The Salamander

I have seen only two other films by Tanner, Le Milieu du monde and Jonas..., but I can say that he is one of my favorite directors. This episodic, fascinating work was written by Tanner and John Berger, the left-wing art critic, and it attacks the mania for finding tidy explanations for deviant behavior: if a man cleans his gun and it goes off, wounding him, is it an accident or foul play? If the man's daughter is a strange, half-educated rural girl, should either Pierre or Paul start sleeping with her? What are the employment prospects of a girl who can't fill a plastic casing with sausage out of a machine, and who listens to heavy rock as though there's a message from the cosmos in it?

I fell into the rhythm of this picture very easily. Its critique of life in bourgeois Switzerland is sharp--the visit from the inspector of "civil decency" is very funny. Both Jean-Luc Bideau and Jacques Denis are very good as the two sheepish city guys, and Bulle Ogier always holds your attention as the unsophisticated Rosemonde who just wants to have fun.