“Wild Grass” might be the strangest film I’ve seen all year. Maybe all millennium. Is it any good? Quite frankly, I have no idea.

Like the 1996 novel “L’incident” on which it’s based, the latest offering from French New Wave auteur Alain Resnais (“Hiroshima Mon Amour”) is based on a simple enough premise. A man named Georges (Andre Dussollier) finds a woman’s stolen wallet. Based on the papers and ID cards inside, he’s able to track down the owner, Marguerite (Sabine Azema).

Now in the real world, that story would be over pretty quickly: Ring, ring. I found your wallet. Oh, my God, you have no idea how worried I’ve been.

Not here. Georges can’t bring himself to actually call Marguerite himself. He can barely handle the ordeal of taking the billfold to the police, but eventually an insistent cop (Mathieu Amalric) forces him to say why he’s shown up at the station.

Georges, you see, is no ordinary protagonist. There are hints, early on, of a criminal past. We learn that he can’t vote, and then he, um, overreacts a tiny bit when he sees a pretty young woman walk by wearing visible black panties under thin white slacks. So viewers may become understandably nervous when Georges starts stalking Marguerite after she has picked up her wallet, leaving her rambling letters and phone messages, slashing her tires.

How’s that again?

You read that right. Georges quickly develops an unhealthy obsession. Then Marguerite returns the favor, stopping by Georges’ house with her best friend (Emmanuelle Devos) in tow to meet with Georges’ wife (Anne Consigny). Yes, he has a wife. And no, none of it makes a lick of sense.

 


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