The Third Page

Dedicated to 'the defeated, the forgotten', this grim anti-thriller offers a problematic but provocatively obverse, inward outlook on life. The title means 'a new start', which is what seems to be offered to the film's protagonist Isa after he takes a gun to his mounting debts, threats and loneliness, only to wake up apparently absolved, with no blood on his hands. In turn, he tries to help the abused mother of two who lives opposite him, offering to do anything for her. The last act strikes a slight note of noir misogyny; like the opening, it's rather too curt to engage. Indeed, the writer/director seems to be working through some distinctly interior anxieties here. He doesn't fully communicate them, but his downbeat distillation of still, silent, luckless lives certainly makes some impression.