Boarding Gate

Director: Olivier Assayas

2007 / 106min / 35mm

Asia Argento clacks across the screen in stiletto heels with imperious flair in Assayas’s coolly kinky globe-hopping corporate espionage thriller, its centerpiece scene a blood-on-the-walls two-hander chamber drama in which Asia and ex-partner/lover Michael Madsen reminisce on their sordid shared history of sadomasochism and backstabbing business deals until such time as he receives the praying mantis treatment. An acridly atmospheric portrayal of mercenary entrepreneurs fending for themselves in the free-for-all scrum of 21st-century capitalism, depicting a world in which sex is just another commodity to be traded and all loyalties are subject to disposal as soon as they become inconvenient, played out in nondescript offices, airport lounges, and blandly immaculate apartments that look much the same in Paris as they do in Hong Kong.

Distributor: Magnolia Pictures