Although very little happens it's hard not to keep watching this period piece, it's as if there's a subliminal message concealed between the frames that whispers if you watch this paint dry long enough, until in fact it IS dry then a REAL film will emerge. There are lots of lyrical visuals of paddy fields, rivers, dusty roads, punctuated by the occasional sortie to what passes for the local Country Club with colonial types sitting about sipping gin rickeys and wondering where the rubber plantations have got to. Isabelle Huppert carries the film of course and so so effortlessly as the widow stranded in the middle of East Jesus with two adolescents, no money and corrupt officialdom slowly squeezing the marrow out of her. Not a keeper but definitely a watcher.
Review of Un barrage contre le Pacifique
