Mister Frost

Setbon's second film as director, in a career which has encompassed cartoons, comics and the screenplay for Godard's Détective, is an odd affair. The eponymous anti-hero (Goldblum) is apprehended for a particularly hideous series of murders after a would-be burglar breaks into his garage and discovers a corpse with its throat cut. The question is: is Mister Frost, as detective Felix Detweiller (Bates) believes, the Devil himself; is he a vibrant, sexy, all-powerful healer in an institution for the helpless and insane; or is he just another heavy-duty nutter? The film does grip, despite the sometimes below-par quality of both the camerawork and the acting. The real weakness lies in the performance of Bates, who leaves much to be desired both as cop and as putative lover of a doctor played by the excellent Kathy Baker. Much of the narrative, moreover, is meandering, trying too hard to reconcile romance with horror pic and with theatre of the intellect. Different, though.