At the World Cinema Showcase, three’s a crowd. By DAVID LEVINSON.

The Squid and the Whale – Noah Baumbach’s semi-autobiographical account of his parents’ divorce – was a rarity: High-witted and heartfelt, it dabbled in warm brownstone nostalgia, all the while remaining heedful of its chosen milieu (puffy Brooklyn intellectuals). Wrenched free, however, from the prism of nostalgia that colored that film, Baumbach’s latest feature, Margot at the Wedding, is a much more acerbic affair: Like Solondz-by-way-of-Bergman, it squeezes shlock relevations and conversational grit (masturbation; pedophilia) out of the cabin-fever scenario of a hyper-controlling writer, Margot (Nicole Kidman), returning home for the sake of her sister’s wedding. As the movie’s axis-of-evil, Kidman is an iceberg of sculpted malaise – coolly panning all those around her. Yet, for all the trauma of her social flubs (declaring a child to be “retarded”; outing her sister’s hidden pregnancy), there’s almost no vicarious pleasure to be reaped as a viewer: Never witty or charistmatic, Margot painfully exploits the way our sense of selfhood tends to become lodged in others – most obviously in her emasculation of her sensitive young son, Claude (Zane Paris). All of which should really count for something in a landscape at the mercy of alluring ciphers waving pneumatic bolt-guns. But unlike her male forerunner – Jeff Daniel’s pompous misogynist in The Squid and the Whale –, Margot neither deflects easily into caricature, nor is gifted enough context to become penetrable; as such, she hangs in dead air – just another piece in Baumbach’s stilted jigsaw of middle-age.

At the World Cinema Showcase, Julian Schnabel’s liberating eye. By DARREN BEVAN.

THERE’s no doubt the effort which went into writing Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, but an adaptation of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (to give it its English title) was always going to have its work cut out for it. It’s the tale of French Elle editor Jean Dominique Bauby (Matthieu Amalric), aka Jean-do. Aged just 43 years old, he suffered a massive unexpected stroke which left him completely paralysed – and only the ability to blink his left eye. To complicate matters he’s diagnosed with a very rare condition, known as ‘Locked-in Syndrome’ which hitherto, has never been treated before. So to try and facilitate a return to some semblance of health and civilisation, therapists such as speech therapist Henriette (played by Marie Josee Croze) are employed to work with him. His ultimate method of communication is an alphabet verbally read out by therapists and a blink used to choose a letter – a painful way to communicate and one which ultimately, despite the pain of being deprived of speech, frees Jean-Do from the diving bell of his locked in life.

At the World Cinema Showcase, Alejandro Jodorowsky turns shit to gold. By JOE SHEPPARD.

ONCE UPON a time we all had to be satisfied with the Humanoids Press graphic novels (the Incal or the Metabarons) or else risk trawling through the mustiest shelves of the local video shop for the middling Santa Sangre if we wanted to indulge in the epic madness of cult polymath Alejandro Jodorowsky. Some thirty years after they achieved notoriety as midnight movies, his mystical manifestos El Topo and The Holy Mountain are now available on DVD, but the sumptuous visuals of the restored prints really scream out for proper big-screen viewing.

At the World Cinema Showcase, Asia Argento rips her into bodice. By DAVID LEVINSON.

THERE’s enough t&a in Catherine Breillat’s An Old Mistress to tide over the most seasoned devotee of softcore royal intrigue, though for the most the part the Frenchwoman plays it safe (which is to say, level-headed): Deprived here of a contemporary setting, she sublimates accordingly – turning the militant love strategies of the French aristocracy into a survey of gender (and generational) power-plays.

At the World Cinema Showcase, the end is nigh for Richard Kelly. By MATT PICKERING.

WE ALL knew Donnie Darko would be a tough act to follow. With Southland Tales, director Richard Kelly expands on the ideas of time travel and suburban science fiction that captivated us in his first film. It seemed only a natural progression for Kelly to turn his attention directly to the apocalypse, but such bracing subject matter is a double-edged sword. It may just have been too much to handle. The film initially showed at Cannes in 2006 to horrid reviews, but nevertheless still found a backer. Kelly subsequently cut the film back by 25 minutes and added another million dollars worth of computer effects, but the storytelling is where this film wins and loses.