Ambiguity reigns till metaphor becomes evident. But the films can also be terse and sophisticated, as in Sous le Sable where the director had the help of Charlotte Rampling to make a weak script acceptable. Since the action has to do only with a middle-aged woman who may or may not have lost her husband, it's a picture about emotions, mainly masked, with the action secondary. Not that it has been absent. But with Patrice Chereau's Fantasy winning top prize at the Berlin festival, the spotlight has turned anew on an area between soft- and hardcore.
Fantasy pulls no punches even if love takes the place of sex.
He's a cab owner, separated. She's a wife, unhappy. What they share is desire, nude and crude. No names, no stories. But then he wants to know who she is.