The Intruder (2004)

Louis lives alone in the mountains on the French-Swiss border. He remains emotionally and geographically distant to his wife and son retaining human contact only with a shopkeeper and dog breeder. A heart condition forces him to undertake an operation on the black market and once he has recovered the former sailor undertakes a journey from Korea to Tahiti in search of the lost son he fathered years before.The Intruder continues to demonstrate the visual poetry of Claire Denis s work. It s a beguiling dreamlike study of memory and alienation which reunites her with actors such as Beatrice Dalle and Michel Subor. Told with minimal dialogue and multi-layered visual language it proof that Denis is one of the few directors who works with pure cinema.System Requirements:Running Time: 130 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 720917548722 Manufacturer No: FLV5487 Product Description

What?

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? December 1, 2007

art film incoherence

*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. November 2, 2006

A Stingy Goddess

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. July 5, 2006

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, May 06 May 20, 2006

A Brilliant Masterpiece

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. May 7, 2006

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