Emotionless universes captured enticingly on screen

The absence – or removal – of love is the theme of several films available from Amazon and other online outlets. Still Water is a beautifully made work about a prayerful blue-collar man played by Matt Damon. He travels from Oklahoma to Marseilles to try and free his daughter from prison. She’s been there for years, having been convicted of murder, but he thinks she’s innocent.

He becomes friendly with a social rights activist and her daughter. His closeness with them runs in tandem with the ‘whodunit’ aspect of the plot. It’s all handed very delicately by director Tom McCarthy. Damon underplays effectively in a sad but uplifting film that avoids any sense of melodrama.

The Face of Love is another melancholy movie with a lot of heart. Annette Bening’s husband drowns at the beginning. Afterwards she meets a man (Ed Harris) who looks so like him it’s uncanny. A romance develops between them.

She’s unable to tell him why she’s attracted to him. The question is: Does she love him for himself or because he reminds her of her husband?

It’s very movingly directed. You have to feel for Harris, who gets a raw deal in the relationship. It’s as if Bening is using him to excoriate her grief. The tone of the film highlights her recovery but there’s little sympathy shown for Harris.

Next to Her is an Israeli work about a woman (Liron Ben-Shlush) who’s taking care of her severely handicapped sister when a man enters her life. The difficulty of keeping both relationships running in tandem is the main business of the film. It’s handled with great sensitivity by the director, Asaf Korman (Liron’s husband in real life) and makes no concessions to commercialism.

Part of it is upsetting to watch – there’s an element of sexual abuse – but it’s admirable in its honesty. The theme will affect anyone dealing with disability in their lives

Another fantastic film you should see is Woman in a Dressing Gown which delivers a strong pro-marriage message after a harassed husband (Anthony Quayle) is tempted to divorce his wife and go off with his mistress (Sylvia Syms).

I was also very impressed by the Russian film Loveless which was made in 2017 but seems prescient about the Ukrainian conflict. Its focus is a selfish couple whose 12-year-old son goes missing. A muted movie that will hit you at the core of your being, it’s hugely effective in its depiction of two people who bring a child into the world without any concern about his well-being.

The direction is as unflinching as the desolate landscape, which acts as a pathetic fallacy to the action. I’ve mentioned writer/director Andrey Zvyagintsev in this page before. I urge you to watch this film and two of his others, Elena and The Banishment. They’re equally coruscating in their rawness, their bleak sense of a world of consumerism hemorrhaging any sense of decency or care.