False trails and thick fog infest Claire Denis's wilfully elusive puzzle-picture, which kicks off in the Jura mountains and winds up in the blustery paradise of Tahiti, where crabs scrabble on the beach and the squelching synthesizer score sounds as though it's been bussed in from a John Carpenter movie.

Our tour guide of sorts is Michel Subor, a lonely hunter in search of a new heart and a relationship with his long-lost illegitimate son. Elsewhere, Béatrice Dalle crops up - white-teethed and wild-eyed - as a fur-clad dog breeder, and an illegal immigrant finds himself gutted outside a log cabin and then buried in the woods. And twisting, glimmering, almost out of reach is a dark and troubling thesis on morality and mortality, with Subor's character installed as a kind of emblematic corrupt westerner who comes unstuck against the slate-grey skies of the tropics.

I'm still scratching my head over this one, but the itch is mostly pleasant.