L'intrus (2004)

Director:

Claire Denis

Writers:

Claire Denis (writer)
Jean-Pol Fargeau (writer)

Release Date:

4 May 2005 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Louis Trebor, a man nearing 70, lives alone with dogs in the forest near the French-Swiss border. He has heart problems...

Plot Keywords:

Heart | Violence | French Swiss Border | Children | Border

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Michel Subor	...	Louis Trebor
Grégoire Colin	...	Sidney
Yekaterina Golubeva	...	Young Russian Woman (as Katia Golubeva)
Bambou	...	Pharmacist
Florence Loiret	...	Antoinette (as Florence Loiret-Caille)
Lolita Chammah	...	The Wild Woman
Alex Descas	...	The Priest
Dong-ho Kim	...	Ship Owner
Se-tak Chang	...	Ship Owner's Associate
Hong-suk Park	...	Man at the Fish Market
Edwin Alin	...	Le patron de la quincaillerie
Henri Tetainanuarii	...	Henri
Jean-Marc Teriipaia	...	Tony
Anna Tetuaveroa	...	The Mother
Béatrice Dalle	...	Queen of the Northern Hemisphere

Also Known As:

The Intruder (International: English title)

Runtime:

130 min | Italy:125 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | English | Korean | Russian

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:12 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Argentina:13 | Hong Kong:IIB | UK:15

Filming Locations:

Busan, South Korea

Company:

Ognon Pictures

Movie Connections:

Featured in Hotel Paradijs (2007)

The nonpareil of free association film making

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