"[Claire] Denis is one of cinema's greatest narrative poets, and The Intruder, the story of an adventurer, is her most adventurous cinematic poem." — Amy Taubin, Film Comment
Screened as part of NZIFF 2005
The Intruder 2004
Admirer of the perennially adventurous Claire (Beau Travail) are encouraged to take up this fleeting opportunity to see her latest film on the big screen. It's her most radical disavowal of narrative yet, and unlikely ever to find distribution. Shot in ravishing CinemaScope, by the great Agnès Godard, it's an intensely physical film, taking us from the French Alps via Korea to a mesmerizing vision of the Pacific in all its immense heaving blueness. Yet one can never be certain how real these settings are for Louis, the film's central and only significant character, played by the gnarled and beaten Jean-Luc Godard veteran, Michel Subor. Louis scours the world for an illegal heart transplant and the son he left behind in the South Seas. Inspired by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's autobiographical reflection on his transplant, Denis conjures notions of intrusion on many levels: house-breaking, border crossing, colonisation, sex, a knifing, and the invading heart itself. The score is by the Tindersticks mainstay Stuart Staples at his most insistently minimal.