Parky At the Pictures (3/10/2025)

(Reviews of Paul & Paulette Take a Bath; Better Days; Mr Blake At Your Service!; A Night Like This; Dead of Winter; and The Story of Skids: Scotland's No.1 Punk Band)

PAUL & PAULETTE TAKE A BATH.

It has always baffled why film directors make so little use of the shorts that helped them get established. Many of these will have done the rounds of the festival circuit, where they get lauded by the trade press. But they rarely get seen by ordinary viewers because they are squirreled away in the hope of future monetisation when they should be made available online so that anyone spending their hard-earned on a first-time feature (particularly one that has been expanded from an existing short) can see how the debutant's style developed. It shouldn't take much for directors (young and old) to post these outings on their own websites or on platforms like Vimeo, in the absence of a MUBI-style showcase for shorts. Otherwise, they will simply disappear into the ether and that benefits no one.

Think how good it would be, for example, to have seen the likes of Trauma Industries (2017), Madame Grenier's Toaster, and Never Apply Salt to Attract a Potential Lover (both 2020) before watching neophyte Jethro Massey's highly distinctive and critically divisive, Paul & Paulette Take a Bath. Ah, well!

Following `once upon a time' voiceover introductions, American photographer, Paul (Jérémie Galiana), spots French girl, Paulette (Marie Benati), recreating Marie Antoinette's final steps towards the guillotine in the Place de la Concorde. He accompanies her to La Conciergerie in order to cut her long hair at the neck so that Paulette can not just replicate the events of 16 October 1793, but also so that she can actually feel them. Taking his number (but withholding her own) after her re-enactment is over, Paulette sashays away with a vague promise to attend Paul's exhibition the following Tuesday.

No one comes to the show, so Paul sells his camera so he can buy a suit to start work as an estate agent. He discovers the boss is nicknamed `Goebbels' and is appalled to discover she is old flame, Valérie (Laurence Vaissière), who still holds a torch for him. He hangs out by the Marie Antoinette plaque hoping to bump into Paulette, but she is living out of a suitcase after being dumped by her girlfriend, Margarita (Margot Joseph), who is a Marilyn Monroe impersonator.

As she has taken a room at 3 Rue Tronson-du-Coudray - which now belongs to her ex, George (James Gerard) - Paulette uses the dial phone to call Paul and ask him to help her re-stage the 1889 strangulation and dismemberment of Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé by Gabrielle Bompard and her accomplice, Michel Eyraud. Sporting a Marilyn wig and a white towelling bathrobe, Paulette teases Paul and warns him not to touch her, as they bask in the post-homicidal glow on the divan.

Next morning, they visit a church so that Paul can taste a communion wafer (after Paulette had confessed to being raised a Catholic). He concurs that the host tastes of `blood and tears, with a hint of pine' and they try others to determine the flavours of Elvis Presley, Genghis Khan, Kim Jong-un, and Adolf Hitler. Paulette shows Paul a photo she keeps in her purse of the young Stalin and admits she would have had his babies.

When she can't find a crime scene to visit, Paul takes Paulette to the see the Mur des Fédérés in Père Lachaise, where 147 Communards were executed on 28 May 1871. He shows her the bas-relief carving on some of the original bricks and crumples to the floor above the mass grave when she shoots him with an imaginary rifle. As the day wears on, Paul tells Paulette about the Graceland maid who collected Elvis's pubic hairs from his bathtub and tried to sell them after he died.

After sleeping with his boss because he feels sorry for her when she's not invited to office drinks, Paul makes excuses to join Paulette at a cabaret bar, where he realises how much she loves Margarita. She crashes on his sofa and calls him a nice man, having described him to her friends at the club as her `victim'. He teases her that putting on a show all the time must be exhausting.

The next day, Paul takes Paulette to the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, where various ethnological exhibitions were presented between 1877-1912. But Paul calls them human zoos in condemning them and the mood of the place makes Paulette sad. She reflects on how living with Margarita had not worked out and she climbs a fence to sit outside a cottage and have him treat her like a dull exhibit as he walks past. Paulette rewards Paul with a kiss on the cheek and an invitation to drive her to Saltzburg to meet her parents (something she had denied Margarita).

They travel in a Volkswagen and make love in a hotel room en route to Munich, where Paul has arranged for them to stay in the flat at Prinzregentenplatz 16, where Adolf Hitler lived with Eva Braun. Like Lee Miller before them, they try the bathtub and Paulette reveals that her father had killed a man and had gone to prison when she was a child. In bed afterwards, she asks Paul not to behave like a boyfriend when he meets Gilles (Gilles Graveleau) and Charlotte (Fanny Cottençon). She also insists that he doesn't try to put her on a pedestal.

While Paulette takes a shower, Paul finds an old camera and makes her pose on a pedestal. They make love, only for Charlotte to walk in on them and Paulette isn't amused. She argues with her mother over supper about her capricious nature and tells Paul about her father killing someone who had been abusing her as a child. At breakfast, Paulette comes out as a lesbian and appals Charlotte who blames Gilles for their child going off the rails.

