I don't think anyone besides Terrence Malick and maybe Tran Anh Hung makes cinema on a purer level than Claire Denis. That said, I don't love this, her newest film, quite as much as her 2001 masterpiece "Trouble Every Day" (although it comes very close), which itself is one of my absolute favorite films. It it only because the narrative here is possibly slightly too elliptical for it's own good. Don't get me wrong, the fact that this film barely has a plot at all is really one of the best things about it, but I think Denis took it about one degree farther than it needed to go and consequently the film does flirt with incomprehensibility, and a few key plot points should have been clarified somehow (like that the main character goes to South Korea to get his heart transplant, instead of just showing him there all of a sudden without any explanation of where he is or why he is there). Also some of the other characters seemed unnecessary and as if they were just excuses for Denis to use actors she likes yet again (Beatrice Dalle's character in particular is a little distracting because you keep expecting that she is going to have some significance). Still, the film is incredibly absorbing and the cinematography is beyond amazing. It is definitely very much a masterpiece in it's own way. At least as good as Denis' more highly-acclaimed "Beau travail", if not better. Claire Denis has to be my favorite French director at this point, better than Leos Carax even. Also I have to admit that the South Korean sequence really does do "Lost in Translation" better than that film itself does (and I, unlike some, am a huge fan of that film as well).
Review of The Intruder
