Aaltra

The menus housing these DVD extras are as determinedly lo-fi as the film itself, and as unanimated as the film's two heroes. Look closer, however, and there is a range of delectable features concealed beneath that austere frame.

The two deleted scenes and five shorter outtakes are almost worthy to have made final cut. The three trailer spots, each comprising a different single take from the film, are as understated and deadpan as trailers can be. The directors' statement of intentions, presented in text form, is articulate and to the point.

Best of all are the two short films. The first, Striptease, is a music video. It takes Hutatut Nouk Nouk's priceless cover version (complete with “club style” crooning and electropop backing track) of Bobby Hebb's 1966 classic Sunny, as featured in one memorable scene in Aaltra, and marries these exotic sounds to images of an afro'd woman performing a striptease in front of a seated pimp-like gentleman, all in the style of Seventies softcore porn.

This absurd merger between cheese and sleaze is alone worth the price of the DVD, but there is also À l'arraché, an eight minute film, directed by Benoît Delépine and Christophe Smith, and starring Delépine as a hapless leaflet distributor whose various attempts to steal a car end in a nightmarishly preposterous chase down the motorway after he chooses the wrong man to rob. Shot in colour, and unfolding at a breakneck pace, it looks and feels totally different from Aaltra, but for its focus on an unsympathetic loser, and its surreal, slightly cruel sense of fun. The French is left without subtitles, but only a fool would fail to get the gist of this mostly visual series of gags.