Train ride with three masters

In the first, Olmi, a much-neglected master in Britain since his classic Tree of the Wooden Clogs, focuses on an elderly biochemist (Carlo Delle Piane) fantasising in the restaurant car about the attractive personal assistant (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) who has arranged his journey. It's an elegiac, almost wistful piece, strong on atmosphere but not on dramatic impact.

In the second, Kiarostami casts Silvana De Santis as an impatient middle-aged woman traveller dragging her much younger escort (Filippo Trojano) along with her. She treats him so shoddily that he decides to drop her, possibly for a teenage girl from his home town whom he spots in the corridor.

It is a slight but effective playlet about rampaging age and innocent youth, proving what you don't at first suspect - that the woman is more vulnerable than the young man she tries to dominate.

For the final episode, Loach attempts to drag the film into a more lively - but not necessarily more subtle - mode. A group of young Glaswegian football fans, on their way to support Celtic, believe one of their train tickets has been stolen by an Albanian kid wearing a Beckham shirt.

The boys do the decent thing when they realise his accompanying family are desperately impoverished immigrants. Which means that one of them remains without a ticket and the police are informed. But another group of fans helps them evade the law on arrival in Rome.

One hopes Scottish football fans would be so kindly but, if one has doubts, Loach clearly doesn't. It's a nice, optimistic way to round off a film which otherwise needs a bit of patience but ultimately repays it.

Tickets
Cert: cert15