Parky At the Pictures (27/2/2026)

(Reviews of Sirāt; The Spin; Little Amélie; and All You Need Is Kill)

SIRĀT.

Having made three shorts in the mid-2000s,French-born Galician director, Óliver Laxe, established his reputation with a trio of distinctive features. Now, he has followed You All Are Captains (2010), Mimosas (2016), and Fire Will Come (2019) with Sirāt, which takes its title from the Arabic word for hair-thin, but razor sharp bridge between Heaven and Hell. In addition to winning the Jury Prize at Cannes, the film (which boasts Pedro Almodóvar among its producers and has just two professional actors in the cast) has also been nominated for Best Sound and Best International Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

In the hope of finding the adult daughter who has been away from home for five months, Luis (Sergi López) heads to southern Morocco, with his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona), and their dog, Pipa. He has been told that Mar has gone to a rave in the desert and shows her photograph around those dancing in front of the giant bank of speakers that has been erected in front of a chiselled red rock face of a remote canyon. On the second day, however, troops arrive to proclaim a national emergency and urge EU citizens to board the transport provided. However, a number of campers break away from the convoy and Esteban tells Luis to follow them.

Free Party veterans Steff (Stefania Gadda), Jade (Jade Oukid), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Bigui (Richard Bellamy), and Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson) try to warn Luis that he is taking a risk in following them, as heading south towards Mauritania will take them into some dangerous territory, as the political situation is so unpredictable. They listen to news reports about war breaking out and pass refugees on the road. Yet they decide to press on after purchasing petrol cans from some haggling men with donkeys.

On reaching a river, Luis watches as the two heavier vehicles make it across and drive away. Cursing coming on this foolhardy expedition, he is relieved when the ravers return and reverse the all-terrain motor into the water to tow the camper van across. It floods as they edge across, but Luis is just relieved not to have been stranded and the ravers gruffly acknowledge his thanks. Esteban wants to share his bar of chocolate with them, but Luis thinks they should conserve their meagre supplies. When he takes a few pieces to the camper, Jade invites him in and shows him a speaker she has fixed. He smiles when she echoes Mar's contention that music is for dancing not listening and she tries to reassure him that his daughter will be fine. She's also useful next morning, when Pipa falls ill after eating some LSD-laced faeces and Jade feeds her some milk.

Tonin amuses the others by putting his leg stump through the collar of a white shirt and sings a song in French using his prosthetic as a guitar. Steff gives Esteban cornrows on one side of his head, while Tonin and Bigui (whose right hand is missing) persuade Luis to pool their food supplies. Having seen a military convoy heading south, they decide to take the mountain route and Josh worries that they're driving into the end of the world. He struggles with the cumbersome camper on treacherous roads while driving in the rain at night. They stop when he gets stuck in a pothole and everyone works to free the tyre next morning. Concerned that Esteban and Pipa are playing too near the edge, Luis tells him to wait in the camper. But, while the boy plays with his pet, the vehicle slips its brake and rolls backwards and Luis is powerless to prevent it from rolling backwards over the precipice.

Naturally, he is devastated and the others try to console him. But they know they can't get down to the crash site and press on with Luis sobbing in the larger camper. After a spell on flat terrain, they reach a settlement and siphon fuel out of a couple of abandoned cars. A young goatherd sees them, but shies away when they approach him for help. In a daze, Luis wanders into the desert and the others find him after darkness falls curled up on the sand.

Parking for the night, Jade suggests playing some music through their twin speakers and they share a drug made from a ground plant before they start dancing. Still in shock, Luis shuffles awkwardly with his arms outstretched, while the others begin to move to the beat. However, Jade steps on a landmine and Tonin is also killed as he rushes over to help her. Josh and Steff bundle the sobbing Bigui into the camper and Luis looks back at the carnage with incomprehension. As they chat over a joint during the night, Josh tells Luis that Tonin had seen Esteban's body when he had peered over the side of the road and Luis vows to collect his son as soon as he can.

