Parky At the Pictures (5/6/2026)

(Reviews of Enzo; Köln 75; Bonnie & Clive;; and Acting)

ENZO.

Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo go back a long way. Having edited Cantet's Les Sanguinaires (1997) and Human Resources (1999), Campillo served as his co-writer/editor on Time Out (2001), Heading South (2005), The Class (2006), and Foxfire (2012) before he edited Return to Ithaca (2014) and co-wrote The Workshop (2017). So, when the cancer that killed him prevented Cantet from starting work on Nino, it was natural that his co-scenarist would complete a picture that opens with two distinctive credits, `A film by Laurent Cantet' and `Directed by Robin Campillo'.

Sixteen year-old Nino (Eloy Pohu) is serving an apprenticeship on a Marseille building site. His hands have blistered and he's forever being badgered for being slow by his workmates. Over lunch, he's teased by a couple of Ukrainians, Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi) and Miroslav (Vladyslav Holyk), when the former shows off pictures of his latest conquest. But, when the client sees him making a mess of some bricklaying, boss Corelli (Philippe Petit) insists on driving Enzo home to speak to his parents. Much to his surprise, however, he discovers that Enzo lives in a large house with a seaview and a private pool, where his engineer mother, Marion (Élodie Bouchez), and maths teacher father, Paolo (Pierfrancesco Favino), are lounging when they arrive. They admit to being nonplussed at their son taking a non-academic option, but they are happy for him to make his own choices and send Corelli away with a reassurance that Enzo will try harder in future.

As older brother Victor (Nathan Japy) comes home with his college pals, Enzo goes for a swim and lets his mother treat his blistered palms. Over supper, Paolo nags him about going to back into education or entrolling at art school, as his sketches reveal talent. But he sees no point in wasting time learning when he would rather be working because buildings will last longer than anything else he might achieve. Marion finds his worldview dispiriting, but Enzo refuses to listen, as he doesn't want to end up like his bourgeois parents, with their wealth and comfort. That said, he takes another dip after everyone goes to bed and Paolo gets up to watch him with paternal concern.

Giving Enzo a lift to work, Marion reminds him to ask about holidays, so she can book a villa near Naples. He had enjoyed it there before and she ticks him off for showing little enthusiasm. She also hesitates when he enquires how much she and Paolo earn. While mixing cement, he overhears the Ukrainians arguing and Miroslav informs him that Vlad is angry because they are being pressurised to return home to fight against Russia. Over lunch, Enzo is ribbed about his swanky home. Vlad insists he should invite them all over and snorts when the teenager claims he would need permission.

Following Vlad when he goes for a smoke, Enzo is puzzled when he asks why he's working on a building site when his folks are rich, as he would use their money to open a restaurant or let him get away with doing nothing. He asks why he's not going back to Kyiv, when his brother is fighting, and Vlad snaps back that he refuses to die because of a bastard like Putin. When Enzo wonders whether he's just scared, Vlad sneers that Miroslav can join up if he wants to, but he feels himself to be French now and doesn't feel dutybound.

The Ukrainians invite Enzo to join them for pizza and a night clubbing. He follows their car on a moped and looks at Miroslav's photos while Vlad showers. They lend him some clothes so he looks old enough to get past the bouncer and they knock back vodka while dancing around the apartment. Feeling good (perhaps because Vlad buttoned up his shirt and told him he looks handsome), Enzo is denied entry at the club and goes to the beach by himself. When he gets home, he finds his father on the sofa waiting for him. Explaining where he's been, Enzo insists Paolo should be happy for him because he's had the best night of his life and he is taken aback when he's enveloped in a hug because Paolo realises how young and naive he still is.

