With its slow-burning build, it is an unsettling, atmospheric piece that has something of the unknowable quality of the central character, with his glassy diplomat’s smile and shark’s eyes, inscrutable behind his blue-lensed sunglasses.

Whether or not the film has anything politically serious to say — and there is always the teasing suggestion that it might — Pacifiction is an intoxicating pleasure.

Very good and unsettling.

For De Roller, what matters is that he reach a state of relational equilibrium between every player...