Absurdist existential thriller adapted from his own novel by French filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère. A movie made out of nothing: a man (Vincent Lindon, an everyman) shaves off his soup-strainer on a sudden whim, and stands by in deepening shades of disbelief, disappointment, dejection, annoyance, anger, and perhaps madness as no one notices — a pliable metaphor of self-centeredness and self-consciousness. It has, for all its nothingness, a fast start and a sharp focus; it has intrigue; it has intensity (no great credit to that musical monomaniac, Philip Glass, whose Violin Concerto intrudes insistently); and it has its own evocative look: the flat, frigid, sunless illumination of ace cinematographer Patrick Blossier. It has, on the downside, an unsatisfactory third and final act (after an impulsive flight to Hong Kong), although nothing to dent the central image of a man with a different, a disjunctive, level of consciousness. With Emmanuelle Devos. (2005) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.