The temporal leaps don’t distract us from the fact that the plot is threadbare in places.

Enzo makes a low-key but resonant coda to Cantet’s work, while thematically also being highly consistent with Campillo’s directorial output.

Open-minded audiences will soon realise that Pillion is not out to provocate, but to authentically and sensitively explore a side of gay culture little seen in mainstream film.

While vivid in its depiction of Paris’s vibrant lesbian culture, seems curiously slight and modest in its emotional impact given the seismic internal battle the central character wrestles with.

Two Prosecutors is crisply fable-like in construction.

Many of these jagged little vignettes are exquisitely realised, others are genuinely chilling. Whether they fully coalesce into a coherent whole is one question; whether they even need to is another. Renoir may leave questions, but it’s an elegant, thoughtful piece of filmmaking that digs into the guilt and confusion that underpins a child’s struggle to process death.

Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards. Mirrors No. 3 (which takes its title from the third movement of a Ravel piano suite) is an elegant demonstration of what can be achieved with limited ingredients in the hands of an inventive creative team and a first-rate cast.

Case 137’s no-frills style can leave the film feeling a tad generic, and one wishes that Moll resisted underlining some of his thematic points so strenuously. But there’s a laudable awareness of the racial, class and gender issues at play in this story of a dogged middle-aged woman going into battle against a heavily male police force.

There’s a nicely intimate side to Ducornau’s urge to dig beneath the flesh here, a ‘soft body horror’ simulacrum of the hormonal changes this adolescent girl is going through.

Laxe maintains rising tension throughout, although to frustratingly inconclusve effect and somewhat at the cost of conventional dramatic satisfactions, but the boldness of the undertaking will appeal mightily to cinephiles hungry for movies that take real risks.

Ultimately, the picture’s energetic swirl comes across as slightly hollow, its barrage of themes and impulses never finding harmony.

This gritty social realist character study is spiked with striking and unexpected detours.

The fourth fiction feature from Kleber Mendonça Filho is a sweat-saturated riot of a movie: a dual-timeline thriller powered by the kind of anarchic, erratic energy that you would expect to find at the end of a two day bender.

The result is an intense baring of the soul that is part performance, part confessional and all entertainment.

Sean Byrne’s third feature is a messy mash-up of creature feature and serial killer movie whose psychological posturing and gory effects can’t hide the fact that it’s propped up by tired horror tropes.

Although The Phoenician Scheme is transporting — an effect amplified by Alexandre Desplat’s lilting orchestral score, supplemented by selections from Stravinsky and Beethoven — the narrative proves to be fussy rather than delightful.

This affectionate homage to a slice of urban French cool that has rarely been equalled is also a nostalgic tribute to a time and place of extraordinary creative ferment and cinematic sex appeal.

The Oscar-winning actress gives a volcanic performance that is nonetheless very controlled, avoiding melodramatic theatrics. Pattinson plays off his costar superbly, giving us an inattentive husband who comes to realise how little he understands about his wife.

Despite an honourable commitment to exploring how severe adolescent trauma casts a long shadow over a person’s life, the film’s patina of pain eventually grows repetitive, undercutting the sensitivity Stewart and her lead bring to the proceedings.

In certain moments, the film’s absurdism recalls that era’s paranoia and volcanic anger, but too often Aster overshoots the mark, collecting the period’s signature elements without finding much that is smart to say about them.

What’s certain is that Sound Of Falling, the striking second feature from German director Mascha Schilinski, is a work of thrilling ambition realised by an assured directorial vision.

As a meticulously coiled study of nasty doings under one roof, Bring Her Back convincingly argues that terror starts at home.

There’s probably an excellent 66 minute film in Desert Of Namibia as well. Yamanaka certainly has talent. But fine-honing is not a strong point.

It’s fair to say that Final Reckoning delivers ever more thrills and spills, even though the links between the action are ever more frayed.

The reason it still mostly works is because the actors play it straight, with Rutherford displaying a sense of directness that compensates for the occasionally wobbly tonal shifts. The few instances of slapstick, however, are always more awkward than hilarious.

If the film cannot entirely shake the suspicion that the creative peaks of this franchise are in the past, the depth of feeling in the performances suggests Marvel still has compelling tales to tell.

Each of the three leads in Blue Sun Palace dreams of a transcendence that may never come — Tsang’s superb debut puts viewers on their side, even though we see how long the odds are against them.

While the thriller element remains compelling, it is ultimately eclipsed by the gripping focus on a man haunted by the past.