Realising the peril they're in, the group send the camper down an incline in the hope of finding a safe route to some rocky ground. However, it blows up and the second vehicle goes the same way after it's knocked off line by a tyre grazes a mine as it rolls forwards. Now without shelter, the foursome has no option than to pick their way and hope not to tread on anything. Luis picks up the ravers' dog, Lupita, and follows the tracks to the burning 911 truck. They sip the last of the water and look on aghast as Luis strides off in the direction of the rocks. He reaches them safely and Bigui sets off after him. However, he is blown up, although Steff and Josh (carrying Lupita) somehow make it through with their eyes shut. On the brow of a hill, they look back at the smouldering vehicles and press on. As the film ends, they hitch a ride on the roof of a train, along with dozens of other men, women, and children. There's no sign of the dog, however.

That the absence of Lupita from the closing sequence should prove such a pressing issue rather suggests that Laxe has failed to involve at least this viewer in the tragic fate of his human characters. There is no doubt that this allegorical journey into the unknown is filled with harrowing moments and striking images. Yet the dearth of backstory and the vagueness of the off-screen conflict make it difficult to identify with the characters, regardless of the intensity and wretchedness of their situation. Led by the ever-impressive Sergi López, the cast couldn't do more. It's just that the scenario concocted by Laxe and Santiago Fillol feels specious at the outset and becomes increasingly convoluted as it progresses, without pausing once to aver why Luis felt so compelled to follow Mar into the wilderness that he put her brother at risk by having him tag along when he might have been better left at home (with his dog) with a relative, in the conceded absence of a mother.

No doubt Laxe has been influenced by the likes of Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953) and William Friedkin's remake, Sorceror (1977), in the way he shows rocks crumbling away beneath grinding wheels. There are also echoes of John Ford's The Searchers (1956) in Luis's doomed mission, Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) in the depiction of the landscape, David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) in the nightmarish uncertainty of the expedition, and of George Miller's Fury Road (2015) in the punkish sense of independence that is worn like a badge of outsider honour by the ravers. Yet, while it makes the film more persuasive as a work of cinematic art, such self-reflexivity does little to make the storyline more plausible or the characters more relatable. The same goes for the subwoofer-pounding throb of Kangding Ray's techno score, which complements the enveloping potency of Laia Casanova's Oscar-nominated sound design and the raw beauty of cinematographer Mauro Herce's views of the forbidding terrain.

No doubt others will identify among the opacities and ambiguities profound reflections on human nature in extremis, the fate of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, the awe-inspiring majesty of our indifferent planet, and the vast unknowableness of existence. Some may even credit Laxe with pushing the boundaries of screen storytelling by disregarding classical constructs in his supreme creative confidence. Yet, while this is undeniably bold and sometimes brilliant, it compounds its thematic naiveté with an aura of anti-psychological self-satisfaction that makes it very difficult to like. Moreover, it occasionally feels pretentious and even preposterous and they are tough sensibilities for any putative masterpiece to overcome.

THE SPIN.

There's been a handful of enjoyable documentaries about searching for rare records, with Alan Zweig's Vinyl (2000), Edward Gillan's Desperate Man Blues (2003), and Vincent Vittorio's Record Safari (2020) being the picks. Now Michael Head's The Spin follows a similar route, with the occasional backward nod towards Stephen Frears's 2000 Chicagoised take on Nick Hornby's High Fidelity.

Dermot (Brenock O'Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan) run Boneyard Records in Omagh, County Tyrone. However, they are behind with the rent and landlady Sadie (Tara Lynne O'Neill) is keen for the duo to default so that she can cancel the lease and sell it to a hotel-building developer. With people forever coming in to ask for keys to be cut or TVs to be repaired, Dermot is close to the end of his tether. No one listens to his soulful set at the local pub and girlfriend Rose (Maura Higgins) is too tired to listen to him pouring his heart out. But hope dawns when they spot a newspaper piece about a Cork man selling his record collection and they agree to head south in order to dupe the rube (Barry Devlin) into selling his rare Robert Johnson discs so that they can flog them on for a small fortune.

