Customer Reviews

The Intruder

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Claire Denis has demonstrated repeatedly that film does not need to tell a story, that it is sufficient to create an experience that allows the viewer to take the ingredients and make of them what they will.

Ostensibly the idea within the framework of a most non-linear film is the older man living on the French-Swiss border, a man devoted to his dogs, who still has a lover, but whose cardiac status increasingly threatens his life. He has a son with a little family who infrequently meet with him, but when he discovers he is in need of a heart transplant he opts for going to Tahiti via Japan to obtain a heart transplant on the black market and to rekindle a long lost relationship with a son he had form a Tahitian women years ago.

What Denis does with this outline of a story is use her camera to explore the loneliness of the soul, the vastness of nature, man's interaction with people vs animals, etc. Much of the time the 'film' doesn't make sense, but that is because we try too hard to connect all the dots laid out before us in beautiful pictures. Life is sort of like that: we look, see, observe, integrate, process, and make of it what we will.

In using this form of film making (much as she did in the strangely beautiful 'Beau Travail') Claire Denis has developed a signature technique. Whether or not the viewer finds the finished product rewarding has much to do with our individual methods of processing visual and conceptual information. This is an interesting and visually captivating film, but many viewers will find it an overly long discourse about very little. Perhaps watching again will change that. Grady Harp, May 06

Claire Denis has done the unthinkable and topped her previous masterpiece, Beau Travail, with this marvelously elliptical and oneiric film. This is a film that you feel, a deeply challenging and ultimately incredibly rewarding cinematic experience. It also features quite possibly the greatest title sequence ever put on film. A must watch for anyone who wants to be rewarded for their viewing efforts.

The comments referring to the film's disjointedness or "free" structure are well-intended, and accurate. I have now watched this film twice, the first a few years ago when it was first released. My reaction at the time was comparable to some of the comments posted here. Namely, the film was far too abstract or incoherent for any potential benefit to become fully or even partially realized. I have now seen it twice and am deeply thankful I have. Perhaps I could attribute my change in opinion to my now subdued expectations (promises of it being the 'best film of the year' were perhaps a touch too assured), or otherwise to a differentiated view on life (something subdued, nostalgic, fleeting).

This said, I would recommend this film for anyone who is prepared, because one has to be, and patient enough to give it a chance. It will not 'reveal' itself, if films have this intention, upon one viewing. There is no traditional narrative structure to speak of, nor any 'well-defined' characters to which we may compare these. On the contrary, the people and their circumstances are hardly explained, and in this way it will not represent the cinema most of us have become accustomed to. Neither does it suggest an attempt to paint in 'realist' tones. There was no artifice to it, something I appreciated in my first (dissatisfied) viewing as well.

The film, even after numerous viewings (I am certain) will not lend itself to any subscription. This is, for me, where I find its value. Claire Denis did not have to make a heavy try to convince me, after a second viewing, that a richer film does not presuppose a 'fuller' (more textured or structured) form.

I hope this helps.

Louis (Michel Subor)an aging loner is eventually forced to seek help. He visits the ever beautiful Beatrice Dalle, the Stingy Goddess who just says no. The Intruder journeys into the real world & finds kindness from ordinary communal peoples in the tropical islands, where he briefly meets his son. However it is imminent Louis will wind up alone in that cold steel box. The Stingy Goddess doesn't give much that we can keep. Nevertheless with director Claire Denis, we get drunk on ocean, wind, trees, animals, people with the magnificent chorus of her imagination.

Horrible film! Disjointed, incomprehensible. I have no idea who people were, what they were doing and saying, or why. Worse, the main character is as flat, mute and unsympathetic at the end as at the beginning. Who was his son? Who got killed at the beginning of the film and why? Forget it, I don't care. I process fictional films as stories, and, for me, if there's no story, there's no film... Beautiful cinematography though.

And why not do something interesting with Beatrice Dalle if you're going to have her in the film?

This film was one of the worst we have ever seen. Pretentious to an extreme. New style of filmmaking? Forget it. Did the film makers write character names,p laces and events at random on 3x5 cards and then throw them into a blender called a camera? The sound track? Ominous, brooding and boring. When you watch a film aren't you supposed to care about something in it? A confetti of shreds. Watch only if you need sleep and films do that to you.

S. MacMillan

I will agree that the cinematography is beautiful, but the story is very difficult to follow. Perhaps I should have read the thirty page book this movie is supposedly based on before purchasing the DVD. The movie seems disjointed and surreal at times. I am not sure how to put the pieces of this puzzle together. I have more questions about this film than answers. Even the interview with the producer, Claire Denis, is cryptic.

*1/2

"The Intruder" is a maddeningly incoherent movie from France that gives so-called "art films" a bad name. The story is something about a bitter old coot who goes searching for a heart transplant, but beyond that, I have no idea who any of the people in the movie were or why they were doing what they were doing.

This muddled, snail-paced drama is a full two hours and five minutes long - though I seriously doubt anyone with any kind of a life will still be hanging around by the closing credits.