La salamandra

"La Salamandre" is probably the worst film I've seen in years, but let me be clear about this: I'm not calling it bad because Alain Tanner is an incompetent or untalented filmmaker. On the contrary, he is very capable and very deliberate about what he wants to do and how (the 119-minute running time cannot be accidental - it has to be a deliberate joke). It's just that his ideas of what a film should be are completely opposite to mine: I think films should tell a story or, failing that, should at least be about something; he thinks that nothingness on the screen is fascinating, that the characters themselves saying to each other things like (and I quote) "we're bored", "we're doing nothing here", "we're mucking about", "we're at a dead end" is the peak of cinema entertainment. We're just on two completely different wavelengths. Bulle Ogier is certainly a great camera subject - one that, thankfully, you can study in many other films which won't make you feel like shutting them off in the first 15 minutes. Rating: the temperature of Ogier's wintry village.