French director stays unpredictable

Claire Denis’ “The Intruder” is the most challenging, ambitious and far-flung film yet from Denis, whose dozen films, which include “Chocolat,” “I Can’t Sleep” and “Beau Travail,” have established her as one of France’s most distinctive and venturesome filmmakers.

Never has Denis demanded so much from audiences as with this shimmering enigma, at once intimate and epic, but it’s worth the effort and then some. Her narrative is elliptical in the utmost, a deliberate blurring between the imagined and the actual through which Denis invites viewers to make their own connections and above all to respond emotionally. She arguably supplies all that an audience needs to know, and her film’s constant state of uncertainty ultimately pays off with an experience that is wholly unpredictable, ever confounding yet surprisingly satisfying. It’s crucial to the enjoyment of “The Intruder” that the viewer go with its flow of stunning images and trust that it will make some kind of sense by the time it’s over.

Michel Subor has what is almost certainly the role of his long and notable career as Louis Trebor, a rugged, self-reliant loner living in a cabin in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland near the French border. Indeed, Louis’ daughter-in-law (Florence Loiret-Caille) is a Swiss border guard not far away, but Louis is distant from her and his son Sidney (Gregoire Colin). Exuding a quietly powerful physical presence, Louis is a vigorous swimmer and bicyclist at 68. His heart condition -- and his sexual needs -- are attended to by an attractive pharmacist (Bambou). He is drawn to a sultry young woman (Beatrice Dalle), a dog breeder whose land adjoins his, but she, like his son, dismisses him as crazy. He is stalked, most likely in his imagination, by a beautiful young Russian (Katia Golubeva) full of menacing reproaches.

Louis is also a man of mystery, seemingly under surveillance, which in part may be a projection of a guilty conscience, and is coolly capable of doing whatever it takes to protect himself. He could be a foreign agent, past or present, or a hired killer. Louis is clearly a man with a murky, sinister past, and this, combined with his failing heart, propels him into a bold journey that unfolds in his psyche as it stretches from Geneva to Pusan, South Korea, and finally Tahiti.

Most men his age would consider Louis’ quest, which involves a craving for redemption and reclaiming a past idyllic existence, sheer folly, so seemingly insurmountable are certain of its obstacles and goals, but on the other hand he is an indomitable man of no small resources, with little to lose and everything to gain, from his point of view. Louis’ destiny plays out with irony, humor and myriad quirks of fate. His odyssey, inspired by various sources, allows for a wide range of penetrating cultural and political observations from Denis, whose childhood in French colonial Africa has throughout her career revealed itself in an acute empathic perspective on people of widely different backgrounds and status.

Admittedly, much can be puzzling in “The Intruder,” but this matters little if one is willing and able to yield to Denis’ formidable storytelling gifts, never before so tantalizing, and to respond with the logic of the heart rather than mere reason to the constant beauty of cinematographer Agnes Godard’s images and to the film itself. With the film’s opening line of dialogue Denis declares what she will reveal so imaginatively: “Your worst enemies are hiding, in the shadow, in your heart.”

*

“The Intruder”

MPAA rating: Unrated

A Wellspring release. Writer-director Claire Denis. Producer Humbert Balsan. Director of photography Agnes Godard. Editor Nelly Quettier. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.

Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.