Parky At the Pictures (18/9/2026)

(Reviews of Queen At Sea; Premature; The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream; and The Cycle of Love)

QUEEN AT SEA.

Eighteen years have passed since Lance Hammer made an impressive feature debut with Ballast (2008). The theme of family members forging an unexpected connection in the wake of tragic events recurs in his sophomore outing, Queen At Sea, which earned the Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival, where Tom Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall shared the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance.

In his 80s, Martin Cargill (Tom Courtenay) is the caregiver for his wife, Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who has dementia. One morning, while they are having sex in their Tufnell Park home, Leslie's daughter, Amanda (Juliette Binoche), walks in on them and believes her mother to be in distress. As she has previously been concerned about her mother being unable to give consent, Amanda calls the police and Martin is dismayed when he is arrested for sleeping with the woman he loves. Unaware of what is happening, Leslie is taken for tests and Amanda feels guilty when her mother becomes frightened during the examination and the doctor suggests a social care review to ascertain whether Leslie is safe to be left in Martin's care.

Asking teenage daughter, Sarah (Florence Hunt), to bring stuff from home, Amanda remakes the bed (as forensic officers in hazmat suits took the sheets and duvet away from the crime scene) and washes her mother's hair. She speaks to her estranged husband on the phone and confides that she has no idea how her mother feels or if she even recognises her any longer. Released by the police, Martin comes home and Amanda lets him stay because he has nowhere else to go, even though she makes it plain that he has to be out of the house before social services arrive next morning.

Chatting alone, Martin insists he is doing nothing wrong and avers that Leslie often initiates things. But Amanda tries to make him see that they could be separated because the doctor has told him to stop having intercourse as Leslie is unable to tell him if anything is wrong. When he counters that people with dementia feel less anxious with intimacy, she tells him to stop finding justification on the Internet. Over supper, however, she sees how reliant her mother is and how doting Martin is towards her.

Left alone at home, meanwhile, Sarah meets up with the boy she likes, James (Cody Molko), and they make a video at the play area near her towerblock. As they bundle through the door, they run into Amanda, who has come home because her mother keeps creeping out of the bedroom to find Martin on the sofa. When an embarrassed James leaves, Amanda apologises for being so wrapped up in the recent divorce and Leslie's problems that she has neglected Sarah. She asks why Martin keeps using Viagra and Amanda suggests it's more out of fear than love, but she doesn't doubt they care for each other after 18 years of marriage.

Martin refuses to leave before police liaison officer Emma (Michelle Jeram) comes and Amanda fibs that she had misunderstood the terms of his bail and thought he could be present. He uses the session to show how Leslie regards him as her best friend and recalls how they had bonded over classical music, as he had been a recording engineer when they had met at a concert in Paris some time after they had lost their first spouses. Leslie clasps her hands together to demonstrate how close they are and asks Emma to leave, as Martin and Amanda tear up.

When Emma asks about day-to-day issues, however, Amanda insists that Martin can't cope and reveals that she had been trying to persuade him to let Leslie move to a care home. He gets angry because he thinks Emma is making presumptions when she knows nothing about them and he takes Leslie for her daily walk in the park, while Amanda explains that she is an academic based in Newcastle and is taking a year-long sabbatical to write a book and get Leslie settled in a home.

When they return, Leslie shows no signs of recognition and a hurt Amanda accuses Martin of being in denial at the speed of her decline. He asks where Amanda has been for the last 18 years and she reminds him that she has power of attorney and that the police could charge him with sexual assault unless he co-operates for Leslie's good and accepts that he can no longer cope alone. Arrangements are made for Leslie to go into temporary care, with Martin being able to visit her. When she tells Sarah the news, Amanda gives her a packet of condoms in case she needs them - but asks nothing about her relationship with James or the fact they seem to have been bunking off school to be together.

At the home, Martin is unimpressed by the musical activity in the lounge and sits outside, while Amanda takes Leslie to the art room. She leaves her to settle in and invites Martin to have dinner with her and Sarah. He refuses and says Leslie will know she has been betrayed. As he listens to classical music and potters around the nearby streets, Martin fights loneliness and resentment and is saddened by photos sent by the home of Leslie holding up a drawing.

