Inside

Willem Dafoe surveys the interior with a Maurizio Cattelan print in the background

Vasilis Katsoupis' Inside has drawn more abuse than praise and I can understand why. However, the film has stuck with me and I am willing to give it a somewhat guarded defense. The film pictures a burglar, played by Willem Dafoe, breaking into a luxury penthouse in order to steal some Egon Schiele paintings from the massive art collection of its owner. Thanks to an unforeseen snafu, the burglar becomes trapped in the unit for months, struggling to survive. The very nature of the film makes it a tough sit, I enjoyed the film more in retrospect, but Inside has its rewards.

Chef among them is Mr. Dafoe's performance. Dafoe can be a very controlled, almost mechanical actor, but is given a chance here to cut loose. His burglar, Nemo, gets pretty buggy after a few months alone in the condo and Dafoe responds with a Wooster Group intensity. The film suffers from the artificiality of the set-up and one's credulity is sorely tested, but Dafoe keeps the film grounded with his tactile immediacy.

The film could be read as an allegory about art or religion. I thought the symbolism got out of hand at times, the wounded pigeon on the balcony being the obvious example, but Katsoupis milks more interesting effects from the enclosed space than I would have thought possible. Nemo deconstructs the space in an attempt to break free. This can be looked on as the plight of an artist reconfiguring the work of his forebears in order to forge his own artistic identity or that of a spiritual seeker denying the material world in order to transcend it; or both. Eventually Nemo is able to ascend to his own reward. 

The credo of the film is Nemo's oft repeated mantra, the gist of which is that attachment to fellow creatures and objects is transitory, but that art remains eternal. Perhaps. Certainly, Nemo's isolation rekindles the artistic spark that lies within him. He sketches portraits of the buildings staffers that he spies on the apartments CCTV feed and creates murals on the apartment's walls that reflect his disoriented state. Inside is only a mixed success, but there are enough interesting threads in it that balance out its more soporific moments.