The very best documentaries should not only inform and entertain viewers with a working knowledge of their areas of scrutiny but also engage the interest and emotions of those who know little (and perhaps care even less) about the subjects. Recent homegrown examples include Julien Temple's brilliant Oil City Confidential, which proved a satisfying and thoroughly cinematic experience for non-aficionados of Dr Feelgood's brand of "Thames Delta blues"; and TT3D, which found in Guy Martin a voluble mouthpiece for the madness of the Isle of Man motorbike races that almost every year claim lives.
Equally remarkable is the emotional conjuring trick performed by director Asif Kapadia with Senna (2010, Universal, 12), which delves into the world of Formula One racing, arguably the most elitist, non-inclusive sport in the world. In a crucial and telling moment, the film's eponymous enigma reveals a longing for the pure sportsmanship of his early go-kart races, before money and politics became the driving forces with which he had to contend.
The triumph of Kapadia (ably aided by writer Manish Pandey and editors Chris King and Gregers Sall) is to draw the focus away from the businessy hubbub of F1 and concentrate instead on the chalk-and-cheese dynamic between two characters whose rivalry provides the real heart of the piece.
Investigating the long-standing friction between Ayrton Senna and one-time team-mate Alain Prost, the documentary charts a path that sees differing worldviews colliding head on, often right there on the race track. In this admittedly selective portrait, Prost is cast as the well-oiled machine, a numbers man who understands the statistics of victory and prevails more through doggedness than daring. By contrast, Senna is a wild card: the passionate, hot-blooded Brazilian who loves his country and his countrymen (for which they love him back) and will risk life and limb once he has picked up the smell of the chase. In a sport in which the technology and cost of the car are increasingly the defining factors, Senna seems to offer a much needed human touch.
Eschewing formulaic talking heads, Kapadia draws on a wealth of home-movie footage, media reportage and TV race coverage, painting Senna as a national hero who wasn't afraid to go his own way. Although it's hard to imagine anyone having avoided news coverage of the fallout from Senna's final race, let me just say that this electrifying documentary is as dramatic, suspenseful and tragic as any feature film I have seen this year and I encourage those with zero affinity for fast cars to seek it out forthwith.
Not to be confused with John Boorman's epochal 60s thriller, Point Blank (2010, Sony, 15) is Fred Cavayé's comparably themed follow-up to the nail-biting Anything for Her, the 2008 Gallic gem about an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, which was recently remade in Hollywood as a dispiriting tale of Russell Crowe being Russell Crowe in The Next Three Days. Like its French predecessor, Point Blank (the original title A bout portant translates literally as "At point blank range") finds a law-abiding husband (Gilles Lellouche) having to cross the legal line when his pregnant wife (The Skin I Live In's Elena Anaya) is kidnapped by gangsters seeking the return of a hospitalised affiliate.
Given an absurdly tight time frame and a terrifying ultimatum, Lellouche's bedraggled Everyman is forced to become an outlaw with a mission impossible. Making excellent use of his locations, from darkened streets to dimly lit wards, Cavayé cranks up the Hitchcockian tension, packing more action and incident into 80 minutes than most thrillers would manage in twice that time. The sparks continue to fly on the extras, with behind-the-scenes coverage candidly revealing outright arguments between the director and his cast and crew. If only more "making of" material had such a refreshingly frank approach.
Taking its lead from Ki-young Kim's 1960 drama of the same name, Sang-soo Im's The Housemaid (2010, Axiom, 18) is a deceptively elegant erotic thriller that mutates into a pseudo-gothic, sadomasochistic nightmare with a genuinely twisted air. As with so much modern Korean cinema, the line between satire and shocks is dangerously thin throughout. Do-yeon Jeon plays the transition from subservience to derangement with verve as the servant whose super-rich married employer seduces and abuses her, secure in the knowledge of his absolute power within this socio-sexual hierarchy. When I first saw this in Cannes last year, the audience gasped as simmering tension gave way to operatically overcooked exploitation shocks, climaxing in an on-screen conflagration. On second viewing, it is the grotesque black humour and bitter class politics that provoke the most alarm.
There's another kind of housemaid's tale altogether in Chalet Girl (2011, Momentum, 12), a lightweight teen comedy about a young skater girl who lands a job working for posh folk at their swanky Alpine ski resort retreat and winds up snowboarding and crossing social boundaries in entirely predictable fashion. It's off-the-peg fairytale fodder from director Phil Traill, who directed the abysmal All About Steve for which Sandra Bullock received a worst actress Razzie on the eve of picking up her best actress Oscar.
Thank heaven for Felicity Jones, who did such a smashing job in the surprisingly melancholic Cemetery Junction, and who breezes through this oddly likable confection with confidence and charm. Even when the screenplay lets her down (which it does at regular intervals), Jones keeps her chin up and carries the movie shoulder high.