He is still feeling protective when the family goes to the beach with friends. As they watch the kids swim, Paolo claims he feels like he's watching Enzo drown in front of him because he can't make him see how important it is to have a good start in life and avoid bad decisions that can impact on his future. Marion reminds him that Enzo is likely to rebel the more he tries to guide him and Paolo bristles when his friend suggests that he is frustrated because Enzo doesn't want to be just like him. He emphasises that he is fine with him being independent, but he wishes he could make him realise that he is trying to help him for his own good.

After a day at technical college, Enzo collects Amina (Malou Khebizi) from school and they go back to his place because there's no one home. She admires his drawings and offers to pose for him, but he claims to prefer statues because he doesn't want to make someone sit still for hours on end. Shyly, he tells her she's beautiful and they kiss while swimming in the pool in their underwear. As they're taking a selfie, however, Marion comes home and Amina beats an embarrassed retreat, as much because she is fine with them being alone when her parents would have been furious. Enzo barks at his mother for inviting Amina to supper, as if to suggest that he would rather have boundaries rather than being raised in such a relaxed atmosphere.

Retreating to his room, Enzo watches videos of Ukrainians at the front. He tries to imagine what it would be like for Vlad and Misoslav and realises that one kid isn't much older than he is. Next day, Vlad guides his trowel hand as he does some plastering and offers him the chance to make some easy money with a one-off weekend job. Vlad asks if he isn't spending the day with his girlfriend and nods admiringly when Enzo shows him Amina's picture. However, he's embarrassed when Enzo insists he reciprocates and he shows him a clip of him lounging in bed with the girl he had picked up at the nightclub.

Following a row with Paolo about a postponed diving weekend, Enzo asks Vlad if he can crash in Miroslav's bed. Despite having admitted to punching his own father, Vlad urges Enzo to pick up when Paolo calls because it's a nice thing to have a concerned family. When he refuses, Vlad answers when he's in the shower and he reassures Paolo that his son's safe. Over dinner, Enzo tells Vlad that he would cheerfully follow him back to Ukraine because he wouldn't be afraid if he was around. Bemused why he would want to put himself in danger, Vlad gives the boy a watchful look, as the last thing he needs is a bromance.

Turning over sharply when Enzo wakes him by touching his chest hair, Vlad says nothing about the incident when they start tiling a swimming pool. With cicadas buzzing loudly, he lets Enzo sleep when he dozes off at lunchtime and insists on driving him home. When he attempts to touch his hand after he pulls up outside the gate, Vlad orders him to back off, as nothing is going to happen. Seeing the teenage skulk off, Vlad sneaks through the gate and sees the size of the house and realises how isolated Enzo is when he sits in his room after being confronted by his parents.

At work on Monday, Enzo gives Vlad a wide berth. When he comes to give him his money, he asks why he's being so odd. Enzo refuses the cash and lashes out when Vlad tries to put it in his pocket. Clinging on in a part-hug, part-wrestling hold. Enzo makes Vlad feel so uneasy that he dumps him on a pile of cement bags. The boy flees and Misolav berates Vlad for making a scene.

Arriving home, Enzo learns that Victor has secured a university place in Paris and he slips away from the impromptu party. Paolo comes to check on him and notices the bruise on his shoulder, but Enzo insists he's fine. He joins the others on the dance floor and puts his forehead on his brother's. However, he pushes too hard and Victor gets cross with him when he starts pawing a girl with his t-shirt off. Enzo pulls the replica pistol he has stolen from Miroslav and Victor barges him into the pool. Paolo drags him out and is trying to coerce Enzo into saying what's bugging him when he declares that he doesn't belong here because everyone is too comfortable and complacent to see how frightening life is. Paolo tries to contradict him, but Enzo blurts out that Vlad is his lover. Marion arrives in time to stop Paolo from freaking out about his underage son being abused by coaxing Enzo into telling the truth. She asks why he lied before leading him through the party to sleep it off.

Back at work, Enzo learns that Vlad and Miroslav are returning to the Ukraine. He avoids Vlad's guilty look and climbs up to the roof to lower down some tar rolls. Returning to collect another load, Vlad sees Enzo turn round and fall backwards so that he lands on his back on some palettes. Corelli rushes over and asks if anyone saw what happened, but Vlad edges away because he can't deal with Enzo's intensity.