Amanda asks Sarah if she'd be willing to move to London and sell the Newcastle house. She had hoped that her father would return from his year in Canada and that things would go back to normal. So, even though she's happy with James and her friends at school, Sarah wanted her old life back. Martin feels the same way and is furious when the home director, Jonathan (Steven Cree), calls to inform him that Leslie had been involved in an incident of a sexual nature in a man's room. Amanda joins Martin to watch CCTV footage of Leslie emerging from his room without her trousers and Martin insists on taking his wife home when he finds her holding hands with the man on the sofa in her room.

Leslie holds Martin's hand in the car on the way home and curls up on their bed after scrambling up the stairs in relief at being home. As he's still not supposed to be alone with Leslie, Martin promises to stop the sex and agrees to a nurse helping out. However, Leslie keeps reaching for him in the night and she refuses to eat anything but sweets in protest at being denied what she wants. Meanwhile, Sarah is becoming more intimate with James, as they smoke dope with his friends and they stay out late together. Indeed, she resents having to spend Saturday morning with her grandmother, as she's made plans with James. But Amanda insists comes along, only for Sarah to storm off after calling Martin selfish for not moving to Newcastle with Leslie. She heads across London to have sex with James, while Amanda and Martin have sandwiches in the park. He explains that he knows Leslie is leaving him, but he has to ignore the fact in order to be strong for her and Amanda hugs him for trying to do the best for her mother.

Arriving home, he finds Leslie fleeing from Janise (Alison Pargeter), who is trying to clean her after she soils herself. Martin says he'll take over and he has to coax Leslie into the bath. She refuses to undress and won't let him touch her until he gets in with her. Removing his trousers so they don't get wet, Martin tries washing the back of Leslie's legs. But she panics and lashes out and he slips and bangs his head on the side of the bath, as he falls.

Teetering downstairs, Leslie finds something to eat, as blood oozes from Martin's wound. By the time Amanda arrives, her mother is still in a state of undress and she clings to her daughter, who has no idea what has happened and fears the worst because Martin isn't wearing any pants. In contrast to this sorry scene, Sarah skips out into the dusk having acted on her own instincts.

Echoes abound of Sarah Polley's Away From Her (2006) and Michael Haneke's Amour (2012) in a film made with discretion and care, if a touch too much the kind of social realist melodrama in which Ken Loach has come to specialise in recent years. Lance Hammer's writing is less precise than his direction, with a lot of exposition being dumped into Amanda's exchange with the inexperienced cops sent to follow-up her emergency call. We learn too little about Amanda's academic career or her separation for her resentment towards Martin to feel justified, especially as it's not made clear how she found out that he was still having sex with her mother, as he is an intensely private and protective man - unless the GP intervened, which makes it puzzling that he is conveniently kept out of the major decisions made on behalf of his patient and on which one might have expected him to be consulted.

It's left for the viewer to decide the extent to which Amanda's marital strife colours her attitude towards Martin, although the fact she turns to her husband long distance when she needs someone to talk to suggests the relationship hasn't broken down entirely. It's also odd that Sarah is kept out of so many loops, when she is clearly old enough to understand what is going on. This is either down to poor parenting on Amanda's part or fudged scripting, although Hammer laudably refuses to offer any easy answers to the ethical dilemmas posed by a situation that he has meticulously researched and extensively rehearsed, with input from the real-life sexual assault officers and geriatric care professionals who occupy the supporting roles. He also has cinematographer Adolpho Veloso reduce the shutter angle of his 35mm camera to introduce an edginess to the sense of visual stillness.

Florence Hunt does well enough in an underwritten role within a rite-of-passage arc that provides a simplistic parallel that doesn't exactly fizz with insight into Gen Z attitudes and argot. Yet Hammer includes lots of atmospheric pillow shots (as Yasujiro Ozu used to call them) to capture the mood and milieu and give viewers a chance to take on board the significance of scenes before moving on to the next. Juliette Binoche is her typically impeccable self, as Amanda struggles with the helplessness of not knowing what to do for the best, while also feeling vulnerable after her own domestic idyll had imploded. But her refusal to trust Martin seems rooted more in a dual sense of guilt at having been so far away for so long and of bitterness at her own break-up than in a genuine conviction that he is bad for the mother who can't be left alone. A little more on Amanda's own (presumably French) father might not have gone amiss, as she may well have felt Leslie's marriage to Martin occurred over-hastily while she was still grieving.

