom is rooted in his unease at the oppressive nature of French rule (and, Ozon hints, in his desultory resistance to his sexual ambivalence), so Rebecca Marder makes a poignantly naive Marie and Denis Lavant is a heartbreaking Salamano. But Pierre Lottin's Sintès isn't as deftly delineated (in spite of a hissable performance) and it's not readily apparent why even a Bressonian sleepwalker like Meursault would fall in so readily with his scheme. The remaining players are admirably cast, but the outstanding performance comes from cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, whose use of light and gradations of white and grey to capture the heat and dust of the various locales is quite masterly. Katia Wyszkop's production design and Pascaline Chavanne's costumes are also exceptional, while Clément Selitzki's editing underlines the pace of life and the sense of stasis that binds Meursault whether he's at liberty or incarcerated.

UNDERTONE.

Canadian director Ian Tuason started making shorts with Continuity Problems in 2009. However, having made Pirates Are Bad People, Extreme Close Up (both 2011), Erased (2014), The Closet (2016), and The Occurrence on Hollow Road (2018), he took a sabbatical to nurse his parents after they were both diagnosed with cancer. He channelled his experiences into a radio play that he has now adapted for the screen as his feature debut, Undertone, which he filmed in the family home in the Rexdale district of Toronto.

Evangeline Babic (Nina Kiri) is caring for her comatose mother (Michèle Duquet), who is dying of cancer. She also hosts a horror podcast entitled, The Undertone, with her friend, Justin (Adam DiMarco), who is currently living in London and is only available to record in the early hours of the morning. While Evy is invariably sceptical about the supernatural occurrences they investigate, Justin is more open to persuasion and he is very excited about an anonymous email he has received containing 10 sound files,, which will be the subject of their next series.

Apparently, the recordings were made by Mike (Jeff Yung), who was trying to prove that his new wife, Jessa (Keana Lyn Bastidas), talks in her sleep. In the first file, he captures her singing `London Bridge Is Falling Down'. But, while Evy is unimpressed by the babbling, Justin explains that he thought there was something sinister about it and, on playing the tape backwards, he heard Jessa saying, `Mike, kill all,' Despite remaining dubious, Evy Googles the subject of hidden messages in children's songs and discovers that there is plenty of material, including a reference to her own favourite, `Baa, Baa, Black Sheep', which contains the reversed message, `lick the blood off'.

After they listen to the next two files, Justin points out that Jessa used her husband's name in the backwards message and he insists that something odd is happening in the house because Jessa appears to have gone sleepwalking and Mike had to turn off the kitchen taps after he heard the sink filling up.

Evy has started experiencing morning sickness and she feels guilty when she listens back to a phone message from her mother chiding her for missing mass and offering to pray for her. Following a visit from the nurse (Marisol D'Andrea), Evy decides to go to a party with boyfriend Darren (Ryan Turner), who warns her over the phone about going stir crazy at home. On her return, however, she discovers mama lying on the floor beside the bed. Evy also finds the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that she had hidden away on the bedside table. So, she puts it in a drawer containing a box of crayons and some childlike scribbles.

At 3am, Evy gets a phone message from Dr Ram (Brian Quintero) confirming her pregnancy. She breaks the news to mama, but worries she's not ready to be a mother and she calls to arrange an appointment at the women's health centre. Evy listens again to the `lick the blood' message from `Baa, Baa Black Sheep', but is disturbed by the sound of taps running in the bathroom sink. Rushing upstairs, she finds the Marian statue on the dressing table, even though mama is still unconscious in bed. Locking it in the wardrobe, she opens a cabinet in the living-room and pours herself a stiff drink. This prompts Justin to ask if she is okay when he calls up because Evy has had problems with alcohol in the past. She reassures him, but reveals she's going to move out of the flat she shares with Darren.

Rather than discuss her problems, Evy suggests they get on with the podcast and listen to the next file. Jessa seems to be playing with a Baby Sleep Time Doll and hints at being pregnant. Fast forwarding to a sound spike, they hear Mike and Jessa being awoken by loud banging, although a whispering voice is also audible. Once again, Evy fails to share Justin's conviction that something disturbing is happening and she urges him to play the next file. In it, Jessa appears to be ranting. But Justin has played the gibberish backwards and has discerned the words, `Come in, Abyzou!' However, Evy has to break off because one of the table lamps beside mama's bed has started flashing and she goes upstairs to turn it off.

