This French drama could not be described as a straight romance, nor quite as a thriller but it has elements of both. Based on a recent popular French novel, it explores the very contemporary phenomenon of online dating and the temptations to fake or polish one’s online self. The fact that it stars the indefatigable Juliet Binoche (still a plausible romantic lead at 55) is bound to give its initial box office a boost.

Here, Binoche moves beyond her sometimes-glassy demeanour to show a fuller range of emotion. Her character is not entirely sympathetic (see below) but she holds our attention throughout.

The mushrooming of social media inside modern life (here with le Facebook as the French know it) is cropping up more and more in films these days, as it more or less has to if they want to inhabit the zeitgeist. The origins of this aspect of the web are rooted in the apparently universal desire to share all, and this can intersect (often dangerously) with the need to connect intimately. If we stop and think about it, intimacy is something that can only take root if we are fully honest, but when it is so easy to project a false or idealised image, that honesty is often fatally undermined.

This is the dilemma that eventually grows like a cancer inside the life of Claire (Binoche). She is a middle-aged separated woman who is still able to attract much younger men. Soon she starts to flirt online with twenty-something Alex (Francois Civil). She can’t help herself really when she borrows some photos of a younger woman to entice her new prospect. Of course, the poet’s adage hovers over this decision; “What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”.

One of the problems with showing this new world is that so many scenes are essentially static, with us just looking at someone typing into their phone or computer. Perhaps the director could have opened it out more, or balanced this with more dynamic interactive scenes.

The excellent Charles Berling is a bit wasted in his underwritten role as Claire’s ex, and Claire’s relationship with the obligatory analyst (played largely unsympathetically by Nicole Garcia) become routinised.

It is important to our enjoyment of the film (directed by a man incidentally, who previously directed 2008’s Mark of an Angel, which has, coincidentally, been remade into the Australian film Angel of Mine, premiering at the Melbourne International Film Festival in August) that we don’t judge Claire too harshly. She is insecure or prone to being narcissistic, but who isn’t today, at least a little? She could also be seen as forced into an impossible position by a youth-obsessed culture. Perhaps we can agree that she didn’t set out to hurt anybody. However, as Gustav Flaubert understood (in that seminal French work Madame Bovary), fate is both merciless and without rancour once the mechanism has been tripped. Claire is neither pure victim nor heroine, but she is recognisably human in her folly.

No film ends up being about just one thing. Whether a director sets out to capture the life of a single person or an entire planet, the culture wrapped around both the artist and the art end up influencing the final product. Hell, half the fun of watching movies is reading the material between the lines that the filmmakers themselves may not be aware is on the page.

Today’s offering, the latest from master thespian-turned-filmmaker Ralph Fiennes, is ostensibly a biopic about Russian danseur Rudolf Nureyev but is also a look at the political and cultural climate around him. Unfortunately for Fiennes, the latter ends up overshadowing the former, much to the production’s detriment.

The depiction we get of Nureyev, as captured by newcomer Oleg Ivenko, is one of frustrating inconsistency. His background as a dancer lets him glide across the stage when he’s called to do so, but backstage, his position in a story supposedly all about him feels in flux. He fluctuates between rebellious selfishness and wide-eyed wonder, wanting to see as much of the world as he can, when he isn’t actively trying to avoid talking to anyone. In greater hands, this could have worked as showing character depth and complexity, but what we ultimately get is a big switch being thrown, with what we learn about the artist different to what we learn about the art.

This is where things get rather disappointing as, in contrast to the film’s impact as biography, its musings on the nature of art make for quite enticing viewing. Meshing the French attitude towards all things sexual with a traveller’s point-of-view in wanting to experience all art possible, it creates a mood for Nureyev’s journey beyond the Iron Curtain as one of voyeuristic admiration.

Mike Eley’s camera work and Barney Pilling’s editing enforce comparisons between different forms of art, from paintings to sculptures to mosaics to songs to the human body itself. Maybe that’s what attracted Blue Is The Warmest Colour’s Adéle Exarchopoulos to the project: Fiennes actually pulled off comparing nude bodies to sculptures without turning it into exploitative softcore fit for late-night SBS.

And when added to the Soviet influence within the story, cementing Nureyev’s eventual defection not as political but as personal in reaction to the KGB’s attempts to stifle his exploration, it makes for a very rich atmosphere that the core story winds up letting down. Where that gets weirder is with David Hare’s scripting, containing numerous pleas to focus on the story and the emotion behind it, rather than the technique with which it is presented. The exact opposite of what makes this film worth sitting through.

It still makes its point as a work of art, one that insists on the appreciation of other works in turn, and it furthers Fiennes’ aesthetic behind the camera. But in the end, it feels like being in a restaurant where the salad has more flavour than the steak it’s been paired with.

With its LA-set storyline and throwback to ‘80s era action films like Lethal Weapon and 48 Hrs., Stuber is an irreverent, entertaining comedy, orchestrated by director Michael Dowse.

We follow Dave Bautista’s Vic Manning, a detective obsessed with detaining the drug kingpin (The Raid’s Iwo Kuwais) that killed his partner. After receiving a tip on his nemesis’s whereabouts, the hot-headed Vic ropes an unwilling Uber driver called Stu (Kumail Nanjiani) into his chaotic investigation and personal vendetta.

Though never reaching the heights of characters like Riggs and Murtaugh, Vic and Stu make a likeable enough duo. Like their cinematic peers, the combination of quick-fire dialogue (“you’re built for justice. I’m built for brunch”) and antagonistic interplay raises enough smiles, capitalising on Nanjiani’s goofiness and Bautista’s brute force. It’s also a delight to see the latter embrace his comedic talent, after a number of scene-stealing turns as MCU’s Drax the Destroyer.

Unfortunately for Kuwais’s bleached-hair bad guy, the story gives him very little to work with. In a similar vein to Mile 22’s frantic fight scenes, the Indonesian’s extraordinary martial arts talents are badly showcased here; a real shame given his brawls with ex-MMA fighter and wrestler Bautista. The once ubiquitous Mira Sorvino also phones in her performance as Vic’s generic and suspicious police captain.

A couple of serviceable subplots involving Nanjiani’s unrequited love interest (Glow’s Betty Gilpin) and Bautista’s neglected daughter (Santa Clarita Diet’s Natalie Morales) are lost amidst the film’s kinetic storyline. Dropping the two oddball leads in increasingly violent and silly situations, such as a chase through a Sriracha sauce factory or shootout in a veterinary clinic (John Woo doves included). In perhaps the film’s funniest scene, set at Stu’s sporting goods store, Dowse gets to drop in slapstick comedy reminiscent of his underrated sports feature, Goon.

In terms of buddy-cop films, Stuber adds little flavour to the formula. But as a mindless action/comedy vehicle, the pairing of Bautista and Nanjiani injects enough life and laughs to keep this extended Uber commercial going.