Her final scene with Tom Courtenay is truly touching, however, and it's a shame, given Amanda's reluctance to become Leslie's full-time carer herself, that the script has them unable to communicate on this level at an earlier point in the narrative. Courtenay and Anna Calder-Marshall played Hamlet and Ophelia together on stage in Manchester in 1968 and the fact they go back much further than Martin and Leslie makes their unspoken bond feel so poignantly plausible. But, while Courtenay's portrayal of wounded gentleness, proud rage, and feared obsolescence is impressive, Calder-Marshall's blend of hunched posture and shuffling gait complement facial inexpressiveness in conveying the unknowingness of Leslie's being, as she tries to process ideas, desires, and recollections whose reflex remembrance and outward detachment make her so hard to read. Intriguingly no one once mentions her personality and/or temperament before dementia had taken hold.

The pair thoroughly merited their Berlin win and BAFTA nominations surely can't be far behind, especially as Calder-Marshall matches anything achieved by the Oscar-winning Julianne Moore and Anthony Hopkins in Still Alice (2017) and The Father (2020). She and Courtenay make such a sweet couple, as they toddle along on their daily walks and as Martin pauses to give Leslie a chance to express a preference or an emotion before stepping in to guide her. They certainly deserve better than the rather soap operatic ending, which too neatly ties up all the loose ends, despite some of them remaining frayed.

PREMATURE.

In 2015, Glasgow School of Art alumnus, Kevin Walls, won the Best Sound prize at the British Academy Scotland New Talent Awards for his first film, Identical. He's since directed such other shorts as When Abbie Met Emmy (2019), No Easy Path (2023), and Rest and Be Thankful (2024). Now, with just £16,000 at his disposal, he has made his feature bow with Premature.

On the morning of the biggest interview of his career, aspiring Glaswegian financier Cameron (James Rottger) learns that art student flatmate Eilidh (Elle Watson) is pregnant. She tries to avoid him, but finds him waiting in her room when she gets home. They discuss a damaged condom, his mistaken belief she was on the pill, and her admission that she forgot to take the morning after pill. She's discomfited when he expresses relief that she is going to abort and has misgivings when the doctor dispassionately explains the `pills by post' method. So, she decides to keep the baby.

She tells Cameron of her decision on a park bench, where he is getting sozzled on half a bottle of scotch because a grunt at work beat him to his dream job. He wallows in his frustration and student debt, while thanking her for being such a good friend. But he thinks she was joking about still being pregnant and they are having a heart-to-heart when they wake couch dweller Gavin (Terry Nelson), who thinks they will make great parents. Having persuaded him to leave and cleaned the living-room area in which he had been squatting, Cameron and Eilidh throw themselves into buying stuff for the baby.

But it's only after a montage that concludes with them building a wigwam do they go for a scan to check she's not expecting twins. Cameron breaks the news to his widowed father, Andrew (Andrew Rodger), who surprises him by saying how much his life changed for the better when he became a dad. Eilidh's mum, Kate (Zoë Lerman), guesses she's pregnant on the doorstep and she warns her daughter that being a parent isn't something she can just drop like guitar lessons.

Back at the flat, Cameron tries to cheer Eilidh up and compliments her on some pictures she has drawn and suggests she does something for the nursery. She's touched by his support, but he's flummoxed whens he turns up at work and demands he leaves so they can pick up the cot she has reserved by phone. The exasperated father (Kevin Walls) tells Cameron that he needs a steel cage rather than a cot, but Eilidh is more interested in catching up with the woman (Amber Conway) who pipped her to the cot. When she refuses to hand it over (despite Eilidh lying in the road to block her car), she insists on stealing it from the woman's house.

Armed with snacks and tights to wear as disguises, they wait for the car that Eilidh has recognised to drive away. She asks him how they are going to raise a child and whether or not they are going to be a couple. But, before he can answer, the car pulls away, leaving the house dark and empty. Using a conveniently hidden spare key, they break in and search by torchlight. However, numerous photos of a gay couple convince Eilidh that she's got the house wrong and Cameron has to coddle her into believing she's going to be a great mum when she gets tearful on hearing the owners get home. They are about to kiss, with Cameron still wearing tights over his head, when they are caught and have to make a dash for the car, where they gaze at each other with exhilaration and a new sense of closeness.

