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Sombre (1998)
Director: Philippe Grandrieux
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A distinctly arty variation on the serial killer genre, with sparse dialogue, lingering shots of landscape and sexual/murderous encounters, and an elliptical, impressionistic narrative in which solitary, joyless killer Barbé simply travels around France from (uncharacterised) victim to victim until he slips into a strange, fragile, clearly perilous relationship with the haunted, seemingly virginal Löwensohn and her flightier sister. Certainly the film mostly avoids thriller clichés, but for all its evident seriousness of purpose, there's far too much picturesque but uninformative out-of-focus imagery, often on the brink of abstraction, for it to be particularly enlightening about murderers or their victims. That said, Barbé is convincing, and Löwensohn, playing far from Hartley, is extraordinary.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Philippe Grandrieux
Producer: Catherine Jacques
Cast: Marc Barbé, Elina Löwensohn, Geraldine Voillat full cast
Duration: 112 mins
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