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Joachim Lafosse's Private Property is a masterly study of a Belgian family that is simultaneously held together and rent asunder by its dyfunctionality. Having used her twins against husband Patrick Descamps during their messy divorce, the haughty Isabelle Huppert now finds them obstructing her fresh start with chef Kris Cuppens. But, for all the twentysomething siblings' infantilisation, Huppert is no more mature herself and her inability to sell their rambling country home and move on with her life becomes as infuriating as younger son Jérémie Renier's indolent insolence. Quibbling slightly, Renier's resentful brat a touch too boorish. But, otherwise, the performances are laudably naturalistic and there isn't a wasted word in the compact screenplay. However, the real power comes from Lafosse's studied use of static, Ozu-like camerawork, which gives each scene a tangible intensity that makes the climactic tracking shot all the more disconcerting.

The old chestnut of why God lets bad things happen to decent people recurs in Hope, the concluding part of Polish screenwriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz's Dante-style trilogy. Riven with images of celestiality and surveillance, the purgatorial storyline careers towards tragedy with domino inevitability as cherubic caretaker Rafal Fudalej attempts to atone for his mother's accidental death years before, by saving the soul of Wojciech Pszoniak, an art dealer who has stolen a valuable painting of an angel from a rundown city church.

Indeed, Piesiewicz is clearly fascinated by Fudalej's encounters with both Pszoniak, one of which is a corker in a conceptual gallery packed with ludicrous exhibits, and suspicious cop Zbigniew Zamachowski. Consequently, subplots involving Fudalej's murderer brother (who is at loggerheads with their organist father) and his girlfriend (who disapproves of Fudalej's skydiving hobby, which rather blatantly reinforces his similarity to the subject of the missing artwork) feel like superfluous diversions. Nevertheless, documentarist Stanislaw Mucha directs with an impressive blend of wit, compassion, control and authenticity that recalls Piesiewicz's longtime partner, Krzysztof Kieslowski.

The undercover cop story is something of a staple in Hong Kong cinema and Derek Yee works hard to impart a new spin on the scenario in the tough, tense mob procedural, Protégé. He finds few fresh insights in veteran flic Daniel Wu's bond with drug baron Andy Lau or his relationship with junkie neighbour Zhang Jingchu and her toddler daughter. But there are moments of bruising action to compensate for the domestic melodramatics and the forensic detail lavished on the mechanics of the heroin trade is ghoulishly compelling. Furthermore, this pivotal sojourn in Thailand's Golden Triangle is given extra spice by the fact that Lau allows his guard to slip following a bungled customs raid that should have exposed Wu's treachery.

Sadly, this week's British offerings don't quite measure up. Horror aficionados may raise the odd smile at Kit Ryan's Botched. It's certainly entertaining enough, with Stephen Dorff's mission to Moscow to steal Ivan the Terrible's crucifix being waylaid by a serial killer rampaging around a creepy apartment block. Indeed, the action fair rattles along (albeit sometimes contrivedly and incoherently) and Jamie Foreman, Geoff Bell and Bronagh Gallagher feast on the scenery to camp effect opposite the deadpan Dorff and love interest, Jaime Murray. But the emphasis is more on knockabout schlock than genuine terror and, thus, the decapitations, impalings and dissectings have more of a guffaw than a grotesque factor.

Much less amusing is Simon Davison's Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth, a sci-fi lampoon showing at The ICA in London. The absence of an unfeigned fondness for the serials and B movies of yesteryear undermines the humour, which too often seems sneeringly smug, especially where the inept sets and special effects are concerned. But the real weakness is the shambling narrative, in which square-jawed James Vaughan and his chums are lured into the Veritan Sector of space so that arch enemy Richard Leaf can exact his cackling revenge.

3:29pm Tuesday 15th April 2008

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