Plans to tumble into bed are disrupted by a medical emergency that results in Eilidh being told to take things easy. However, she is stressed when Cameron is offered a job in London and he accepts before asking her to move with him on what was to have been their first date. He pleads that he has spent a decade waiting for this chance, but she doesn't want to leave her friends and is hurt that he puts his ambitions before their new romance and their baby.

Montages show Cameron feeling alone in London and Eilidh making the best of being a barista in Glasgow. She tells her mother that she's not going to put the child up for adoption because she's tired of basing decisions on her wishes. By contrast, Cameron's father travels south to tell him that life doesn't care about carefully made plans and he quits to arrive with the delivery of a cot. Eilidh's nettled at first, but he explains that he has been trudging along the wrong path without realising he wasn't happy. But now he is, and it's down to her and she shuts him up with a kiss.

Nothing can silence Eilidh, as she staggers along a hospital corridor cursing Cameron for landing her in this situation. But she delivers a baby girl and makes up with her mother (while Cameron is hugging his dependable dad) before agreeing to give Cameron a second chance, if only because he thought he had better ask because their daughter had raised the subject while Eilidh was dozing.

Of course, it's all been done before, but Kevin Walls won't be the last director who thinks they have something fresh to say about a well-worn subject. He does have a couple of new angles, but it's the familiarity of the Knocked Up scenario that makes this such easy and engaging viewing. That and the lovely performances by James Rottger and Elle Watson, whose insouciant chemistry helps the script through its stickier patches.

Watson has a look of Paula Wilcox and there is something Man About the House about the set-up. Yet this feels closer to the Jack Rosenthal-scripted gem, The Lovers (1971), with Cameron sharing Geoffrey's immaturity, even though Rottger isn't quite at Richard Beckinsale's level. The writing isn't on a par, either, with the housebreaking scene feeling as forced as Cameron's sudden need to decamp to London. But Walls adds some neat directorial touches, blurring the sound in the doctor's surgery as the full import of what is happening dawns on Eilidh and pulling off a neat character reveal during the denouement.

He doesn't quite get the backstory balance right, as more emphasis is placed on Cameron's career sacrifices than Eilidh's indecision, while Andrew is seen as supportive while Kate is presented as a disapproving nag. Nevertheless, with Walls operating his own camera, this seems as accomplished as a romcom with a considerably higher budget and it's only a shame that we will probably never get to catch up with the couple in the future, as the closing shot of the little family cuddled up on a hospital bed has a `happy ever after' feel to it - even though Walls's stained-shirted cameo suggests not.

THE WATERGATE CAPER: RICHARD NIXON AND THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.

Irish director Shane O'Sullivan is no stranger to American history. Having examined the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in RFK Must Die (2007), he turned to the killer of his brother in Oswald (2013), which explored the conspiracies surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald. He's equally at home in the 1970s, however, with Children of the Revolution (2010) focussing on Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, who respectively belonged to the Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army. Now, drawing on research undertaken for his 2018 book, Dirty Tricks, O'Sullivan considers a defining moment in modern American history in The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream.

Opening on 8 August 1974, as Walter Winchell introduces the broadcast in which President Richard Milhouse Nixon will resign, the documentary flashes back six years to Hunter S. Thompson (who despised Nixon) interviewing him on his campaign bus at the start of his bid for the presidency in 1968. We see Robert Kennedy's final speech at the Ambassador Hotel and witness the chaos of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, which formed the backdrop of Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969). Armed with the `sock it to `em' catchphrase he had picked up during a guest appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in (after telling an interviewer that he wasn't the gimmick type), Nixon attacked Lyndon Baines Johnson's policies in Vietnam and seems likely to outpace opponent Hubert Humphrey.

Election night is prismed through Hal Ashby's Shampoo (1975) before Peter Watkins's Punishment Park (1971) is used to reflect on the use of force on citizens following the shooting of students on the campus of Kent State in Ohio. The sense of a police state had been conveyed by Michelangelo Antonioni in Zabriskie Point (1970), which contradicted Nixon's insistence that had always been in favour of protest.

