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This paper can be divided into two lines of investigation. On one plane, there are the technical aspects of filming. On this level, Arnaud Desplechin displays an array of filming and editing talent that makes the film a visual exercise in filmic construction. On the other plane, there are the social-political issues that Desplechin raises and presents within the film. While these are intertwined, they are hard to talk about simultaneously, given that the film as a whole does not completely stand on its own merits. In any case, by focusing on these two areas, the film emerges in its final reading as an interesting displacement of viewer expectations. It is through this struggle between the viewer and the film that the most meaningful aspects emerge.

The genre of spy films is quite large. In James Parish and Michael Pitt's book entitled The Great Spy Pictures, they note that "as long as there have been conflicts between peoples and nations there has been spying" (Parish and Pitt, 1974:9). They go on to say that "in order to have genuine spy content, a motion picture must concern itself in some way with national interest and with the interest being in some way threatened by a foreign power" (10). While these aspects are certainly present in La Sentinelle, the focus is immediately shifted by making its central character a civilian, who becomes involved with national interests by his association with diplomatic figures.

Larry Langman and David Ebner in their Encyclopedia of American Spy Films describe the milieu of the typical spy and they argue that what makes spy films interesting is the "particular type of insight [spies have] into human nature" (Langman and Ebner, 1990: xi). The spy, in their analysis is the "quintessential outsider" who is constantly playing a balancing act between identity and cover up. This too has a place in La Sentinelle. The central character of Mathias Barillet, the young doctor, is a reclusive and alienated character. As a newcomer to Paris, he is caught between his solitary investigative work in the laboratory and the tense atmosphere of his sister's friends. His youth also provides space for him to explore other areas of interest, and though he is not a traditional spy, he eventually acts the part of one.

In filmic terms, this becomes more complex. The film opens with an establishing shot of a deserted bend in a street. A police car comes around the bend and just before it meets the camera head on, the camera angles away. A quick jump cut presents the same street in the original shot, but from a farther distance. The effect is that the viewer is pushed back by the police, a force of power now absent in the final shot. An inter-title matted on a black screen informs the viewer of the location. It is the French Embassy in Bonn, Germany. The date is September 1991.

The first five minutes of the film go through similar techniques of displacement through quick and elliptical editing. The camera moves from outside, where a group of children are playing with some adults to inside the embassy, where a private conversation is going on. While the soundtrack unfolds an historical tale told by one of the members of the private party, the camera jumps inside and outside the room. The effect implies that the story being told has ramifications that go beyond the secret confines of the listeners. In fact, the story being told is about a discreet conference between Churchill and Stalin at Yalta in which "the world was made." Like the opening shot of the police car, the power is deferred. Someone else breaks the story by saying, "That's all over now."

This opening also serves other structural functions. It presents two characters, Mathias Barillet and Jean-Jacques. Barillet is first seen after the film title sitting alone lost in reverie. He is seen again outside the embassy with the soundtrack cutting through him with the words: "Let us not argue about things not worth our time." Jean-Jacques is shown inside the private room. He stands out not only by his close-up, but also by the fact that he is so much younger than everyone else in the room. By the end of the story being told, he wanders out of the room into a dark hallway, somewhat uninterested in the story that seems to have held its older listeners with fascination.

At this point then, there is evidence of an inner conflict vis-a-vis international history. Firstly, history is not what it seems to be. It is instead, bantering conversations for old men in drawing rooms. Secondly, it seems to have little to do with the practicalities of younger people's lives. Of course, the rest of the film goes on to make this all not true.

Michel Foucault developed a theoretical construct that I find to be quite apt in this particular structuring. In his conception of Knowledge-Discourse-Power, Foucault undoes the myth that there is an objective truth and instead offers a radical constructivist posturing that knowledge is produced, fabricated - constructed. In relation to this film, what holds reality together aside from filmic structures, are the power structures of international relations that govern the quality of life, and the scientific institution, which presents us an analytical process capable of creating facts to begin with.

What is so interesting about this posturing is that Desplechin pits the two institutions against each other through the character of Mathias. It is by this method that he attains spy status. And it is by this process that he uncovers the unsettling nature of what we hold as fact.

It is easy enough to see how international intrigue constructs the myth of history. The story that opens the film makes it clear that there can be more than one way to narrate how past events took place. Risks to national security must be monitored, information catalogued, and evidence suppressed. The role of the spy in this structure is to regulate the commerce of secrets that provides the material for constructing history.

In the same way, the medical profession participates in covert operations. However, in its discourse, it seeks to uncover evidence through an investigative process that takes as its object the human rather than the social body. Seen in this way, the film sequence entitled: "Living with it" shows us a hospital on police property where autopsies are performed. The doctor, who leads his group of young interns through this process, indoctrinates them in a method of turning investigative evidence into a narrative that makes sense of a person's death.

