ADVENTUROUS, maybe. Successful, not really. The detached images and disembodied voices are only intriguing for a short while, and then tedium sets in as we wait desperately for something to happen which makes any kind of sense.

The main character is an American sports journalist living in Paris with a deep-rooted obsession about her family, in particular her younger brother. The younger brother is possibly dead, and possibly a team basketball player. Her husband only speaks French, despite the fact that her French is fairly awful, and wants to design cities that look like cemeteries. Her employer feels a need to say everything twice, once in English and once in French, presumably because, despite being English, her French is quite good. The main character progresses in various stages from looking like a fairly normal adult to an overgrown child, complete with white tights and pony tails. Over the top of all this (as well as several shots of a rather uninteresting Paris roundabout) is a conversation between a brother and a sister touching on sex, death, jealousy, and distance.

If the images were stronger, or the dialogue somewhat less coy, (e.g. little girl's voice singing "we are going to die") the effect might have been different. As it is, the film doesn't quite cut it: it is merely pretty on occasion, rather than stunning; irritating rather than fascinating. The addition of purely superfluous images, such as the character miming at excessive length a basketball player to a waiter, when in fact a) she speaks French, and b) it's the same word in both languages, merely add to the annoyance as well as bringing the film down to a standardised narrative form which it would seem it was trying to avoid. Famous people are involved (Kristin Scott-Thomas), which can be a good sign, but on this occasion one merely wonders why.