Waking in hospital, he finds Paolo at his bedside. He reassures him that he has only broken his wrist and he pats his arm, as Marion breezes in to open the blinds. The brightness matches to the Italian sunshine, as the family explore some ruins. Enzo gets a call from Vlad. He's outside Kherson and jokes that he's got a loopy Frenchman with him from Avignon. With shells exploding in the background, Vlad admits to being scared. Moreover, he confides that he was pleased that Enzo loved him. Distracted by his father calling for him, Enzo turns his head, only to realise that he's been cut off.

Ever since The Class, Cantet and Campillo have explored the options open to young people and the reasons why they don't always do what's expected of them. In the case of Enzo, a combination of class consciousness, sexual ambivalence, and socio-global anxiety causes him to reject his cosy domestic situation and seek a place in the world that he has forged for himself rather than one that has been arranged for him by doting parents who have come to take their affluence and privilege for granted. Immature and impetuous, Enzo might not be as bright as his brother and can't articulate why he's kicking out, but he's more sensitive and open to experience, even if he's often driven more by confusion than conviction.

Newcomer Eloy Pohu plays the teenager resisting well-adjustment as though he's still getting used to his new physique and thought processes. He face is often impassively quizzical, while his mien is ungainly and his mood veers towards the sullen end of angst-ridden. Far from being a natural rebel, the introverted, but volatile Enzo learns the ropes as he blunders along, only ever considering the feelings of others when they have to explain how inappropriate his actions have been. His father can't understand why he would want to reject the opportunities he's been presented with, while his mother seems unable to see that he needs direction not latitude. In many ways, Vlad (who is played with brittle cockiness by Maksym Slivinskyi, who is himself a construction worker) is the clumsy and contradictory Enzo's mirror image, as he is also reluctant to do what's expected of him, albeit for markedly different reasons. Victor and Miroslav are also counterparts, as they act as both a conscience and a source of guilty resentment.

Cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie captures both the homoerotic gaze and the brightness of the southern sunlight, while also showing how out of place Enzo seems, whether he's in the family's luxurious home, Vlad's cramped flat, or on the building site. Mélissa Artur Ponturo's production design is key in this regard, while sound designer Valérie Deloof often cocoons the action in cacophonous cicada whirring. As editor, Campillo is somewhat hamstrung by the fact that he, Cantet, and fellow screenwriter Gilles Marchand felt compelled to append an ending to a story that been happily drifting between quotidian incident and character insight. Many will recognise the concluding homage to Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By My Name (2017). But this feels a rather cornily obvious note on which to end a film that had convinced because of its authenticity, ambiguity, and unmistakable air of Cantetian humanism.

KÖLN 75.

New York-based director Ido Fluk made ripples with his first two features, Never Too Late (2011) and The Ticket (2016). His third, Köln 75, isn't likely to take the mainstream by storm. But this biopic marking the 50th anniversary of a fabled improvised piano recital is bound to delight the cognoscenti and send curious newcomers in search of the music of Keith Jarrett.

After a narrator tells us the film we are about to see is the equivalent to the scaffolding that supported Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, we get two false starts. The first sees Vera Brandes (Suzanne Wolff) being branded a disappointment by her father, Horst (Ulrich Tukur), on her 50th birthday, while the other has music journalist Mick Watts (Michael Chernus) naming The Cramps and Bob Dylan among his favourite false start tracks.

Then, we flashback to 1973, as 16 year-old Vera (Mala Emde), goes to see Ronnie Scott (Daniel Betts) play in a Cologne ice cream parlour with her friend, Isa (Shirin Lilly Eissa). He asks her to book him a German tour because he can't imagine anyone turning her down and she brushes up her English and practices her phone technique before making calls from the line in her father's dental surgery. Delighted to arrange her first gig, Vera soon finds herself in her element and rents an office, where she does drugs with Isa, classmate Oliver (Leon Blohm), and older boyfriend Jan (Enno Trebs).

