The Devil, Probably

Although it won a prestigious award at Berlin, Robert Bresson's most earnest film is also his least engaging. In having 20-year-old student Antoine Monnier pay a junkie to stage his "suicide" in Père Lachaise (the Parisian cemetery containing many national luminaries), Bresson is clearly lamenting the death of individualism in an indifferent world. However, he is unable to find a suitable motive for the crime. Militant ecologist Henri de Maublanc blames society's ills on pollution and famine, but others seek political, spiritual, cultural and psychological causes. Each case is cogently argued, but the debate never fires the intellect.