Cafe de Flore a deeply rewarding melodrama

Before Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallee made the deeply rewarding 2011 melodrama Cafe de Flore.

Vanessa Paradis in the sweepingly ambitious Cafe de Flore.

A tribute to the recently departed Egyptian actor Omar Sharif appears in the form of a timely screening of David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (Sunday, 8.30pm, Fox Classics). Peter O’Toole became a star for his performance as the whip-smart yet eccentric World War I British Army lieutenant who becomes the charismatic leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks.

Sharif, in his first English-language role after eight years as a star at home, was nominated for a supporting actor Oscar as Sharif Ali, the sceptical but faithful Arab right-hand man in the struggle. Freddie Young’s Super Panavision 70 wide-screen photography is stunning, so the bigger the TV, the better the experience. Rest in peace, Mr Sharif.

In the wryly funny Norwegian thriller In Order of Disappearance (Friday, 7.30pm, World Movies), transplanted Swedish snowplow driver Nils (Stellan Skarsgard) works clearing the same remote stretch of Norwegian road — a task that wins him an unexpected civic award (not much, competition, apparently).

When his clean son is brutally murdered during a drug deal, Nils executes some single-minded, imaginative revenge against the foppish local crime lord (Pal Sverre Hagen) and ruthless Serbian gang patriarch (Bruno Ganz) who dared to disrupt his quiet life.

Director Hans Petter Moland and Skarsgard have made four films together in 20 years, including the little-seen gem Aberdeen (2000), and their creative shorthand here pays great dividends. Veteran genre screenwriter Kim Fupz Aakeson’s script is a model of underplayed wit, highlighted by sombre title cards announcing the names of the dead as they pile up.

Before he moved to Hollywood and directed Matthew McConaughey to an Oscar in Dallas Buyers Club, Montreal-born writer-director Jean-Marc Vallee made the sweepingly ambitious and deeply rewarding 2011 melodrama Cafe de Flore (Tuesday, 6.30pm, World Movies). The parallel narratives follow a contemporary Montreal DJ’s complicated relationships with his girlfriend and ex-wife, as well as a single mother in 1960s Paris who has a son with Down syndrome. Vallee, who also edited the film, takes his time telling the two stories in great detail. So by the time the two threads are joined, the logic of the linkage seems entirely plausible. As he did in his breakout 2005 hit C.R.A.Z.Y., Vallee has an astute ear for popular music; here, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is used to hypnotic effect.

The 1936 screwball comedy Libeled Lady (Sunday, 10.35pm, TCM) stars Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, which is reason enough to spend 98 minutes with it. An excellent example of the endlessly funny and manic genre, it was a box-office hit that was subsequently nominated for a best picture Oscar.

Lawrence of Arabia (M) 4.5 stars

Sunday, 8.30pm, Fox Classics (113)

Cafe de Flore (MA15+) 4 stars

Tuesday, 6.30pm, World Movies (430)

In Order of Disappearance (MA15+) 4 stars

Friday, 7.30pm, World Movies (430)