Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 12/9/2013)

Sautet's status was much affected by the misfortune of his emergence coinciding with the breaking of the new wave that prompted critics in the early 1960s to dismiss his style as safe and old-fashioned. Yet, nouvelle vagueurs like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were great admirers of Sautet and it should be noted that when Jean-Paul Belmondo reported for work on Classe Tous Risques, he was about to become the poster boy of the cine-revolution after his superb performance as a doomed thief in Godard's À Bout de Souffle (1960)

Since fleeing France with a death sentence over his head, gang boss Lino Ventura has been living in exile on the banks of Lake Lugarno with wife Simone France and their sons, Robert Desnoux and Thierry Lavoye. However, funds are running low and Ventura decides to head home, despite the risk of capture by the French police. Having put his family on a train to Ventimiglia, Ventura and trusted henchman Stan Krol cosh a couple of security guards on a Milan street and speed off in a waiting car to count the loot. It proves to be a disappointing haul, but they split it evenly and Krol offers to make the next part of the getaway on a motorbike to give Ventura a better chance of getting through the roadblocks leading out of the city.

On nearing the first barrier, Krol selflessly causes a diversion by veering off the road and allowing Ventura to overpower the sole cop on duty and pass unhindered. Ditching the bike, Krol steals a car in a picturesque nearby town and reunites with Ventura, more by luck than judgement, as he travels in the opposite direction. Pleased with themselves for defying the odds, Ventura and Krol abandon the vehicle and catch a bus to the coast, where they meet up with France and the boys. However, having only snatched 500,000 francs, they lack the resources to linger long and a contact suggests they take a boat from San Remo to the Riviera town of Menton to plan their next move.

Tossing the skipper overboard with a lifebuoy, Ventura lands on the beach at dusk. However, he is challenged by a couple of patrolling cops and Krol and France are killed in the ensuing shootout, leaving Ventura to seek refuge in Nice with Charles Blavette, who owes him a favour from the olden days. Slipping into a church, Ventura explains to Desnoux that the police will be looking for a man with two boys and tells him to walk 10 yards behind him in the street and never let go of Lavoye's hand. Moreover, he cautions the pair to keep going if he gets arrested and find a priest who can help them.

Desperate to get back to Paris, Ventura calls old gang subordinate Michel Ardan and urges him to send an ambulance so he can return to the capital without attracting any police attention. However, in the time Ventura has been away, Ardan has opened a café with France Asselin and former comrades Claude Cerval and Philippe March are equally reluctant to get involved with a wanted man, as the former has become a successful hotelier with spouse Michèle Méritz and the latter is on bail after his latest run in with the law. Aware, however, that they are indebted to Ventura for past deeds, they recruit newcomer Jean-Paul Belmondo to drive the ambulance south and let Ventura take his chances.  

As the police step up their search, Ventura and the boys sleep in a boat on the beach. However, they rendezvous with Belmondo in the main post office and are soon on the road with Ventura lying on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance, with his head swathed in bandages. Encouraged by Belmondo's affection for his sons, Ventura discusses the treachery of his friends and smiles bitterly that he has to rely on a stranger after everything he has done for them. As night falls, Belmondo pulls over on seeing a woman struggling with her male companion at the side of the road and offers her a lift after knocking out her assailant. An actress with a travelling troupe, Sandra Milo is glad to get away from the tour manager's busy hands and agrees to pose as a nurse when Belmondo informs her that while Ventura was shot in the head by his wife, he is still so devoted to her that they are steering clear of the police in case they insist on bringing charges against her. Milo plays along with the scenario even after she spots a machine gun under Ventura's blanket and not only passes up the chance to call the cops at a garage, but also fusses over her patient when they are flagged down at a roadblock.

While Milo and Belmondo bid each other farewell in a Paris backstreet, Cerval, Ardan and March meet up to discuss what to do with their unwanted guest. Asselin is furious at the prospect of having her business compromised and, when Ventura arrives, he orders her out of the room after smashing a milk jug into a mirror in fury at being treated like an inconvenience. Cerval urges Ventura to calm down and says he sympathises with Asselin, as Méritz is suffering with her nerves and he worries that the strain of this situation might kill her. Ventura is fond of Méritz and agrees it might be better if he went to stay with Cerval's cousin in Brittany. So, he arranges to billet his sons with their grandfather's wartime buddy, René Génin, and his sister Jeanne Pérez, and moves into the empty maid's room on the seventh floor of the small pension where Belmondo resides.

