Ann Oren’s “Objet a” is reviewed as a strange, sensual and deliberately provocative follow-up to her 2022 film “Piaffe”. The film follows two highly controlled hand surgeons whose private desires disrupt their orderly lives, using fetishism and erotic curiosity to explore the objects and absences that drive desire. The critic considers it a more ambitious and polished work that should appeal to cult-minded arthouse audiences.

Aenne Schwarz plays Ingeborg, a precise but compulsively thieving surgeon, while Louis Hofmann plays Adam, her submissive partner, who enjoys being treated as an object. Their carefully compartmentalised relationship is shaken when Ingeborg steals a cigarette lighter, falls while fleeing and fractures her tibia, threatening months away from work. The 95-minute German-language film premiered in Locarno’s main competition, and Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired US rights.