As is shown in Steven Spielberg's The Post (2017)., the Pentagon Papers leaked by Daniel Ellsberg disclosed that Nixon had expanded a war he had promised to end. The president's fury is heard in a taped phone call, while his efforts to prevent future leaks with his own in-house intelligence network are recalled in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995). Leading `The Plumbers' was E. Howard Hunt and Egil Krogh is shown recalling his role in the break in at the offices of Ellsburg's psychiatrist, Dr Lewis Fielding, in the hope of finding information with which to smear him. The operation was lead by lawyer G. Gordon Liddy and we see Nixon denounce it in a speech. Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes (1971) traded on prevailing notions of spying and bugging and Liddy's boasts about what he could achieve are mocked in Shea Whigham's mini-series, The Gist (2021). Attorney General John Mitchell and assistant Jeb Stuart Magruder testify to a Senate committee about Liddy's ideas, which draw laughter from those in attendance. But they still sanctioned him to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington, DC.

While Warren Beatty vouches for candidate George McGovern on a chat show, we learn how the shooting of Nixon rival George Wallace coincided with Paul Schrader writing Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), which is set during a presidential campaign and has Travis Bickle stalk the candidate in the way Arthur Bremer did Wallace. Another film connection to the time sees Michael Winner have an office next door to the DNC while shooting Scorpio (1973), which was the first picture to shoot on CIA premises. Watergate burglar Frank Sturges met Burt Lancaster on the day of the break-in and shook his hand. He also went to see Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) after getting out of prison and commented on the similarities to what he had been through.

Back in 1972, Scorpio co-star Alain Delon shared an elevator with Howard Hunt before the break-in, on 17 June which is shown from All the President's Men interspersed with hearing footage from the Metropolitan Police officers attending the scene and lookout Alfred C. Baldwin III, who co-operated with the inquiry. Interestingly O'Sullivan misses the chance to refer to the film on TV that distracted Baldwin from his job, Bert I. Gordon's Attack of the Puppet People (1958).

As US news bulletins carried stories on Bob McCord and his four Cuban accomplices being caught trying to plant bugging devices, Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward received information that two of those detained had the name of Howard Hunt in their address books.

On the instructions of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean tossed incriminating documents into the Potomac River, while Magruder destroyed papers relating to Liddy's Gemstone plan. Richard Helms, however, refused to allow Nixon's team to use the CIA to cover up the break-in, despite the fact that McCord was a long-serving agent. He repeated in Senate testimony that the CIA was not involved with Watergate.

Michael Ritchie's The Candidate (1972) was released around the time the Democrats confirmed McGovern and Robert Redford became interested in making a Watergate film while promoting it. On 29 August, Nixon made a statement claiming that Dean had conducted a full internal investigation of White House staff - but he hadn't and sat tight on the fact that the president had lied while abhorring the idea of any cover-up into Watergate.

Scenes of Gene Hackman in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) accompany clips in which it's admitted that the 17 June break-in was to put right a bungled bid that had bugged the wrong phones so that the intel coming out was of no consequence. Investigators were baffled by the mistakes that were made and the fact that cop Paul Leeper was on the scene two hours after his shift had ended. One suspects the police had been tipped off and that Hunt was responsible, but Watergate had no impact on the election result, although Ehrlichman was asked about it in the first interview after the result was called. What law enforcement official were sure of was that they were well ahead of Woodward and Carl Bernstein in unearthing clues.

In the spring of 1973, McCord sang and Magruder and Mitchell changed their stories. As a result, Nixon addressed the nation to inform them that Ehrichman, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, and Dean had all resigned. He concluded a nervy performance with the phrase, `There can be no whitewash at the White House.' But the story wouldn't go away, especially after Dean turned evidence in the Ellsberg case and he was freed.

Everything focussed on what Nixon knew and when and ways to ascertaining this became clear when Alexander Butterfield disclosed the presence of recording devices in the Oval Office. When Nixon refused to hand them over - prompting a scene in Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997) - and then closed the special office investigating Watergate, speculation whirled that he had something to hide. Under pressure, he surrendered the tapes, but spoke about earning every cent in his bank account so that the American people knew that their president wasn't a crook.