Leaving Ventura to pace the floor, Belmondo tracks down Milo to the theatre where she is rehearshing a new play. She is happy to see him and, unconcerned by what he does for a living, jokes about the gun she had spotted in the back of the ambulance. They go for supper and kiss in the elevator. But Belmondo doesn't allow his love life to deflect him from his duty to Ventura and he suggests they pull a few jobs together to make some easy money. However, Ventura is aware that the cops have arrested Blavette for sheltering him and have been to see Cerval and Ardan. Thus, he opts to lay low when Belmondo and Milo go to check on Desnoux and Lavoye and Pérez regrets the way things have turned out, as Ventura was such a nice kid and she hopes she can make a decent home for his sons.

Aware that Génin is not paid enough as a guard at the Maritime Museum to care for his sons, Ventura pays a call on shady fence Marcel Dalio and his step-daughter Evelyne Ker. He distracts them with a pouch of fake diamonds before pulling a gun and locking them behind a security door. But Dalio is enraged by the effrontery of the robbery and demands that Cerval and Ardan punish Ventura and they decide to eliminate him before he gets them all into serious trouble.

They hire private eye Sylvain Levignac to follow Belmondo, in the hope he will lead them to Ventura. But Belmondo knows he is being tailed and beats Levignac into revealing that he works for Jean-Pierre Zola. Ventura storms into his office and demands his file on Belmondo and the name of the person who hired him. On hearing it is Dalio, Ventura kills him and murders Cerval on his doorstep for betraying him (causing Méritz to collapse when she looks out of her bedroom window). However, Inspector Marcel Bernier gets to Ardan first and he gives him Belmondo's address. He is wounded while trying to warn Ventura and Milo comes to visit him in his cell and promises to wait for him.

Meanwhile, Ventura has heard the commotion downstairs and is tipped off about a door on to the roof by Laure Paillette, the shy doctor's maid he had befriended in the communal bathroom. He seeks out March, who tells him that Ardan is in a police safe house and will be very difficult to reach. But Ventura is so chastened by Méritz's death that he declares he has had enough of being a fugitive and, as he wanders the streets, the narrator reveals that he was arrested shortly afterwards and executed after a fresh trial.

This attention to small details in the closing sequences sums up Sautet's approach to the entire picture. The audacious daylight raid is staged with almost neo-realist authenticity, as Ventura and Krol linger by a news stand before making the snatch and haring down some subway steps to their waiting car. Equally astute is the way that Ventura checks on his pal before his wife after they are ambushed at Menton, while the café showdown in which he loses his cool is all the more chilling as it gives the viewer a glimpse of the ruthlessness that lurks behind the hangdog geniality Ventura evinces even as the net begins to close around him. Indeed, Sautet and cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet make atmospheric use of enclosed and open spaces alike, with the long shots employed to capture the tiny figures as they step on to the half-lit beach emphasising their insignificance and contrasting with the sense of entrapment conveyed by the tight close-up of Ventura as he prowls around his seventh storey eyrie. 

Yet, for all the visual acuity, much of the story's veracity comes from the screenplay, which was adapted by Sautet and Pascal Jardin with the author of the source novel, José Giovanni. A former Death Row prisoner whose guillotine sentence had been commuted to hard labour before he was pardoned by the president (as his uncle and brother were the ringleaders of the murderous racket with which he had been associated), Giovanni had based Ventura's character on Abel `the Mammoth' Danos, a prominent member of the Bony-Lafont gang, the Gang des Tractions Avant and the Carlingue, who was executed as a wartime collaborator on the testimony of a single witness when he may have been linked to the Maquis's top secret Marco Polo Network. Sautet was not aware of this when he made the film and later said he would have closed down production if he had known he was laying himself open to the genuine danger of reprisal. However, the shoot went ahead without a hitch, with Giovanni's sister being cast as Ventura's wife and a career criminal as his loyal lieutenant in Italy.

