Based on Herman Melville’s Pierre; or, The Ambiguities, Leos Carax’s most recent feature continues the director’s journey through obsessive, fatalistic relationships. A young aristocrat (Depardieu, son of Gerard) who has just written a best-selling novel lives in a grand estate which he shares with his mother (Deneuve). The sexually charged mother-son relationship is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious stranger, with whom the young writer escapes to the industrial streets of Paris with plans to finish an autobiographical novel. Carax avoids convention at every turn, allowing his film to be driven by the mad passion of his characters rather than a desire for narrative clarity.