35 Rhums (35 Shots of Rum)

Widowed train driver Lionel (Alex Descas) lives in a small Paris flat with his affectionate teenage daughter Josephine (Mati Diop). This reflective film charts their shifting relationship, and how friends, neighbours and love interests come into their lives.

Wally Hammond, Time Out: Though it's true that 35 Shots demonstrates an extraordinary reflective ease and contains possibly more hugs and smiles than [director Claire] Denis's entire oeuvre to date, that is not to say it is a film free of tribulations, tensions and taboos... The film's extraordinary economy is typified by a lovely, spontaneous café scene where the principles dance to the Commodores' Nightshift, a mini-ballet touchingly evocative of their separate feelings, relationships and destinies. (Verdict: five stars out of five)

Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: Denis is magisterial when dealing with her central trio [Josephine, her boyfriend Noe (Gregoire Colin) and Lionel], a kind of Isolde/Tristan/King Mark stuck in a dour promontory of French finitude. She is less magisterial when breaking the story's circle herself and shifting, albeit briefly, to Germany, where Ingrid Caven (ex-Fassbinder diva) turns kitchen-sink realism to kitsch and surrealism Europudding-style. Credits reveal that the film had German co-funding. Sometimes money talks and the language is Gobbledegook. (Verdict: three starts out of five)

David Parkinson, Empire: Harking to [Japanese director Yasujiro] Ozu's genius for capturing the rhythms of the everyday, Claire Denis celebrates the often-overlooked traits of trust, acceptance and love in this exquisite domestic drama... With Agnes Godard's subtle imagery making the mundane seem reassuring, this has a quiet confidence to match its compassion. (Verdict: five stars out of five) ·