Next morning, Evy gives mama a bed bath and notices a blue line under the head-dress worn by the Virgin in a needlepoint copy of an Orthodox icon. She is also spooked by a blue angel hovering at the bottom of the image. Returning to the recording, Evy listen to Jessa calling on Abyzou, but doesn't hear a death rattle in mama's breathing. Jolting awake from a nightmare at 3am, she assures Justin that she is fine and they resume their recording. He tells her that Abyzou had been executed by King Solomon in front of the Temple in Jerusalem for crimes relating to children and she had become renowned in Mediterranean countries as a demon who causes miscarriages and drives mothers to murder their newborn because she had been infertile. He continues that Abyzou was reputed to have entered a statue of St Rita of Cascia and caused a woman to kill her husband and baby and invert the crucifix in the statue's hand.

Notwithstanding such troubling information, Evy refuses to believe that Jessa has been possessed, even though the next recording has her tell Mike that she had slept like a baby after he had woken her from a wracking nightmare. Evy claims it was easy to blame disturbed behaviour on demons at a time when mental health issues were so little understood. But they listen to File 7, in which Mike gets up in the night because he can hear a baby crying downstairs. Jessa frets because she can't find the bag she keeps her doll in. As Evy listens, the camera does a 360° sweep of the room and a pair of long white curtains in the hall take on a spectral appearance.

At the end of the recording, Justin reveals that he had tried to reply to the email, only to discover that the account had been closed. He also points out that the address spells `Come in, Abyzou' backwards. This prompts them to play File 8, which captures Jessa waking Mike in the middle of the night and he goes downstairs when he hears children's voices singing `Baa, Baa Black Sheep'. As Justin knows this is Evy's pet tune, he feels sure that they have stumbled on to something truly sinister. When she scoffs, he tells her that he has discovered that two women committed suicide after having become obsessed with the `Come in, Abyzou' message.

Feeling tired, Evy asks if they can take a break and suggests that they put out what they have recorded thus far and play the final two files during a live podcast on Monday. Feeling emotional, Evy sits on her mother's bed and tells her that she had always planned to name her daughter Mary. But she is disturbed by a banging sound and she closes the bedroom door before looking for some pills in the bathroom cabinet. Going to bed, she listens to a relaxation tape, only for the voice (Christina Notto) to become menacing and she wakes with a jolt having heard rumours of drowned babies and having seen herself swimming in a lake. Evy hears mama saying a `Hail Mary', but the whispering has stopped by the time she reaches the bedroom.

Having made an appointment at the women's health centre, Evy turns off the light in mama's room, just as the death rattle returns to her breathing. By the time Monday comes around, Evy is tightly wound and sits at the dining table for the podcast with the box of crayons to hand. She chides Justin for wasting their time with fake files from attention seekers. but she agrees to listen to the last two. In No,9, Jessa claims she had been woke up in the night and felt a shadow lying beside her. She had tried to pray, but the presence had joined in the `Hail Mary'. But the file fails and Justin pauses to take a call from a listener (Austin Tuason), who claims to have been a neighbour of Mike and Jessa before they were found dead, with plastic bags over their heads and the walls being daubed with crayon drawings of dead babies. Before they can react, a woman (Seled Calderon) calls from San Diego to say she remembers hearing a story about a woman who played children's songs backwards before murdering her baby.

Despite scribbling with red and black crayons, Evy declares it all to be nonsense and demands that Justin plays File 10 after he has misgivings. In the recording, Jessa defies a raging temperature to state that she has to get a warning to someone who is listening. When the voice cuts out, Evy berates Justin for messing up. But it plays backwards whenit resumes and `Baa, Baa Black Sheep' can be heard (playing in both directions) as the sound of screaming and baby cries becomes overwhelming. When an ominous pounding is added to the mix, Evy starts to freak out, as the lights start to flicker and Jessa mutters something about licking the blood off her fingers.