Paul is embarrassed and hurt and reveals that the Munich flat hadn't really been Hitler's when Paulette declares their brief, but delicious moment to be over. She insists they shares a room on the way home, but Paul is frosty when she tries to cuddle up to him. Returning to Paris, they pass the Bataclan and the spot where Chief of Police Maurice Papon (the former Nazi collaborator who had also deported Jews) had some of the dozens of Algerians massacred during the autumn of 1961 thrown into the Seine.

It's here that Paulette chooses to say goodbye and she gifts Paul her camera. He uses it to take pictures of Valérie, but ultimately asks her if they can just be friends. She treats him curtly at work, but he uses his contacts to find the apartment where Bataclan killer Salah Abdeslam lived before the attack on 13 November 2015. Wanting to make a grand gesture of love, he shaves his pubic hairs and tries to glue on those of Elvis Presley, which he has bought online. He invites Paulette, but is in tears when she arrives, as he has realised that, while he loves her, she is not for him. She lets him down gently and they chat about her flavour with Margarita.

Seeking to subvert romcom convention by borrowing its key facets and putting a morbid spin on them, Jethro Massey does a decent job in trying to meld Jacques Rivette's Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) and Richard Linklater's Before trilogy (1995-2013). However, by contenting himself in filming in some of Paris's darker corners and mentioning the crimes committed there, he fails to delve into the significance of the atrocities and what they say about France in general and Paulette and Paul in particular. Indeed, there's these ghoulishly touristy visits come close to seeming like an affectation, unlike Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon's genuine fascination with funerals in Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (1971).

The scripting is at its smuggest during these episodes, notably the glib line about Papon being an `equal opportunities monster'. But it doesn't help that Marie Benati and Jérémie Galiana struggle to avoid sounding like they're reading off cue cards, as they deliver their Wiki-précis. Massey also fails to make the connection between Paulette's fixation and her own trauma and the fact that Paul also appears to miss this point makes him seem a bit more of an insecure clod than he already is.

With his 1970s Paul Simon hairstyle and dour demeanour, Paul interacts awkwardly with everyone he meets - his treatment of Valérie is booishly chauvinistic - and his infatuation initially feels more stalkerish than puppyish, as he tries to follow up what might be called the `meet macabre' on the Place de la Concorde. Benati gives much the better performance, as the manic pixie dream fille, but Paulette is just as sketchily drawn as Paul, with her passion for the barely limned Margarita being much less convincing than her melancholic vulnerability.

The supporting roles (all taken by white actors) are actually a thankless task because Massey treats them as little more than plot pawns. But the Parisian shock spots he selects for the pilgrimages (with an emphasis on the `grim') have been evocatively photographed by Ole Marius Dahl and Isarr Eiriksson in a freewheeling style that irresistibly recalls the early nouvelle vague. Yet, this also brings to mind both the Zanzibar films of Philippe Garrel and Emmanuelle Mouret's bittersweet romcoms. With several Marc Tassell songs being dotted around and the principals wearing knowingly chic Joanna Wojtowicz costumes, this superficial concoction is easy to enjoy (providing you're not too squeamish about the glibly exploitative use of tragic crime locations) and it will be intriguing to see what Massey does next. He might even make his shorts available. Who knows?

BETTER DAYS.

Those who enjoyed Valérie Bonneton's winning display as Mother Véronique in Laurent Tirard's bicycling nuns comedy, Oh My Goodness!, will be intrigued to see her take on a weightier role in Better Days, Elsa Bennett and Hippolyte Dard's drama about female alcoholics.

Widowed mother of three, Suzanne (Valérie Bonneton), is forced into rehab after crashing her car on the school run. She has been siphoning vodka from a secret stash into water bottles for some time, but insists she only has the occasional glass of wine with dinner when she's examined by Dr Mathis (Myriem Akheddiou).

She conducts the group therapy sessions, in which Suzanne keeps quiet because she doesn't think she had much in common with serial relapser Chantal (Sophia Leboutte), party girl Alice (Sabrina Ouazani), or famous actress Diane (Michèle Laroque), who is more worried about her daughter's imminent wedding than sobering up and keeps using the facility's only payphone when Suzanne wants to call her kids. Their grandmother shields them from her, however, and she is low spirits when she attends a therapy class on motor maintenance run by reformed drinker, Denis (Clovis Cornillac).

He has entered the centre in the Rally of the Dunes in North Africa and has to keep reassuring Dr Mathis that the adventure will do the chosen women the power of good, providing he can find someone to sponsor the car. In the meantime, he runs sessions in the garage, where Diane faints because she is finding it hard to accept her situation. Suzanne pals up with Alice, who reveals that she lost her job at an old people's home after she locked the residents out while on a bender.

Dr Mathis conducts a restaurant session, in which the women have to decline booze when asked by the waitress and explain that they feel better for abstaining. The exercise is designed to remove the shame from being a female alcoholic and Suzanne realises that she needs to stop feeling sorry for herself if she is to be reunited with her brood. While she commits to the programme, Chantal warns that it's not an easy road, as this is her eleventh spell at the hostel.

