La Sentinelle

Traveling by train from Germany to France to continue his medical education as an intern, Matthias (Emmanuel Salinger) is accosted by custom officials and forced at gunpoint into another car where he is searched and interrogated, then abruptly released. Later that evening in his Parisian hotel, Matthias discovers he's picked up an extra passenger on his journey: there's a slightly shrunken head inside his suitcase. How Matthias a) becomes obsessed with determining the identity of the dead man, b) gets caught up in post-Cold War intrigue, and c) has metaphorical relationships with friends, lovers and family, is the subject of Arnaud Desplechin's two-hour-plus "suspense/thriller." If you've a taste for arty French rumination on the similarities between insular and/or duplicitous political relationships amongst ideologically opposed countries and human beings, well then, cue this baby up. If you're looking for a good thriller, on the other hand, I'd pass. Optional. (R. Pitman)