The Adversary

January 1993: a man returns home, muddy, dazed, bloody. From this intriguing beginning, flashbacks gradually reveal that he is not the doctor he's claimed to be for the last 18 years - nor indeed has he another job - and that, finally, in shame and confusion, he has killed those nearest and dearest to him. Garcia's film suffers in comparison with L'Emploi du Temps, which mined the same territory but dispensed with the murder; more damagingly, it doesn't stand up on its own terms, so inert is the signposted narrative. Auteuil and Devos do their best, but the film is essentially stillborn.