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Movies about a loving family should be joyous, heartwarming tales. Even the most dark and depressing examinations of family values have at least a bit of humour in them don’t they? Comedy is, after all, an ever present in life…no matter how grim. Not so much in Belgium it would seem, as Joachim Lafosse’s Our Children is a tragedy void of anything the slightest bit whimsical, but when hearing about the true story the film is based you can kind of understand why.

Inspired by the heartbreaking story of Genevieve Lhermitte, Our Children is an exquisite yet ultimately tragic expression of mental suffocation with a stunning lead performance at its core. Emilie Dequenne is Murielle, a young woman who falls madly in love with Moroccan native, now Belgian citizen, Mounir (Tahar Rahim). As their life together develops, through marriage and the birth of 3 children, their domestic life becomes manipulated by Mounir’s adoptive father, Dr Andre Pinget (Niels Arestrup). Taking it on himself to financially support the family, Murielle gradually becomes stifled by his presence and the inevitable cracks begin to emerge in the relationship of the young couple.

Emotionally arresting and profoundly moving throughout, the film is extremely fast paced for its subject matter. Utilising clever edits to develop large chunks of time, the film persistently skips forward and spans several years in a heartbeat. Of course such a technique is essential in documenting Murielle’s gradual mental descent, and it’s a testament to both the acting and the direction that its narrative progression never becomes confusing nor convoluted. There are occasions when proceedings become a bit of a chore, but then such forays into monotony only heighten one’s sympathy for Murielle and her evidently mundane and suffocated existence.

As the film wears on, it becomes increasingly heartbreaking to see Murielle deteriorate as the chauvinistic ideals of her husband, and unwanted landlord, take their toll. Essentially seeing her physically and emotionally fall apart due to the unwarranted pressures that besiege women, the film plummets southward for Murielle in the final third conjuring a truly horrifying finale that will render even the most talkative of people speechless.

In a word, Our Children is tragic. It’s unsettling, upsetting and at times haunting thanks Lafosse’s powerful script and his cast’s phenomenal acting. Exuding a nuanced honesty throughout that only seems apparent in films from mainland Europe, every performance is great to watch. From Emelie Duquenne’s gradual deterioration to Niels Arestrup’s ever present creepiness, Our Children is as engrossing as it is sombre. From top to bottom, Joachim Lafosse’s latest truly is an old fashioned Greek tragedy of the very highest order.

Let’s begin by saying that Jamie Hooper’s Plastic Love will certainly push some people’s boundaries. Personally, I can applaud this, however, given that Fingercuff Production’s short-film is a self-professed ‘dark and twisted tale of love, loss, obsession and fetishes’, perhaps we can assume that it’s not for the faint-hearted. You’ve had your warning with the words ‘twisted’ and ‘fetishes’, however, what Hooper forgets to mention here is how Plastic Love is also a surprisingly tactful and poignant take on a range of very personal and taboo subjects.

Plastic Love follows three different stories; a young couple with an interest in performing dangerous bondage routines, a man’s loss of sexual interest in his partner being replaced with a sexual fetishism for a pair of her shiny red shoes and, lastly, a widower coming to terms with the loss of her partner through her own sexual release.

Put in the wrong hands, these story-lines could certainly be fodder for some painfully awkward comedic moments and, even worse, could accumulate to being insensitive and ignorant of the taboo subjects it portrays. Luckily, Hooper and the talented cast perform an excellent job of delivering a both tactful and believable portrayal of the three stories, whilst also managing to end the film on a rather serene and positive note.

Whilst not particularly dialogue-heavy, Plastic Love includes a well-needed dose of aesthetically-farcical British humour (running around the garden half-naked brandishing a garden-tool, anyone?) that works well to relieve some of the intensity of the story-lines. However, given the artistic and smart cinematography used throughout, the short-film certainly does not suffer from the small amount of dialogue as it is arguably this very factor that contributes to the film being so poignant.

Although Plastic Love certainly lives up to its own description of being a ‘dark’ tale, it is the intelligent way in which it visually portrays these tales that allows what the characters do to become rather completely normal and even deserving of empathy. Regardless of your opinion on boundary-pushing, acknowledgement should be given to Hooper for relentlessly tackling a group of taboo subject matters in our arguably close-minded society.