Giovanni wrote several crime novels (some of them in his cell) and a number of them reached the screen, including Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960), Le Deuxième Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1966) and L'Excommunie, which was filmed by Jean Becker as Un Nommé La Rocca in 1961 and as La Scoumoune by Giovanni himself in 1972. However, none surpassed Sautet's compelling and impeccably played drama and it is deeply regrettable that he was so shaken by the negative criticism that he didn't return behind the camera for five years, when he reunited with Ventura on the gun-running thriller, L'Arme à Gauche (1965).

Around the time Abel Danos was at the height of his powers, France was home to thousands of exiles from Spain who would rather have taken their chances under the Nazi occupation than they would under the tyranny of El Caudillo. Fernando Trueba alights on one such fugitive in The Artist and the Model, a treatise on inspiration, courage, youth and freedom that is loosely based on incidents in the lives of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Aristide Maillot. Hints of Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse (1991) and Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun (1992) flicker in the corners of the monochrome frame. But, while Trueba and co-scenarist Jean-Claude Carrière meditate mournfully on art and the ravages of war and time, this is also an engaging character study that borrows situations and stock characters from pictures as different as Jean-Pierre Melville's La Silence de la Mer (1949) and Trueba's own Oscar winner, Belle Epoque (1992).

Somewhere in the French Pyrenees in 1943, 80 year-old sculptor Jean Rochefort is struggling to recapture past glories in the company of wife Claudia Cardinale and maid Chus Lampreave. One day, while out shopping in the nearby town of Ceret, Cardinale and Lampreave spot waif Aida Folch sleeping in a doorway and discover that not only has she fled across the border after enduring hardship and persecution in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, but that she has also escaped an internment camp for refugees. Cardinale offers her sanctuary on condition she poses naked for Rochefort, in the hope that her beauty and fiery Catalan spirit can revive the artist's dormant creativity.

Once a leading figure on the Parisian art scene and a friend of Matisse and Cézanne, Rochefort is too wrapped in melancholy to work with any conviction. Although taken by Folchs vivacity, he starts sketching her out of a sense of obligation to Cardinale (who has once been his model and muse) than out of real enthusiasm. But, as they talk during their sessions, Rochefort becomes more intrigued by Folch and starts to mould clay with insight and enthusiasm. Folch is concerned, however, that Rochefort seems to be oblivious to the fact that France has been defeated by the Third Reich and that Fascism has overrun the continent and left a trail of devastation and despair in its wake. But Rochefort shows her Rembrandt's drawing of two women teaching a child how to walk and explains how inspiration comes from life and how the quest to create beautiful things must continue in the face of barbarism and tragedy.

Such is his pessimism about humanity's descent into carnage that Rochefort has no interest in the activities of the Maquis in the locale. But Folch has been radicalised by her experiences in Spain and not only helps smuggle people to safety, but also insists that Rochefort and Cardinale shelter literature-loving Resistance fighter Martin Gamet. Recognising the passion of her convictions, Rochefort agrees to hire Gamet as his assistant and maintains the pretence when he is visited by Götz Otto, an art historian from the University of Munich serving in the Wehrmacht, who is keen to discuss the dissertation he has written on Rochefort.

Despite the odd moment of tension, Otto's stay proves uneventful and, shortly afterwards, Folch leads Gamet to a hideout in the mountains. Rochefort completes his sculpture and realises his life's work is done. Thus, as Folch takes her leave for Marseilles (while Cardinale is away visiting her ailing sister), a gunshot rings out across the now quiet countryside.

Rather ridiculously, this thoughtful and meticulously produced drama has been criticised in some quarters for being too similar in theme to Gilles Bourdos's recently released Renoir, in which an ageing artist hid away from the war raging in northern France and found inspiration in a nubile young woman brought into his hermitic orbit by his devoted wife. Some have even frowned upon the fact that Trueba and debuting cinematographer Daniel Vilar opted to work in black and white at precisely the same time that Pablo Berger and Kiko de la Rica made the same choice for Blancanieves. By focusing on such coincidences, the naysayers have failed to see the bigger picture, let alone the important ideas contained in the fine detail.

