Alice

Good performances with moments in it, particularly with that strong first act...

Piponnier is... a lanky joy to watch, all awkward, flailing limbs and expressive Bambi eyes.

However, the story is fundamentally risible and strangely sanitised and it plays like a pretentious and po-faced version of Billie Piper's TV show Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Women can and do make a good living as escorts, without the tragic end that male moralists earnestly imagine for them. But this is contrived and the ending is borderline absurd.

Piponnier is phenomenal, putting in a meticulously reserved performance in what could very well have been a melodramatic role.

A thinly sketched tale of female empowerment, pushing an unconvincing sex-positive agenda in which prostitution is a reasonable, relatively worry-free shortcut to financial emancipation.

Alice rejects convention and may just find joy, even if it means going nuclear. Breathtaking.

Working with a small budget, an available set - her own apartment - and a generous team, Mackerras has created an intriguing and complex mix of comedy, horror and tragedy.

Certainly worth visiting as one of the more complex and sympathetic dramas about sex work that has been made in recent years.

An increasingly nuanced drama about a woman put in an impossible situation.