At the age of 40 in 1988 Claire Denis burst into international cinema consciousness with "Chocolat," an autobiographical film about growing up  in colonial French West Africa.* Her 1999 masterpiece "Beau travail" was a reimagining of Herman Melville's Billy Budd in the very remote French Foreign Legion post of Dijbouti (on the horn of east Africa) with Michel Subor playing the Captain Vere and Grégoire Colin the Billy Budd. (It was, very incidentally, the first non-English-language movie about which I epined.)

Subor and Colin returned to Denis's globe-trotting 2004 "L'intrus" (The Intruder) as a father and son who live close to each other but are emotionally distant. Early on Colin's Sidney Trebor is shown to be a very involved father of two young children. His wife Antoinette (Florence Loiret-Caille) is a border (the Jura region of the border between France/Switzerland) customs agent with a dog sniffing out drugs.

Louis Trebor (Subor) lives in a forest cabin with two dogs. At night the forest comes alive with border crossers, who seem to be Russian, or at least Slavic. When Louis cuts the throat of a male intruder while a female one (Katia Golubeva, the movie's Angel of Death) watches without visible reaction, I thought that disposing of this corpse was going to be the focus, and that this dead man, who might have been an assassin rather than an illegal immigrant was the intruder of the title.

I was wrong. The film is inspired by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's very short book that meditated on outsiderdom partly on the basis of Albert Camus's L'étranger and partly on the basis of his experience of having had a heart transplant.

Louis needs one. No backstory is included in the movie, but it seems impossible that the accumulation of money stored in a Geneva bank resulted from legal activity. The surgery is done in Pusan, South Korea, where Louis also buys a ship (not a boat) from Japanese sellers, telling them that it is going to be a gift for his son.

Not Sidney, but one he left in Tahiti long before to be raised by the boy's mother. She tells Louis that their son does not want anything from him or to meet him. Louis sets up his old beach cabin (to which he and an old friend ((Tetainanuarii) wade carrying a mattress and other stocks).

Although like all my other interpretations, this one is more than open to question, I think that the Tahitian son is dead. Some elders assemble a group of men to audition for the role. As Louis's body is rejecting the alien heart, he also rejects the young man selected to play the part of his son, though rewarding him with a roll of  money.

I couldn't spoil the ending, because I have even less certainty about what happens after that than about what might sound like a fairly straightforward story of an old man filled with regrets about his failures as a father attempting to start over with a new heart. In the metaphorical sense as well as the physical one, Louis lacked a healthy heart. (Libido he had: pharmacist Bambou not only delivered heart medicine but access to her body and Louis makes plays for a neighbor who raises German shepherds and wants to have nothing to do with him (Lolita Chammah.)

There are French film-makers who provide what might be considered superfluous (but very literary) voice-over explanations of what they are showing (Jean Cocteau, for instance), but there are more who have no interest in providing explanations of motivation for characters. Denis is very much in the latter group, influenced by the nouvelle roman, I think, except with a very rich palette (realized by the great cinematographer Agnès Godard) and an interest in action. ("Chocolat" was about a French girl growing up in west Africa, but "Beau travail" and "L'intrus" are primarily about male relationships in exotic locales.) Although I don't remember what my solution to the puzzle of "Last Year at Marienbad" was, I know that I worked one out. Any interpretation of who Louis was other than an absent father who accumulated a lot of money is doomed. Some segments are clearly his dreams. Others might be hallucinations, including the man whose throat he slits.

Although running over two hours, the ellipses in "L'intrus" are immense (including the heart transplant surgery, though from the scar he fingers in later scenes we know that it has occurred). After about half an hour of it, I turned to Keelung and said that I had no idea who these people were or what the movie was about.

An hour and a half later, I had some ideas about how some of the characters were related to others, and if pressed, I'd say that the movie was about rejection... though the Tahitian community wants to ensure that Louis's riches are retained, whether a living son exists there or not. The "story" (if the word can be used in a spectacularly anti-narrative film!) is not that of Jean-Luc Nancy, an academic philosopher rather than a criminal with ties to Korea or Tahiti.