She's also hiding what she's doing from her father and mother, Ilse (Jördis Triebel). But brother Fritz (Leo Meier) latches on to her and Vera gives him a job helping her put up posters in order to buy his silence. She's also still at school, even though she's giving interviews to music reporters and spending weekends away to watch Miles Davis at a jazz festival in Berlin in 1974. It's here she meets Mike Watts and first sees pianist Keith Jarrett (John Magaro), who so blows her away that she recklessly arranges a gig at the Cologne Opera House. Needing a deposit of DM 10,000, she asks her parents just after they have seen her splashed across the front page of the local paper under a `jazz bunny' headline. Horst slaps her face and she runs away. But she refuses to back down and returns to accept an apology and demand a loan. However, Horst calls her a whore and vows never to give her a penny until she has failed and come begging for his help.

Dejected, Vera picks up a stranger in a bar, only for Fritz to barge in and beat him up. The fight is halted by Ilse, who has come to give her daughter the money she needs on the proviso that she becomes a dentist if she can't pay her back. This, of course, depends on Jarrett and, as the clock ticks into 1975, Watts leaves his performance in Lausanne to wander between backstage rooms to give a potted history of jazz improv, from the big band era to the age of free jazz. He asks the audience to try making something up on the spot and even leaves classical pianist Ana-Marija Markovina feeling stumped when he asks her to play without pre-written music.

Watts had come to Europe to interview Jarrett for Jazzworld, but the Lausanne show had exacerbated his back problems and Watts and record producer Manfred Eicher (Alexander Scheer) had to get him to a hospital before squeezing him into a small car to drive 500km overnight to Cologne (because they've cashed in the plane tickets Vera bought them). Eicher explains Jarrett's method of being open to the ambience when playing live, but refuses to let Watts use it in his piece. The same goes with the conversation that he has with Jarrett in the car about why he left Miles Davis's band and why he's doing gigs in Europe when he could be comfortable and appreciated in New York. After a narrow miss when Eicher falls asleep at the wheel, they take a break and Jarrett makes Watts stay silent while he listens to the birdsong and cowbells in a remote German field. Taking the wheel, Watts asks Jarrett if he ever worries about his family and he replies, `Every night.' But, when we see editor Gus Mailer (Corey Johnson) reading the article, Watts admits that the road segment was entirely made up.

We hook up with Vera again, as she meets Jarrett and Eicher to take them to the Opera House. They reject the piano on the stage for being too small and out of tune and Vera has to plead with minor office worker Sabine (Lea Draeger) to let her use the phones to ring around music shops and other venues to find the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand that Jarrett demands. When they track one down, however, the piano tuners refuse to let them wheel it over cobbles, as this would damage the instrument. Feeling desperate, as the production of Alban Berg's Lulu that will precede Jarrett's gig is about to start on the stage, Vera gets new strength when Fritz tells her to improvise and reveals that their parents will be in the audience, as her father wants to be there when she fails.

Convincing the tuners to work backstage during the opera, Vera goes to Jarrett's hotel room and pleads with him to save her. When he refuses she gets mad and goads him into agreeing to play. He's not pleased when he finds out that Eicher has arranged for the concert to be recorded, but he is broke and needs a good cut of the box office as much as Vera. While the sleep-deprived Jarrett prepares to go on, Vera heads into the streets with flyers to drum up trade, only for Isa to tell her that she show is sold out. Unable to watch, she slinks backstage and finds the piano Jarrett had requested under a cover. She bursts into laughing tears, as we see the tape machine turn ono and start recording what would become the biggest-selling solo jazz album in history.

