Heartbeat Detector

A company psychiatrist at a large corporation (Mathieu Almaric) is assigned to investigate discreetly the erratic behavior of the firm’s CEO (Michael Lonsdale). Directed by Nicolas Klotz and written by Elisabeth Perceval (from a story by François Emmanuel), the movie’s English title (in French, it’s The Human Question) fairly begs for snarky comments about detecting a heartbeat in the film itself. Scenes are static and disjointed; peripheral characters wander in and out in a haze, unfocused and sometimes even unexplained; and the dialogue (at least in the English subtitles) is riddled with pretentious non sequiturs. Klotz paces things at a leaden crawl, setting off nearly every line with a pregnant pause that only emphasizes its foolishness. At just under two-and-a-half hours, the movie is a horrible bore.