Libera Me

An elegant, original and just occasionally irritating oddity, this film - from the director of Thérèse - consists entirely of wordless, enigmatic tableaux (many of them close-ups of faces, hands and objects). These slowly coalesce into an elliptical narrative about the spirit of resistance in an authoritarian state given over to imprisonment and torture. It looks, as one might expect, marvellous (though one can't help thinking that it rather aestheticises cruelty), and in the end it's Bressonian, in its focus on essentials, rather than gimmicky. Unlike Bresson's best, however, it remains rather soulless.