Rent The Intruder (2004)

The aesthetics of silence - The Intruder review by CP Customer

Do not look for a dialogue or a 'proper story' in The Intruder: the film relies on elliptical and fragmented narrative where the remnants of a repressed past seem to constantly threaten to disturb the present of the protagonist. The film resists conventional narrative approaches keen on explanations and psychological classifications. It does not describe situations and conflicts in order to find solutions. The actors are not provided with personalities that justify all their actions. In the way characters and story become freed from pre-established codes and causalities, the film combines aspects of modernist fiction and of philosopher and film theorist Gilles Deleuze's concept of a 'time-cinema': time and the visual do not simply function as codes to allow the easy unfolding of movemnt and action towards a logical end. Time and the visual become the actual texture of the film. This film, therefore, fails to meet many of the expectations of more conventional work. Nevertheless, a story can be recuperated in The Intruder: a man constantly dreaming violent scenarios while he waits for a heart transplant, the murder of a young intruder in his home, his escape to Tahiti to find one of his sons, whilst rejecting the other one who lives around the corner from him. The complexities of human life...

Very difficult to follow - The Intruder review by CP Customer

It might help if you have read the book, but apparently the book is difficult to follow also.

The film comes over as a half finished project. Maybe they were hoping for cult status where everyone would discuss what the film meant.

The film fails to tell the story in a coherent manner so we were very disappointed.

How this has managed to achieve 3 stars is beyond me.

Don't bother - The Intruder review by CP Customer

This film makes absolutely *no* sense ... don't waste 2+ hours of your life trying to figure it out, as I have just done.