听 
Esteemed French director Philippe Harel, who has modestly (or penny-pinchingly) cast himself in most of his films, clearly sees no reason to switch track. He has the sensitivity to twig that he is his own best lead actor, for he proves excellent as a lost, lonely soul, a terminal, slightly unbalanced introspective who - living in Paris - sees life in all its hugeness happening to everyone else. Piled high with dark thoughts and anxieties of every kind, he can't even cope with owning a car (he has lost his and would be socially embarrassed to admit it) or buying a bed (a desire for a single bed is an admission that sex is not part of the present, or even planned for the future). Looking every inch the prisoner of his own disturbing thoughts, he also comes across as someone who has been forbidden to smile. A computer programmer who has to travel to Rouen to teach IT, he is professionally partnered with a colleague who - still a virgin at 28 - has his own unstable yearnings. Together, hovering on the fringe of Rouen nightclubs, they are very much the odd couple.
Harel, as an actor, is possessed of a haunting, staring face which powerfully suggests all kinds of trouble; as a director, he combines the programmer's pithy, perceptive voice-over (which dominates the soundtrack) with short, snappy scenes to create the quiet energy which powers the film. Everything here relates to the central fact of one man's unhappiness, even the brief cutaway shots of vending machines and plates of food which punch home the mechanical pointlessness of his life. A smart, sombre treat.