There is no escaping the fact that the narrative may not be particularly innovative or that Rivette and Erice had each previously devoted swathes of their respective films to close-ups of an artist at work. But they had been beaten to the same punch by Henri-Georges Clouzot in Le Mystère Picasso (1956), which captured the great Spanish painter producing numerous original images on transparent screens, and even this remarkable documentary resorted to  techniques that had been utilised half a century earlier to make the shorts featuring the sketching hands of J. Stuart Blackton and Émile Cohl. Yet, the mere fact of being superseded doesn't automatically devalue a work or diminish the potency of its message.

In reviving such perennial themes as life, art, passion and death, Trueba and Carrière consciously refuse to make any bold claims or reach any conclusions. Indeed, they are much more interested in the dynamic between an artist and a model and how the interaction of their personalities impacts upon the finished artefact than they are the unquestionably slender storyline. But to dismiss the precision of the performances, the lustrous texture of the 35mm photography and the contrasts between the cosy interiors and rugged exteriors in Pilar Revuelta's production design is reckless in the extreme. The way, for example, in which Rochefort becomes increasingly agitated as the troubles of the outside world start seeping through his defences is as deft as the gentle humour that not only comes through the snooping of Lampreave's short-sighted maid, but also through the throwaway lines relating to Rochefort and Cardinale's previous co-starring assignment (ironically, alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo) in Philippe de Broca's Cartouche (1962).

Dedicated to the memory of Trueba's sculptor brother Maximo and sound recordist Pierre Gamet, this follows the lead of Rembrandt's drawing in its modesty and perspicacity and, while it may not be a masterpiece, it is still a work of clarity, sincerity and efficacy. Sadly, the same cannot be said for Jules Bishop's debut, Borrowed Time, which tries so hard to do something different with the clichéd `hapless teen trapped in a sink estate' scenario that it fails to convince as either a slice of social realism, a vigilante thriller or an odd couple comedy. The leads couldn't try harder and there are a few funny lines in Bishop's script. Moreover, cinematographer David Rom unfussily captures the mood of the Stratford locations without forcing the concept of Broken Britain. But, while Bishop borrows from the likes of Mike Leigh, Bill Forsyth and Shane Meadows, he lacks the acerbic compassion that makes their films so authentic.

Eighteen year-old Theo Barklem-Biggs hasn't got much going for him. As gormless as he's gangly, he has no qualifications, no job, no prospects and no money. Consequently, he steals an antique clock to pawn from sister Juliet Oldfield and is told to get it back sharpishly or be thrown out of their flat. His mates take the mickey, but are genuinely fond of him, as is four year-old nephew Ted Cozzolino. But Barklem-Biggs hardly helps himself. He uses some of his ill-gotten gains to buy weed from martial arts-mad wideboy Warren Brown, only to have it nicked by his first customer, Hammed Animashaun. Suddenly faced with owing Brown a small fortune, Barklem-Biggs is on the verge of despair when his pals suggest he breaks into the home of reclusive pensioner, Phil Davis.

Naturally, Barklem-Biggs gets caught red-handed, as Davis descends the stairs on a chair-lift clutching an ancient blunderbuss. Hissing Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry quip about feeling lucky, he demands to know what the wretched teen thinks he's doing. As they chat amidst a menagerie of stuffed animals, the initial antipathy begins to diminish and Barklem-Biggs offers to run some errands for the housebound taxidermist. Unable to help himself, he steals some of the change, but the pair sit down to tea and biscuits and Davis explains how he hit the bottle after his wife died and Barklem-Biggs reveals how much he would like to shake his reputation as a serial loser.

When Brown comes searching for Barklem-Biggs, Davis hides him and plays the role of trigger-happy eccentric with such conviction that Brown is made to look like the pathetic bully he is as he skulks away. Yet, Davis strikes up a rapport with Cozzolino when Barklem-Biggs brings him to visit and even bounces back from a drinking lapse after he comes to doubt his new friend's sincerity. Thus, when they discover that Brown and Animashaun are Scousers in cahoots, Davis and Barklem-Biggs set out to teach them a lesson and seize the money needed to get the clock out of hock.

