成人快手

Victor (Leonardo Sbaraglia) joins his family at their father's hospital bedside in Paris. Max (Fernando Fern谩n G贸mez) is dying of cancer and suffering fearful delusions. While his relatives, headed by Geraldine Chaplin's icy matriarch, bicker over the inheritance, Victor helps Max to "escape" from hospital and carry out his final wishes, which include phoning numbers that don't exist and fruitlessly searching Paris - a City Max no longer recognises - for dead men. Gradually, everything starts to make sense, in this haunting, superbly performed drama.

From the outset, The City Of No Limits comes on like Gothic horror, as an ordinary Paris hospital, its staff, and its CCTV monitors are rendered wildly sinister when seen through the eyes of a frightened and apparently demented old man. "Don't look at the cameras!" Max warns Victor, "they're watching us!" A cheeky nod to the audience? Maybe so, but just as we think we've got a hook on the film, it suddenly veers sharp left to become a political thriller, a family drama, and a subversive love story of Douglas Sirk-style proportions - all at the same time.

"THIS IS GREATLY AFFECTING CINEMA"

That director Antonio Hern谩ndez manages to keep so many irons in the fire without losing the viewer is absolutely to his credit; this is greatly affecting cinema, with heartfelt performances (from the Argentine Sbaraglia, and iconic Spanish actor G贸mez, especially) that elevate proceedings beyond standard melodrama.

It's also aided no end by a fantastically textured score - the sort of stuff that derisively used to be called World Music - from composer Victor Reyes. Hern谩ndez has stated that Victor, The Good Son, is an idealised version of himself. Years previously, he'd cared for his own dying father "and ignored his madness". But as he'd later reflect, "My father had died alone." With City Of No Limits, one hopes he has finally made peace with himself.

In Spanish with English subtitles.