Bela Tarr, aptly named as watching his movies is like running over freshly laid tarmac, is an unapologetic auteur who makes Gus Van Sant look like Michael Bay, and whose previous works include the seven hour Satantango.

Here he sticks to a more bum-friendly 134 minutes, but that's the only concession he makes in the telling of his story.

Maloin (Krobot) is a night worker in a windswept French port town, who witnesses a scuffle between two broad accented cockneys during a clandestine money exchange, in which one ends up dead in the dock with a suitcase full of money and the other flees.

Retrieving the £10,000 loot from the drink, Maloin sees a way to escape his miserable existence, his meagre income barely able to provide for his wife (a bizarrely cast Swinton, dubbed into French) and daughter (Bok).

When renowned English Inspector Morrison (played by Lenart, voiced in exaggerated panto fashion by Edward Fox) comes calling Maloin feels the heat, but the overwhelming bleakness of his life, no matter how much money he gets, could prove more threatening than any police action.

A typical festival favourite, The Man From London is a good example of why foreign films have tough times finding audiences.

A lugubrious pace, shots that hang... and hang... and hang... long after most other directors would call "Cut", and scant dialogue but a surplus of portentous close-ups make the film a somnambulant chore.

The "action" revolves almost exclusively around the port, a local cafe and Maloin's threadbare flat, but too little plot takes too long to tell, subplots are left dangling, and the decision to crudely dub the actors into French saddles the film with an amateur feel. 

In a film like this, pleasures need to be grasped with both hands and Fred Kelemen's noirish photography glistens in the nocturnal scenes. Mihaly Vig's mournful score also keeps the film moving even when the dying-clock pacing threatens to sputter out entirely. 

Flashes of humour - Maloin attempting to sleep in a room seemingly lit by a 1000 suns, a loud ticking that follows him around and may actually be his beating heart - suggest Tarr is capable of producing something memorable if he could slough off the need to annoy.

For truly inspirational foreign movies released in 2008, check out Ashes of Time Redux, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Edge of Heaven and Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame, and if expertly wrought misery is your thing try 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days or Gomorrah.

Safe to say, this man from London was not impressed with that Man from London.
 

Rob Daniel