The time must surely be coming when British film-makers realise they have inflicted enough `drug deal gone wrong' movies upon their long-suffering audience. Such tales may reflect the everyday experience of thousands of people in the margins and below the poverty line. But, cinematically, the tropes are tired and the plots they engender are becoming tiresomely formulaic. Bishop deserves credit, therefore, for attempting to tweak the clichés. Yet, with so many minor characters being one-dimensional caricatures (most notably Warren Brown's cartoonish villain), the engaging byplay between Barklem-Biggs and Davis is forever being undermined by mundanity and mediocrity.

Production designer Miren Marañón ably contrasts Oldfield's spartan flat with Davis's cluttered home and Bishop similarly uses the City skyscrapers on the horizon to reinforce the different realities lived by the haves and the have nots. But the social comment is largely superficial and what small fascination there is here lies in watching Barklem-Biggs riffing on the young John Gordon Sinclair and Davis striving to invest his unkempt curmudgeon with some Pinter-cum-Steptoesque pathos.

If Borrowed Time is an honest misfire, Sascha Hartmann's Sir Billi is a misguided muddle that represents an even more ignominious end to Sean Connery's career than his final live-action credit, Stephen Norrington's calamitous adaptation of Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's comic-book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). Once again, Connery doubles up as producer. But, while this is evidently a labour of love that took several years and £15 million to complete, Hartmann and writer wife Tessa should have stuck with the 20-minute version completed in 2006 rather than expanding their flimsy material beyond breaking point in a bid to produce Scotland's first computer-animated feature. Technically, this looks okay. But the storyline lurches without logic and the characterisation is virtually non-existent. Consequently, this will fail to capture the imagination of younger viewers and will leave accompanying adults with a growing sense of bafflement and consternation. 

As the camera roves over a plastically lush Highlands, Sir William Sedgewick (Sean Connery) laments in voiceover that nothing is quite as `rare' as it was in his youth. However, if the Scottish Parliament had its way, beavers would not just be rare, they would be eradicated altogether and PC McKenzie (Ford Kiernan) can scarcely conceal his delight as he places the last crate containing Bessie Boo (Valentina Hartmann) in the back of a truck at Classified Beaver Patrol Compound 77, some 275 miles north of Glasgow. But, as McKenzie and colleague McTavish (Greg Hemphill) lead the way along the winding mountain road, the lorry driver pays more attention to a chocolate bar than the route and, when he crashes into a rock, Bessie Boo escapes her opened crate and is rescued by kindly mummy bunny, Barbara the Jag (Barbara Rafferty).

Five years later, McKenzie is still on the trail of the missing beaver and, as he prowls around the village of Catterness, we are introduced to some of its other residents, including pie shop owner Banjo Barry (also Kiernan) and garrulous New Yorker Patti Turner (Ruby Wax). However, the focus soon falls on Sir Billi and his sidekick Gordon (Alan Cumming), a goat in a yellow tracksuit who is convinced he's a dog. Apparently, Billi is a widowed octogenarian veterinarian, but little is made of this or Gordon's personality disorder as the action lurches suddenly to Darrachmhor Castle, where Lady Serena (Larry Sullivan) lives with Billi's adored grandson, Jake (Elliot Doyle). He has devised a Heath Robinson-style network of chutes to get him downstairs, but Benjamin the butler (Alex Norton) is less than impressed by his shenanigans.

Just as Billi sets off to take Jake to school, Toni Turner (Amy Sacco) arrives by train to visit her sister and Gordon and Jake tease Billi after he bashfully offers to take her case to save her from lugging it on Patti's scooter. But they soon have to make a detour, as an Irish bunny (Tessa Hartmann) jumps into the road to alert Billi to an emergency that is unfolding at the McToff Industries Recycling Area near Pirniefalls, some 15 miles west of Catterness.

Bessie Boo had gone to the site to make her first attempt at riding a speeding log down a track dug into an incline. But, while she had exceeded expectations and earned the applause of the watching crowd by making the perilous journey in one piece, her rabbit friend Wee Dave (Jamie Still) is so jealous that he attempts to navigate the treacherous fourth lane and winds up hanging over a sheer drop above the raging river after he makes a ruinous miscalculation. As bunnies cannot swim, Bessie Boo jumps into the water in an effort to save her friend. But the current is very strong and they are swept away.