Mathias, a member of this group of pathologists, finds himself caught between these two discourses and his navigation between the two is what provides the tension in the film. The head that Mathias is investigating is not an object separate from the affairs of state. By the end of the film, it is so integral to national security that Mathias finds himself in the only place where these tensions can be resolved: a military hospital. The difference is that the doctor is now a patient, has now become dis-empowered and displaced.

It is precisely because knowledge is constructed in relation to the power that can sustain it, that the flaws in any particular system become manifest. On the purely filmic level, these flaws point out the structural failings of Desplechin's film.

It is unclear how Mathias acquires the head, and it is also unclear what his final actions brought on by his dealings with the mysterious head ultimately signify. Narratively speaking, it confuses the viewer and makes it hard to determine how this all began and how it ends up. By exploding and exploring the production of narrative, Desplechin comes up against the problem of coherency and closure and does not successfully negotiate it.

In addition to the mysterious appearance of the head, there are two scenes of overt violence in the film that on initial viewing may pass as somehow necessary to the film's diegesis, but on subsequent review appear less meaningful and hence more mysterious. The first is the presumed murder of Nathalie, who unfortunately encountered an agent retrieving the head from her apartment. The second is the shooting of William Mahe by Mathias. In the first case it is unclear who it is who kills Nathalie. It does not seem to be William because the murderer has a widow's peak and William does not. It also doesn't seem to be necessary to have her killed.

This raises a few questions. One, why is this scene depicted this way ? Why not instead simply recover the head without complications ? And two, who is the mysterious man ? Is he depicted incorrectly by a flaw in continuity editing ? As for Mathias' act of violence, it is not so much why it happens, but how. That is, how did the shot gun which he uses to kill Mahe end up on William's desktop ? There was no prior presentation of it in the film. It appears there for the first time, much as the head appeared in Mathias' suitcase.

In general, these structural flaws become unsettling. The more the film is meticulously investigated, the less there seems to be an underlying structural design to explain them. However, by the very same process, an interesting editing and filming style specific to Desplechin was uncovered.

If I were to give it a name, I would call it filming and editing along multiple axis of symmetry. In its simplest form, Desplechin uses a lot of mirrors to capture an image, holds it steady long enough for the viewer to get absorbed by it, and then like the pulling away from the police car in the beginning, the camera angles away to reveal a mirror mistaken for the image itself. As is always the case with mirrors, there is usually some detail that betrays it as a mirror. Either it is something as simple as it being smaller than the entire shot, like the rear-view mirror in the car or the mirrors on the train, or the frame of the mirror itself gives away its object.

It is easiest to discover these mirrors when the objects that they reflect are directly in front of them, revealing themselves by their reflection across a 180 degree plane. But Desplechin goes beyond this by choosing other angles where the focal length of the camera falls inside the mirror, producing an incredible amount of depth from a flat surface. With his use of lighting, he was able to produce an identical effect without a mirror at all. In a scene where Nathalie is singing behind the body of a grand piano, she is off to the right of the screen and a lighted lamp takes up most of the left. The lamp is in the center of focus, but it is off-center of the shot. The depth produced by the angle of the camera in relation to the lighting gives the illusion that the camera is not set straight on its subject and hence leads the eye to conclude that the shot must have been obtained by a reflection. But, this is surprisingly not the case.

The movement obtained by the illusion of depth in the mirror provides for some unsettling entrances and exits for characters. At first, they appear to be coming from some unseen direction and then they appear at unexpected angles - angles that only emerge at the moment that the mirror is discovered.

Desplechin was able to build on this visual dynamic and use it for continuity edits. The 180 degrees combined with their reflection gives one a circular space to film. Removing the physical mirror gives the camera a spherical domain in real space. Thus, the axis of symmetry no longer has to be obtained by reflection in an actual mirror, but can be created by radically altering the camera angle for the next shot. Since the actual mirror has been removed, the camera can be made to capture any detail that it wishes to reflect. For example, Desplechin used the turning of Mathias on a chair in the laboratory to mirror the opposite turning of his face in the following close-up shot. What was reflected in opposition was the angle of Mathias' head and the direction of its spin. At the same time, the camera could move to a close-up that takes place at a different time. Desplechin then goes on to reflect this movement on to the head that Mathias is dissecting, showing that the axis of reflection vis-a-vis this method can also change its subject of reflection.

This visual dynamic as a technique is interesting enough in its own right. However, it also has an influence on the narrative of the film as well as theoretical implications. It also provides a narrative motivation underscoring Mathias' investigations.

