Lullaby for Pi

Sam is a jazz musician who has just lost his wife. He shuts himself in a hotel room and starts drinking. One day he realises there is somebody in the room's bathroom: her name is Pi, she is a painter, and she refuses to come out. The two of them start talking through the door. Neither sees the other's face and there is no plan between them; they simply talk, and after a while that becomes the only thing either of them has. The film, directed by Benoît Philippon, is a French-Canadian co-production. Rupert Friend plays the musician and Clémence Poésy plays Pi, and for most of the film the two do not see each other. Forest Whitaker is also in the cast. The mould is the two-hander room drama and the story is deliberately kept small; there is no event, no outside, only two people's voices. Ninety-eight minutes. That is also the film's risk: everything runs on as far as the dialogue can carry it.