I draw here in particular on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the crystal-image and on Jean-Luc Nancy’s thinking of ecotechnics, as elaborated in his essay on The Intruder (a film inspired by Nancy’s autobiographical essay, L’Intrus). Addressing Beau Travail (1999) and The Intruder (2004), I examine an ecological impulse that manifests itself through a nonanthropocentric detailing of the coexistence of body and landscape, and a nonhierarchical attentiveness to the distributed agencies of humans, animals and things. This article explores the work of Claire Denis beyond the focus on the human body through which it is commonly read. Furthermore, L’Intrus’s complementary depiction of imaginaries of the South Sea islands and the Northern mountain forest suggests that the imagined relationship to a place that is unknown and far away is dependent upon an imagined relationship to the natural environment that is familiar and close by. Rather than proposing new ecological or economic imaginaries, I argue that L’Intrus is a significant ecological text precisely because it makes legible how debt-ridden imaginaries of nature intrude upon another and affect the experience of places and the policies that regulate them. Moreover, I explore how the idea of nature in L’Intrus appears as a construct in which economic and ecological relationships of debt are mediated through imaginaries of place. I examine the complex notions of indebtedness that shaped the film and its production. She proves to be the perfect composer to help Hallström project the tale's subversive feminine energies.In reading Claire Denis’s L’Intrus, I enter into a dialogue with two recent publications that consider her cinema in light of contemporary discussions on ecology and economy: Laura McMahon’s work on the ‘ecological impulse’ at play in Denis’s films and Rosalind Galt’s analysis of the way in which Denis’s ‘default cinema’ resists contemporary neoliberal formations. But Portman's is the film's most impressive performance. Depp's fans will undoubtedly be delighted by his impressive fretwork on the Django Reinhardt and Duke Ellington gypsy guitar pieces that begin and end the soundtrack album. The music does not so much capture as create the whimsical and mysterious atmosphere of the film, blending breezy French orchestral allusions with otherworldly Andean flutes and rambling gypsy guitars in an effective sonic representation of the cultural clash between Juliette Binoche's South American mystic, Johnny Depp's Irish river rat, and the conservative French town that brings them together. Throughout Chocolat, Portman's rich and airy melodies float sweetly across the screen, mischievously hinting at hidden meanings and darker themes.
But Portman's score was a different story altogether. A year later, Hallström's adaptation of the Joanne Harris novel Chocolat was in many ways as charming and as vapid as Cider House. The score brought her an Oscar nomination, but lacked both the eclectic complexity ( Beloved) and the vibrant playfulness ( Emma) of her best work. Rachel Portman's innocuously pretty score for Hallström's innocuously pretty 1999 screen adaptation of The Cider House Rules played by the director's rules, melding pleasantly and forgettably into the glossy period landscape.
The approach has its advantages, but the earnest limpidity of his vision can have a stultifying effect on his films. He is an old-school storyteller, preferring to step out of the way and let the story speak for itself.
Swedish filmmaker Lasse Hallström's directorial style is marked by a taste for simplicity.
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