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"To maintain this fabric of absolute normality requires powerful repressive forces"- JG Ballard

Talk about soul-searching! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (the final-ever Part 2 is next Summer) is positively European in its sensibility with cinematographer Eduardo Serra extracting the essences of the wand-wielding trio of teenagers and those of the English landscape to alchemically expose mendaciousness. Early in the plot Harry must drink a potion proffering replicas of himself so as to escape possible harm. Thereon, the pace creeps ever more darkly and slowly to the cliff-hanger ending while along the way almost suspending into existential elevation in scenes such as the Forest of Dean (actually filmed in Burnham Beeches) where Hermione's (Emma Watson) parents used to take her.

It's interesting to compare the gently erotic scenes of the latest Harry Potter with those of the 2D animation Chico and Rita where the drawing of artist/designer brothers Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando enter a sensual, erotic realm far more than live action full frontal ever could (not of course that there's any of that in Harry Potter - all gently blurred). While it takes a while to gather steam, Fernando Trueba (Belle Epoque, Calle 54) directs this 40s/50s Havana/New York jazz lost/found love story so that the animated lines gently envelop you like those of a melismatic Bolero duet (soundtrack is by Cuban great Bebo Valdés). Chico (Emar Xor Ona) is a piano player and Rita (Limara Meneses) a singer.

This year's Cannes Fest Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives gets quietly seductive too. But then so has most work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Having twice viewed it I'm in a very miniscule minority that aren't raving about it. And that I stress is a very personal opinion. Only because the director's earlier work casts spells from the very, very ordinariness of everyday life whereas his latest film concerns extraordinariness and the transmigration of souls. The Uncle is suffering from kidney failure and one night at dinner the ghost of his deceased wife appears. Thereon, is a journey to the heart of the soul that many viewers will find totally transfixing.
A surprising hit of the week (nay month) is Brazilian writer/director Heitor Dhalia's Adrift, also gorgeously photographed (Ricardo Della Rosa), but always to embody the performances of father (Vincent Cassel), cheated upon wife (Deborah Bloch) and confused, frustrated teenage daughter (Laura Neiva) - a stunning acting debut as the entire film centres around her performance.

Ashley Horner's brilliant love (this year's NYC Tribeca Film Fest and Edinburgh) is quite a lot more than just sweltering summer sex in a Northern England garage with en suite fields. Noon (Nancy Trotter Landry) is a taxidermist and boyfriend Manchester (unemployed) takes sexually explicit photos of her. Accidentally leaving some on a pub table, a stranger inveigles him into showing them in a city gallery. While not a revelatory film it's an extremely assured one. Another Brit director who may well conjure something quietly amazing in the future.
Clio Barnard's award winning The Arbor about the short life of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar (using real interviews lip-synched by actors) continues screening across the country.

Mammoth, on the other hand, the first English language opus by provocative Swede Lukas Moodyson is somewhat of a disappointment relative to his usual fare. New York games guru Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal), hugs his wife (Michelle Williams) and daughter (sparky, adorable Sophie Nyweide) before hopping over to seal a deal in Thailand. His 'spiritual' journey is paralleled by Gloria (his Filipino nanny) and her own 2 sons back home. While the film is hugely 'atmospheric' and seductive (more great cinematography - Marcel Zyskind) it's never more than the sum of its well crafted parts.

Leap Year is the 1st feature of Michael Rowe (and winner of this year's Cannes Fest Camera d'Or - Juan Manuel Sepulveda) set in the shabby Mexico City apartment of Laura Lopez (Monica del Carmen). Over 29 days her many one-night stands and 'rough sex' empower her rather than the opposite. In description the film may sound like many others but it's the singularity of vision, of seeing this woman practically 'body build' her psyche in her lonely space without a directorial recourse to cinematic stunts. One for those who like Catherine Breillat's films.
[ADDITION at end of latest post]