We hear nothing of it, however (Nina Simone's cover of the Bee Gee classic `To Love Somebody' plays instead), as we return to Vera's birthday party, where she catches up with Horst to tell him that he had been a terrible father and that he had ultimately beaten himself because his taunts had only made her strong and determined enough to succeed. It's a good place to end, as captions tell us that Vera went on to form her own record label and keep jazz alive by releasing hundreds of albums and staging concerts galore. She's seen in a final shot with Mala Emde and Susanne Wolff demonstrating that she still can't whistle with her fingers (as she hadn't been able to do when Jan got into the fight with one one-night stand all those years before).

Playful and poignant, this is a lively biopic that cannily focusses on the machinations of the endlessly resourceful Eve Brandes to avoid having to pay for the rights to Keith Jarrett's music. The frequent breaches of the fourth wall are neatly done, with the pick being Mike Watts's jazz crash course, which flits between several rooms and when not filling the screen with the form's greatest hits. Channelling his inner Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs in Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), Michael Chernus makes a splendidly hangdog (and entirely fictitious) spare wheel, although the Green Book passage isn't as engaging as Vera's wheeler-dealing, which see Male Emde do more sprinting than Franka Potente in Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998). Her cohorts are rather sketchily drawn, while more might have been made of the domestic tensions between Ulrich Tukur's imposingly unpleasant paterfamilias and his wife and son. But Fluk gets it right in leaving Jarrett as an enigma, both on stage and off. John Magaro plays the scene in which Jarrett communes with nature particularly well and he looks very comfortable and connected at the keyboard.

Jens Harant's bustling cinematography and Anja Siemens's snare-sharp editing give the action its propulsive rhythms. Fluk incorporates the odd flight of fancy through the various montages (the best of which concerns handbills), but there's little sense of extemporisation in his direction (which is fine). He coaxes a wonderful performance out of Emde, even though she doesn't always manage to hide her excess dozen-or-so years on the teenage Vera. However, she ably captures the spirit of West German youth at a time when the country felt out of step with the rest of Europe and she certainly suits Ola Staszko's excellent costumes (kinky boots, mini-skirt, yellow cardigan, and shearling coat). As for the hour-long concert on 24 January 1975, you simply have to hear it in order for the magnitude of Vera's achievement to sink in and for the realisation to dawn that Jarrett couldn't have produced such a sublime performance on any other piano.

BONNIE & CLIVE.

According to his self-penned IMDB blurb, Mancunian Kevin Short has had quite a time of things. Having acted on stage and television and produced over 200 shows at the Edinburgh Festival, he turned his attention to film-making with the features Punk Strut: The Movie, Speed Love (both 2016), A Reel Life (2018), and Tom and His Zombie Wife (2021). Made in conjunction with cinematographer Kathryn S. Kraus for their K4K company, Bonnie & Clive is a Covid road movie with a song-filled soundtrack that had enough homemade honesty to get it over the numerous bumps between London and Land's End.

As a series of snapshots and a caption inform us that Bonnie (Eleanor May Blackburn) hails from Rochdale. She watches Clive (Michael Kodi Farrow) busking with his ukulele in a London park and decides she's found her man. It's two days before the start of a six-week Coronavirus lockdown and Bonnie needs someone to drive her camper van to Cornwall so that she can take care of her grandparents. In return for giving her a face mask, Bonnie buys Clive a kebab. However, her credit card is refused and they have to do a runner (although the homeless Clive atones by giving the kebab man the provisions he has just been given at a food bank).

Setting off on their adventure, the pair hit a snag when the engine starts to smoke. Fortunately, AWOL student Wilco (James Jip) shows them how to fix the leak with eggs, glue, and black pepper and they reward him with a ride to Stonehenge, which would help with his social anthropology studies. He's not been aboad long, however, before he finds the body of Bonnie's grandad (Kevin Short) in a cupboard. She explains that he had died after driving up to fetch her and she feels guiltily dutybound to return his body to grandma before lockdown begins.