Alice also feels better about herself and decides to trace her biological mother. There's a fuss when someone finds a beer can in the camper van that Denis has borrowed for the women to work on and Suzanne feels sufficiently sorry for him to offer her help (as an expert seamstress) in making special jackets for the rally team. She also throws herself into a stress-relieving punchbag session and a nocturnal camping exercise and is thrilled when she wins a marker race with Alice and Diane as her navigators.

Taking a detour on the way back to the clinic, Suzanne asks Diane to pose as a saleswoman so that she can see her children on the doorstep. But Diane suffers a relapse after daughter Léa (Adèle Sierra) makes a scene in reception while telling her to stay away from the wedding. Alice and Suzanne discover the stash of miniatures that Diane has smuggled in her suitcase and vow to be more supportive. Dr Mathis shows the group how to make mocktails and they experiment with combinations before a fitness montage shows the group going through their paces prior to Denis announcing the rally trio.

Just as she starts to see light at the end of the tunnel, however, Suzanne learns that custody of her kids has been awarded to her mother-in-law and she has a major relapse that results in Denis having to vouch for her so that she can join Alice and Diane in Morocco. Chantal was also supposed to be accompanying them as first reserve, but she gets drunk at the ferry terminal and has to be escorted home.

A row breaks out after Alice misses the first checkpoint in the desert and tempers fray further when the car rolls down an incline. But Denis gives Suzanne a pep talks and she realises he likes her when he reveals that he bought and sponsored the car himself, as he has already failed to save one woman he loved. A better day follows, when they come across some local kids and Diane is delighted when they recognise her from her films. However, the mood changes when Diane collapses back at base camp and the doctor informs her that it would be suicide to try and continue.

Determined to go on after Diane is airlifted home, Suzanne and Alice rise up the standings. However, they flip the car when the wheel strikes an obstruction and they have to be rescued. They are applauded by everyone at the camp, even though they don't get to complete the course. The pair are also warmly welcomed at the hospice and Suzanne is allowed to see her children. Still in her hospital bed, Diane is introduced to her granddaughter, while Alice goes to meet her birth mother with a pasta necklace like the one Suzanne cherishes. She finds herself helping Denis run the activities programme, as he prepares to teach the next batch of rehabbers hot-air ballooning.

Well intentioned and admirably played, this is a thoughtful and, at times, grittily realistic insight into problem drinking among women. In addition to showing how alcoholism knows no class barriers co-directors Bennett and Dard, along with fellow writer Louis-Julien Petit, examine the particular stigma attached to mothers, who seem to be held to higher standards than other members of society. The insults about motherhood that Suzanne, Diane, and Alice trade in the desert get to the heart of the matter, but the rally section is the weakest part of the film, as its very far-fetchedness magnifies its myriad contrivances.

The more intimate moments at the rehab centre are more impactful, as the loneliness and despair of the addicted drinker are laid bare with insight and sensitivity. Valérie Bonneton is particularly good in the initial sequences in which Suzanne remains in denial, but her friendships with Alice and Diane are markedly more convincing than her hesitant romance with Denis. Sabrina Ouazani isn't given enough to do, as her absent mother subplot largely unfolds off screen. But Michèle Laroque is splendid as the grande dame whose private pain becomes all-too-public in the rather forced reception shouting match and whose pleasure at being recognised by some desert children is touchingly authentic, as she poses for photos.

Avoiding sentimentality, this joins a growing number of worthy features about addition to drink and/or drugs. Yet, by making the intake at the clinic so large, Bennett and Dard are forced to leave a lot of characters on the margins - and these are perhaps the ones more deserving of the film's attention than those chosen to go gallivanting around in the Sahara.

MR BLAKE AT YOUR SERVICE!

Had you been told that Gilles Legardinier's Mr Blake At Your Service! was a remake of a 1950s comedy of manners starring Clifton Webb, you would hardly be surprised. In fact, the debuting director has adapted the scenario from his own 2012 novel, Complètement cramé!

Still grieving from the loss of his wife, Diane, four months earlier, Andrew Blake (John Malkovich) skips a business leader of the year ceremony in his honour and old friend, Richard Ward (Al Ginter), questions whether he's doing the right thing in heading back to the place where he had first met his French soulmate.

Andrew had spotted an online advertisement for the château. However, housekeeper-cum-cook Odile (Émilie Dequenne) had been looking for a butler rather than offering bed and breakfast. Once the muddle has been resolved, Andrew applies for the post and is introduced to the chatelaine, Nathalie Beauvillier (Fanny Ardant), who is drowning in the debts left by the husband who had died four years earlier. Odile is concerned about the strain placed on Nathalie. But, after he scorches her morning newspaper while ironing it, she haughtily dismisses Andrew's attempts to offer his expertise in matters financial. Consequently, he settles into a four-month trial regime of serving breakfast, cleaning the clocks with cotton buds, and helping maid Manon (Eugénie Anselin) hang out the washing.

