The Man in the Hat

About the movie

Seemingly content but introspective at the same time in his solitude, a man is dining alone at an isolated and otherwise empty marinaside café on the French coast when he sees five bald men in a rebuilt orange and blue Citroën Dyane dump what appears to be a dead body wrapped and tied up in a plastic sheath into the water. As they approach him with the possible intent of doing him harm for what he saw them do, he is able to abscond without they seeing where he went. In his subsequent getaway, the man drives off in his blue Fiat 500 with two of his seeming most cherished possession, his fedora hat and a framed black and white photograph of a woman. As he tries to evade the men in the Citroën who are closely following him at every turn as they both travel through the French countryside, he is a secret interloper in the unusual lives of some of the people he encounters, whereas he is more involved in the equally unusual lives of a number of other people he encounters over and over, such as a bearded man he first meets down by the river, a woman on a bicycle, and a male/female pair of road surveyors, all the while still being able to indulge in the culinary delights of France. As their collective journeys continue, the question becomes if all is as it appears on the surface, especially concerning the pursuit by the five bald men in the Citroën of the man in the Fiat.—Huggo