It's one of those long-takes, everyone-is-miserable, everyone-sits-in-silence art house films that drives me round the bend as a critic. I find that kind of film-making so utterly formulaic and tricksy that I genuinely do not understand why so many mainstream film reviewers are happy to give this kind of film a pass. I touched on this with my review of Nicolas Phillibert's Back to Normandy but I think the problem may well be that this type of direction is trying to push buttons that I simply do not have.


