It comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Austrian director's previous films, Funny Games, Hidden and The Piano Teacher, and their depiction of physical and psychological violence.

This, however, is a period piece filmed in austere but somehow beautiful black and white, fitting the setting of 1913 when a series of inexplicable events disturb the pastoral life of a German village and spread a mood of fear and loathing.

The local doctor is seriously injured in a fall from his horse caused by a trip-wire, two children are abducted and tortured and a barn set on fire.

This proves to be against a background of malice and cruelty that seems endemic – the pastor is sadistic towards his children, the doctor sexually abuses his daughter, the baron humiliates his wife and exploits his workers. The children of the village all look shifty.

The young schoolteacher (Christian Friedl), who narrates the events in later life, is one of the very few innocent people in the whole story but then we only have his word for all this.

It is clear that Haneke is offering this scenario as a clue to the origins of the subsequent history of Germany in the first half of the 20th century and in the knowledge that the First World War is imminent, you watch the gripping events of The White Ribbon with a huge sense of foreboding.


First-time writer-director Sophie Barthes has come up with an ingenious comic fantasy in the mould of Being John Malcovich.
Cold Souls (Cert 12A) finds Sideways actor Paul Giamatti in the midst of an existential crisis while rehearsing Uncle Vanya on Broadway.
When he stumbles on a New Yorker article about a private clinic promising to alleviate suffering by extracting souls he signs up.
He lives to regret being a changed man as his marriage (to Emily Watson) hits the rocks and he becomes entangled with a Russian soul-trafficking racket.

There's a Woody Allen feel to much of the comedy and Giamatti is perfect casting and a good sport as the neurotic thesp who has the indignity of discovering his soul has the shape and size of a chickpea and then that it now resides inside a wannabe actress in St Petersburg who thought she was getting Al Pacino's essence.
In Harry Brown (Cert 18) Michael Caine is a widower and old soldier who becomes so incensed by the seemingly uncontrollable violence in his London neighbourhood that he takes matter into his own hands and turns into a ruthless solo vigilante.
Caine is very good in the role as the polite and quietly-spoken old boy who shows a calm and calculated tough streak and it's a well-made film by young director Daniel Barber, who handles the violent action scenes with alacrity.

But it is a film that leaves a nasty taste. Barber has said his motives were to highlight the issues of violent crime and no-go areas in urban cities, as though we don't read about it all the time.
Assuming he is not suggesting we all take up arms, he can offer no solution (the police as represented by well-meaning inspector Emily Mortimer and arrogant superintendent Iain Glen are depicted as ineffectual or corrupt) and it ends up being merely an exploitative vigilante movie that Michael Winner would be proud of.

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