Wendy Ide’s pick of other films: Splitsville, DJ Ahmet, Below the Clouds and more

Splitsville

(105 mins, 15) Directed by Michael Angelo Covino; starring Dakota Johnson, Adria Arjona, Kyle Marvin 

When his wife Ashley (Adria Arjona), asks for a divorce, Carey (Kyle Marvin) bares his soul to his best friend. Paul (Michael Angelo Covino, who also directs) and Paul’s wife Julie (Dakota Johnson) are a couple who seem to have it all: a solid partnership, a lakeside house and a $20,000 rug. The secret to their marital success, it turns out, is an open relationship. Carey wholeheartedly embraces the idea, perhaps a little too enthusiastically; his impulsive one-night fling with Julie sets in motion a chain of events that starts with broken furniture and concludes in a mess of partner swapping and shattered relationships.

The film shares intimacies with Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and many a French bedroom farce. The problem is this exhaustingly open-minded yet curiously dated rom-non-monogamy-com is lacking the chemistry and comedic bite needed to make it distinctive.

Johnson, delivering her trademark languid, sleepy-sexy performance, is the closest the film has to an anchor. Around her, the others plough through partners like dogs obliviously humping the nearest item of furniture. The previous collaboration between co-writers Marvin and Covino, the barbed portrait of male friendship The Climb, gave its flawed characters texture and depth. We might not have always liked them, but at least we cared. In this feature, I was more invested in the fate of the $20,000 rug.

DJ Ahmet

(99 mins, PG) Directed by Georgi M Unkovski; starring Arif Jakup, Agush Agushev, Dora Akan Zlatanova

Music is a lifeline for Ahmet (Arif Jakup), a 15-year-old boy in a remote mountain village in North Macedonia. It’s a connection to the mother he recently lost. It’s a distraction from his widower father’s demands that he quit school to tend to the family’s small flock of sheep. It’s a way of communicating with his grieving younger brother Naim (Agush Agushev), mute since their mother’s death. It’s a treasured shared secret with Aya (Dora Akan Zlatanova), an alluring girl from a neighbouring family.

And when he stumbles across a rave deep in the forest, music is a door to a whole other world. Unfortunately for Ahmet, his sheep follow him, and footage of him wrangling his panicking animals turns him into an unwilling viral internet star.

This handsome double Sundance prize winner from the Macedonian director Georgi M Unkovski is charming. It’s a rich depiction of a traditional Yörük community – Turkic tribal people – that feels authentically lived in rather than an ethnographic curio, as well as a fresh coming-of-age film.

Below the Clouds

(114 mins, 12A) Directed by Gianfranco Rosi 

There’s an evocative shot near the start of Italian director Gianfranco Rosi’s lyrical, multifaceted documentary portrait of the city of Naples. Gazing through the window of a commuter train, the camera catches both the passing suburbs and their reflection. It looks as though time is moving in two directions – creeping forwards and winding backwards simultaneously. It’s a visual metaphor for a city in which the past and the present coexist, at times in violence and at others in peace.

Like Sacro GRA, Rosi’s 2013 Venice Golden Lion-winning collage of life on and around Rome’s notorious orbital ring road, Below the Clouds is a rewarding, wryly funny mosaic of a turbulent city, flanked by volcanoes and rich with stories. Although perhaps a little overstuffed, the black and white feature elegantly weaves together the prosaic, such as an ad-hoc study group in a bookshop, the endlessly patient emergency phone operators, with the mythic: a torchlit exploration of the exquisite Roman treasures in a museum storeroom.

The Last Blossom

(90 mins, 15) Directed by Baku Kinoshita; voiced by Natsuki Hanae, Kaoru Kobayashi, Hikari Mitsushima 

Distinctive, melancholic and visually striking, Baku Kinoshita’s adult-themed anime has more in common with the violent crime dramas of Takeshi Kitano – the slow-burning Hana-Bi in particular – than it does with much other Japanese animation. A prisoner on his deathbed reminisces about his life as a yakuza – a member of the Japanese mafia – and his relationship with a woman and her young son. His guide through the landscape of his regrets is a brutally candid balsam flower (“You suck!”, the plant tells him).

It’s a lovely picture, notable for its emotional sophistication, elegantly unshowy graphic style and especially its use of music. The jazzy woodwind on the score evokes male and female voices, at first in harmony but later drifting into different melodies. An impromptu rendition of Stand by Me, accompanied by the sound of packing tape and the ping of a microwave oven, is a gorgeous and affecting motif.

The Magic Faraway Tree

(110 mins, U) Directed by Ben Gregor; starring Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy, Nicola Coughlan, Rebecca Ferguson, Jessica Gunning

The Enid Blyton fantasy story is given the Paddington treatment – with uneven results. On the plus side, the film, whose screenplay is by Paddington 2 co-writer Simon Farnaby, looks glorious, with lush, lavish production design that captures the character of each of the magical realms at the top of the tree.

Less successful is a laboured plotline about the evils of screentime. Still, if you can get past some rather overegged child-actor performances, it’s an enjoyable enough option for Easter holiday family entertainment. Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy star as the parents who relocate their three kids to a derelict barn to pursue their dream of building a tomato-farming rural idyll, and discover an enchanted wood.

Photographs by PA/Conic Films/Mubi