The feature debut of director Luca Guadagnino, and the first of three films he has made with Tilda Swinton, The Protagonists follows an Italian documentary crew as it travels to London to document a grisly murder that took place five years previously. The team, led by Swinton’s unnamed actress, carry out interviews and reconstruct events in an attempt to explain the apparently motiveless crime.
In later scenes, Guadagnino blurs the boundaries of the various levels of reality on show, which becomes alienating. He may have been inspired by Fellini’s 8½, but this comes across more like sub-David Lynch weirdness.
