Les Voleurs

Kicking off with a scene in which a young boy, woken by his mother's scream, discovers that for some reason his father has been killed, Téchiné's ambitious attempt to deconstruct (and put a less generic, more humanist slant on) the crime thriller continues by telling the story through a variety of 'voices', including Auteuil as the dead man's detective brother, Deneuve as a philosophy professor, and Côte as the tortured young woman involved, at one time or another, with all three. Ambitious, yes; successful, no. Though script and direction have their moments, as a whole the film is simply too diffuse to add up to very much, either intellectually or emotionally; notwithstanding the strong performances, it all seems rather academic and, well, pointless.