In a 35-minute interview in occasionally faltering English, Denis talks a lot about working with Subor (she says she gave him no direction in any of his scenes), to my disappointment not at all about working with Colin (whom she has cast in many other movies, including not only "Beau travail," but "Vendredi soir" and "Nénette et Boni"). She confirms that the titular "intruder" is the heart, though, and speaks about  wanting the menace under the beauty of South Seas islands to be manifest.

Subor is on screen most of the time, but does not speak much. Appropriately the film's trailer is wordless, highlighting the visual spectacle and the haunting music supplied by Stuart Staples of Tinderstick, that brought the soundtrack Miles Davis laid down for Louis Malle's "Elevator to the Gallows" to me more than once.

The opacity of the narrative and the uncertainty about what "happens" and what is imagined by Louis would (and no doubt has) driven some viewers to frustration and even fury. In the Jura portion, I don't know if Louis is being watched or is projecting his guilt outward. The very first spoken line of the film is "Your worst enemies are hiding, in the shadow, in your heart." Perhaps this is the thread to follow through the strikingly visualized multinational labyrinth.

______

* She had been assistant director for Wim Wenders's "Paris, Texas" and Jim jarmusch's "Down by Law," two rather elliptical and not plot-driven movies in English.

©  2009, Stephen O. Murray

With this review I am launching a "French finds" writeoff in appreciation (and, alas, as of 4/11 in memory) of Barbara Fields (Ifif1938) who has organized several and encouraged me in writing about French movies and in persisting through the many frustrations of trying to find them here to write about. The "finds" definitely do not have to be cinematic, but "French" products and places.They don't need to be "fabulous," though Barbara herself was.

 E-mail me URLS, s.v.p.

URLs for Barbara' most recent French and English finds are here,
those for her previous French and English one here,
those for her first, exclusively French, one (celebrating her 400th posting) are here.



Popsrock may have kicked off the writeoff before I did, with an essay on "I gotta learn French"

Bruguru has delivered his judgment on Unibroue Chambly Noire; Fishifishi on Lucien Albrecht Pinot Noir Amplus 2005
and Poprocks throwns back some Vincent Van Ghogh Vodka Acair Blueberry

The superfit Jocom has "weighed in" on how French women avoid the obesity increasingly common in North America

Susiewho has written about Ille de France brie (it's hard to get more central to France and French cuisine than that!)

Telynor has written about Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire and some tea from Paris('s Russien émigré community) to sip while reading it: Kusmi Evening Russian Tea

You shouldn't instead instead  try Seattle's Best FRENCH Roast Coffee, according to Toiletoctopus, who also discusses French's mustard 

but Mongkut suggests checking out Tampa's Restuarant BT 

Reginafug was delighted by the Hotel Muguet in Paris

Gillandtony has/have written about the Palace of Versailles,
Jiahong about Saint-Paul-de-Vence, primarily the Maeght Foundation museum,
Millinocket about Notre Dame de Paris
Telynor has also written about someone else (Tony Spawforth) writing about Versailles
Reginafug has written about her experiences of what I consider "Barbara's tower" though officially known as la tour Eiffel
and about gliding through Paris on les Bateux-Mouches

Knotheadusc has delivered a mixed verdict on the 2009 Let's Go: France guide.
finding DK Eyewitness France superior (though heavy)
She also recommended Hotel Le Six in the wilds of Montparnasse,
and was swayed by wine and cheese to recommend Air France

More generally, Sleeper54 considers The Smart Traveler's Passport: 399 Tips from Seasoned Travelers

I enjoyed 25 Travelers' Tales [of] Provence and my own memories of the region and was appropriately alarmed by Au Revoir to All That

Befus delighted in Adele & Simon (in Paris)

