Of course there still are cinemas. But most of them are ‘multiplexes’, with 10 or a dozen screens apiece.

When this type of cinema started to appear I naively thought that, with so many screens, there would certainly be one devoted to more unusual films - foreign language or independent - and maybe another showing classic films from the past.  Ah well.

If you go to the Guardian Film website and type in your postcode it brings up half a dozen cinemas within 20 miles of where you live, starting with the nearest; in my case, Aylesbury, followed by two in High Wycombe. Last week all three were showing the following nine films, none of which we fancied.

The Croods / Dark Skies / Evil Dead / G.I Joe: Retaliation / Jack the Giant Killer / Oblivion / Olympus has Fallen / Scary Movie 5 and Trance.

At the Aylesbury Odeon you also had The Odd Life of Timothy Green (an infertile couple grow a son in their garden); The Host (A girl infected with a parasitic alien host learns how to form a symbiotic relationship with the intruder and plans to save other humans from a similar fate); and Wreck-it Ralph, (a computer-animated film for kids).  The 11.00 am Wednesday ‘Senior Screen’ showing was the new Jack Reacher movie (with tiny Tom Cruise playing Lee Child’s strapping great action hero); possibly ok for me but not for Jane.

At the High Wycombe Cineworld they were also showing Finding Nemo (another computer-animated film for kiddies); Identity Thief (“It's meant to be comedy, but this tale of a confidence trickster stealing a businessman's financial details is no laughing matter”, says Philip French in the Guardian, while Peter Bradshaw adds that “with Jason Bateman on particularly cold form, it's left to Melissa McCarthy to lift this depressing odd-couple comedy”; Madagascar 3 (Guess what? Another computer-animated FFK).

And so it went on.  But wait a minute: the High Wycombe Empire, it turned out, was actually advertising Amour as their 11.00 o’clock Senior Screen showing!!  A five-star film by the great Michael Haneke, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant (in everything from Vadim’s Et Dieu créa la femme via Bertolucci’s The Conformist to Three Colours Red) and Emmanuelle Riva (of Hiroshima Mon Amour fame, Oscar-nominated for her role in the Haneke film).

So we got in the car and drove the half hour to the outskirts of Wycombe, near the motorway, really pleased that we would be seeing a universally applauded movie for just three quid.  Oh oh.  The smallish group of seniors waiting to buy tickets were told that, unfortunately, there had been a mixup and they had not been able to download the digital version of the film as promised (gone are the days of celluloid and skilled projectionists).   The best they could do was offer us a voucher for a future Senior Screen presentation and, if we wished to see it, show a different Tom Cruise vehicle, a SF film called Oblivion. 

Well, I wouldn’t go and see a film just because of Tom Cruise; but it did co-star one of the best of the up-and-coming English actresses, Andrea Riseborough, who did a brilliant job, back in 2008, playing the young Margaret Thatcher in The Long Walk to Finchley on BBC 4 and had lit up a number of films since, most notably Shadow Dancer, set in Northern Ireland during the troubles, as well as being the only possible reason (playing Wallis Simpson) to see the Madonna disaster WE.  But even she couldn’t save a pretty average movie, the plot cobbled together from bits of superior predecessors.  So we left fairly disgruntled, but pleased to see that they were due to show another French-language film the next week: Dans la Maison (In the House) by another first-class director, François Ozon, with Fabrice Luchini, Kristin Scott Thomas and Emmanuelle Seigner.

So yesterday we set off to the Empire again, for the 17.40 show, to be confronted with a sign regretting that In the House would not be shown that week after all.  More apologies from the manager ‘nothing to do with me, guv’, all decided at head office.  No free voucher this time, since we hadn’t checked their own web site but relied on the Guardian’s; but at least he let us in free to see the film that had replaced the one we had made the trek for: an anti-fracking film, Promised Land, with Matt Damon  and Frances McDormand, directed by Gus Van Sant (not bad, but preaching to the converted  in our case).  And he did confirm that Amour was to be shown on 2 May at 11.00. 

But before heading to High Wycombe that day we’ll check the Empire site rather than the Guardian.   I consult www.guardian.co.uk/film many times a week, but something that happened when we were in Cambridge the Monday before last has made me realise that it’s not 100 % reliable.

Entering CB1 into the “Search by postcode for UK cinemas” link brought up the welcome news that there was to be a showing of a film called Amen at the Vue cinema at 7.00 that evening.  Clicking on the title Amen brought up the welcome news that it was a 2002 film, set in France during WW2, by Costa-Gavras, the Greek director, long resident in France.

But as we sat in screen 7, watching the trailers while the rest of the audience took their seats, we realised that something was amiss.  If you click on the last sentence of the previous paragraph you’ll see that the theme is not one for children, and yet the cinema was filling up with families, many with children, even babies. Not only that; everybody apart from us was from South Asia.

When the feature started we realised that we were the odd people out. Instead of a film about people discovering what the Nazis were actually doing to the Jews during WW2 we were watching a light-hearted movie, also called Amen, set in a little town in Kerala, apparently.

One of the many reviews of it available on the web ends by saying that

The flavor, spirit and fun of 'Amen' make it buoyantly unpretentious, and the sheer exuberance that it lets out renders it a movie of the magical kind. A feel-good, jovial and unfussy musical experience, it's a sunny gem of a film that drops down from the heavens above, as the Lord parts the clouds to take a look at the world down below. Bright and flashy in all the right ways, Lijo Jose Pellissery's new film is a delight from start to finish.

I’m sure that the audience at which it was aimed had a great evening out, children, babies and all.  But we were not prepared to spend a couple of hours watching a film, in Hindi I presume, without the benefit of subtitles, and slunk away.

But at least the manager was prepared, without protest, to refund the fourteen pounds we’d coughed up.