In the White City

Alain Tanner's 1983 film follows Paul, an engineer on a cargo ship, who goes ashore in Lisbon and does not return to the vessel. He settles into a hotel room, films the city on a super eight camera and sends the reels to his wife, and loses track of time. The subject is not escape but escape arriving nowhere: Paul is freed from nothing, he only waits. Bruno Ganz's performance carries that emptiness without words. Tanner's Lisbon is not the tourist city; stairways, trams and empty afternoons. The amateur camera footage set inside the film deliberately breaks the story's sense of time. There is almost no plot. Who it's for: viewers who like European art cinema and films about a city. Who it's not for: anyone wanting incident, or who will find an ambiguous close unsatisfying.