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Let me just start by saying that this is a very beautiful film. It is shot very well, and it has a haunting score that repeated in my mind the whole of the next day. I think that this is a great tribute to Georges Simenon.The main character is a guy called Maloin (Miroslav Krobot) who works mostly at night in a glass cage down at the harbour, a signalman for the railway that picks up passengers from the ferry. The film is shot in black and white in the old port of Bastia on the island of Corsica which is quite scenic though not in a meretricious way, and I'm sure more of a purgatory for Maloin. I once read a powerful short novel by John Steinbeck called The Pearl, where a fisherman discovers a large pearl that will enable him and his family to live a life with less struggle. At the moment he discovers the pearl he lets forth a huge scream, it's a great release from suffering. So here Maloin also has a pearl dropped into his lap, which as in the Steinbeck novella will however cause it's possessor much turmoil. Tarr also manages to access this raw Steinbeckian power. He does this through looking at the relationship between Maloin and his daughter. Maloin is upset that she works in a grocery store where the proprietress is an abuser, and that her arse is available for any man to see (the words of the film). So when he comes across a highly dubious little nest egg, a briefcase he sees smuggled past customs from his vantage point, he takes her out of the shop, even though threatened with violence by the proprietress, and buys her an incredibly expensive fur stole. There was a deep rawness of emotion there, in the act of honouring someone you love.Tilda Swinton is in the movie as well Maloin's wife, I thought her acting was pretty superb in the couple of scenes that she was in. It's a very simple film really. The guilt and fear is very tangible, as is the hopelessness of Maloin's existence.It's a very contemplative sombre film, and the touches are very well done, the sighing barkeep at one point, "Little Vera has had the flu for the third time this year", a child playing football on his own, as opposed to the typical cliché of a whole street gang playing.The only slight problem I had was that the first time we see Maloin playing chess with the barkeep, the chess board is set up incorrectly, "white on the right" folks! It does "break the frame" slightly.
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