With elements of "Kiss Me Deadly" and Lars von Trier's "Europa" and a lot else inbetween this decidely daft film is a kind of Kafkaesque 'thriller' minus the thrills. It won its director, F.J. Ossang, the best direction prize at Locarno though I have no idea what the competition was. It certainly looks the part even if it doesn't make a lot of sense; this is an art-house movie for smart kids who like this sort of thing. You could say it's very 'French'. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it. I was actually rather bemused by it. Ossang is undoubtedly a skilled film-maker but he's also an acquired taste.

Upon seeing the trailer for 'Nine Fingers' - shot in arty black-and-white with characters saying profound things to one another in the approved French fashion - I assumed it would be one of those films that is heavy in pretentious style but light on substance. So I was pleasantly surprised that - even though there is a large amount of arty-fartiness - there is also a mostly coherent plot: Magloire (Paul Hamy),on the run from the authorities, discovers a dying man on a beach. The man gives him a large sum of money, quickly leading to Magloire's capture by the members of the dying man's sunglasses-wearing gang and their molls. Following Magloire's willing dismemberment of their dead comrade's corpse, the gang award him membership, so he accompanies them on their getaway ship after they pull off their last job: stealing some extremely radioactive polonium.

The black-and-white filming undoubtedly adds to the atmosphere of this film, emphasising the closed confines of first the gang's crumbling mansion hideaway, and subsequently the equally-crumbling ship. As for the acting, Hamy, strikingly wooden in 2016's 'The Ornithologist', raises his game here - at least as far as F J Ossang's direction will allow him. 'Elvire' (no surname) is notable as the gang's senior moll.

Certainly interesting to watch once. I would not *pay* to see it again, but would happily do so gratis!