After arriving in Paris and finding the head in his suitcase, Mathias could have simply handed it over to the authorities as his colleague, Simon Asher, suggested. However, for some vague reasons, Mathias holds on to the head because he believes he might have it for a reason. As the film unfolds, there are forces that compel Mathias on his course. Much the same way as the camera chooses its particular detail to focus on, so too, these forces act on Mathias. They provide him with a focus and push him on his investigations.

In general, Mathias analyzes the head because that is what he has been trained to do. That is, his actions are merely a reflection of his function as a medical examiner. When Mathias consults a priest to find a way to dispose of the head properly, he is confronted with another discourse incapable of dealing with the situation properly. He cannot transfer the head into the domain of the church because the church does not recognize the head as an identity - a specific human being. This is what compels Mathias to begin his investigation. And he begins his investigation by a collapsing of the filming techniques just described.

Mathias brings the head out of the locker he has hidden it in (a neutral space of reflectivity: all space around it looks the same) and takes it on the metro to the hospital. On the way, the camera films the motion of the metro through one of the train's windows. As the angle of the landscape gets closer to the train, the camera brings its focus closer and closer. Just before the camera lens is reflected in the window and reveals itself to the viewer, the film cuts to inside the lab where Mathias places the head under a laboratory camera. That is, the subject of reflection is simultaneously revealed and displaced.

After Mathias meets the young girl, who show him the specific point in her art project where their gazes cross, Mathias returns to the lab and starts an in depth analysis of his subject beginning at a similarly specific point taken from the back of his subject's head (the lobe of vision.) Reflecting on a set of x-rays of the skull, Mathias then decides to open the head up. Later, chewing on a sandwich leads him to extract a portion of the jaw.

Upon completing his analysis he presents his findings to his colleagues for review. He has sketched out the entire face of the person, determined his height, his age, his diet, even which hand he preferred to brush his teeth with and that he got his cavities filled in Russia. Afterwards, Mathias brings the jaw to a Russian Orthodox priest where he obtains a blessing for it. In some senses then, he has finally completed his task and found a place for at least part of his subject to rest. However, on returning to his apartment, he finds it in shambles from the investigative work of his overly zealous roommate, William Mahe, who works for international security. This prompts Mathias to create his own mess by taking William's security clearance card to do his own investigative work to determine the identity of the head. This narrative unfolding seems to show that in a psycho-analytic way, motivations can be transferred and reflected from one place to another propelled by the details focused on and reflected by the camera.

The whole thing comes undone when William discovers what has happened and turns Mathias over to his superiors. It is at this point that the entire film unwinds or buckles, depending on how you look at it. While Philippe Varins (William's superior) acknowledges his dealings with Kolchaguine (the head's identity) he denies any torturing or ill treatment of him. Mathias, himself, has no evidence to prove otherwise, and in fact, his methods of matching Kolchaguine to his head appear to be circumstantial at best. The photos match Mathias' drawing and his head's blood type. There is no direct evidence beyond that and certainly no information on cause of death or more specifically Varins' involvement as the executioner. But to phrase it a different way, this isn't a murder investigation. Mathias isn't a police investigator, he is a medical examiner and Philippe Varins isn't a murderer by profession, he is a diplomat who trades defectors. And thus, Mathias finds himself at the intersection of Power itself. Before Mathias can invoke the validity of his scientific investigations, Varins decides to invoke his power of the State and erase the entire subject.

Left with no recourse, Mathias holds on to the one piece of evidence he has left, the portion of the jaw. It has been blessed and he protects it up to the point of committing murder for it and its sanctified significance. In fact, the shotgun appears in the film at an inserted jump cut where the jaw, thrown on the desktop flips over (reverses angles) to underscore the appearance of the gun. When Mathias succeeds in passing the jaw over to a Russian citizen, there is a similar moment of pause as Mathias transfers the sacred object across the boundary of the embassy gates. That is, he transfers the entire significance of his efforts into the subjective space of the one who accepts the jaw (an object now identified), the social-political space of Kolchaguine's homeland, Russia.

The film fades out to a white fade in and concludes with Mathias in a military hospital with a voice over, presumably from a tape of his debriefing. In it, he confesses to his inquisitors and to the audience a partial reasoning for his actions. It is in this space, despite the structural flaws of the film, that Desplechin brings home a complex network of messages. Mathias goes through a reverie of his father and his family, of living in Aachen, and living before and after WWII, and what life was like in Post- WWII up until the present day.

In the press conference following the pubic screening of his film, Desplechin commented that the world we live in now, a Post-WWII and Post-Cold War world, is a world of the dead where the living live as caretakers of a mausoleum. It is clear that the character of Mathias encapsulates this idea. However, other characters in the film also have their roles to play out and the film clearly shows that these roles intersect and conflict.

