For an hour or so he had me with him...slow camera movement around an ocean-front home, learning the relationships of the various characters. It reminded me of Woody Allen's October, with its privileged characters and end-of-the-season air of melancholy.
But then he went off the rails with some inexplicable overacted angst and the film degenerated into the kind of morose, indeterminate suffering that gives European "art" films a bad name. There were hints of war...possibly nuclear. All very distant, intellectual and existential. We never do learn who these people are, what they do, where they come from...why we should care for their fate.
The final sacrifice...the burning of the house...was unforgettable but by that point I was so fed up with this stupid movie I couldn't wait for it to end. Why this guy's films get such high praise is a mystery to me. They're about as insightful, and fun, as reading Being and Nothingness. Like having metaphorical slivers of wood being shoved under one's fingernails.
An ordeal.
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