Ordering Vicky the duck (Regina Reagan) to keep an eye on the pair from her red bi-plane, Billi calls a meeting of the villagers and discovers that the castaways are heading for the turbines that have just been turned on at the newly built dam. Angry with owner Baron McToff (Norton again) for having the mechanism on an automatic programme that can't be overridden, Billi divides his neighbours into teams to do what they can to avert a disaster. However, The Admiral (Patrick Doyle), a German seaman who is travelling in a sports car with Baroness Chantal McToff (Miriam Margolyes) and her daughter Meggan (Tallia Storm), turns out to be afraid of water and a vital chance to pluck the bedraggled twosome from the water is missed.

Meanwhile, Billi, Gordon and Jake have found Barbara badly injured and in need of urgent treatment. Luckily, she is revived by some water from Pirniefalls and any fears she might have broken her back are soon allayed. Speeding towards the dam, Billi manages to grab Wee Dave as the log to which he is clinging hurtles towards the turbine grille. But Bessie Boo eludes his grasp and Gordon has to plunge down on a handy rope to whisk her to safety. However, as he is handing her to Patti and Toni onboard Billi's boat, he falls overboard and is lucky to be yanked back on deck. At that moment, however, McKenzie (who has persuaded McTavish to help him capture Bessie Boo) arrives in a coastguard helicopter that nearly crashes into Vicky's plane. As she flies over the boat, it is lifted out of the water by a Russian nuclear submarine that has lost its way and Gordon grabs a dangling rope (for no good reason) and is taken on a hair-raising tour of the area before he plummets to earth and lands on a small trampoline being held just above the ground by Sir Billi and his friends.

Once again, the tone turns maudlin, as Billi fears for Gordon's survival and he thinks back to their happy times together (which seem to include them re-enacting Gene Kelly's dance routine in Singin' in the Rain, 1952). But, just as he despairs of reviving the sparked out goat, Vicky baseball pitches a bottle of waterfall tonic from the wing of her plane and Gordon comes back from the brink. However, any hopes the audience might have had that this is the end of these chaotic and wearying proceedings are dashed by the sub skipper handing Bessie Boo to McKenzie, who zooms off in Billi's stolen vehicle to report him to his superiors for harbouring an outlawed creature.

Billi hurtles after McKenzie in a car that looks suspiciously like the Aston Martin that Connery drove in his James Bond days. It is even fitted with gadgets, including a boxing glove that prevents a nasty collision with a grazing cow. But Billi has to switch to a skateboard before finally catching up with McKenzie, just as he is arrested for being a nuisance and exceeding his authority. McTavish shrugs at betraying his former boss, as he has had enough of his fanaticism and just wants to go back to his family in Glasgow.

That evening, everyone gathers in the Laughing Trout pub, where an African-American golf tourist (Chris Jai Alex) finds himself in the middle of riotous celebrations that include Patti, Toni and Meggan performing a dance number replete with split screens, silhouettes, flashing lights and garish colours. Sir Billi makes a speech about the importance of teamwork before he asks Toni if she would like to go for a drive in the moonlight. Gordon and Jake snigger at the old smoothie making his move, while Serena marvels at the ampleness of Toni's chest before fireworks erupt in the sky and the members of the cast take their bows over closing credits that finally signal that this exhausting farrago is over.

Bizarrely, this outline makes far more sense than the plot ever does as it plays out on screen. Opening with a pastiche of a 007 title sequence - complete with Shirley Bassey singing `Guardian of the Highlands', one of several execrable songs composed by the director - this is risible nonsense from start to finish. Events occur with perplexing haphazardness, while peripheral characters frequently pop up out of nowhere and behave as though their backstory had been revealed in intimate detail. Adding to the sense of disorientation is the dismal dialogue, which often leaves Sir Sean waffling incoherently and Alan Cumming striving desperately to extemporise hilariously like Eddie Murphy as Donkey in Shrek (2001).