Odile resents the fact that Andrew gets on with her fussy cat, Mephisto, and gets cross when he eats a terrine she had prepared for her fluffy white pet for his lunch. She's also displeased that he has palled up with gamekeeper, Philippe Magnier (Philippe Bas), who had shot at Andrew during a nocturnal stroll to find a phone signal. On returning to the château, he had spotted a light in the garage and discovers that Manon is sleeping there because her mother has thrown her out for getting pregnant by a boyfriend who has scarpered. Odile persuades Nathalie to give Manon one of the servants' rooms and the household ticks along nicely, as Andrew and Philippe fix the entrance videophone and instal a cat flap for Mephisto. He also encourages Odile to be more creative with her cuisine and learns that she is a trained chef, who was all set to follow her beau to London to open a restaurant when he got cold feet and she buried herself away in the countryside.

One of Andrew's tasks is to respond to junk mail advertising prize draws, as Nathalie is that strapped for cash. But he also serves tea when she is visited by the snooty Madame Berliner (Christel Henon) and takes exception to the way she gloats over her hostess's money troubles. Nathalie is amused by Andrew's gentle put-downs and thanks him for helping bring the house back to life when she sees him teasing Odile about Mephisto's weight. She even comes to help set up Manon's room, when it dawns on Andrew that Philippe has a crush on Odile. Over a game of chess, he offers to teach him table manners to make a better impression on her and drops into conversation with Odile the fact that Philippe makes hedgehog houses to protect them from predators on the estate.

There is also a threat from estate agents and Nathalie breaks the news when she joins the staff for dessert in the kitchen that an English couple will be coming to assess the chateau's suitability for taking paying guests. Andrew is surprised to discover that Richard and his property dealer wife, Melissa (Anne Brionne), are the visitors and he grumpily puts up with Richard treating him like a servant. However, his embarrassment proves worthwhile, as Melissa agrees to help promote the location.

Nathalie asks Andrew to accompany her on a walk around the grounds and reveals that François had been cheating on her for decades with the mistress who now lies beside him in an unmarked grave. Despite the sense of betrayal, she had continued to love her husband, but fears that she won't be able to wait until the guests start arriving because the bank is pressurising her into selling up. While fetching a shawl from Nathalie's office after he had left Mme Berliner at the gate in a downpour, Andrew sees that documents have already been drawn up. But Nathalie again chides him for trying to interfere and banishes him from her presence.

Undaunted, Andrew helps Manon draft a letter to her errant boyfriend and keeps trying to matchmake Philippe and Odile, whose dread of the cellar had caused her to faint while choosing wines for the Wards. She fears the worst when Andrew falls from a ladder and spends a fortnight in a coma. But he recovers to learn that Nathalie is about to sign the sale papers and he uses Philippes gun to scare off the estate agents. Moreover, the pair break into Mme Berliner's townhouse to recover the ring that Nathalie had sold to her for quick cash.

With Mephisto turning out to be an expectant mother, the household prepares for Christmas. The Wards come to confirm the hotel plans, with Odile's cooking being flagged as a key selling point. But they also bring Andrew's daughter from Australia, as his probation period ends and he seems set to stay on with his new family.

If one can overlook John Malkovich's dreadful French, there is much to enjoy in this throwback dramedy. But it's impossible to forget that this was the wonderful Émilie Dequenne's final film before she died in March 2025 at the tragically early age of 43. She is typically authentic, as the cook keeping the chateau going, although Legardinier forgets to explain her antipathy towards the gamekeeper, who couldn't be any more different from the envious Édouard Schumacher (Gaston Modot) in Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939) or the lusty Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc'h) in Pascale Ferran's Lady Chatterley (2006).

This romantic subplot is somewhat underdone, while the hints at Nathalie and Andrew coming to an understanding over a shared insight into loss and a love of classical music feel more like a tease than a possibility. Legardinier and co-scenarist Christel Henon (who is very funny in the burglary scene, as Mme Berliner believes she's being robbed by alien zombies) also fail to provide an explanation for Andrew's estrangement from his daughter. They also sell Manon's storyline short, while the idea that Odile wouldn't know the gender of her cat is faintly preposterous.

Nevertheless, there is a palpable rapport between the ensemble members, while the setting couldn't be more enchanting. Moreover, the first-time director takes a risk with a couple of slapstick passages, as Andrew dons a wig and lipstick to teach Philippe how to converse with Odile before the pair adopt bizarre disguises to recover Nathalie's prized ring.

Such episodes have baffled certain critics, who have dismissed this as a misfire in berating Malkovich for his over-deliberate delivery style. But Ardant and Dequenne more than atone, alongside the scene-stealing feline who has everyone dancing attendance.

A NIGHT LIKE THIS.

Why on earth would anyone release a film set during the festive period in the first week of autumn? Side-stepping this poser, there's plenty to like about Liam Calvert's debut feature, as it puts a queer spin on the format that Richard Linklater perfected three decades ago in Before Sunrise (1995). Frustratingly, though, there's also a good deal to underwhelm.

