Kirk Douglas had virility and a dimple in Lust for Life, but that Hollywood classic never knew how to strike home with simplicity. This is the great achievement of Maurice Pialat’s pained, tender and masterly film, which emerged to some acclaim in 1991 but never enough for its merits.

At the centre is the tightly coiled performance of the singer-turned-actor Jacques Dutronc as the painter during his last anguished months convalescing in Auvers-sur-Oise. No melodramatics; no heaving music; no tricksy editing: Pialat lets the images fall with Spartan clarity as we observe Van Gogh’s daily round — painting, drinking, arguing, falling for young charms, being ignored and misunderstood. This is a film of faces and landscapes, every one of them resonant.

And it could be a film about Pialat himself. He was often a nightmare to work with, as some stories in the extras suggest. Introducing half an hour of deleted scenes, the editor Yann Dedet offers valuable insights into the director’s artistic intuitions; we also get 20 minutes with a sadly fuzzy-headed Dutronc. Plus a fascinating image gallery featuring Pialat’s own paintings. They’re accomplished landscapes, Post-Impressionist in manner. Why am I not surprised? (Artificial Eye)

Bombon El Perro
15, 97 mins

You don’t have to love dogs to love Carlos Sorin’s shaggy Argentine beauty about a middle-aged man at loose ends who finds self-respect and companionship with a pedigree hunting dog. The dog is the cast’s only professional; but the true star is the garage-hand Juan Villegas, wonderfully expressive and touching as the mild, ever-hopeful hero. Too much Steadicam lurching at times, but Sorin knows a strong image when he sees one, and this subtle, dryly comic film comes with a strong beating heart. (Pathé)

Portrait of Jason
E, 99 mins

Intimate details of black gay lives were not common knowledge in 1967 — before the Stonewall riots, before confessional television — and when Shirley Clarke’s film hit American cinemas a bombshell exploded. A black hustler and nightclub aspirant, Jason Holliday, spills out his chaotic life in between vodka gulps, joints and laughter. We get just a fraction of the 12 hours that were shot — quite enough for a moving, hilarious, sometimes sad ride through house-boy duties, cop problems and matters unprintable here. A raw, neglected American classic. (Second Run)

Flash Gordon
PG, 111 mins

“This Ming is a psycho!” observes our superhero. Not language the 1930s comic-strip would use, or the spin-off serials. But it fits the self-mocking world of this gaudy 1980 spectacular. In this anniversary edition the director Mike Hodges and Brian Blessed give separate commentaries, and there’s a sample serial episode. But how can you concentrate when Queen’s rock score digs in and Danilo Donati’s outrageous designs pile on the operatic camp? Geat fun. (Metrodome)

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