Claire Denis has had one of the bravest careers in modern cinema, always beginning where most directors end and working her way into uncharted territory. With The Intruder, she ventures into territory that is not only uncharted but hitherto unknown. Inspired by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's short autobiographical reflection on his heart transplant and built around the eloquently brooding presence of Michel Subor (Beau Travail, SFIFF 2000), Denis doesn't so much tell the story of Subor's Louis as she feels and hacks her way around its contours and tunnels into its core. This is a film about longing on the deepest level imaginable-for a son on the other side of the world and for a life that is always elsewhere. As Denis follows Louis from the French Alps to Geneva to Pusan to Polynesia in search of the child who has grown up without him, she maintains an extremely delicate if not precarious balance between presence and absence: the sheer presence of the physical world, of mountains, lakes, forests, beaches, and oceans; and the absence of completeness, the feeling that for Louis, wholeness will always be a continent away. Shot, as always, by the great Agnès Godard. The flashback scenes are drawn from Paul Gégauff's unfinished 1961 adaptation of Stevenson's Ebb-Tide.