Isabelle Huppert

Glazed-over looks, naked flesh, inane philosophizing, and sand dunes announce that we're in Antonioni-land, circa Zabriskie Point.

Darkly funny, haunting, and perhaps hopeful...there's a keen sense of absurdism (and in Agnès Godard's brilliant photography a sort of surrealist realism, if there is such a thing) in the circumstances.

Haneke has hit upon the most accessible, most universally understood experiential vehicle to explore his career-defining obsession with nihilism, or he has made his most emotionally sensitive film yet, a true love story.