The divorced Elvis doesn't just need the windfall for the rent, as he has promised his young daughter, Lily (Cait Ellis-Gowland), that he will buy her a pony for her birthday. Dermot questions the wisdom of the idea, as they set off in an old car borrowed from Elvis's mother. They marvel at the passing scenery, stopping off to admire a waterfall and wonder why anyone would think concrete was better than woodland. When they reach the border, Dermot lies down in the road to demonstrate where it lies and has to be yanked out of the way of an unrushing car. He's spooked by the experience and not amused when Elvis jokes that he would have had to carry on to Cork with a corpse in the boot.

While Sadie flirts with Frank the developer (Adam McFarland), Elvis and Dermot take a detour to the seaside town of Bundoran. They ride the dodgems, see a film about a shark with legs, and eat chips by the sea. Elvis bumps into Debbie (Amy McElhatton) and they complement each other on their jacket badges before he confides in Dermot that his Elvis-impersonating father had brought him to see Meatloaf at the Astoria Ballroom before flitting out of his life. Dermot reassures him that he's a much better dad and they nip off for a pint.

The night goes better than expected for Dermot, however, and he has to flee a gun-toting father, while Elvis wakes up in his chicken coop. Having somehow lost their wallets, they have to do a runner from a barman and a petrol-pump attendant in order to get back on the road. Getting lost, they pick up a farmer with a stuffed fox (Joe Savino), a nun (Claire Malone), and an American stripper (Kimberly Wyatt) and they squeeze into the back seat before they run out of fuel and have to push the car to the nearest town. Dermot notices that Jimmy the Fist and the McKowski Family Band are playing at a nearby pub and he jams on a number. Elvis bumps into Debbie and they kiss. However, they all end up in the cells after Jimmy gets in a fight and Elvis is hurt because Dermot had told him to go to Cork alone because he had accepted an invitation to go to America with the band.

The boys are not on speaking terms when they are released. But the nun has left them a few euros to get them back on the road and they make it to Cork. However, the seller has just lost everything to a pair of bailiffs, who accept a backhander (the £50 that Elvis's dad had given him years before and which he had never spent) to rescue the records. Feeling bad at duping the old man (who has just lost his farm), they offer to sell the discs for a 15% commission and give him a lift to Tyrone, so he can go and live with his daughter.

He also just happens to have a horse and they head north to discover the shop empty. Dave (Ian Toner), who has married Elvis's ex, Tracey (Leah O'Rourke), just happens to Frank's boss and he offers the lads some new premises. He also informs Sadie that her property has been condemned and that she won't be compensated for its demolition. Despite their series of lucky breaks - that includes Debbie finding Elvis in the new shop - Dermot decides to take his chances Stateside and an insert during the credit crawl shows him returning a year later clutching his first album.

With all its loose ends neatly tied, this genial romp leaves a feel-good vibe that feels closer to such Irish road movies as Anand Tucker's Leap Year (2010), Dave Minogue's Poster Boys (2021), and Emer Reynolds's Joyride (2023) than any actualities about vinyl hunters. Indeed, the rare records are something of a MacGuffin and serve only as the means for providing the various happy endings. But the action rolls along as pleasingly as the passing scenery before Sebastian Cort's camera, with Mark McCausland's jaunty score twinkling away in the background.

The idea underpinning Colin Broderick's screenplay has its roots in McCausland's past. But one can't imagine quite so many coincidences and coin flips falling down the right way in one eventful journey. Not that plausibility matters a jot, as the travellers encounter a gaggle of offbeat characters, several of whom would have been right at home on Craggy Island. All of which is a far cry from the setting of onetime playwright Michael Head's directorial debut, Bermondsey Tales: Fall of the Roman Empire (2024). But he wisely keeps the focus on the engaging Owen Colgan and Brenock O'Connor (who resembles George Harrison c.1974), whose chirpy chemistry consistently distracts from the scrappiness of a script that just about gets them from A to B and back again.

