Ennui = L'Ennui [Widescreen]

Martin is a philosopher suffering from ennui - listless at work, disinterested in films or literature, disenchanted with life and estranged from his ex-wife. One night he meets an elderly painter, who dies shortly afterwards whilst making love to his teenage muse, Cecilia. Intrigued by Cecilia’s hold over the artist (who painted her obsessively) Martin starts to meet Cecilia every afternoon for uncommitted sex. At first Martin is aroused by Cecilia’s bland conversation and apparent feeble-mindedness but soon Cecilia’s detachment starts to obsess him and, unable to control his burgeoning neuroses, Martin’s life spins out of control. The enigmatic Cecilia, an inscrutable and monosyllabic presence to Martin’s excessive verbiage, exacerbates his feverous (and increasingly demonic) need to penetrate her calm. But Martin’s methods to destabilise Cecilia’s mystique are sexual violence and petty torments. Kahn’s roving camera, occasionally hand-held with sudden drops in lighting, suggests a documentary rather than a drama as he explores the futility of Martin’s masochistic irrationality. As a study of sexual obsession, “L’Ennui” pays detailed if detached attention to the sex act, deliberately failing to eroticise the couplings that at times appear utterly joyless to the protagonists. But at two hours and with a cyclical narrative, this film proves, at times, quite trying. Cast includes Charles Berling and Sophie Guillemin. In French with English subtitles.