Perhaps no other filmmaker shoots human physiognomy with the intimate intensity of Claire Denis. Her work is filled with passionate, deceptively haphazard-seeming appraisals of bare flesh, fervent glances, and rasping breath. In L'Intrus, she enlists the aid again of superb cinematographer Agnès Godard, who gets in close to the actors, particularly Michel Subor and his unsettling icy stare. While the baffling narrative seems to take place within Louis' (Subor) head, and in his failing heart, Denis turns it into a dystopic travelogue, wherein Louis, an unappointed defender of the French border, who has shut down his own emotional borders, finds himself a foreigner, first in Pusan and then in Tahiti. A few things seem clear. He's an older man with a heart condition who uses a nefarious international black market to save himself, and neglects one family in a vain quest for another. Beyond that, there are Denis' images and the fascinating faces of her actors -- Subor, Grégoire Colin, Katya Golubeva, and the startling Béatrice Dalle. There are moments of humor, as when Tahitian locals hold an impromptu casting session in a generous effort to fulfill Louis' patriarchal wishes, and moments of disturbing violence. There's an underlying emotional truth in the movie's well-earned sense of loss. That's plenty, but it won't be enough for some. Denis keeps us scratching our heads for a long time, the film bogs down during the long wait in Tahiti, and there's an inexplicable dogsled coda that seems capricious enough to frustrate even the most patient viewers. L'Intrus is a strange and beautiful work, but it doesn't quite cohere.