LITTLE AMÉLIE.

Belgian author Amélie Nothomb reflected on her terrible twos in the autobiographical novel, Métaphysique des tubes (which has been translated as `The Character of Rain'). The story has now been reworked for the screen as Little Amélie by Gobelins graduates Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, who scripted in conjunction with Aude Py and Eddine Noël. Having already been nominated for a Golden Globe, this charming, but deceptively acute adaptation has also made the shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

`In the beginning,' Amélie (Loïse Charpentier) informs us in narration, `there was God.' But this God was the infant Amélie, who had been diagnosed as being in a vegitative state. Nothing her parents or older siblings did could prompt a reaction, as God simply stared with her fixed gaze. Soon, people stopped taking notice of her, until 13 August 1969 in the Japanese town of Kobe, when Amélie was roused by an earthquake and started to explore her world. Her first step resulted in a tumble, however, and she went into a neverending tantrum that led to a building brick being hurled through a window. Diplomat Patrick (Marc Arnaud) and wife Danièle (Laetitia Coryn) are at their wits' end. But landlady, Kashima-san (Yumi Fujimori) puts them in touch with Nishio-san (Victoria Grosbois), who had helped her family after the war. She arrives at the same time as Patrick's mother, Claude (Cathy Cerdà), turns up from Belgium to make a fuss of grandchildren, Juliette (Haylee Issembourg) and André (Isaac Schoumsky), and get to know Amélie (Emmylou Homs), who is furious because the family can't understand her baby talk (which she can't fathom, of course, because she is God).

Claude charms Amélie and calms her with white chocolate. Within days, she has the child walking and even running. She utters her first word, ` aspirateur' (`vacuum cleaner'), after being impressed by a machine that could make things disappear. But, while she reveals that she can speak fluently, she refuses to utter her brother's name because she resents him for being a bully. However, Claude's visit is a short one and Amélie is so distraught when she leaves that she kicks André in the shin and sulks after pulling some books off the shelf. Nishio tidies up and shows Amélie a book about yōkai spirits that enchants her. However, Kashima appears to resent the bond developing between the pair and admonishes Nishio for neglecting her duties towards her.

One day, Amélie spots her brother putting some plastic koi carp flags on a small pole in the garden. She is curious about why the fish are symbolic of boys and Patrick and Nishio take the children to a koi centre, where Amélie sees the carp feeding and decides they symbolise boys because they are so ugly. It starts to rain and they are forced to go home, but Amélie loves the sensation of the droplets on her cheeks and Nishio shows her the Japanese word for rain (`ame') by drawing the pictograph on a steamed window and she is delighted.

When she goes to tell her parents, she sees Patrick sobbing and Danièle explains that Claude had died. Reasoning that her grandmother had given her life so that she could she could begin to live, Amélie confides in Nishio, who uses a rice cooker to describe how she had lost her entire family during an air raid during the war. She tells Amélie about a forthcoming memorial day and she asks if she can accompany her. Meanwhile, Patrick returns to Belgium for two months and Amélie and Nishio become inseparable, as she helps with the household chores and learns about cooking and calligraphy. She even learns how to float in a rubber ring on the pond. They build a wooden candle lantern to float on the river during the Obon festival, but the child is too young to understand the look of vexation that Kashima shoots Nishio when they meet on the riverbank.

When Patrick returns, he takes the family to the beach for the day. However, Amélie is reluctant to go without Nishio and is only persuaded when she tells her how much fun she had had there as a child. Amélie decides to take a jam jar with her so that she can capture the sea air as a present for Nishio. Once at the water's edge, however, she imagines that she has the power to part a wave and she strides across the sand to gaze at the sea creatures she has held in suspended animation. However, the spell breaks and she is swept away by a wave. André spots her jar by the rocks and Amélie is so grateful to have been rescued in time that she forgives him his past misdemeanours and finally says his name. Driving home, Amélie watches the patterns made by the rain on the car window. Nishio is touched by her present from the beach and, as she savours the smell of the ozone, she imagines her young self embracing Amélie and Patrick and Danièle watch indulgently, as they know how much they owe Nishio for Amélie coming out of her shell.