Despite insisting that they are not a `we', Clive agrees to see her home. But they still stop off at Stonehenge, as Wilco has never seen it. Taking a break at a Dartmoor pub, Clive sings a song about the benefits of eating bananas before they press on to the Eden Project, where they take grandad on a tour in a wheelchair to give the van a chance to air out. Unfortunately, Bonnie and Clive have an argument and are barely on speaking terms while Wilco plays leapfrog over the Merry Maidens at St Buryan and pretends to surf atop Lanyon Quoit.

On arriving at Land's End, Wilco buys everyone tea and Bonnie and Clive kiss after resolving their problems. She urges him to return to play a gig on the cliff edge and he agrees. The boys carry grandad inside and Bonnie reveals that she's their paid carer and will have to keep explaing what happened to her grandmother, as she has dementia. With Clive and Wilco deciding to isolate in the van, they plan the Land's End gig and a few hippies come along to join in the chorus of `John and Yoko Days', as the scene fades and we are treated to some outtakes during the closing credits of the cast and crew having a ball making a film that jollies you along, in spite of its low-budget limitations and hokily charming flaws.

With much of the action taking place inside the camper, there's no escaping the three leads, as they do their darnedest to make the excruciating puns and leaden dialogue work. Luckily, they prove to be an endearing trio and even the cornball ukulele ditties written by Short and performed by Jason Kadji and Jenny Murray help the time pass as pleasantly as the scenery out of the windows.

It would be easy to dismiss this odyssey on account of its title alone. The characterisation is stick thin and there's a lot of padding around the core action. But Short and Kraus display a good deal of filmic nous and technical ingenuity in keeping things moving and amusing. Without getting one's hopes up too high, it would still be intriguing to see some of their earlier efforts.

ACTING.

Since making her feature bow with Hoover Street Revival (2003), Sophie Fiennes has produced a string of intriguing documentaries. She collaborated with Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek on The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006), and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2013), profiled German artist Anselm Kiefer in Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), and presented an unseen side of an American icon in Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017). Fiennes has also made a number of films about dance and recorded brother Ralph Fiennes reading T. S. Eliot in Four Quartets (2022). Now, in the 147-minute, Acting, she focusses on a theatre workshop on William Shakespeare's Macbeth that was conducted in the derelict Twyford Mansion by the Cheek By Jowl duo of Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod.

Four Macbeths - David Burnett, Orlando James, Jonathan Livingstone, and Ekow Quartey - and four Lady Macbeths - Grace Andrews, Amber James, Sophie Khan Levy, and Hannah Young - are initially invited to explore the space in which they are to work by Declan Donnellan (as Nick Ormerod watches on). Some are invited to deliver soliloquy passages, as Donnellan explains that he understands that it takes courage to expose oneself in this kind of format and hopes that he can help each actor gain a greater understanding of what it is they do (and how they do it).

In a session on Lady Macbeth hearing that Duncan is coming to stay, Donnellan breaks the text down to stress the energy of the verse. He explains how a shortage of time is a key Shakespearean theme and reminds his students not to get hooked up on the meaning of the verse (even though he thinks that is our natural way of thinking and that we use prose when speaking to save time by ensuring we're understood). Taking one pair aside, he explores the emotions Lady Macbeth experiences while reading her husband's letter about the three witches and delivering the `unsex me now' speech. At another time, he has Grace consider breathing patterns to deliver the speech, while Hannah is encouraged to show Lady Macbeth's conviction that she can pull off her audacious scheme of killing the king so her doubting husband can assume the throne and get away with it.

They move on to Macbeth's `If it were done' speech and how it needs to be phrased in order to convey his anxiety. David, Orlando, and Ekow give their best, with Donnellan chipping in to remind them about being authentic without making it obvious. He addresses their concerns with accessible advice relating to daily life and artistic integrity, while picking out places in the text to pause for breath and emphasis without seeming too actorly. It's a difficult process to distil for a review, as ideas are forever tumbling out alongside pearls of wisdom and it would be easy to dismiss it all as precious introspection. Yet the alchemy is clearly present and it's to the credit of the young actors that they not only sense it, but also open themselves up to be impacted by it.

