In a poignant tale, Tino (Tino Guimaraes) leaves behind his squabble with his brother Joao (Fernando Tavares) and his life of quiet desperation in Santana, Portugal, to seek old flame Lucia (Lidia Pinville). Meanwhile in Paris, Lucia’s husband, bigoted taxi driver Samuel (Gerald Morales in a superb performance) alienates his acquaintances with his blatantly racist remarks. Two further threads delve into the issue of immigration, while the final two stories are set in Salamanca. Frequently desolate and mildly bleached of colour, the characters reflect the gorgeously lit aesthetic of the industrialised wasteland as well as the rural landscape.

In many ways, Sud Express displays the sensibilities of a documentary. Its cast is largely non-professional, diegetic sounds dominate and jar, and rough camerawork lends an authentic realism. Through all the scenes are shown chronologically, sharp editing and quick cutting of sequences breaks continuity, meaning that the audience is always the outsider, offered only fragmentary glimpses of the characters’ lives. Dialogue is used to great effect; at times witty, in other instances inadequate to express the intricacies of human emotion or carrying the unmistakable whiff of ulterior subtext.

Ignoring grand narrative, Sud Express quietly chugs along, resulting in a deeply nuanced and heartrending film. A resonant final shot enforces the film’s underlying theme; that through changing ingrained and restrictive attitudes, social unity and a bright future for Europe is infinitely possible.

Opening with a suicidal picador (Fernando Arrabal) morosely spearing a rhino and then himself, a indistinct plot emerges when, in a wonderfully executed sequence, a scraggly deaf-mute dog handler (co-director Gustave Kervern) inadvertently kills his paranoid employer (Jean-Claude Garrie’re). Meeting his new co-workers, the dog handler is lured into a harebrained scheme to ransom the dog of Avida (Velvet). Chaos ensures when the dog falls foul of a lion’s pit, whereupon the dog-nappers have it stuffed in a gruesome scene. Ludicrously, this leads to the culprits becoming entangled in Avida’s death wish to be carried up a mountain.

At this point, Avida’s plot looses stream. A homage to Salvador Dali and the only scene in colour redeems the entire film. Coupled with the Chief Seattle quote bewailing the similar condition of animals and humans, the ending draws disparate threads and lends a vague structure to the madness. It certainly explains the presence of a hallmark of the film; numerous shots of humans and animals freakishly taken out of context to elaborate their linked weirdness.

Avida will send those seeking lucid plots, traditional humour or a ‘real’ point, hurtling to the exits. By suspending logic and believability, however, Avida amuses (at the very least for its first half) and is a genuinely unique addition to cinema.