On her third birthday, Amélie wakes before anyone else and follows Nishio through the garden. She overhears Kashima reprimanding her for spending so much time with Westerners and urges her to remember the damage they inflicted upon Japan during the war. Despite reasoning that it was time to move on, Nishio feels compelled to honour her patron's wishes and Amélie is distraught. Patrick tries to cheer her up by showing her the three koi carp they have bought her. But she's in no mood to celebrate and things get worse when her father announces that they are going home to Belgium.

Feeling Japanese and unable to bear the thought of being away from Nishio, Amélie lets herself fall into the pond and she is slowly sinking in her own little bubble when she encounters Claude. She tells her that it's not her time to die and promises her that she will soon discover that memories are among the most precious things she can have. As if to prove the point, Amélie watches the moment when Nishio had written her name on the window pane and she realises that she will never forget.

Waking in a hospital ward, Amélie learns that Katshima had rescued her and she cries for joy when Nishio hugs her and swears to stay by her side until she leaves for Europe. Winter comes and Nishio dresses Amélie in a warm coat so she can play in the snow with her family. As she concludes her narration, Amélie declares that she knows she isn't God after all and is glad to be a mere mortal.

There's much to intrigue in this toddling rite of passage, as the precocious Amélie has to negotiate her way through socio-cultural niceties and cope with the realities of death while edging towards the realisation that she is neither God nor a tube (through which food passes), but a little girl with a lively imagination and a capacity for making rash decisions. Owing much to Studio Ghibli, the imagery is invitingly innovative, dazzlingly colourful, and often delightful. Those of a certain vintage may equate the emerald-eyed Amélie with the big-eyed little boy in Joe, a cartoon series that started on the BBC's Watch With Mother in the mid-1960s. They both certainly know how to cry.

But there are also echoes of Sunao Katabuchi's In This Corner of the World (2016), which is largely set in 1940s Hiroshima, and Mamoru Hosuda's Mirai (2018) in a voyage of discovery that sees the self-contained heroine being guided towards enlightenment by the offbeat characters around her. No one is a dog in human form, but marine life plays a part in widening Amélie's horizons and enabling her to accept people for who they are. That said, she remains puzzled by Kashima-san's resentment towards the interlopers and Vallade and Han - who had previously worked on Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist (2010), Mark Osborne's The Little Prince (2015), and Jérémy Clapin's I Lost My Body (2019) - might have done a better job of both fixing the action in its 1960s timeframe and of explaining why Kashima would harbour such loathing for Belgians who had spent much of the Second World War under Nazi occupation (not that Amélie and her siblings or, quite possibly, her parents had been around at the time).

Nevertheless, there's much to admire in the digital graphic style that Remi Chayé had pioneered on his own feature, Long Way North (2015), in which a teenage girl is prompted to act because of her close ties to a grandparent. He not only conveys the naiveté of Amélie's worldview, but also her sense of wonderment at the flora and fauna that have so much to teach her (while also occasionally frightening and bemusing her). This is a difficult stage of life to depict authentically on screen (hence Family Guy's decision to make Stewie Griffin wise beyond his years) and the debuting directors shrewdly focus on audiovisual sensations and surreal flights of fancy to complement the mature reflections of the narration. Not everyone will be swept away by its charms, but it's good that a film of this sort has been recognised at the Oscars alongside Ugo Bienvenu's Arco - although Zootopia 2, Elio, and KPop Demon Hunters are more likely to prevail on 15 March.

ALL YOU NEED IS KILL.

Hiroshi Sakurazaka's 2004 YA novel, All You Need is Kill, has already been brought to the big screen in the live-action form of Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, which paired Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. The Japanimation outfit, Studio 4°C, has now taken an anime stab at the time-looping material, with co-directors Kenichirô Akimoto and Yukinori Nakamura changing the nature of the threat to Earth's existence, while retaining the source's Groundhog Day structure.