Another impressive 1st feature is Marc Dugain's An Ordinary Execution (adapting/directing in French from his own novel) shot entirely hand-held with a great cast of André Dussolier as Stalin and Marina Hands (Lady Chatterley) as the doctor who is summoned to 'cure' him using her 'laying on of hands' energy after the dictator has purged all Jewish doctors in 1952. She's forced to abandon her husband and forbade to speak of the consultations so as not to "pander to the people's propensity for the irrational". There's not a whiff of 'period' film or star-turn bio-pic performance to be found here. And though one could never feel sympathy with Stalin, the film is a fascinating meditation on the pain of others and the self-reflecting nature of cure. "Nature is beautiful- a pity it is so contradictory," says Stalin gazing out onto the lake at his Georgian dacha - truly believing that perfect order will result in the perfect State. "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Re-released in cinemas for its 50th anniversary Peeping Tom and out on Blu-ray today (par excellance commentary by film historian Ian Christie from the standard DVD). We'll never know whether the film would have gained an audience at the time by promulgating the damning reviews of disgust on a poster saving director Michael Powell's career from future oblivion. But he never worked again after this masterpiece of cinematic psychological trauma- a man whose childhood torments him into filming the death of his victims. It's become somewhat of a benchmark in considering films 'of its kind' and censorship's boundaries.

Pang Ho-Cheung's Dream Home is ghastly, gruesome stuff - almost as if Ken Loach had dreamed of a social realist horror/slasher pic. Wanting to remain living with her childhood view of the water, the ever increasing Hong Kong property prices keep thwarting Cheng's (Josie Ho) ambitions even though she works two jobs. "A cut throat film about the cut-throat property market" goes the poster's tag line. What humour there is blackly assured as is the film's overall tone. (Trailer)

It makes Let Me In (the remake of last year's Swedish cult vampire hit Let the Right One In) seem like Sunday brunch with the Addams Family. If you're a fan of the original (and I only recently saw it again in the big screen) it's hard to suspend the Swedish version whilst watching this, so closely does the American version follow the original's narrative. It's a bit like the book of the movie syndrome - the two could never be the same but if seeing the movie makes someone curious enough to seek out the original then all the better for the world.

We Are What We Are (Somos Lo Que Hay) (Mexican writer/director Jorge Michael Grau 1st feature) is an impressive debut (chosen for this year's New York Film Fest) without really being sure exactly where to go with its 'social realist' vampiric material.

Not something that could ever be said of Mike Leigh and his latest Another Year. And though it may all be a touch predictable for Leigh devotees, there are very few directors in the world (let alone Britain) who can generate performances that amount to psychological fragments so powerful that while they are geographically specific also symbolise a broader human sociology. Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) are nice, intelligent, hard-working middle-class folk as is their son Joe. When Leigh was trying to work out a 'look' for the film his regular cameraman Dick Pope presented him with four options - hence the story's four seasons was born (great tree poster). Into their lives keeps popping Gerri's work friend Mary (Lesley Manville) who's treated like her 'sister' and sadly for her almost behaves as if she is. This film will linger in the minds of many viewers. The contradictory beauty of the world.

Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins is his character's (from previous films) fictional journey around Oxfordshire - documentary footage narrated by Vanessa Redgrave's very apt gentle manly timbre. Robinson's quest to preserve the earth by communicating the world's blunders to higher non-human intelligences. It's as if Monty Pythonite turned TV doco world traveller Michael Palin was on quinine musing of man's misadventures.
And some fascinating rarely seen short public service films by director John Krish in A Day in the Life: Four Portraits of Post-War Britain - a book and DVD also available. Do foreigners know that London once had trams -The Elephant Will Never Forget (1953). Kids and teenagers even these days would find Our School(1962) both funny and educational - one of the kids is so charismatically 'mouthy' that you'd have expected him to become an actor. While I Think They Call Him John (1964) is a moving portrait of a man coping on his own after his wife's deceased. It could have been made yesterday.
Aristotle's Lagoon (a repeat on BBC4) tells the little known story of the philosopher's biological investigations on the island of Lesvos. Many of them proved absolutely spot on.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake, 1790