This film has been around for about a year I think but was shown at the 2008 Cambridge Film Festival recently. The brochure said it would be slow moving, in fact ‘glacial’ was the word used and yes, this was an incredibly (and beautifully) slowed down film, from the very slow pan from the water upto to the bridge of a ship docked in a dark and misty small harbour in an unnamed French port town, through to the slow and mannered declarations of the old old detective from London, sent to solve what in reality is a rather minor crime. This is black and white at its best, as has been said before, a homage to noir. What struck me was how mannered all of the acting is. It is deeply unnatural but very arresting and much, refreshingly, is left unexplained at the end. I wonder what the Simenon novel was like, and how much of the mood has been devised by the director. The cast includes Tilda Swinton in a rather strange minor(ish) role. This is definitely worth seeing.