Amidst rumours of impeachment proceedings, Nixon gave his State of the Union address on 30 January 1974. But within days, news broke that 18 minutes was missing from one of the tapes and few believed secretary Rose Mary Woods when she said she had done it accidentally while pausing transcription to answer the phone. Nixon defended her, but a subpoena was issued for the remaining recordings and news reports concurred that there were enough votes to impeach.

The day after informing the public of his decision to go, Nixon handed over to Gerald Ford and pundits concluded that he had been brought down by his need to have enemies, a deep-seated sense of bitterness, and his hatred of the press.

Ford pardoned Nixon on 8 September and he told Dick Cavett that he did so to speed up the healing process, as a trial would be a year away. Films like Sidney Lumet's Network (1976) and Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) summed up the paranoia in post-Watergate America. But Harry Shearer's narration makes it clear that the inclusion of a clip from Hal Ashby's Being There (1979) is aimed at Donald Trump and his Maga constituency, as a fool who believes everything he sees on television becomes a close adviser to the president. Yet, nothing would have happened had $2 an hour security guard Frank Wills not noticed that someone had replaced the tape he had removed from one of the doors of the DNC office. He got to play himself in All the President's Men, but he was long-term unemployed when TV cameras caught up with him seven years later. O'Sullivan opts not to reveal that he lived in poverty before his death from a brain tumour at the age of 52 in September 2000.

This is about the only thing O'Sullivan doesn't touch on in an adroitly thought out and well-constructed documentary that makes splendid use of both archive footage and clips from pertinent Hollywood features. Serving as his own editor, O'Sullivan uses barbed juxtaposition to underline his points, leaving Harry Shearer's droll narration to make sure we all know he's gone to all this trouble to spike the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who makes Nixon look like a choirboy by contrast.

Little emphasis is placed on Nixon's conduct of domestic policy or his escalation of the war by invading Cambodia. But his political legacy has been so scuffed by his downfall and disgrace that achievment feels like an irrelevance. Although focussing on the 48th President, O'Sullivan ensures that the `yes men' and enablers in his entourage are also held up for opprobrium and ridicule. It's almost as if he's waiting for someone to paraphrase the line uttered by so many Scooby-Doo villains: `And I'd have gotten away with it without that meddling Frank Wills.'

Things have changed over the last five decades and not always for the better. Nixon always denied that he was a crook and, unlike some since, he doesn't seem to have lined his pockets or indulged in shameless nepotism. He was, however, cowardly, envious, thin-skinned, and vengeful. Despite having shaken the loser tag in 1968, he was haunted by the spectre of defeat and this prompted him to over-estimate the threat posed by George McGovern in 1972. Obviously, his biggest mistake was getting caught. But his worse decision lay in the selection of the inner circle members who lacked the ruthlessness to organise a simple espionage mission and keep it secret. Nixon was always his own worst enemy. But his confidantes were clueless and that's where the difference lies with today - at least until someone decides that two terms isn't enough.

THE CYCLE OF LOVE.

Once a professional snowboarder, British documentarist Orlando von Einsiedel knows all about going the extra yard. He has twice won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short - for Skateistan: To Live and Skate Kabul (2010) and The White Helmets (2016) - while Virunga (2014), his study of mountain gorillas in Congo, was nominated for Best Documentary. Having made Evelyn (2018) about his late 22 year-old brother, Von Einsiedel also knows about putting personal feeling on screen, as he does to touching effect in The Cycle of Love.

An astrologer told the parents of Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia that his future wife would come from far away. She would be a Taurus and musical. Moreover, she would own a jungle. As a Dalit, PK had grown up an outcast. So, when he went to Delhi in 1972 to make his way as an artist, he was overwhelmed when (after three years of struggle and ostracisation) Swedish tourist Ann-Charlotte von Schedvin treated him without prejudice. Although she was travelling in a van with friends, she spent the next few days sightseeing with PK and even visited his home village.

Inspired by his horoscope, PK decided to buy a secondhand woman's bicycle and follow the hippie trail through Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran to get to Europe. He only had $80 to his name, as well as his art materials and some dried fruit. But he set off with utter confidence in his destiny and his journey is recreated through improvised interactions featuring Chirag Lobo as PK and Mina Dale as Lotta.

The real Lotta describes her conservative childhood in the small town of Borås and explains how finding a photograph of a stone wheel in India during a trip to London made her long for adventure. She admits she found PK handsome and charming during her portrait sitting and had no hesitation in spending time with him, as she had no idea he was `Harijan' or `Untouchable' according to the Indian caste system.

On his journey, PK sold sketches to survive and we see him discussing his experience of exclusion with four Dalit men living on the streets. Lotta recalls her distress at the pain that PK had to endure because he was considered inferior and this feeling was reinforced back in February 1977, when he was denied entry to Pakistan. Fortunately, a kindly sitter in Amritsar paid for PK to fly to Kabul and he was able to continue when his bike arrived by bus a few days later. As his visa was only for a fortnight, he had to cycle hard to make the border. However, he was deflated by a letter from Lotta wondering whether it was worth the risk of riding all this way through dangerous terrain. Reliant on the kindness of strangers, PK (who was often cold and hungry) felt dutybound to stay with an Austrian tourist named Linea, who had lost her teeth in a car crash. While sitting by her bedside in Kabul, however, his visa expired and he had to wait several weeks for a new application to be processed.

Suffering through the Dasht-e Kavir desert, PK felt as desperate as he had done following the death of his mother (when he had contemplated suicide). But a Cuban woman encouraged him to keep going and he was rescued from exhaustion on the shores of the Caspian Sea by three female medical students with a picnic. Despite not having heard from Lotta in many months, PK felt renewed and pressed on to Turkey in his bid to reunite with her.

In Istanbul, he found a letter from Linea waiting for him with a train ticket to Vienna to thank him for his kindness to her. He was singled out by German policemen on a train near Passau and threatened with deportation, but managed to convince them to let him go to his beloved. This certainty that Lotta is the one is contrasted with her recollection of PK taking her to a Sun temple near his home village of Odisha, which just happened to contain the stone wheel that she had on her wall in London. It was then she realised they were meant to be together and PK recalls their first kiss with delightful enthusiasm.

On 28 May 1977, 123 days after leaving Delhi, PK arrives in Halmstad and he cycles on with the realisation that self-love had enabled him to prevail, as if you don't love yourself, others can't love you and you can't give love. Grateful to all those who had helped him along the way, he completed the cycle of love and PK and Lotta join Lobo and Dale in recreating the hug they shared on her doorstep. Closing captions (accompanied by family photos and home movies) explain how they had two children and now live in Sweden but regularly return to India to campaign for Dalit equality.

It's a fitting end to an epic feel-good story that is told on an intimate scale by Von Einsiedel and his actors improvising with people they meet along the route that PK had followed half a century earlier. There are plenty of asides denouncing the caste system, while the journey is clearly supposed both to remind audiences of the hardships that migrants face in trying to reach Europe today and to urge them to show a little compassion towards their fellow humans.

The socio-political messages aren't allowed to overwhelm the central theme of love conquering all, however, which is reinforced with each utterance the affable PK makes. His bits to camera exude the charisma that prompted so many strangers to help him. But Lotta also has a quietly subversive dignity, as she reflects on the chances she took to reach India in the first place and her natural instinct to accept PK for who he was.

Von Einsiedel first became aware of the story, when PK and Lotta's children, Emilie and Karl, had given him a copy of Swedish journalist Per J. Andersson's book, The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled From India to Europe For Love. His fondness for the couple is evident in the space he affords them to speak for themselves. But he also rather romanticises their story through the casting of the photogenic Chirag Lobo and Mina Dale and some of the postcard vistas captured by cinematographer, Franklin Dow. Patrick Jonsson's score is also on the sentimental side, but this seems fair enough, given the nature of the content. But the biggest factor in realising Von Einsiedel's bold conceit is the editing of Katie Bryer, who also cut another account of a remarkable journey against the odds, Alex Holmes's Maiden (2019), which recreated yachtswoman Tracy Edwards's achievement during the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. Piecing together atmospheric travelogue snippets with the talking heads and the reconstruction of PK's travails, Bryer ensures the film combines the scope and intimacy that makes PK and Lotta's love story so captivating and inspirational.