As the clock hits 3am, Evy thinks she hears the name `Justin' in the recording and she accuses her co-host of being behind the scam and he breaks off defending himself to take a call from a woman (Blanca Nugara) who keeps asking for Mary before her voice turns deeper and darker. Another caller (Jayda Woods) mocks the pair for listening to the last file because she reckons that Abyzou has duped them into doing her bidding. Now openly scared, Justin claims to have no idea what is going on, while Evy keeps drawing a demonic face in black crayon.

Neither knows what to say when Abby (Sarah Beaudin) calls in and asks for advice on how to stop her baby from crying. Sensing that Abby is at the end of her tether, Evy tells her that she's a much better mother and she is a daughter, as she admits to having killed her by refusing her request to pray together. She had stopped talking and eating after the row and Evy laments that she lost the will to live because she had lost the faith her mama had taught her with such devotion. Evy asks Abby for her address so that they can send help, but the frightened voice suddenly dissolves into cackling laughter and Justin calls out to Evy in panic, as the camera surveys the walls that are covered in drawings of dead babies.

Seeing a screaming face frozen on the TV screen, Evy is dismayed to realise that the set isn't plugged in. With Justin yelling at her to get out of the house, Evy wanders from the kitchen into the hall, as the camera tilts on its side and a series of fuzz cuts reinforce the rising sense of terror. Venturing into the bedroom, Evy finds mama missing and hears her own voice repeating the Abyzou incantation. Looking into the mirror, she sees mama cloising in on her and Evy screams, as the screen goes black. A baby cries and Evy tells Justin that she feels cold, as the Abyzou voice gets louder, as we hear what sounds like Evy being stabbed to death.

One suspects that Tuason watched compatriot Bruce McDonald's Pontypool (2008) several times while making his hight effective and impressive debut feature. Set in an Ontario radio station as it comes under attack from a rampaging mob, this unsettling chiller also relies heavily on audio to convey the spaces beyond the camera and immerse the audience in the enveloping dread of the unknown. Tuason also follows McDonald in toning down the camera movements and opting for canted angles to reinforce the aura of claustrophobia and dislocation. As he's shooting in the family home, Tuason knows every inch of the set and how to light it to make it look forbidding. Cinematographer Graham Beasley cheats occasionally in seeking to restrict the visuals to Evy's perspective, but he exploits these breaches in his brief to suggest shapes in the shadows and imply that evil is pervading the premises.

In the middle of all this stylistic ingenuity sits Nini Kiri, who cleverly conveys Evy's caprices and complexities from minimal backstory hints. She doesn't overdo the reactions to the uncanny happenings within the house or to the sombre sounds coming through the RSS feeds, which makes her final acceptance that she's in trouble all the more frightening. Brought in to replace Kris Holden-Ried after A24 acquired the $500,000 picture, Adam DiMarco is the obvious pick of the other voices, as he keeps remembering to get back into podcast character before resuming the recordings. Despite the excellence of David Gertsman's sound design, the Mike and Jessa recordings are never as disquieting as they might be because the audience is asked to care about the fate of two people they know nothing about. The decision to end with a live podcast with listener participation also strains slightly, as it's obvious that Tuason is going to use the calls to slip in some late exposition and to yank the audience's chain. But he does so with such imagination and conviction that it's easy to cut him some slack, especially as he's gone and saddled himself with the reboot of the Paranormal Activity franchise that has patently had a significant influence on this story. Then again, so have The Exorcist (1973), Ring (1988), The Blair Witch Project (1999), Session 9 (2001), Hereditary (2018), and several others. But, then, no one makes unreferential horror films any more.

BEING OLA.

A decade after discovering the village of Vidaråsen, while making a student film, Norwegian director Ragnhild Nøst Bergem returns for Being Ola, a charming, if unquestioning documentary on which she acts as her own writer, cinematographer, and editor. Bergem's award-winning Alzheimer's featurette, Vær her (2020), was not rendered as `Be Here' when it toured the festival circuit, but the distributors have maybe missed a trick by not releasing her sophomore offering under its translated title, `Ola: A Completely Ordinary Unusual Guy'.

Ola Henningsen has been living in the Vidaråsen community for people with learning difficulties for four years. He tells Ragnhild Nøst Bergem that he feels comfortable here after years of thinking that his brain was too slow for everyday life. We're guided around the workshops, as the residents and the professional staff grow and prepare their own food, making things to sell in the village shop, and try out a range of crafts. Everything is shared and all get along well.