One year after an extraterrestrial plant named Darol landed on Earth, Rita Vrataski (Ai Mikami), a member of the United Defense Force, is attached to a unit that has been dispatched to study the threat the seemingly dormant growth poses to the planet. Woken by her alarm clock at 7:03am, the redheaded loner drifts into the UDF cafeteria and gets teased for eating a chocolate bar from a slot machine rather than eating a proper meal. Still haunted by a trauma from her past, she prefers to keep to herself and turns down in invitation to a party.

Venturing out to Doral in a suit and bubble helmet designed to protect her from the plant's electromagnetic waves, Rita survives a fall from a frond before being wiped out in an attack by the black spores that Doral has started emitting without warning. Much to her surprise, Rita wakes from her blackout to find herself back at 7:03 on the day she died. The light flickers again over the bathroom mirror and events repeat themselves in the cafeteria before Rita is killed once more by the monsters bursting out of Darol's fruit.

On the third day, Rita tries to warn everyone of the imminent danger. But they laugh at her and she is chased by a couple of watchmen after she asks the shift supervisor to cancel the day's mission. Hiding in an alleyway, she calls the police to alert them to the coming calamity. But the line goes dead and Rita cowers in a corner as watches the carnage taking place at the end of the alley before the spores seek her out.

Waking for a fourth time, Rita steals a truck from the UDF plant and speeds away in the hope of finding a safe place. But she crashes in some woods, where the spores find her. This happens a couple of times before she decides that the only way to end the nightmare is to commit suicide. As she prepares to jump into the river, Rita flashes back to her unhappy childhood with her drunken mother and she reaches out to her former self, as she sinks down. But 7:03 comes round again and she has to endure the hell of knowing what is coming when no one else does. During her seventh awakening, Rita discovers that she can shape events if she attempts to fight back. But she is soon on Day 15 after repeatedly failing to outrun one of the creatures, which can zip along on its tentacles.

By Day 23, Rita has hit upon the idea of attack as the best form of defence and she scours the base for possible weapons. Now fearless because she knows she can cheat death, but still keen to escape the time loop, she hacks into one of the spores and buries a hatchet in its gynoecium, unleashing spurts of black liquid. However, no sooner has she killed one than more lurk up behind her. This happens repeatedly until Rita notices that she survives some of the skirmishes and has more success with a bigger axe.

On Day 92, she spots someone in the warehouse she has never seen before and follows him to an abandoned observatory. He reveals himself to be Keiji Kiriya (Natsuki Hanae), who is also on his 92nd reptition and Rita is cross with him for watching her all this time when she was trying to do something practical. He admits having known about her since Day 3 and has been monitoring her efforts in the hope of detecting an escape route for them both. As they both died the first time when an alien emitted a flash of red light, they reason that they will be able to quit the loop if they kill the same creature before the flare erupts.

She is impressed that Keiji had secretly worked on her protective suit and had been studying her battles by employing a drone to record them. Hopes that he could use his computer to pinpoint the position of the beam flower are dashed, but Keiji dons a suit of his own and joins Rita in attacking the aliens. He even creates an android to accompany them and drop explosives, while a hovering drone feeds them information on enemy movements. Keiji is pleased when he makes Rita smile, but their efforts are still proving to be in vain, even though they are able to put up a better fight each time. Indeed, they are soon waging war in super-suits with a phalanx of robotic sidekicks enabling them to hack more killer flowers each time.

But destroying the beam alien has no effect and Day 165 proves enough for Rita, who is tired of losing battles. She accuses Keiji of being a coward and tells him to leave her alone. Wandering together on a beach, he urges her to visit the Darol Research Centre and here they meet Shasta Raylle Carter (Kana Hanazawa), a scientist who has been monitoring the plant's behaviour and its impact on Rita and Keiji. She reveals that Darol has been implanting quartz crystals in their brains in a bid to form a triangulum that merges human and plant into a force that can launch at takeover of the entire planet. By her estimation, they only have a couple of chances left to break the time loop or Rita will be subsumed, as she is the stronger of the pair.

