another treatise on feeling lost, lonely and fragile in a dangerous, collapsing post-colonial world from our foremost master of the intersection between the sensual and political. no other filmmaker is as gifted as denis at the conflicted ambiguity between desiring the touch of another and having that touch cursed by unseen material, transactional forces. mq in the running for strangest/best physical performance of the year (even the way she simply walks barefoot in the rainy streets is hypnotizing), and i will be sliding the moody, ambient jazz tindersticks score into my end-of-the-year rotation immediately. were the cannes critics shown a different movie?