Ola is particularly close to Lasse Kortegaard Kristensen, a Dane who has been at Vidaråsen and whose accepting nature and geniality chime in with the kind of person that Ola aspires to be. He remembers being reluctant about joining the community and now feels ashamed because everyone is so nice and he realises that coming here took pressure off his brother and sister, who would have been responsible for him if anything happened to his parents. Over family photos of Ola as a boy, he admits he had been a sullen teenager and remembers how relieved his parents were when he was diagnosed, as this gave them a better idea of how to help him.

When we next see Ola, he is having to deal with the news that Lasse is returning to Copenhagen because he has decided not to renew his contract. As Ola had presumed he would always be there, he is stunning and tells Bergem that he feels like a piece of ice has been stuck into his heart. He also confides that he fears being lonely, as we see him keeping to himself at mealtimes, when he had been the life and soul with Lasse. The fact he could just up and leave also reminds him that he's destined to stay and never experience having his own little flat - and this, in turn, makes him aware that he would become a burden if he tried to go it alone.

Elizabeth is having a party to celebrate her 70th birthday and Ola has prepared a piano piece. It goes wrong and he sidles away to sympathetic applause and a hug. But Carla sits with him and they play together and Elizabeth is delighted and rewards Ola with a big hug. However, he tells Bergem that it was a fiasco, even though not giving up showed character. As if to prove he can perform, he invites friends to a reading of a detective story he has written and it goes down well. He's also part of the Nativity play and his parents come to watch before taking Ola home for Christmas.

Having hosted a speaker session at the Literature House in the nearby town, Ola feels pleased that people got to see a serious side of him, as he likes to play the clown. He enjoys an open day at the facility, but still tells Bergem that he misses Lasse and that there is a piece missing from his puzzle. So, after he has a birthday party in the garden. Ola decides to accept Lasse's invitation to travel to Denmark and Bergem agrees to be his carer for the excursion. Overjoyed by a jokey phone call with his friend, Ola parks his misgivings and even takes a risk to play bingo on the ferry (and is smilingly disappointed when he doesn't win).

Excited to see Lasse at the ferry terminal, they go for lunch and Ola tells him about the literary event. Alone at Lasse's place, Ola admits that he's found it tough to enjoy himself since he left because he had hoped that Lasse would stay forever. But he realises that the experience has taught him things that he can now apply to other parts of his life. Feeling good about himself (and knowing Lasse will be his friend for life), Ola returns to Vidaråsen and puts the portrait that one of the older men had painted of him on the door to his room so that everyone knows who he is and where he lives.

Replete with hazy views of Vidaråsen that are accompanied by Eivind Hannisdal's tinkly piano score, this is a deeply affectionate portrait of a man in need of companionship and purpose. Ola accepts his situation, but that doesn't stop him wanting to be someone else and Bergem might have pushed him a little harder on the ambitions he once might have had and, indeed, still has. She might also have delved a little more deeply into Ola's feelings on returning to Copehagen. Obviously, he is thrilled that Lasse wants to remain friends. But how much does he realise that their relationship will always be shaped by the contrasts in their worlds? As the focus is entirely on Ola, we never learn how Lasse views the situation (or the terms under which helpers like him are contracted) or whether Ola's confession about his abandonment issues will impact upon his commitment to maintaining the bond. These may not have been the issues that Bergem wished to explore, but they arise nonetheless and their shadow casts itself over the outwardly happy ending.

Having befriended Ola a decade ago while making her short, Bergem clearly wants him to be the centre of attention. But it seems a shame not have said more about the Vidaråsen project in its 60th anniversary and its connections to the Camphill Village Trust, which was founded in Scotland in 1939, and the anthroposophical theories of Rudolf Steiner (who gets a namecheck when Ola chairs the Literature House gathering). But the neatly montaged tour of the various kitchens, studios, workshops, and garden spaces captures the feel and spirit of the place and the fact that Ola crops up in so many of them with tasks or hobbies to perform speaks volumes for the way in which residents participate in activities and embrace the ideal of sharing and caring for the greater good. How much does the modern world need to learn that particular lesson?