Moving on, we reach the scene in which Lady Macbeth chides her husband for leaving the banquet and for deciding to call off their scheme. Sophie and Orlando are warned about overdoing the anger, while Ekow and Grace ponder the distance the scene takes place from where Duncan is actually sitting. Once again, Donnellan raises the point about the state of the couple's marriage and how Lady Macbeth wears the trousers (perhaps because her parents had warned her she was hitching herself to a loser). He also considers how many references to babies there are in the play and how the childlessness of the Macbeths shapes their relationship. When Amber and Orlando take their turn, Donnellan suggests she treats him like an encouraging mother to bolster his confidence by reinforcing her faith in him.

David attempts the dagger soliloquy and Donnellan tells him to speak to the audience not the blade. As he works through the text, he shows how Macbeth is trying to steel himself and convince the audience that he's a tough guy in control when he feels nothing of the sort. It's an interesting section, as Donnellan keeps jolting David into remembering he's performing for an audience who have to go along with him rather than simply living the character in the situation (a tricky assignment and, yet, one that is central to acting). The sequence also affirms how much detailed thought goes into the delivery of each line in order to make the most of Shakespeare's words, to be true to one's character, and to keep the audience in the story moment. That said, many will be surprised by his acerbic remarks about the performative reactions of the witnesses to the 9/11 assault on the World Trade Center (`who directed that?', he asks).

Grace is next seen in a corridor waiting for Ekow to finish killing the king. Much discussion centres on Lady Macbeth's emotions at being unnerved by the owl and then how appalled she is that Macbeth has failed to follow the plan and brought the daggers with him rather than leaving them to incriminate the grooms. They try to get into her mindset, as she listens to his description of the crime and again how she is the driving force of the pair. When Sophie and Orlando take their turn, Donnellan tries to help them with an anecdote about venturing into a filthy toilet on tour in Egypt that became pitch black when the door was closed, so you have no idea where things were or what could be touched without contamination. Amber and David put their own spin on the scene, with her being twitchily watchful and momentarily proud before she realises he had the daggers. He conveys Macbeth's fearful remorse and it's fascinating to see how differently each group plays the scene (although Jonathan and Hannah are not shown, with the former being very much a bystander for much of the film).

After guiding Ekow through Macbeth's tirade against Banquo, Donnellan joins Sophie and Orlando for Lady Macbeth ticking off her husband for not revelling in his new status and acting like a king. Ekow and Grace have a go, with Donnellan urginig the former to show more resentment to the woman he blames for ruining his life. Thence, we pass on to the `out, damn spot' speech, but no comment is needed, as Hannah nails it. Amusingly, Fiennes follows it with shots of rain cascading in through holes in the roof.

After Donnellan reminds the chaps that they are not being paid to tell the truth (indeed, he jokes that if someone insists that's what acting is about, they should grab their coats and flee) Orlando does the `tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow' speech and leaves us with the idea of poor actors strutting their hour upon the stage and tales being told by idiots that are filled with sound and fury, yet signify nothing. As John Cleese says at the end of Eric Idle's `Galaxy Song' in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983): `Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Photographed in evocative monochrome in a detached manner that invites comparison with the style of Frederick Wiseman, this would probably prompt similar levels of contemplation at half the length. But time never hangs heavy, as there is sufficient divergence in approach in even the most repeated sequences. The actors are willing and receptive and also rather brave for agreeing to be filmed in such a vulnerable situation. Clearly, some possess more talent and insight than others. But this is very much Declan Donnellan's showcase and he has the personality and the expertise (in the text, acting technique, and human nature) to make holding centre stage from the wings look deceptively easy.