The languorous camera movement, godlike remove, exotic location, light, and subject matter combine to give the image sweep, a druggy and lazy beauty, and an ominous undercurrent related to the invisible traffic of international capital. “Pacifiction” begins with the year’s best opening shot, a long pan across high stacks of shipping containers before a jagged volcanic mountain ridge and sky burning dull red through the tropical haze. READ MORE: 2022 New York Film Festival Preview: 14 Must-See Movies Scratch your head at it in front of the biggest screen possible.

The atmosphere is chokingly sensual, the geopolitical implications are operatic, and the filmmaking is at once puckish and grand. “Pacifiction” is a modern-day Conradian tale of South Seas intrigue in which De Roller ( Benoît Magimel), the French government’s High Commissioner in Polynesia, investigates rumors of an impending resumption of nuclear testing. With “ Pacifiction,” he makes his first film with a contemporary setting-and made his debut in the main competition at Cannes, where the film premiered-but it’s in many ways the closest he’s come to classic historical fiction. Albert Serra has up to now been known for his revisionist period films, which include prankishly unconventional treatments of Don Quixote (“ Honor of the Nights,” 2006), Casanova (“ The Story of My Death,” 2013) and Louis XIV (“ The Death of Louis XIV,” 2016).

Boat trailer with spider rollers