That's a fairly witty concept -- of course Berling's sour academic would find the whiff of sex and death surrounding this nubile teenager to be intoxicating. The ensuing pas de deux is both disquieting and infuriating, not least because Martin is so ill equipped to deal with the ineluctabilities of such a relationship. He chafes first when Cecilia tells him that her parents won't let her visit him every day; he becomes nearly manic when he learns that he's sharing her affections with a boy closer to her own age (who may well be a more energetic lover).

Your involvement with the film will depend on your interest in the slow burn of the self-absorbed protagonist, who stalks and fumes around the frame like any number of testy boyfriends you may have had in real life (or may remember from other French movies). After our screening, hardcore cinephile Steve Erickson convincingly described the ever-tightening spiral of madness and obsession conveyed by the film's rhythms and performances, although I had to admit that I found the whole thing rather shapeless. Yes, the film becomes darker and more ominous as it unspools, and the sense of fatalism is near-overwhelming -- but the repetitive structure, with Martin ironically edging nearer to some undefined precipice every time he sees Cecilia, proves tiresome, mainly because the character is such an inveterate specimen of chauvinism and middle-aged sexual desperation (he even seeks comfort from his ex-wife, who's trying to get on with her life). I did appreciate a nerve-racking scene where Martin meets Cecilia's parents, one of whom is dying of cancer, as well as the film's denouement, which may (or may not) promise Martin some degree of peace.

I suppose my impatience with all this can be traced to the source material, a novel by Alberto Moravia, whose work has previously been grist for directors including Godard (Contempt) and Bertolucci (The Conformist). Despite those fundamental reservations, I have to admit that L'ennui is well-crafted and impeccably realized. Berling's performance succeeds precisely because it's so single-minded an exercise in frustration, and Guillemin's works because she's so blank and accommodating a sex object that Martin's reactions can't possibly be attributed to malice or thoughtlessness on her part. As objects of sexual obsession go, she's long on fleshiness and short on mystery; like Martin, the movie seems not at all concerned about her internal motivations, and I spent most of its running time rooting for her to come to her senses and leave that creepy Humbert Humbert wannabe behind.