User Reviews

This is a film that seems to be more interested in creating an atmosphere than in telling a story. Into a small town in the French countryside, a German stranger arrives. Certainly he has a back-story, and wheedling out the strands of what that story might entail is, I suppose, what the film is "about." There is an event in his past that he must find a way to come to grips with. We witness his interactions with those around him -- his landlord, neighbors, and a possible romantic interest -- as he settles down into a disjointed day-to-day existence. There are definite signs of darkness and foreboding, but we are given only tangential clues as to what it is that he has run away from, and he seems by turns depressed, mysterious, sexy, dangerous. We eventually witness his attempt to address the provocations of his troubling past, albeit in an obtuse poetic manner; but it is not clear what effect his actions will have for him in the long run. Nor is it clear what the film's viewers are meant to take away from their viewing experience. We can acknowledge that the filmmakers have been able to successfully build for us a tension and a sense of un-ease. But to what end? Perhaps the character himself has gained some sort of self-awareness, but what is it that we have gained from this experience?