Quite what nippers used to CBeebies will make of all the Bond allusions and smutty innuendo is anyone's guess. They may just content themselves with watching the visuals, which are decent enough if you like CGI and don't mind it resembling something a mid-range Euro studio might have churned out a decade ago. The hair work on Sir Billi's top lip and Gordon's chin is so so, while the shots of the rolling hills and tumbling rivers are charming. But, even if you buy into a neverland where beavers are banned, bunnies and goats chatter away to humans and there are as many foreigners as Scots in a place as small as Ballamory, the storytelling is so dementedly incompetent and lacking in wit, suspense and control that this has to be installed as a serious contender for the worst film of 2013.

Back in the early 1980s, Adam Ant was one of the biggest pop stars in Britain. Hits like `Antmusic', `Stand and Deliver' and `Prince Charming' broke the rules musically and were backed by stylised videos that helped smooth the transition from Punk to New Romanticism. However, Jack Bond only makes passing reference to this all-too-brief heyday in his documentary, The Blueblack Hussar, which chronicles Ant's bid to make a comeback after losing 15 years of creativity to a bipolar condition that saw him sectioned three times under the 1983 Mental Health Act. Little direction mention is made of these events, either, and nothing at all is said about the brushes with the law the occasioned them. And quite right, too, as this is a study of fresh beginnings and the 56 year-old Ant (whose real name is Stuart Goddard) seems to relish the challenge of finding a new audience, as he plays a range of small venues across London with an ever-evolving band in support of his long-awaited sixth studio album, Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar in Marrying The Gunner's Daughter.

First seen walking up to the Albert Memorial on whose steps he broke a milk bottle as a beautiful young man in Derek Jarman's punk paean, Jubilee (1977), Ant is next shown breezing along in his hussar's uniform and bicorne hat, with the seventysomething Bond valiantly trying to keep pace, as he chatters away about his new chapter like Johnny Depp impersonating Russell Brand. The incessant flow continues in the back of a cab with Bond and Katherine d'Hubert, as he unfurls the 31-song playlist he intends using that night at The Electric Ballroom and rattles on about beer and the influence of Roxy Music. Following a snippet from his controversial JFK song, `Catholic Day', Ant eulogises about Brian Eno and parodies Bryan Ferry's delivery style before bundling into the theatre, where he dedicates `Fall In' to the soldier stepfather who had died two days earlier, and then powers through an explicit variation on `Physical (You're So)'.

It's a frantic start to a feature that continues to set an unrelenting pace, as Ant treats Bond to a Cuban cigar as he puts on his make-up and sings along to Scott Walker's `Jackie'. He does a photo shoot with Esther Segarra and rants on about public smoking laws as he poses in his uniform with a lobby card for Jacques Deray's Borsalino (1970) and a cardboard cut-out of Admiral Lord Nelson. Without a pause, he welcomes music journalist John Robb to his home to discuss the importance of Kraftwerk and Iggy Pop to bands like Adam and the Ants and The Human League and then he's off to a tattoo parlour to discuss new ink depicting David Hemmings in Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) delivering the line, `There are your guns.' He is accompanied by a trio of young women, who ask what the needle feels like and he struggles to find the right words, while lapping up the attention.

The esteem in which Ant is still held by a new generation of musicians is made clear when he meets up with Mark Ronson and Jamie Reynolds of The Klaxxons. He recalls audiences gobbing on him in his early days and how he now needs two drummers to recreate the sound he requires on stage. Ronson extols the virtues of recording on tape and reveals how his collaboration with Amy Winehouse used to work. But this back-slapping session feels rather forced and it is a relief to get to Madame Jojo's in Soho, where Ant delivers a scorching rendition of `Christian D'or' with the first incarnation of a new band that includes backing vocalists Georginia Baillie and Georgina Leahy.

Back at his flat, he entertains a giggle of young ladies with an impromptu guitar riff on T. Rex's `Get It On', a mocking appreciation of a James Franco photo spread in GQ (which he thinks rips off old shots of his own) and an anecdote about a woman who carved the word `F*ck' into his back with a razor blade. Such is the way that Bond presents the action, one gets the impression that Ant is swept off from this gathering to the XFM radio studio, where he is interviewed by Liam Young and plays an acoustic version of `Never Trust a Man' after explaining that he has spent the past six months putting a line-up together and getting used to being a musician again. Similarly, the gig at The 100 Club seems to come hard on the heels and it is intriguing to see Ant changing with the Georginas in a cramped cubby hole after a scorching take on `Red Scab' before he is swept away into the night in a fast car.

