Intrigo: Death of an Author

This film tells us that the gulf between what we want to know and what we can know may never be illuminated.

While German actor Fürmann and especially Kingsley engage in a nimbly calculated game of cat and mouse, the film’s coup de grace fails to land with the intended punch.

Sacrifices its potentially compelling central storyline to an elaborate, meta-style intermingling of supposed fiction and reality that turns out to be far more confusing than intriguing.

The movie’s structural dynamics make it play like a cross between “Nocturnal Animals” and “Sleuth.” But the stagings are stilted; the relations between the conflicted characters never catch fire.

The film evinces neither the visceral pleasures of noir nor the precision to uncover deeper thematic resonances.