Cannes. La Question Humaine.

"Two years after La Blessure, French director Nicolas Klotz returned... to Cannes' sidebar section Directors' Fortnight to present his fifth feature film, The Heartbeat Detector, adapted from François Emmanuel's novel La Question Humaine," writes Vitor Pinto at Cineuropa. "What could have easily become a frenetic thriller is treated by Klotz and [co-screenwriter Elizabeth] Perceval as the intimate portrait of a man suddenly pushed to face a past that he thought did not concern him."

"Forty years ago, the Straubs said it all in their film, Not Reconciled, did they not?" asks Emmanuel Burdeau for Cahiers du cinéma. "The hypothesis that there is a direct link between Nazism and liberalism, without wanting to sound cliché, is drawn from a certain orthodoxy, that which the philosopher Giorgio Agamben teaches."

"Both pertinent and discomfiting, this sober, well-cast drama remains quietly riveting, despite its 140-minute running time," writes Variety's Lisa Nesselson. Karl Rose (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), assistant director of the Parisian branch of a German firm, "assigns Simon [Mathieu Amalric] to surreptitiously assess the mental health of the firm's director, Mathias Just (Michel Lonsdale, supremely convincing). There have been reports of erratic behavior and the brass in Germany are worried.... Chilly, precise lensing maintains the pressure to excellent cumulative effect."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 29, 2007 4:31 AM