L'Argent (Blu-ray)

A forged banknote leads to a tragic chain of events in Robert Bresson’s late masterpiece

This energetic, enigmatic indictment of capitalism is a late masterpiece by Robert Bresson, imbued with a fierce cinematic power and tautly positioned amid the coldly structured complexities of human behaviour.

Adapted from a novella by Leo Tolstoy, Bresson’s portrait of an ordinary man driven to evermore extreme crimes by social and financial forces beyond his control probes uncomfortably beneath the surface of ‘civilised’ society. This compact, rigorously stylised film and the awkward questions it poses, about the nature of forgiveness and the possibility of redemption, is a rich testament to one of cinema’s greatest auteurs.