I liked the portrayal of the intergenerational aspect of gay experience here. I found the coming out scene and relationship with the mothers' character a bit off – this despite the great delicacy in the acting of the main protagonist. I thought it could work as an interesting answer to Shame – same kind of setting, luxurious condo with big windows emphasizing the loneliness of a middle age male character – where sex is not the main issue but shame…

The film uses obvious mechanisms of thrillers (there is a clear deadline from the start, will he match it?) and aspects of the noir (the fatality of the sequence events, an underworld of which he can't escape where the capacity to act morally blurries). But it is the way in which it depicts the precarious Souleyman as being thrown from one place to the other, only able to react and rarely to reflect, that makes the special psychological force of…