On Christmas Eve, Lukas (Jack Brett Anderson) is contemplating jumping off a London bridge when he has second thoughts. He wanders into a bar called Take Courage and is nursing a pint when Oliver (Alexander Lincoln) blunders in and steals it. A gay German actor, who has just started working in a café while waiting for news on a major audition, Lukas is dismayed when he bumps into Oliver on the top deck of his bus home. Carrying a guitar and eager to share his life story, Oliver confides that he is a nightclub owner who is hoping that his late father has left him enough in his will to pay off some debts.

Against his better judgement, Lukas agrees to get off the bus and accompany Oliver to his favourite jazz club. As they chat, Oliver gets a text informing him that his father has left his money to his trophy wife and he bolts into the gents to snort a line of cocaine in order to overcome a panic attack. Back at the table, he wonders whether it's okay to do something bad to bring about something good before urging Lukas to talk about himself. He's not far into an anecdote about his first day as a barista when Oliver interrupts to tell him the story of King Ferdinand of Naples, who ordered his crew to unleash the cannon against a foe only to be informed that their ship didn't have any guns.

Explaining the message that you need to back up a boast, Oliver suggests that the forge a pact to stay together until 8am and treat each other as honest strangers who will listen and not judge in the knowledge that they will never meet again. Over chips, Lukas agrees and they wander into the night, with Oliver telling a story about busking in the fog when someone dropped a pound coin on the pavement and he had the eerie feeling it had been his recently deceased father trying to reassure him.

Having been chased for mocking a gym bunny through the window, the duo run into Daniel (Jimmy Ericson), a Scouse scally who bums a smoke and tells them how he ended up on the streets. He follows Oliver and Lukas to a country club, where Emma (Beth Rylance) informs them that the shutters will come down for good at the end of the night. Lukas urges Oliver to play a number on stage and gnarled owner, John (David Bradley), nods in assent after Oliver recognises a reference to John Denver's `Take Me Home, Country Roads' behind the bar.

Oliver's song goes down so well that they're invited to stay for a drink. John laments that life is brutish and short, although Daniel scoffs that they all live in a world of fairytales and lullabies. They concur that love enables one to live forever by passing a spark on to someone else. But Oliver's sense of benevolence soon dissipates when he realises that Daniel has absconded with his wallet.

Undaunted, he takes Lukas to a silent disco and they dance among the people swaying to the music on their headsets. Suddenly, they kiss passionately and decide to go back to Oliver's place to watch Ron Underwood's Tremors (1990) on DVD. He insists on making a detour, however, and Lukas feels uneasy when he sees Oliver berating a woman on her doorstep.

Wandering into a café after Lukas expresses his disquiet, Oliver explains that he ran into debt after agreeing to let minors into his club and had run into debt because of drug dealers and a protection racket. He had hoped to persuade his stepmother to bail him out, but she had refused. Feeling that he also has to come clean, Lukas reveals that he has already had his big audition and that he had slept with the director and felt humiliated at the way he had been used.

At that moment, Daniel bursts into the café being pursued by an angry drunk (Kane Surry) who had caught him trying to steal his wallet. Lukas tries to intervene, only to be subjected to a torrent of abuse. Remaining calm, he tells the stranger the tale of King Ferdinand before punching him hard in the face and scarpering. They take Daniel to casualty because his nose has been broken, but he doesn't want to stay in case people start asking awkward questions.

Lukas is offended when Daniel uses a homophobic slur, but Oliver gives the teenage Liverpudlian his jacket to keep warm and they trade advice before parting ways. Oliver finds Lukas on the bridge and tells him off for making him worry. They stroll until 8am, when Lukas leaves to start work. Oliver encourages him not to shut himself in, as he turns to go. But he soon returns to remind Lukas that life is a miracle that should be treasured and shared.

Liam Calvert was clearly operating on a low budget and this possibly influenced his decision to make such conservative use of the camera that he leaves cinematographer-cum-editor Oliver Bury with little option but to rely on a rigid shot-reverse-shot pattern. Nevertheless, there's no excuse for the fact that this is a very white Christmas, indeed, in our supposedly bustlingly diverse capital.

This grumble also extends to the problems facing the protagonists, who have it much easier than the displaced Daniel or the hundreds of other unseens who would have been on the London streets during the course of Oliver and Lukas's peregrinations. Admittedly, they are at defining crossroads, but neither really experiences a dark night of the soul, even though the mercurial Lukas begins it with vague thoughts of ending it all after being grotesquely abused. He experiences some casual homophobia and bilious racism, but the root of his despair is isolation, as he's a long way from home in a business in which identity and self-worth are heavily dependent upon the opinion of others.

The garrulously over-sharing Oliver is less concerned by how people see him, as he has seemingly been living a self-centred existence with little thought for the consequences of his actions. He might take the lead in this melanchlic/merry dance, but he is the one with the most growing up to do and still has sizeable problems to solve, even though he winds up in a better place to deal with them.