Waking on what they realise is going to be the last day, Rita and Keiji drive to Darol's crater and begin climbing from inside. She apologises for being so mean to him and he explains that he learned to laugh things off having been bullied as a boy. He tells her that she's his superhero and they smile, realising how fond of each other they have become. She confides about her relationship with her mother and how it had made her so self-centred and she has only discovered the importance of serving the greater good through Keiji.

Their mutual admiration session ends when they come to the entrance of a long, dark tunnel. Rita spots Darol's core and they hope they have enough time to complete their mission. She launches into an attack, but seems to be thrown back to her bed, as the alarm goes off. Keiji urges her to keep her eyes closed because they have to succeed. However, he realises that he is close to being subsumed and forces Rita into fighting with him so that he can be sacrificed and she can focus on defeating Darol alone. She sobs at seeing his crushed body. But suddenly, she wakes again on another day and wanders to the base to hear Shata declare Darol dead. No one seems to know what killed the plant, but Rita is relieved to have broken the loop. She wanders off alone to the warehouse room where she had met Keiji, but there's no sign of him. Drifting towards the observatory, she looks out on a beautiful morning, with Darol's husk shimmering in the sunlight. Assuming that Keiji has perished with the plant, she is surprised to see him stroll on to the viewing platform. He has no idea how she knows him, but she is pleased he has returned to his bashful self, as she gives his cheeks a tweak.

Presenting heroism as perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds rather than the performance of courageous deeds, this is an intriguing, if not always involving anime, whose strength lies in its visuals rather than its narrative. Exploring the notion of self-improvement through trial and error, trusting others to overcome trauma, and the need to make sacrifices in order to succeed, the action avoids becoming tiresome because Akimoto and Nakamura find so many novel ways to convey the recurrence of time. Yet, as the plot progresses, its logic begins to buckle. If Rita is trapped in a time loop, surely she must return to Day 1 each time rather than Day 92, with souped-up safety suits and squadrons of drones and `droids? She must always start from scratch. But the action only remains consistent until she leaves the cafeteria after having her snack bar, when she seems to be able to catch up with Keiji and their increasingly sophisticated armoury at the point she last left off before succumbing to the marauding flora.

Striving to pin stories like this one down to plausibilities is a fool's errand. But, while Rita's symbolic battle with her trauma doesn't always fire the imagination, the film's imagery certainly does. The character design is pretty standard, but the blend of hand-drawn graphics with computerised flourishes is highly effective. Occasionally, the impression is of being trapped in a funky video game. But some moments are mesmerisingly immersive, while others jolt the viewer back into reality to highlight Rita's impossible plight. Much of the colour work is arresting, with one shot during the climactic duel resembling a Jackson Pollock dripscape. However, the chalkboard look for Keiji's reminiscence of his classroom bully harks back to Émile Cohl and the dawn of screen animation, while the almost monochrome conversation inside Darol's crater makes the light show during Rita and Keiji's tussle all the more spectacular.

Equally impressive is Kôji Kasamatsu's layered sound design, notably in the cafeteria and warehouse sequences, where voices echo outside Rita's consciousness. Yasuhiro Maeda's score also merits mention, as does the voicework of Ai Mikami and Natsuki Hanae, although there is always something larger than life about anime delivery, as Kana Hanazawa demonstrates in her giddy cameo as the UDF boffin who identifies Darol's weak spot. The alien foe and its fiendish flora may not be particularly daunting, while it seems odd that Rita and Keiji are able to get to Darol's most vulnerable place with so little difficulty that they manage to hold an intense heart-to-heart in the process. A little more humour might also have helped matters, as the single-minded Rita is rather resistible, while Keiji is a bit limp. Quibbles aside, this is an audiovisually ambitious anime that is much less exhausting than sharing a time loop with Tom Cruise and a bunch of Mimics.