Adam Ant may not be a big star any longer, but he still knows how to live the lifestyle and, thus, he is able to summon Charlotte Rampling to a Parisian studio because he wants her to record his song, `Wonderful'. Bond has explained to the actress how Ant has adored her since seeing her in Lilliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974) - indeed, his first album was named Dirk Wears White Sox (1979) in tribute to the film - and she gratefully accepts a t-shirt as a memento. She explains how she likes songs she can speak-perform rather than sing and she sits around the control room watching Ant working on a track before she leaves.

The interlude feels like something of a dead-end, but it reinforces the extent to which Ant is a cultural magpie and the ensuing sequence in which he shows off purchases from a shopping trip seems similarly designed to present him as an irresistible eccentric with a lively mind and a passion for life. Among the items he exhibits are some old singles, a pair of Marcel Cerdan's boxing gloves, a book of photographs, a Meissen figurine of an 18th-century French dandy, some plates with a military design and a poster of Jean-Paul Belmondo. He gets into an animated conversation with Bond about antique motorbikes and, having reworked `Ça plane pour moi' and `Je t'aime... moi non plus' in the studio with `Twinkle' Leahy, Ant is soon off to another sidestreet shop to buy an old guitar.

Stationary for once, he confides to Bond that he could easily live in Paris. He laments that he got to see so little of the world at the height of his fame and recalls taking tea with a yakuza boss in Tokyo. Having expressed his dislike of groupies, Ant reflects on how he dropped out of a graphic design course after his band, Bazooka Joe, had topped the bill at Saint Martin's School of Art on which The Sex Pistols had made their live debut. Malcolm McLaren was a key figure in these early days, but Ant resents the fact that so many talentless people ligged on his success and he jokes about hoping those with the worst taste have long since died. 

The degree to which Ant has to play the game to get his foot back on the lower rungs is shown in an amusing sequence in which he tolerates the inefficiency of a BBC crew that has come to his home for an interview (although, in their defence, their task is not made any easier by one of his dogs snoring loudly on the floor). However, the size of the venues is noticeably increasing and the Bush House show includes a sneering version of `Press Darlings' before Ant heads off to see artist Allen Jones. He remembers Paul Weller taking exception to a handbill that he had distributed outside The Marquee Club and is delighted when Jones shows him some painted figures that Ant had produced with John Lydon before they became famous and he reciprocates by showing Jones how one of his works had fitted into the luxury house that Ant had vacated almost as soon as he had finished decorating it.

Now firmly on the rise, Ant travels along the Thames to the Indigo O2, where he launches into `Plastic Surgery' and `Beat My Guest' with a band that now comprises drummers Andy Woodard and Jola Rodowicz, bassist Matt Round and Tom Edwards on guitar (replacing Baz Boorer, who had been a fixture in the earlier line-up). After 23 gigs, he is all set, therefore, to face 55,000 souls at Hyde Park and he goes through the pre-show interviews with laconic grace before Bond fades to black, as Adam Ant steps on stage to the strains of `Rock'n'Roll Station' for his biggest show in decades. 

Curiously adding up to much more than its constituent parts, this is a compelling profile of a man trying to build a future in the long shadow cast by his illustrious past. Fans of the Dandy Highwayman may feel cheated of nostalgia, but Bond wisely focuses on Ant's noble ambition to bounce back from his health problems and re-establish himself as a valid artist. Despite the advancing years, he still cuts a dashing figure and his hyper-personality comes across loud and clear during the more intimate segments. But he is always most fully alive on stage and in the recording studio and the music provides the majority of the film's highlights.

Inserting himself in the action on several occasions, Bond provides a secure environment that enables Ant to relax and veer between banter and confidences with pleasing ease. Ultimately, he doesn't quite succeed in selling the hussar persona and it might have been interesting to have included an outside perspective on how the comeback was being received. But this is more a freewheeling snapshot than an in-depth profile and it is none the worse for fixing on the man and his music rather than the myth.