Francesca Steele

The film itself doesn’t feel overly new, but smartly, smoothly evocative of the first installment.

This is absolutely a film to go to the movies for: original, confident and boldly entertaining. And, at its core is a powerful tenderness.

All the entertaining villainy has the effect of making Andy’s quest – to shape her new role as Runway’s features editor into something truly worthwhile – look even duller, and her romance with nice-guy Peter (Patrick Brammall from Colin from Accounts) completely pointless.

It is a brash, funny, extravagant spectacle about sex and death, pain and pleasure, and – most of all – fashion. Milkmaid corsets, vintage Chanel, latex wedding dresses. Move over, Kate Bush. There’s a new Wuthering Heights look in town.

Crucially, the film is very funny, but like Alex (and Bishop), in a gentle, unprepared sort of way that feels like having good mates over for dinner.

H is for Hawk wants desperately to make you feel the raw blankness of grief and the healing power of nature, but in the end feels more like a kids’ wildlife documentary: beautiful but bloodless.

I’m not convinced that the heavy violence is entirely warranted, but the whole thing is at least unfailingly kitsch, and when the storylines merge they do so seamlessly.

It is a story of family and relationships, of life’s inevitabilities, and the surprises we can nonetheless carve from those. Its gut-wrenching despair is matched by a strange optimism, a powerful embrace of the possibilities of life and love that stays with you long after the end credits roll.

The film’s very last moments are perhaps a little saccharine, but honestly, by this point, you’ll forgive it anything. Supremely confident and stylish film-making that markets itself as big yet feels somehow small, in the sense that extraordinary care is paid to each scene, each modest conversation. Marty’s self-belief may sometimes be unearned, but this film’s absolutely isn’t.

Song Sung Blue’s best moments are when it focuses on its beautifully ordinary love story.