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THE INTRUDER
Directed by: Claire Denis.
Produced by: Humbert Balsan.
Written by: Jean-Pol Fargeau & Claire Denis, based on the book by Jean-Luc Nancy.
Director of Photography: Agnès Godard.
Edited by: Nelly Guettier.
Music by: Stuart A. Staples.
Released by: Wellspring.
Language: French, Korean & Russian with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: France. 130 min. Not Rated.
With: Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katia Golubeva, Bambou, Florence Loiret-Caille, Lolita Chammah, Alex Descas & Béatrice Dalle.
DVD Features: Interview with director Claire Denis. Trailer gallery. Filmographies.

Claire Denis is one of those directors you either love or hate or who leaves you baffled. Like Matthew Barney, her films tend to feel like extended, well-funded video art, with a nonlinear narrative, a lack of dialogue, and a shared obsession with the human body. What little change there is in The Intruder since Denis’ Beau Travail (1999) is an even more abstract approach to storytelling.

Very loosely based on an autobiographical account of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s heart transplant, Denis’ beautifully-shot adaptation follows Louis Trebor (Michel Subor) before and after his heart transplant (the film is seamlessly set as much in flashbacks as it is in the present). Armed with a literal and figurative new heart, Louis decides to end his life of exile – spent mostly by rolling about naked in the grassy wilderness with his pet dogs – and find the son he had abandoned at birth. Denis employs nameless characters, inexplicable scenes and a dream-like storyline that she’s become known for over the past two decades.

DVD Extras: It’s refreshing to see an interview that’s so informative and interesting that its editors felt the need to make only one or two jump-cuts. Although it’s the DVD’s only extra, it’s well worth watching. The poetic Denis discusses intimate thoughts about filming The Intruder (her isolation, producer Humbert Balsan’s suicide, her comparison to reading Nancy’s book to smoking a joint) with as much detail as she does when discussing her creative process. One such anecdote concerns how the beatific closing sequence came about; it started to snow during a shot originally conceived for the film’s middle, even though it was spring and that particular French village had not seen snow for 15 years. Zachary Jones
May 10, 2006