The Limits of Control
In an airport, a mysterious man, known only as 'Lone Man' (Isaach De Bankole) is being instructed on his mission by another man known only by his alias Creole (Alex Descas). The mission itself is left…
The Limits of Control
In an airport, a mysterious man, known only as 'Lone Man' (Isaach De Bankole) is being instructed on his mission by another man known only by his alias Creole (Alex Descas). The mission itself is left unstated and the instructions are cryptic, including such phrases as "Everything is subjective," "The universe has no center and no edges; reality is arbitrary," and "Use your imagination and your skills." After the meeting at the airport, he travels to Madrid and then on to Seville, meeting several people in cafés and on trains along the way. The Lone Man's contacts include a middle-aged Frenchman (Jean-François Stévenin), a violin playing man (Luis Tosar), an adrogynist blonde British woman (Tilda Swinton), a Japanese woman (Yuki Kudo), and an elderly British man with a guitar (John Hurt). Each meeting has the same pattern: he orders two espressos at a cafe and waits, his contact arrives and in Spanish asks, "You don't speak Spanish, right?" in different ways, to which he responds, "No." The contacts tell him about their individual interests such as molecules, art, or film, then the two of them exchange matchboxes. A code written on a small piece of paper is inside each matchbox, which Lone Man reads and then eats. These coded messages lead him to his next rendezvous. One contact that Lone Man encounters repeatedly is a woman (Paz de la Huerta) who is always either completely nude or wearing only a transparent raincoat. She invites him to have sex with her but he declines, stating that he never has sex while he is working. One phrase that Creole, the man in the airport, tells him is repeated throughout the movie: "He who thinks he is bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery. There he will see what life really is: a handful of dirt." This phrase is sung in a peteneras flamenco song in a club in Seville at one point in his journey. In AlmerÃa, he is given a ride in a pickup truck - driven by a companion of the Mexican (Gael GarcÃa Bernal) - on which the words La vida no vale nada ('life is worth nothing') are painted, a phrase Guitar says to him in Seville, and he is taken to Tabernas desert. There lies a fortified and heavily guarded compound. After observing the compound from afar, he somehow penetrates its defenses and waits for his target inside the target's office. The target, an American business (Bill Murray) asks how he got in, and he answers, "I used my imagination." After the assassination which the Lone Man kills the American with a guitar string, he drives back to Madrid, where he locks away the suit he has worn throughout the movie and changes into a sweatsuit bearing the national flag of Cameroon. Before exiting the train station onto a crowded sidewalk he throws away his last matchbox.
The Limits of Control
Crime,Drama,Mystery
Film Details
In an airport, a mysterious man, known only as 'Lone Man' (Isaach De Bankole) is being instructed on his mission by another man known only by his alias Creole (Alex Descas). The mission itself is left unstated and the instructions are cryptic, including such phrases as "Everything is subjective," "The universe has no center and no edges; reality is arbitrary," and "Use your imagination and your skills." After the meeting at the airport, he travels to Madrid and then on to Seville, meeting several people in cafés and on trains along the way. The Lone Man's contacts include a middle-aged Frenchman (Jean-François Stévenin), a violin playing man (Luis Tosar), an adrogynist blonde British woman (Tilda Swinton), a Japanese woman (Yuki Kudo), and an elderly British man with a guitar (John Hurt).
Each meeting has the same pattern: he orders two espressos at a cafe and waits, his contact arrives and in Spanish asks, "You don't speak Spanish, right?" in different ways, to which he responds, "No." The contacts tell him about their individual interests such as molecules, art, or film, then the two of them exchange matchboxes. A code written on a small piece of paper is inside each matchbox, which Lone Man reads and then eats. These coded messages lead him to his next rendezvous.
One contact that Lone Man encounters repeatedly is a woman (Paz de la Huerta) who is always either completely nude or wearing only a transparent raincoat. She invites him to have sex with her but he declines, stating that he never has sex while he is working. One phrase that Creole, the man in the airport, tells him is repeated throughout the movie: "He who thinks he is bigger than the rest must go to the cemetery.
There he will see what life really is: a handful of dirt." This phrase is sung in a peteneras flamenco song in a club in Seville at one point in his journey. In AlmerÃa, he is given a ride in a pickup truck - driven by a companion of the Mexican (Gael GarcÃa Bernal) - on which the words La vida no vale nada ('life is worth nothing') are painted, a phrase Guitar says to him in Seville, and he is taken to Tabernas desert. There lies a fortified and heavily guarded compound.
After observing the compound from afar, he somehow penetrates its defenses and waits for his target inside the target's office. The target, an American business (Bill Murray) asks how he got in, and he answers, "I used my imagination." After the assassination which the Lone Man kills the American with a guitar string, he drives back to Madrid, where he locks away the suit he has worn throughout the movie and changes into a sweatsuit bearing the national flag of Cameroon. Before exiting the train station onto a crowded sidewalk he throws away his last matchbox..