Dream a little dream

Reviewed - The Intruder/L'Intrus: HOW much of the peculiar magic that surrounds Claire Denis's hypnotic films is down to the contributions of her regular collaborators?

Once again, viewing this puzzling, disturbing exercise in globe-trotting anxiety, we celebrate the liquid photography of Agnés Godard, the spare writing of Jean Pol Fargeau and the enigmatic performances of such Denis regulars as Michel Subor and Gregoire Colin. Stuart Staples, one bit of Nottingham's Tindersticks, who scores many of the director's films, is also on hand to deliver a powerfully jarring guitar loop.

It hardly matters. Whether The Intruder is the work of a dictator or a collective, it remains a bewitching experience. Having to do with mortality and guilt, the picture hangs around an aging recluse (Subor) - maybe a criminal, maybe a former spy - living in the Jura Mountains near somebody who could be his son (Colin). We know that the protagonist has a heart complaint and requires a transplant.

Maybe the film takes place in his mind. How else could we suddenly come across footage of Subor's younger self - actually salvaged from Paul Gégauff's 1965 film Le Reflux - layered in between scenes of the old man pottering about a Polynesian island.

Denis and her posse risk losing our attention with their wilfully obscure approach to narrative. Each individual scene is, however, so brilliantly composed that the picture rarely becomes boring. Like earlier Denis works (Beau Travail and Trouble Every Day), The Intruder, which is very, very loosely based on Jean Luc Nancy's account of his own heart transplant, offers us a harsh, cruel world.

But, through the character The Queen of the Northern Hemisphere, a feral dog handler played fleshily by Béatrice Dalle, we are also offered an unexpected jolt of romantic fantasy. Team Denis may be lightening up.