Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Haut perchés | Don't Look Down (2019)

This is another huis clos, this time with five people high up in Paris within view of the Tour Eiffel, one young woman and four guys: Veronica (Manika Auxire), Marius (Geoffrey Couët), Louis (François Nambot), Lawrence (Lawrence Valin) and Nathan (Simon Frenay). All five are victims of an unnamed, never seen man, a monster who has abused their love, and it is the turn of each one to conclude their relationship by seeing him individually, although the pact is that none of them will reveal what happened in any of the one-to-one occasions.

Each has his or her separate pain and no one has 'known' the same man, although there is one particularly surreal occasion when Nathan sticks his chest out and starts strutting like a chicken, others recognise this as a common experience, and start bumping each others' thrust out chests. Most seem to agree with the well-known nursery rhyme 'Il était un petit navire' which Veronica begins and others join in, which speaks of a person drawing a short straw on a ship to find out who will be eaten:

'On tira à la courte paille, 

On tira à la courte paille,

Pour savoir qui-qui-qui serait mangé,

Pour savoir qui-qui-qui serait mangé,

Ohé ! Ohé !'

Their pain is common, but their individual experiences are different, such as Veronica saying the tyrant used to shop with her, she would buy things he said he liked, he acted as if they were a couple, although they wouldn't eat together. But they eat his food in the highrise flat, and it's obvious that Veronica and Marius take a delight in slicing a sausage, clearly imagining that they're slicing  the monster's penis.

Marius is very proud, these are obviously cultured victims, and he initially objects to mistakenly being call 'Mario', at which he snorts and says he's not a plumber. At the beginning he puts on some music and dances frantically to himself, then relaxing as if relieved of a burden.

Nathan breaks down crying in another room, tears run down Louis's face at the memory of the abuse to which he's been put, but when it's Marius's turn to go to the man they retreat from his loud laughter (which he later denies) and shut themselves out on the veranda, looking at the view.

Lawrence proves to be a genius at trigonometry when he cuts an apple tart they've cooked into exactly five equal sections, and – their separate exorcisms over – they contemplate the view and vaguely locate where they shall go back home. This is a film where the action is mainly internal and we're left imagining: not one for those who like meanings served up on a plate.