This time around Claire Denis is exploring the area later exploited in Dirty Pretty Things, namely immigrant subculture in a large city (London and Paris respectively). It's loosely constructed at best and if it has a centre that centre is a fictionalised version of 20 real murders that occurred in Paris in the 80s. Newly arrived Lithuanian Daiga (Katerina Golubeva, recently seen boffing her brains out in Twentynine Palms) serves as a link of sorts between Mona (Beatrice Dalle) and her on-off relationship with an African musician, Alex Descas whose ambition in life is to return to Martinique with Mona and their baby and live off sunshine and fish and his brother Camille (Richard Courcet) a drag queen who, with his white lover, is in fact responsible for the murders. Line Renaud is also on hand to remind us of how the old school used to do it and very welcome she is. At times this resembles an Otar Iosselliani project if Iosselliani were featuring cameos by the likes of Catherine Frot. Watchable without being memorable.
Review of I Can't Sleep
