L'intrus (2004)

An emotionally cold man leaves the safety of his Alpine home to seek a heart transplant and an estranged son.

Director:

Claire Denis

Writers:

Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau

Stars:

Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Yekaterina Golubeva

4 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Michel Subor	...	Louis Trebor
Grégoire Colin	...	Sidney
Yekaterina Golubeva	...	La jeune femme russe (as Katia Golubeva)
Bambou	...	La pharmacienne
Florence Loiret Caille	...	Antoinette (as Florence Loiret-Caille)
Lolita Chammah	...	La sauvageonne
Alex Descas	...	Le prêtre
Dong-ho Kim	...	Le propriétaire du bateau
Se-tak Chang	...	L'associé du propriétaire du bateau
Hong-suk Park	...	L'homme du marché aux poissons
Edwin Alin	...	Le patron de la quincaillerie
Henri Tetainanuarii	...	Henri
Jean-Marc Teriipaia	...	Tony
Anna Tetuaveroa	...	La mère
Béatrice Dalle	...	La reine de l'hémisphère nord

Storyline

Louis Trebor, a man nearing 70, lives alone with dogs in the forest near the French-Swiss border. He has heart problems, seeks a transplant, and then goes in search of a son sired years before in Tahiti. Told elliptically, with few words, we see Louis as possibly heartless, ignoring a son who lives nearby who is himself an attentive father to two young children, one named for Louis. He leaves his bed one night - and his lover - to kill an intruder; he dreams, usually of violence. Will his body accept his heart? Will his son accept his offer?

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Plot Keywords:

male frontal nudity | male rear nudity | heart | violence | tahiti | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

France

Language:

French English Korean Russian Polynesian

Release Date:

4 May 2005 (France)

Also Known As:

El intruso

Filming Locations:

Japan

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$4,640, 25 December 2005, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$40,603, 23 April 2006

Company Credits

Production Co:

Ognon Pictures,Arte France Cinéma,Conseil Régional de Franche-Comté

Technical Specs

Runtime:

130 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Edited from Le reflux (1965)

User Reviews

Great director, average movie

It's certainly beautiful, as must be any movie featuring the outstanding cinematographer Agnès Godard and the criminally underacknowledged sound mixer Jean-Louis Ughetto. Most movies don't give us images as warm as Michel Subor drinking with a Pusan local or as vivid as a flashback to a boat's arrival at a French Polynesian island. But from the director of "Friday Night" and "Beau Travail," that's not enough.

Subor's character, Louis, is an intruder; various people are intruders in Louis's life (notably Béatrice Dalle); Louis even has an intruder inside his body - his transplanted heart. The heightening of Louis's condition, at first achieved through long looks at his huge chest scar, becomes absurdly literal when we see a bloody organ lying in the snow. All this is meant to make some vague point about rejection, and how communities and their outsiders relate to each other, but except in the Korean section and parts of the Tahitian one, Denis's use of photogenic isolated locations defeats her theme by not giving Louis enough human life to interact with. Perhaps I'm grading too harshly, but I expect great things from a Denis movie, and I didn't see them here.