Screenwriter Diego Scerrati leaves it up to the viewer to decide where Oliver and Lukas's relationship will go. But much of his dialogue is awkwardly on the nose and stiltedly expository. Jack Brett Anderson and Alexander Lincoln do well to give such passages existential heft and make them sound eavesdroppedly conversational. But the verbosity is hard to overlook, especially as Calvert could have lightened the load by opting to show more and tell less. But we've all yapped too much while trying to make a good impression, and, thus, for all its flaws, though, this genial and sincere entry in the Christmas Carol canon might be cut some slack.

DEAD OF WINTER.

Almost two decades have passed since Matthew MacFadyen headlined Middletown (2006), Brian Kirk's trenchant treatise on the divisive role of religion in Northern Ireland. For much of the intervening period, the Amagh native has focussed on episode television, with a BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations (2011) to his credit, along with contributions to The Tudors, Murphy's Law, Luther, Game of Thrones. and Day of the Jackal. Now, following 21 Bridges (2019), Kirk has released his third feature, Dead of Winter.

Setting out to fulfil her late husband Karl's last wish to have his ashes scattered at the place where they had their first date, Barb Sorenson (Emma Thompson) leaves their bait and tackle shop closed and heads off towards Lake Hilda in northern Minnesota. She makes it through a snowstorm on the highway, but loses her way in the backwoods and stops to ask for directions. Wrapped up against the cold, the heavily bearded man (who is surprised to see anyone in the wilds in such inclement weather) grudgingly indicates the way and dismisses a patch of blood on the path with the mumbled word, `Deer.'

As she unpacks her ice-fishing equipment, Barb hears a gunshot and hides behind the car in time to see the man from the house dragging a young woman back through the woods. As the back wheel sticks in the snow and she can't get a signal, Barb wonders how she can help the woman in distress. Picking her way through the trees, she creeps up to the house and sees the victim bound and gagged in the cellar. Writing backwards in the frost on the window, Barb promises to return and rescue the captive. But she drops a mitten in beating a retreat and it's found by the man's wife, who is furious with him for not having been more vigilant. Sucking on Fentanyl lollipops, she also spots the mirror writing and orders her spouse to fetch his rifle, as they need to eliminate Barb in order to complete their mission.

Having scuttled back through the woods, Barb has set up her ice cabin on the lake and the couple venture towards it. They find it empty and Barb makes a bolt for the cabin when the man falls through the ice hole she had cut and his wife has to save him. Although she can remove the gag and learn that Leah (Laurel Marsden) had been abducted at the end of her shift at the local pharmacy, Barb can't remove the shackles. She leaves the taps on to flood the house so that the couple won't be able to stay and slips away. However, she is winged in the arm and has to place snow on the wound to clean and staunch it. As she winces, Barb notices that she's lost her engagement ring and flashback shows Karl (Cúán Hosty-Blaney) proposing to Barb (Gaia Wise) after they had spent their first date on the ice together.

Returning to the house with her husband, who is suffering from hypothermia, the woman is furious to see that Barb has sabotaged their nest and goes in search of her. But Barb has doubled back, armed with the man's dropped gun. She breaks into the house and finds thread in the medicine cupboard and uses a fish hook to sew up the bullet hole in her arm.

Barb also uses the couple's CB radio to call for help and gets through to a couple of hunters. The man creeps up on her, however, and she has to bury a hatchet in his foot to floor him. Shivering, he tries to explain that he's not a bad person, as he is helping his wife, who is dying from a rare form of cancer and has got it into her head that she can use Leah (who has previously attempted suicide) for parts for a vital operation by a dodgy doctor she has found online. Barb takes pity on the fellow and sends him to hospital in the car, on the proviso he calls the cops to stop his wife.

Before driving off, the husband returns Barb's ring, which he had found on the ice. However, he doesn't get far on the road, as he runs into his wife, who accuses him of treachery. As Barb thinks back to the pain of losing a child and not being able to have any more, she blows up her truck on the ice to show the hunters (Brian F. O'Byrne and Dalton Leeb) where she is in the snowy wilderness. They insist on taking Barb's gun, as they have no reason to trust her. But they agree to go to the house, where they are ambushed by the woman who has left her dead husband's corpse in the front seat of his car.

Unarmed and desperate to get away, Barb is captured when the woman causes an outhouse roof to collapse on top of her after Barb manages to wound her in the leg. Waking from a sad dream about Karl (Paul Hamilton) dying, Barb finds herself manacled in the cellar with Leah. Kicking off her boots, she manages to knock the key off a shelf, but she is caught at the coal chute by the woman, whose patience is wearing thin.

Before he died, her husband had set up a tented operating theatre on the ice and Barb and Leah are taken there at gunpoint. The former is ordered to tie the latter down, while the woman traces on Leah's torso where she needs to make an incision. As the tent is lit by storm lanterns, Barb manages to start a fire and slips Leah a blade so she can cut herself free, while she fights the woman. After a titanic struggle over a gun on the ice, Barb deposits the woman in the ice hole and jumps in after her to ensure she can't get out. As she expires, Barb thinks back on her first kiss with Karl and a small smile plays on her frozen lips.

