La Sentinelle

Director: Arnaud Desplechin

1992 / 139min / DCP

An espionage film unlike any you’ve ever seen, Desplechin’s knotty, outré thriller stars Emmanuel Salinger as a 25-year-old raised in the company of ambassadors and diplomats who, on arriving in Paris to continue his studies in forensic medicine, discovers a shrunken human head in his baggage, an inexplicable occurrence which draws him into a labyrinthine conspiracy haunted by the specters of the Cold War. Willfully elusive to the point of near-hermeticism, byzantine in its narrative intricacy, and chilly to the touch throughout, Desplechin’s paranoia-wracked breakthrough ponders the invisible fissures beneath the surface of an officially unified Europe.