The Invader (Nicolas Provost, 2011): Belgium

Reviewed by Daniel Matthew Harrington. Viewed at AFI Fest 2011.

The Invader, directed by Nicolas Provost is decently filmed movie with a common use of the creepy ex that is obsessed. Provost begins in fashion, the camera locked in close on a beautiful woman lying naked on a nameless beach. Some off-screen commotion she rises and walks across the sand, arriving to a place where two African American men; one of them the powerfully built Amadou (Issaka Sawadogo) – have literally washed ashore. Going forward then, both in time and space, and find Amadou working on a construction site in Brussels. He’s even more powerfully built than in the first scene, and gifted with both obvious intelligence and lots of potential. He is in the country illegally, completely under the thumb of a local mobster who houses illegal migrants in the bottom of a parking garage, using them as debt slaves as he forces them to pay down the cost of promised illegal papers that will most likely never arrive. Amandou thinks his sick friend is safe and sheltered, but when he disappears and Amadou’s questions his whereabouts his boss is just laughing and cutting him off. He lashes out with anger and decides to leave, then when they are gone he goes back to get himself some fresh clothes and money. He soon meets a business women, Agnes (Stefania Rocca) and by being very assertive and charming gets her to have an affair with her husband. Amandou has trouble understanding the fact that she made a mistake and wants to cut ties, he starts stalking her and even steals a key to a extra condo she had; things then begin to get creepy for Agnes.