No Return Address

An impressive and melancholy drama, finely lit in dark tones by Xavier Perez Grobet, which sees an old bachelor postal clerk teased into a sad last go at love by an equally 'lost' upstairs neighbour, a twenty-something female photo-journalist who writes him anonymous notes, supposedly from an admirer. It's fascinating to watch Carrera's mordant humanism at work: no character - the clerk, the prostitutes, the modern neighbour, the clerk's unreconstructed friend, especially - is without faults, delusions or reasons. It's this attention to detail, observation and even-handedness that distinguishes the movie. The mood is ably sustained and Laphame (as the clerk) gives a performance that recalls the master Emil Jannings in its old-fashioned pathos.