The Intruder

The Intruder

by
Louis in Tahiti

Claire Denis’s remarkable film The Intruder (L’intrus) was first released in 2004, rolled out worldwide in 2005 and promptly disappeared. In some countries it was never shown at all; in the US, for instance, it’s only in 2021 that people are getting a chance to see it. It is a deliberately oblique drama, constructed almost as a series of questions – where are we? who is this guy? who’s that strange woman? and what the hell is Béatrice Dalle doing in this film, and why for only for a handful of seconds? Denis has said that she’s done this deliberately, having taken the original idea – an adaptation of an essay by French … Read more

The Intruder

by
Annie and Scott look scared

The Intruder examines, in the sort of lurid, semi-deranged way you’d expect from a horror movie, something that’s actually rather subtle. How a house becomes a home. How any prospective buyer, looking around someone else’s home with a view to purchasing it, is an intruder. And how the seller, once the deal is complete, still has some residual emotional hold over the property. It might be the new buyer’s house – the legal documents say so – but in some sense it’s still the old owner’s home, especially if they lived there for decades. Nice young marrieds Scott (Michael Ealy) and Annie (Meagan Good) have done well in their careers and fancy moving … Read more