This is one of the most unsettling movies I’ve ever seen horror or otherwise. If you want to put through the wringer definitely give this a try.

The film follows an international spy named Mark, played by Sam Neil, as he returns home from a mission to find his wife waiting for him outside their apartment building. She is Ana, played by Isabelle Adjani, and she informs Mark that they can’t be together anymore. She’s leaving. Mark is devastated. He goes through every possible emotional reaction. He is depressed and spends months alone in a hotel room. He is enraged and lashes out at Ana in horrific scene in a cafe. He begs and pleads with her and with the other man he discovers she’s been seeing. This passage of the movie is brutal and terrifying to watch. Some of the scariest moments of the movie are just the ones depicting how far peope will go when dealing with emotional distress.

From there, it gets weirder. I won’t spoil anything. I’ll just say that the motivations are far stranger than anything I ever guessed. The movie ventures into horror territory, but the scariest things on screen are the relationship dynamics we seen play out. The emotional negligence that turns into emotional abuse is hard to watch. When Mark is pushed to far because Ana refuses to give him a reason for leaving, he lashes out physically. Watching the characters become violent with each other is shocking and horrifying, and I had to pause the movie to take a walk around the living room.

Sam Neil plays Mark with an unsettling quality. His natural charisma carries us through Mark’s more disturbing moments. He is a wonderfully compelling actor at all times. He is clearly pushing himself to the very edge. The places he goes with this character are unlike anything I’ve seen before.

By Isabelle Adjani is the one who deserves all the praise for going to extremes. She is beyond intense in this movie. She rips her soul out of her body and holds it up to the camera. Her performance here feels so real inspite of the unreality on display in the movie. She is convincing in ever second. She has so many small moments with Sam Neil that work. She has a couple of massive masterclasses that she puts on all by herself. She performs a scene by herself in a subway tunnel that is absolutley riveting and completely terrifying. I can’t believe how far she went for this movie. She won several awards for this movie and rightly so.

The film is rich in cold war Eastern European symbolism. The movie is just dripping in metaphorical meaning.

The direction is slow and measured. The pace is deliberate and impactful.

The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous. I love the way this movie was shot. Scenes in apartments seem to be lit entirely with sunlight, but it’s not natural sunlight. It looks as though the sun were direction outside the bedroom window. The scenes are so stark and bright it feels beautifully unnatural. I love the way the framing allows multiple action to take place within a single frame. So much more is communicated in a steady unbroken shot then is convey in rapid cutting between closeups.

Is this movie fun to watch? No. Will it stay with you for years to come? Yes, absolutely. It’s not a conventional horror film, but it is one of the scarier movie experiences I’ve had.

It is my cup of tea. A