Farewell, Home Sweet Home

Iosseliani's wholly delightful, assured and typically idiosyncratic fable tells of the various reversals of fortune that affect a well to do 19-year-old, who rebels against his culture-vulture businesswoman mother and boozily indolent father. He forsakes the family chateau for café 'society, preferring the company of its denizens - Parisian dropouts, immigrants, barstaff - to home life. As ever, the jigsaw narrative slowly pieces itself together, and the overall dearth of dialogue means that the audience has to work for its pleasures. But it's a hugely charming piece, wondrously inventive, consistently witty, engaging in its devotion to the joys of wine, women and song, and somewhat deeper than it first appears.