No Man's Land

Don't ask me why I love that movie, but, God !, I love it ! Maybe because it's about a border (physical : between two countries, that's means nowhere for the common sense; and mental : living or keeping dreaming ?). Maybe because Alain Tanner knows that trees and cows (I love cows) have something to tell us. Maybe because he knows that ordinary is extraordinary. And certainly because of the Terry Riley music. The great french critic Serge Daney wrote about that movie those definitive lines : "This is the enjoyment at the idea that "Things are there", and demand, in silence, to be seen, to be registered, filmed; and this is the anguish at the idea there is no more collective way that lead to them (a collective way is "the fiction"), only individual itinerary, some secret ways".

Leonard Maltin calls "No Man's Land" a companion piece to Alain Tanner's more acclaimed "Jonah Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000"; true, it too is an ensemble piece, made by the same director in a similar minimalistic style, but it has no "plot" connection to "Jonah" and lacks its political charge and its surrealistic elements. It is also not as engaging. But it is effectively disorienting (we're never quite sure which side of the French - Swiss border we're on, living up to the title), beautifully photographed (especially at night-time, in the forest), and has some wonderfully introspective moments, like a man describing seeing a woman's soul through her eyes ("it's like a well...you don't see the bottom"). **1/2 out of 4.