There's clearly no doubt that Emma Thompson has seen Joel and Ethan Coen's Fargo (1996), as she spends much of this snowbound Minnesota thriller trying not to sound too much like Frances McDormand's Marge Gunderson. She might apologise for the mildest of cuss words, but Barb is also a redoubtable and resourceful woman and, for all her remorseless determination, Judy Greer's dying psycho simply can't shake her off. The purple woman (as she's called in the credit) might be going through a life or death crisis, but she fails to heed the moral of the story: never come between a devoted wife and her husband's last request.

Although its premise is whoppingly far-fetched and studded with moments of duh-fuelled folly that erode Barb's gumptionality, Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb's screenplay keeps things relatively simple and director Kirk follows suit in his use of Christopher Ross's camera. The flashbacks - in which the younger Barb is played by Thompson's daughter, Galia Wise - feel shoehorned and slacken the tension. But they do allow Thompson both to show a softer side and justify her final plunge into the icy depths, as she would rather stay in a meaningful place with Karl than keep struggling on alone waiting for an inevitable end with no one to bring her back to Lake Hilda.

Greer has her own twisted reasons, but her desperation rather goes unexplored, as she is depicted as deluded rather than dread-filled. She plays the patchily written part against type with considerable skill, but this is very much Thompson's picture, as she continues to expand her range while retaining that glint of sly wit that characterises her best work. Maybe it's time someone (perhaps Thompson herself?) wrote a two-hander for her and McDormand?

THE STORY OF SKIDS: SCOTLAND'S NUMBER 1 PUNK BAND.

When not producing art for his Illuminati Neon brand or celebrating superbikes, Mark Sloper is making music documentaries. In addition to directing The Beatles: Made on Merseyside (2009), John Lennon: Love Is All You Need (2010), and Billy Fury: The Sound of Fury (2015), he also executive produced Sonia Anderson's Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World (2016). However, it's his credits on Sid! By Those Who Really Knew Him (2009) and Punk `76 (2013) that make him the ideal director for The Story of Skids: Scotland's Number 1 Punk Band.

Growing up in the 1960s in the tough Fife mining village of Ballingry, Richard Jobson was taught about outsider music by his older brother, Francis. He introduced him to Jobson's ultimate hero, Iggy Pop, and a desire to own a pair of leather trousers took Jobson to London in 1977, on the back of a motorbike in the snow. He met Sid Vicious at Malcolm McLaren's Sex shop and was invited to watch him play drums with Siouxsie and the Banshees at a gig in Oxford Street.

Open in his dislike for Nancy Spungen and John Lydon, Jobson places it on the record that he was there at the beginning of punk, albeit in a minor role. Returning to Dunfermline, he met Stuart Adamson at a Be-Bop Deluxe gig and was invited to audition to be the singer of a new band at Cowdenbeath Working Men's Club. Menacing the competition into scarpering, Jobson sang Iggy's `I Wanna Be Your Dog' and fronted Skids at their first gig at the Bellville Hotel in August 1977 because Adamson had no problem with an onlooker's verdict that Jobson couldn't sing or dance.

The night ended in a mass brawl, as the largely biker audience didn't like punks. Worse followed when they were silenced without playing a note at an outdoor benefit for Chilean refugees when Adamson harangued the Communist organisers and the band's biker minders waded in. Jobson was arrested, but unbowed and he kept playing between working in a factory and seeing the likes of The Damned, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash when they ventured north of the border.

Eventually, Skids were voted the Number One punk band in Scotland and Jobson accepts his mother's caveat that they were also the only one. They played Dunfermline's Kinema Ballroom and toured with The Stranglers, who were nurturing and even helped the school age Jobson get round the education law by listing Hugh Cornwell as his teacher on the road.

When not broadening his reading horizons, Jobson was writing poetry in Dunfermline Library and Adamson adapted some of his ideas for the tracks on the debut album, Scared to Dance, in February 1979. He explains the influence of the Great War Poets on his writing and why he would never write `boy/girl' songs when the trauma of friends serving in the British Army in Northern Ireland could inspire songs like `Into the Valley', `The Saints Are Coming', and `Working For the Yankee Dollar'.

Revealing that he gets regular rights requests for the first two tracks, Jobson explains that the second was written about an 18 year-old pal who was killed in Ulster and left a child he's never get to know. He is proud of the 2006 U2/Green Day cover version, but also pays tribute to Adamson's guitar sound and the social realist nature of his lyrics on songs like `Charles'. This was picked up by John Peel and Jobson recalls the excitement of hearing when they were sharing a freezing Cowdenbeath bedsit with bassist Bill Simpson.

Jobson also notes how Adamson protected him over his epilepsy and how they had debuted on Top of the Pops hours after he had had a seizure. Self-deprecatingly comparing low-key fan worship with on-street abuse, Jobson goes on to mock the single's B-side, `TV Stars', and namechecks Kenny Dalglish in lamenting that he had written a song about characters on Coronation Street and Crossroads. He is less candid about the Aryan glorification furore that erupted over the original cover of the Days in Europa album, which had been rush-released and riffed on issues in inter-war Germany. But he tells amusing stories about the impact that new drummer, Rusty Egan, had on the Skids sound and how his forthright, opinionated views weren't always appreciated by Adamson or producer, Bill Nelson.

