L'intrus (The Intruder)

In "L'Intrus", conventional narrative storytelling has been replaced by an attempt to tell a story in purely visual and aural terms. The dialogue has been stripped down to bare essentials, while the image assumes a privileged position. We are taken to the French-Swiss border, where we follow a number of different people who move like ghosts through the woods. Faces we have seen in shadow may reappear, but we are never sure how or why. Gradually our focus comes to rest on a white-haired man, Louis, who takes money out of a Swiss bank and ends up somewhere in Asia. Slowly, the fragments of Denis's deliberately foggy narrative start to come together as we discover Louis is trying to reconcile parts of his past with events in the present. This film is many things. It touches on how the past informs the present and how privilege and power are manifested. It is also an ode to the cinema, ranging through cinematic allusions from Jean-Luc Godard to F.W. Murnau. But, finally, it is a visual symphony of elusive depths and, like great music, resists being reduced to a simple story.