Part Strindberg, part Bergman, this gorgeously stylized chamber piece smoulders around an old crumbling apartment and the struggle for power among its sniping, scheming inhabitants. Five people-an elderly woman who owns the space, and four others who want her money-form alliances, betray one another, and start again, all moving toward goals they long ago let slip. Through the murk Tarr's camera stalks their every move, eavesdropping on midnight whispers and daytime arguments like a ghostly sixth character, while the visual schemata - all strikingly artificial blue–grays and orange–reds-divides both rooms and humans into particular hues. Autumn Almanac represents Tarr's great stylistic leap forward, able to weld a new visual aesthetic of trancelike photography and hypnotic imagery to his metaphysical obsessions of societal decay. His vision of the pettiness of human existence makes a Todd Solondz film look like an Osmond Family reunion. However, unlike most modern–day dabblers in the cynical, his work is not based in sarcastic disdain for people and their flaws, but rather in an empathetic, overwhelming melancholy for them.