INTRIGO is the first part of a crime trilogy from bestselling author Håkan Nesser that will be released in cinemas and bookstores at around the same time. In the first part, Nesser amuses himself by leading viewers deeper and deeper down a labyrinth of false tracks. It‘s less about “who is the murderer?“ and more about who the author of this confusing game of stories and narrators is. On a remote Greek island burgeoning writer David (Benno Fürmann, intellectual thanks to his reading glasses) is reading out the plot of his new novel to reclusive star author Alex (Ben Kingsley, nicely eccentric as always). You sense that he‘s telling him his own story. It‘s about a married couple vacationing in the mountains. She tells him she‘s been having an affair and wants to leave him on the way there. At first he doesn‘t react, then he cooks up an awful plan...The woman disappears, but years later the man hears her voice on the radio. On top of that, he gets a manuscript of a story that is astonishingly similar to his own story. The intricate plot of INTRIGO goes from one criminal case to the next, to new entanglements, new places, new authors, new missing people, and lands – how could it be otherwise – on the same island that David and Alex are on, having reached for the hard alcohol by now. More of a journey through an inner maze than a thriller, INTRIGO is clever, twisty – and very wordy. David tells us what happens over wide stretches of the film and the images seem like an afterthought. The book version probably works better, it‘s about writing after all, which is a very glamorous and lethal occupation here. The power relations keep changing. The difference between the person narrating and the figure just acting out someone else‘s narrative is of crucial importance.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy