The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru (12A)
Directed by Fang Li, Ming Fan and Lily Gong 
★★★★★

ON October 1 1942, a Japanese cargo ship carrying over 1,800 British POWs from Hong Kong to Japan was torpedoed by a US submarine off the coast of China. Left to drown by their captors, over 380 were to be rescued by Chinese fisherman.

This untold story of tragedy and heroism, both British and Chinese, has finally been brought to light in this Chinese documentary. Producer/director Fang Yi spent eight years in its making, taking great care to get the facts of history straight. 

Tracking down descendants of the POWs through adverts in British newspapers, he conducted some 110 interviews, combined with letters, diaries and the testimonies of two survivors, both nearly 100 years old, to uncover the harrowing experiences of the prisoners. 

The horrific conditions in the hold where the POWs were trapped as the ship slowly sank are depicted with great care. Managing to escape, being shot at as they swam, they were picked up by the fishermen who then hid them from the Japanese at great risk, allowing the POWs to make their escape through China and back to Britain. 

This is a people-centred film which does not allow the shocking brutality to overpower its human message.

Why has this episode remained hidden for so long, and why is China’s role as ally absent from our history books? As historian Rana Mitter puts it, it all disappeared “down a hole created by the cold war.” This watchable and compassionate film retrieves the history.

Jenny Clegg

In cinemas Friday.

Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other [15]
Directed by Manon Ouimet, Jacob Perlmutter 
★★

WHEN two well-to-do celebrities — in this case renown photographer Joel Meyerowitz (84) and his partner musician and therapist Maggie Barrett (75) — invited film-makers Manon Ouimet, Jacob Perlmutter to follow them for a year, from Tuscany to NYC and St Ives and back, both parties expected an intimate portrait incrusted with sage wisdom. 

The film is a series of vignettes featuring the couple, in their elegant habitats, exchanging observations about themselves, their love for one another, their separate days of old, once or twice transmitted via genuine moments of tenderness and affection. 

The trouble is that it is a bit like paging through Vogue, or some such, where every scene is scrupulously choreographed and even the words sound, over and over, scripted, which massages the artistic egos involved but is largely devoid of drama and appears self-indulgent. Yawn.

The one moment of true revelation comes when Barrett is “pissed off” by Meyerowitz’s egotism and lets fly with all the accumulated angst at having forever to play second fiddle. The articulate rage is a glory moment for any feminist, whatever their gender.
 

Michal Boncza
 

In cinemas Friday.

American Dreamer (15)
Directed by Theodore Melfi
★★★

AMERICAN DREAMER is a 2022 US black comedy directed by Paul Dektor and written by Theodore Melfi. 

Based on a segment from the radio show This American Life, it stars Peter Dinklage as the hapless, untenured lecturer Phil. He is desperate for a proper place to live but can’t afford it on his low salary. He spots an ad he cannot resist: lonely widow Astrid (Shirley Maclaine), offers to sell her $5 million home for $240,000 cash provided she can live out her days there. 

Phil takes the plunge, but discovers there are various caveats, not least the fact that the widow has two grown-up children who will certainly challenge the agreement. In a complicated narrative with cliff-hangers, all turns out well in the end. 

A lame satire on the American way of life. Phil’s broker brings Phil down to earth with the words: “You’re a dreamer, Phil, not a doer!” 
 

John Green
 

In cinemas Friday. 

When Autumn Falls (12A)
Directed by Francois Ozon
★★★★

IT’S not possible to speak about this film without spoilers, but not sensible to do so in any other way. It deals with the stigma of prostitution for women in old age, and provokes the audience to examine their own prejudice, and as such is very artful and relevant.

It is a murder mystery constructed around this theme, in which the truth is never revealed. Does Michelle (Helene Vincent) feel so stigmatised by her daughter’s scorn that she tries to poison her? Does the ex-con son of her best friend, who understands the stigma of a criminal record, finish the job for her?

The bereft grandson stands in as innocent channel for the audiences sympathies, first shocking us with his disgust at his grandma’s past and then committing the only on-screen crime we witness when he lies to cover up for the ex-con, who may have murdered his mother but who is a better parent than either.

Teasing, and accomplished.
 

Angus Reid
 

In cinemas Friday.

Flow (U)
Directed by Gints Zibalodis
★★★★

A CAT survives the apocalypse, learns to swim and has a transcendental experience. If you dream about that kind of thing then consult a therapist, or find it lavishly animated in this Oscar-winning, camera-spinning wordless fantasy.

In a world devoid of humans it pitches itself in between Ghibli and Avatar in its line-perfect study of animal competition and camaraderie. There’s something mesmerisingly naturalistic about the animals themselves, including an affectionate capybara and a neurotic lemur, even if the whole thing feels made up as it goes along and a soft-core exercise in Jungian free association.

Water, jungles and abandoned temples feature heavily both as environments and metaphors for its own creative wish-fulfilment, a five year labour of… what exactly? Anti-humanist eco-escapism? Animal buddy love? Or simply a wallow in its own virtuosity, apolitical and un-Disney?

Enjoyable, but vacuous.
 

Angus Reid
 

In cinemas Friday.