L'Homme de Désir

Delouche's film is reverentially shot in the style of Bresson: the pious, anguished hero inhabiting a world in which everyday objects are infused with mystical significance, and where natural sounds serve to emphasise the individual's essential isolation in a universe where man's only possible relationship is directly with God. Uneasily grafted on to this act of homage is the ménage à trois tale of a man's infatuation for a hitchhiking youth he has picked up, a relationship which develops with all due encouragement from his wife. The story is reminiscent of Chabrol's Les Biches, in fact, and is best enjoyed as a thriller. The contrast between the urbane, relaxed world of the man, and the underworld night existence of the youth, is handled with a remarkable sureness until the working-out of the respective fates of the two characters, when our sympathy is shifted from the corrupt impotence of the man to the unworthy pocket-picking boy unwillingly drawn into the man's cruel and ultimately masochistic pursuit.