Harbouring dark thoughts from a troubled youth, Adamson frequently quit the band, only to return days later. At the end of The Absolute Games sessions (1980), however, he walked away after a Hammersmith Odeon gig and Joy (1982) was recorded without him, as he formed Big Country. Jobson admits it wasn't his best work, but pleads the distraction of recording spoken word albums and publishing poetry books. Just as he was ready to explore pastures new, however, Russell Webb and John McGeoch persuaded him to join them in The Armoury Show.

Jobson wanted to do something a bit artier than rock`n'roll and shifting audience tastes and tensions over McGeoch's lifestyle meant the project was destined to be short-lived. He mourns McGeoch's early death and places the blame squarely on John Lydon firing him from Public Image Ltd, denouncing him for being `not one of life's good guys'. However, he doesn't regret not being part of Big Country, who he damns with faint praise for being successful in spite of lacking the artiness that he had contributed to Skids.

Visiting younger brother, Brian, at the Old Town Barber Club in Dunfermline, Jobson takes us through some of the memorabilia on the wall, including a picture of his footballing brother, John, shaking hands with George Best after a game between Meadowbank Thistle and Hibernian. However, by the 1990s, Jobson was part of the London scene and he recalls presenting 01 For London with Paula Yates before fronting The Movie Show and Movietalk for Sky. It was after a screening that he heard that Adamson had killed himself in 2001 and he is sad that he found it so hard to find a suitable avenue for his talents and took to drinking, instead.

In 2003, Jobson directed 16 Years of Alcohol from his semi-autobiographical novel. It was well received, but the verdicts have been mixed for subsequent offerings: The Purifiers (2004). A Woman in Winter (2006), New Town Killers (2008), The Somnambulists (2012), and Wayland's Song (2013). He also produced the anthology, Tube Tales (1999), and co-wrote Damian O'Donnell's Heartlands (2003), with Michael Sheen. Joking that his worst pictures have made the most money, Jobson insists he's often led a hand-to-mouth existence.

But he's always been a natural storyteller and his 2023 novel, The Kreuzberg Sonata, is based on his time in Berlin in the late 1970s. However, he has reformed Skids to make a new album, Destination Düsseldorf (2023), which was inspired by the life and work of artist Joseph Beuys. He delights in the fact that the fans of Fortuna Düsseldorf have seized upon the title track on the terraces, but feels it will be the band's swan song - which makes it all the more peculiar that he makes no reference to its predecessors, Burning Cities (2018), Peaceful Times (2019), and Songs From a Haunted Ballroom (2021).

A poignant moment shows Skids doing an acoustic set at Dunfermline Abbey (the burial place of Robert the Bruce) and Jobson ponders the thrill of playing live and connecting with people reliving a moment from their youth or discovering Skids for the first time.

The best rockumentaries provide a balance between insider insight and external analysis. Accommodating the latter tends to reduce the time available for juicily delicious anecdotes and it would be a shame to miss out on some of Richard Jobson's more indiscreet utterances. But the lack of objective appraisal reduces this highly selective overview to a puff piece that even allows Sloper the chance to pretend it's a tribute to Skids, when it's really a `what I did next' exercise in self-mythologising by a sixtysomething in a St Pauli FC skull and crossbones t-shirt designed to reinforce his anti-establishment credentials.

Don't misunderstand. Jobson is a fascinating character and it's a pleasure to spend 90 minutes with him reminiscing and dissing. As a practiced broadcaster, he knows precisely how to pitch his talking-head spiels, while he clearly relishes conducting the guided tour around Scotland's Ancient Capital. But we only ever get one perspective - because Jobson's barber brother and the man in the leather jacket shop struggling to get a word in edgeways don't really count as incisive commentators - and, as The Guardian once opined, Jobson is `someone not lacking in self-importance'.

The absence of any bandmates leaves countless questions hanging, as do the gaps in Jobson's discography and film credits. Obviously, no one is expecting completism, but a third of the Skids's recording career and the bulk of Jobson's directorial activity are left unaccounted for, along with his poetry albums and his prose writing. He is also allowed to slalom through difficult terrain, particularly where Stuart Adamson is concerned, while the complete omission of the Days in Europa scandal (which resulted in the original cover being withdrawn) smacks of airbrushing.

Sloper also seems to struggle for archive material, either because it doesn't exist or because the rights are beyond his budget. Clips of Jobson performing iconic tracks live with the latest incarnation of his combo are fine, but they don't offer the same energy rush of grungy footage from back in the day. Snatches of original recordings are also at a premium, although we get to see plenty of clips from Jobson's various TV excursions. Evidently, they play a key role in his evolution as a media personality. But most Skids fans would probably have preferred the focus of this missed opportunity to have been a little more music-centric.