Estranged from his family and now living abroad, dedicated geologist Julien receives a phone message from his ex-wife, Marie, announcing that their 7-year-old son has disappeared while on a camping trip in the woods. Wracked with guilt and desperate to find his son, Julien frantically plunges into that mission with a vengeance. Guillaume Canet gives the film a taut, seething edge, as Julien, and Melanie Laurent is moving as his grieving wife, Marie. Perhaps most compelling is the fact that director Christian Carion devised a plan whereby Canet improvised his scenes, in chronological order, not knowing what was in store for him at each narrative turn — a tactic that injects the thriller with enormous tension and suspense.
