ADiff review: The Misplaced World plays like a chewy soap opera

Light House, Saturday 27th, 1pm, 101 min

Margarethe Von Trotta delivers a chewy soap opera that will cause indulgent critics to reach for such faint praise as “nicely mounted” and “easy on the eye”. Sophie (Katja Riemann) plays an MOR singer dispatched on an unlikely mission by her comfortably-off father (Matthias Habich). He seems to have spotted a photograph of his late wife’s double – an opera singer in New York named Caterina Fabiani (Barbara Sukowa) – and he suggests that Sophie travel to the Met and discern the truth. Once there, she finds herself chased around the brownstones by various supposed charmers. What is Von Trotta striving for? The picture eventually settles into the sort of revelatory manoeuvres we expect from airport novels with embossed covers. Such things do entertain, of course.

Can't see this? Try Hitchcock/Truffaut, a great doc on the meeting between those two directors. Light House, Saturday 27th, 4pm