Film

It’s a pity that That Obscure Object of Desire had already been claimed; it would have made the perfect title for Spanish director José Luis Guerín’s elliptical take on lost love. A young, impossibly handsome artist known simply as Él (Lafitte) loiters in a café in Strasbourg, France, checking out every comely female within sight. (The film replicates the male gaze with enough dogged fidelity to make Laura Mulvey’s head explode.) Suddenly, among these anonymous women, a brunet (López de Ayala) catches Él’s eye. He discreetly follows her, ducking in and out of the city’s endless alleyways. Eventually, we find out what’s going on: He’s convinced that she’s the same Sylvia he met in a nearby bar seven years earlier. Her rebuff suggests a case of mistaken identity—but is it?

Whether you consider this stalker’s travelogue a feature-length version of Citizen Kane’s “white parasol” monologue or Vertigo in miniature, Guerín’s oblique ode to the one that got away embodies the pull of pure, uncut obsession. Yet the director’s near-silent tour of quaint European street scenes is even more adept at making the picturesque seem pretentious, as well as at reminding you that male-model good looks don’t make antisocial behavior any less creepy.