Firstly, on the level of age differences, there is clearly a positioning of power and authority that favors the old over the young in relations to the production and maintenance of international history. The younger generation figured by Jean-Jacques and William are accessories to this production. However, they are pawns of a larger structure and they follow the orders that come from above. They are not interested in questioning the larger ramifications, they merely are doing their jobs.

This point of interest is clearly seen differently. At a party at William and Mathias' apartment, Mathias, Jean-Jacques and William make their positions known. Mathias asks, "You think Bleicher is a spy because he went after his brother. That he's crazy...I think it's a good thing. Don't you ?" William replies, "The guy is a spy. He isn't good or bad. He's with our enemies. If he does something for us, it's against us. The question is, who are you with ?" Jean-Jacques refuses to participate, saying to William, "Why don't you look after your guests." Thus, there is on one hand a questioning with no ultimate recourse for reason, an affirmation based on insipid logic, and finally complacency.

Voicing the perspective of the old is Bleicher, who laughs at the "fat sacks of shit on TV" who claim that the Cold War is over, Varins, who seeks to erase all records of contrary ideas, and the older gentleman who began the tale at the beginning of the film and finished it saying, "It's all over now." That is, there is another level where questioning meets the process of containing conflict by denying and erasing its existence with power finally coming to rest in the one who gets to say with authority, "It's all over now."

In the background of this movement between Knowledge and Power is the emerging discourse of gender. This is figured in this film by Claude, the young girl that Mathias attempts to befriend, his sister, Marie, and her friend, Nathalie. Structured in this way, the three fall into an unsettling position. The young girl is naive and innocent of these affairs of state, sharing an alignment with power only by association with her father, the head of the hospital. Marie, voices her questioning of her position seeing that her function as an accomplice in Varins' smuggling operation is in conflict with her desire to be a legitimate part of a professional singing troupe (also Varins' cover) shouting at the point of tears, "It's my life. It's my life." Finally, there is Nathalie, who despite her loose sexuality and easy going accommodations for her friends, ends up dying because of them.

In all these cases, what comes to the surface as conflict or is pushed back into repression, is a struggle of and for power that involves a lot of death. Foucault, himself, in his writings pointed to ultimate power as a shift from the right to decree death sentences to control over life processes. Freud too, in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle moved from contemplations of sexuality and repression, of conflicts between Id and Ego, of Conscious and Unconscious, to a struggle between the forces of life and death pitted in constant repetition. There is also the psycho-analytic position of Jacques Lacan, who points out in his Mirror Stage, that the construction of subjectivity is through a displacement of identity into its image and the necessary subservience of subjectivties to social realms in the Symbolic Order.

Filmed in its political undertakings, Desplechin's film underscores these theoretical issues and brings to light a complex contemplation on modern and perhaps post-modern constructions of what can ultimately be a repository for meaning. His film seems to indicate that the process is always framed and that as such we are always trapped. There is no comfortable place to be in this world where even the dead are not put to rest.

His filming technique opens up space where at first there was only reflected surface. His ability to divide space into spheres of reference capable of reflecting and transferring information is a technical feat interesting as a filmic event. However, it also leaves the viewer in conflict. It leaves the viewer unsettled by the ending of a flawed film as well as unsettled by a larger flaw: there can be no comfortable ending at all.

Brought into a film where a cop car flashes its presence at us and momentarily deflects itself from view, we are left at the end of the film with a sad reverie of Mathias' state - a doctor marooned in a military hospital nostalgic for a history we only partially knew and understood. Left too with two murders and a lot of unknowns. What is known is that Power structures are capable of displacing meaning, of transforming and transferring information. Ultimately, they produce Knowledge, the criterion of validity, and the substantiation of identity. Caught at the criss-cross of discourses, Mathias at first naively, and then with full-blown intentions, questions the structure and ultimately is overpowered by it. Thus, as a visual representation, despite its flaws in filmic structure, Desplechin's film questions the larger structure of Power and gives us much to reflect upon.

La Sentinelle. Directed by Arnaud Desplechin. Produced by Why Not Productions, France, 1992.
(Public Screening, 1992 New York Film Festival.)

Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. Vintage books, New York: 1983.

Freud, Sigmund. The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. W. W. Norton and Co., New York: 1989.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. Transl. Alan Sheridan. W.W. Norton and Co., New York: 1977.

Langman, Larry and David Ebner. Encyclopedia of American Spy Films. Garland Publishing, Inc., New York: 1990.

Parish, James R. and Michael R. Pitts. The Great Spy Pictures. The Scarecrow Press, New Jersey: 1974.

Vorkapich, Slavko, "Toward True Cinema," from Film Culture, No. 19, March 1959, pp 10-17.