THE HOAX. Dir Lasse Hallström. 2006

This doesn’t sound like an interesting premise for a film; an unsuccessful writer faking the autobiography of Howard Hughes and getting caught, but it’s gripping, and true.

Clifford Irving’s breathtaking audacity is so outrageous and implausible that you have to keep watching because you can’t believe he’ll pull it off, and he nearly does. Richard Gere plays Irving with what looks like a dodgy black perm and he looks so unlike the Gere we know that he manages to convince.

Although the film is about the trickery involved in fooling his publicist, the publishers and their legal advisors, it is also a close study of friendship and relationships. Irving’s friend joins him rather reluctantly in the venture, which is a sort of literary hussle, but fails to put a brake on the increasingly complicated and unnerving fraud, while Irving’s wife has concerns about his easy lying in his private life.

Irving’s obsession with Hughes grows, and threatens to disrupt his life; he becomes almost deluded and paranoiac. Hallström weaves in sinister scenes which provide terrific tension, making the film a literary thriller. Irving comes to believe that Hughes wants to use him as a tool to topple Nixon’s corrupt government, so what started out as a desire to write a publishable book becomes a deranged mission to take on the White House and the CIA, to tell the truth and make a difference to the world. Was Irving going off the rails or was he a tool and a scapegoat? Hughes' power combined with our suspicion of CIA activities at the time of the Nixon administration, intimate that it could be possible.

Whatever is the real truth, Irving and his close relationships suffer from his casual deceit and betrayal and the film is a fascinating study of a man whose love of story, lively imagination, agile thinking and determination are really impressive. It's a pity his talents didn’t work to his, and his loved ones, advantage. His confidence, fearlessness, and talent as an actor suggest a bold, courageous or desperate man, and make for a fascinating character study. Not sure if he's likeable though.

The History Boys. Alan Bennett. Dir Nicholas Hytner. September 2007.

Alan Bennett wanted to write about a charismatic schoolmaster and has come up with Hector (Desmond Barrit) whose approach is to teach the boys poetry and songs; Hector’s view is that learning moving, insightful or just plain silly texts provide the antidote to the earnest love of 'words'. He has the boys acting, singing from musicals and speaking French rather than studying History, and his unorthodox style aims to provide them with cultural awareness and breadth.

These boys are ambitious and their Headmaster wants them to get into Oxford which will give the school a better ranking in the league tables so he brings in a young teacher, Irwin, to prepare the boys for the examination board by challenging the way they think about history. The play is about teaching, the way to open up young minds balanced against exam training, and Bennett’s play shows how a teaching career can be fulfilling but also limiting; the school is a nation in microcosm: flawed individuals doing their best in a public institution.

Despite knowing that the actors are not boys but young men, this is soon forgotten; their performances are engaging and funny, occasionally moving. Their tolerance of Hector’s weakness for them seems mature but it is also the way that young people accept the oddities of adults as long as there is no harm done. Irwin, however, is less convincing. He is repressed and consequently somewhat dampened which makes it hard to see how he captivates the boys as he does, enough to shake them out of their sparky cynicism, pay attention, and alter their thinking.

Foul language distracts from the first-class script; it’s not necessary. The History Boys is a thought-provoking play, with moments of great tenderness, terrific humour, and lively and convincing performances. Watching this play from far back in the theatre diminshes its impact; seeing it a second time closer to the stage reveals a far deeper meaning; minute changes in the actors' faces are visible, we can see the expression in their eyes alter, but further back, we are unable to read these subtle and highly significant signs. Go and see it but sit at the front of the class.

WAITRESS. Dir Adrienne Shelley. 2007

A confection of a film this one, featuring no end of sickly pies baked by Jenna (Keri Russell) in a small town diner. She puts everything she has into the buttery crusts, creamy fillings and marshmallow toppings; it’s all melted bitter chocolate and caramel, but her life is lacklustre and unhappy, her husband is an insecure control freak and he is the obstacle to her creative and emotional fulfilment.

Funny and charming, the film’s humour surprises and delights whenever her git of a husband’s behaviour becomes too oppressive, and the story achieves a nice balance between eliciting sympathy and laughter. Having said that, husband Earl is nasty but not too nasty, and there are times when we wonder why she doesn’t tell him what a prat he really is.

Jenna is horrified to find she is pregnant and her real ambition is to win the pie making competition and open her own pie diner. The pregnancy and her medical consultations with a new doctor bring unexpected benefits. Charming and funny.

LA VIE EN ROSE. Dir Olivier Dahan. 2007

Marion Cotillard is outstanding as Edith Piaf in Dahan's biography. Piaf’s classic songs are terrific and passionately delivered, and the film feels like a cinematic roller coaster ride of emotions and fragments from Piaf's life. The effect is of vivid but random memory recall, as though we are seeing moving snapshots taken through her life.

Dahan serves up a visual maelstrom, from Piaf as a small child left with her grandmother to be brought up in a brothel, through her years of success and arrogance, to her death, ravaged by drugs and alcohol. Loss follows loss, first her father takes her away from her mother, then she is torn from the arms of the prostitute she comes to love, and finally she is grief stricken at the death of her lover, boxer Marcel Cerdan. She never recovered from her broken heart, which caused her addiction to morphine, and her physical degeneration is shocking.

Cotillard's Piaf is outspoken and rough, drunk and mouthy, but occasionally vulnerable. The music is fantastic and Cotillard's performance is so riveting it feels as though we are watching Piaf herself. Despite witnessing her behaviour - brash, a bit trashy, sometimes pathetic, her character remains elusive.

Dahan's use of flashbacks flings the viewer from time to time and place to place, forwards and backwards in a breathless and almost bewildering sequence of unrelated events. Nevertheless, the film is gripping throughout, Piaf's progress upward and downward is compelling and, as the film reaches its climax as she sings her heart out, the power and heartfelt performance leaves this audience gaping at the screen in stunned silence.