Cripper in Amelie

Coldsteel7 has added his endorsement to Barbara's own of the omnibus Paris je t'aime

AlventiAsylum added her endorsement to Barbara's of The Vanishing Gaelkm takes on  French tryst (French twist),  Friday Night
and Talyseon An American Werewolf in Paris

I deliver a very mixed verdict on Luc Besson's "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (in English) and the DVD bonus feature purporting to document the 1999 movie,
but  was very impressed by the cast, headed by Kristen Scott-Thomas, in "I've Loved You So Long" (in French), and entertained by Romain Duris et al. in "L'auberge espagnole" and its sequel Russian Dolls, both written and directed by Cédric Klapisch
Having followed the charming open-to-experience Duris to Barcelona, London, and St. Petersburg, I follow him to rural Romania in Gadjo dilo/Crazy Stranger and across Spain and Morocco to Algiers in the disappointing Exils
Orpheus into (and back out from) a bombed-out Hades in Jean Cocteau's Orphée, the earlier peregrinations of doomed artists in Cocteau's Le sang d'un poet
Lino Ventura and Jaques Brel on a crime spree across four continents in L'aventure c'est l'aventure
the purported Son of Gascogne (Grégoire Colin) through the world of French cinema
and a never-named actor also played by Colin to fraught sex scenes and frigid Normandy beaches in Sex Is Comedy

George Chabot weighed on a movie set in similarly suspect versions of the past: Helen of Troy and  a real history: Steven Runciman's The First Crusade volume one and two

Ricardo Ramos was underwhelmed by Adored, which begins and ends in a French chateau where the characters grew up.
He has also written about a brief biography of Marguerite Yourcenar, the first woman elected to the French Academy and who remained very French through decades of living on Mount Deseret Island (Maine)

Kamel622 celebrates (the original, short) Red Balloon

Susidee34 finds The Last Tango in Paris to hold up

PMills finds An American in Paris still a delight

I was entertained (if not fully believing in) Paul Glassco's Memoirs of Montparnasse of an earlier era (the late-1920s) and somewhat frustrated by Jeffrey Meyers's biography of Amadeo Modigliani, who made the Bohemian Montparnasse scene during the first two decades of the 20th century. I also castigated the multiple inaccuracies in a movie "inspired by" his life with Andy García playing him in his final Montparnasse years.

I've enthused about the music of the ultra-French composer Francis Poulenc in regard to a compedium of his orchestral music led by George Prêtre and a recording by the Lyon Opera Orchestra led by Kent Nagano of two modernist ballets by another member of "Les Six," Darius Milhaud. I'm less enthusiastic about the recordings of two of the same three pieces in Leonard Bernstein's 1978 rendition and still less enthusiastic about other Milhaud compositions in a 1995 George Prêtre recording..

Jurgrace has expounded on the excellence of the French viola soloist Gerard Causse

Smorg has reviewed Krassimira Stoyanova et al. in a DVD of Halevey's opera La Juive

Pilarzmom about L'Occitane Cooling Mousse for Tired Legs

Penguinlady writes about what sounds an entertaining book about the French one does not learn in class in Merde Encore!

Skbreeze examines Tale of Despereux

Texas-Swede has written about Asterix and the Normans,  Lucky Luke Adventure 4: Jesse James, and Lucky Luke 15: The Daltons in the Blizzard

Carstairs38 investigates Murder in the Marais
and celebrates the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as well as following Herbie Go[ing] to Monte Carlo

Another Claire (E rather than Denis) has written about the much-loved Le Petit Prince/The Little Prince

JanKP reaches back to Chretien de Troyes's Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion

Cr01 looked the other way (southwest from England) to celebrate the French-Canadian Jack Kerouac's original scroll of On the Road

And writing about Bottle Shock, which was the subject of Barbara's last epinion (2/22), I write about the French discovery of California (wines)

And you? The writeoff remains open for additions until the one-month anniversary of Barbara's death, (May 10th).




Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD