The innovative Irish film-making team of director Lorcan Finnegan and writer Garret Shanley will never trouble you with a romcom. Despite Finnegan's back catalogue of TV adverts that made you laugh - husbands for sale and the like - their films, from the award-winning short Foxes to 2016's Without Name, are much darker.

Vivarium is a stylish, drily funny, rich, clever but mostly bleak take on the values of modern society. Scheduled for a cinema release last week, they have run with the circumstances and led the way, releasing the film straight across every conceivable digital platform, from Sky to PlayStation.

The film opens with a shot of cuckoos being lethally cuckooish. We don't know it yet, but the stall has been laid out.

We meet primary teacher Gemma (Imogen Poots), who finds herself comforting a little girl upset at her discovery of a dead baby bird, ousted from the nest by those same cuckoos we met earlier. Then Gemma's boyfriend Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) turns up.He's a gardener who means to get a van but hasn't yet.

You wouldn't really say he's entirely committed to the idea of full-scale adulting.

But they're of an age when things are expected, so they play along and indulge in some half-hearted house-hunting.

More out of curiosity than anything, they look at the sales pitch for a sprawling identikit housing estate called Yonder and somehow get roped into following a strange, pushy estate agent (Jonathan Aris) out to it. Getting out of Yonder will prove more problematic.

The film has a very definite dry humour but that does little to alleviate its relentless bleakness.

I have heard it described as a parable of parenthood, and as such it is really depressing and super-dark, but I took it to be a broader, more existential reflection on modern life and how we so often just stumble into what is considered normal.

But this is a sci-fi thriller and it tells its story and makes its point in an almost cartoonish way, reminiscent in many ways of The Truman Show with added Kafka.

While I cannot say I enjoyed it per se, it has many merits. And in a time where we have no choice but to re-evaluate so many aspects of what we accept as normal and how and why we live as we do, it feels remarkably relevant.

★★★ Aine O'Connor

Movie releases

Do not adjust your set: this is the new normal

With cinemas shut, studios are mobilising to make back any returns on some releases by fast-tracking to on-demand. Universal has already rolled out Emma, The Invisible Man and The Hunt to streaming services (see universalpictures.ie). All are highly recommended.

Many release dates are being pushed back, but how they end up faring in the already clogged schedule is anyone’s guess.

For those missing the IFI and Light House cinemas, Curzon Home Cinema and Volta.ie have ample catalogues of independent films on-demand.

The big story this week is Disney+, which went live on Tuesday in Ireland to much ooh-ing and ah-ing (despite a lower bandwidth to cope with the huge streaming demands this pandemic is causing). You imagine frazzled parents were waiting with credit cards in hand.

Not to be outdone, NOW TV is giving away a three-month Kids Pass (via nowtv.com/ie/wfh) before the end of March, if Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig is more your thing.

Togo

Cert: 6+; Now on Disney +

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The content list on the newly launched Disney+ inspires waves of nostalgia. There is much new content too, and this week they led with Togo, the true story of a heroic husky and his not unheroic human.

Tom Flynn’s script begins in 1925 and a diphtheria outbreak in Alaska during the storm of the century. The only way to get the required medicine is by dog sled, and only one man is deemed capable, Leonhard Seppala (Willem Dafoe, above).

The story goes back and forth between the arrival of a stubborn runt of the litter that Leonhard didn’t want but his wife did, and the huge task ahead of them 12 years later.

The back-and-forth storytelling might confuse kids initially — but it’s a cute dog film with a good story, and it looks stunning.

★★★ Aine O'Connor

The Truth

Cert: Club;

Curzon Home Cinema

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Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda must have pinched himself when he secured not only Juliette Binoche but also Catherine Deneuve for his first Western film, with the two Gallic icons (above) locking horns in a tale of film roles and life merging.

Deneuve plays Fabienne, the grande dame of the big screen in the autumn of her career. Callous, petty and demeaning, she is hard work for anyone in her path. This includes her scriptwriter daughter Lumir (Binoche), who arrives from New York with her actor husband (Ethan Hawke) and young daughter. They have arrived for the launch of Fabi’s memoir, but Lumir quickly discovers that there are glaring omissions and inaccuracies in the book.

Further friction is caused by Fabi’s new film role in a mother-daughter drama opposite a rising star (Manon Clavel) whose physical appearance awakens old family ghosts.

Some metaphors are heavy-handed (we keep being reminded Fabi’s home is next to a jail) but there is a richness about this film that goes beyond its stellar cast and their immersion within the roles.

Kore-eda manages to have fun with his super characters while also telling a tale of memory and redemption.

★★★★ Hilary A White

The Perfect Candidate

Cert: Club;

www.modernfilms.com

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Saudi filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour has an uneasy relationship in her homeland, as much a leading light of its national cinema as a provocateur rattling the cage of the ultra-conservative kingdom. Her latest drama shows that she is an excellent storyteller, one with a keen eye for using the particular to signpost the universal.

Mila Alzahrani (right) is just wonderful as Maryam, a determined young doctor at a local clinic whose ambitions are quickly overtaking the dreary limitations Saudi society places on its women. Chief among her concerns is the muddy road leading to the clinic, so she decides to run in the local elections in order to get the thing paved. At every turn, she faces obstacles, from patronising deflections to outright condemnation. All the while, her musician father is playing the first concerts permitted for decades, hinting at some level of change in the air.

What our heroine has to contend with is at times laughable (one old-timer insists on being anaesthetised before allowing her to examine him) but also sobering. Combined, we get a portrait of a character who comes to feel like the most real element in a bizarre world. A gently courageous piece of Arab cinema.

★★★★ Hilary A White

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