L’intrus (The Intruder). 2004. France. Directed by Claire Denis. Screenplay by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau. With Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin, Yekaterina Golubeva. In French, English, Korean, Russian, Polynesian; English subtitles. 35mm. 130 min.
“In my cranium, it is empty, so it seems vast, unlimited, and yet it is enclosed. It is like a large studio and everything seems possible. In my chest, once past the the sensitive boundary of my breasts, where skin is more fragile than elsewhere, in my chest I am swallowed up in the swaying of respiratory movements, breathing the breath of life. To find a beating heart, I must change perspective, everything must be reversed. I am inside in the ribcage. There I am small, Lilliputian, a larva in a forest at in summer. The forest is sultry, powerful, it rustles and quivers. The trunks of pine trees thrust upwards underneath me like columns, the meet and close to form an arch. Like the bars of a cage, like the gray bones of a skeleton. As a child , the Jura forest where my aunt forcibly dragged me in order to breathe fresh air gave me asthma attacks. I anticipated the day when, finally an adult, I would master it. I would be languid, a real daughter of nature, bare-skinned and confident. Forgetting as a result, the cage, closed like the teeth in a jaw, and the fragility of a body. The Intruder, (L’intrus) like any intruder, arrived secretly, worked its way in, and gnawed away, bit by bit, at my imaginary territory. The film is not a person, an animal, or virus but it’s design ( grand plan) slowly, stealthily unfurls.” - Claire Denis