The Intruder (L'Intrus)
''The Intruder," a new movie from the great French director Claire Denis, is about -- oh, OK, you caught me. The new Claire Denis movie isn't about ''about." Nor is there an easy way to wrap up its grand images, deft rhythms, and arresting shifts in mood with a tidy, alluring synopsis. The woman has a camera, a peerless cinematographer in Agnès Godard, and a thrilling instinct for what to do with both.
Denis's other films include ''I Can't Sleep," her French Legionnaires masterpiece "Beau Travail," and "Trouble Every Day," a grisly excursion into the sex lives of vampires. If you managed to catch one of these, you know their maker can't be bothered with conventional exposition.
As for the plot of "The Intruder," it ripples in deference to the currents of the shot making, not the other way around. Loosely, it's the tale of Louis (Michel Subor), a fit, handsomely weathered gentleman in his late '60s, and his ailing heart. But even that morsel of news doesn't get us far. Denis seduces us into following what becomes a stunning, almost surreal spiritual adventure.
Louis lives in snowy isolation with a pair of huskies in France's Jura Mountains near the Swiss border. He appears to have a shady past and a grown son (Gregoire Colin) living near Geneva. The movie's title extends beyond the figures who creep around in darkly lit interludes and the fact that Louis expertly slices the throat of one after he breaks into his house. These associations nudge ''The Intruder" into the land of mystery. Who is this man? Why is he paying cash for a new heart? And does he really want one from the black market? Oh, and why is that Russian beauty stalking him?
Denis composes a majestic dream book of shots and sequences: a human heart atop the snow, a huge ball swinging on the side of an ocean liner that suddenly spews streamers and confetti, and, most stunning of all, Beatrice Dalle as the most fabulous dog sledder in the history of movies. (The credits call her the Queen of the Northern Hemisphere, and who are we to argue?) With an hour left, there's a trip to South Korea and another to Tahiti, where Louis goes looking for a life he left behind.
If you're so inclined, ''The Intruder" can be appreciated as a riff, alluding in intervals to Chester Himes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jean-Luc Godard, and, most clearly and most intelligently, Robert Flaherty and F.W. Murnau's 1931 South Seas opus, "Tabu." Of course, missing or ignoring the references does nothing to prevent our being captive to the movie's thrall.
Enigmatic as it is, "The Intruder" dares us to see movies as visual marvels tethered to humanity. Like Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien, Denis wants cinema not simply to reach a more exalted realm but for it to exist there permanently. She's fighting to keep movies free from narrative shackles, and while she'll never win an Oscar, she deserves some kind of Nobel Prize.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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