Claire Denis' filmwork appears to be on a loop, approaching more and more the idea of the foreigner, the stranger, the other, the intruder.
Political correctness would like to clear the foreignness of the other, to conceal his intrusion. But you can't really receive nor comprehend him by hiding this, as
Jean-Luc Nancy says in
The Intruder.
Foreignness and strangeness is everywhere in Claire Denis'
L'Intrus (The intruder).
"The intruder is in me and I become a stranger to myself", says Nancy. So Louis Trebor (Michel Subor) is a hunted hunter, he seems to go on travelling to find some rest, some comfort in the idee fixe to meet "his" lost son, but the only rest is death (reminded by his french son, but also by all the others who love him without being considered - even in his "new life" with his "new heart" he isn't less "heartless"). Claire Denis wanted to show a main character who doesn't deserve compassion, I'm not sure if it works, the more it goes the character's enigmatic side becomes even stronger. So I'm wondering if his gaze is simply empty (expression of a yawning void) or deeply mysterious. Perhaps I have to stick to a phrase of
Heimito von Doderer in his novel
The Strudlhof Steps:
"No sign of mental activity, not now nor later [...]."
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