The Intruder
Director: Clair Denis
Actors: Michel Subor
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Running time: 120 minutes
Living in the secluded Jura Mountains in France, mean and dangerous Louis Trebor (Subor) keeps to himself until a heart transplant gives him a new lease of life and, in a quest for redemption, he decides to search for the long lost son he abandoned years before. That's the plot but as in all Denis' films, its lack of dialogue, unconventional story line and narrative space - which lets the camera tell the story through almost static images - creates the sensation of being in a dream. Just who is The Intruder? Is it the boy who comes snooping around Louis' house? Is it Louis when he travels to a closed-off Tahitian community? Or is it the audience, which Denis grants a peek through the key-hole into the intimate world of this boorish man? Denis bathes the screen with inviting beautiful scenery, which only mocks the cold-hearted Louis, who can't feel an affinity with anything and is closed off from everything as he stumbles naked around his empty but majestic home. The slow-slow-quick-quick-slow (minus the quicks) pacing of L'Intrus really lets it down, as the plot jumps back and forth through time and moves from location to location without letting the viewer know why. L'Intrus needs a couple of viewings to get what is really going on but I can't see myself rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of enduring this again.
