EMPTY QUARTER - UNE FEMME EN AFRIQUE

A journalist is in the north-east African town of Djibouti. He meets a young woman, is attracted to her and asks her to accompany him on a journey across the desert to Alexandria. She has a manner like that of a slave, or a goddess. Thus the basis for an obsession and for this remarkable study in mood, infatuation and voyeurism. Raymond Depardon's Empty Quarter is a film in which we hear this man's desultory conversation with the women and his brooding analysis of their relationship, but in which he is very rarely seen. He lives behind the camera. In front of it here is the ochre vacancy of the desert and the women, Françoise Prenant (also coeditor on the picture), who goes from seeming strange, aloof and awkward to gathering the allure of Dietrich in the Sternberg films, by virtue of being seen in a film that teaches us how to watch. It is half photo essay, half interior novel. Yet the fascinating interplay of voices and observation in Empty Quarter is only possible in film. (David Thomson)