Freshly in love, emotionally volatile couple Cass and Anx inhabit a lovely old apartment (kissing, fighting)… while out on the streets, a new virus is raging. This causes living things to fuse with whatever they touch: rock, timber, bed sheets, anything. Thibault Emin massively expands his 2007 short film, serving a mixture of eccentric, scary body-horror (with subtle references to The Thing), surrealistic excess and profound love-story. The results are visually exceptional, philosophically challenging and truly outstanding in terms of special effects: watch out for the “dog” sequence, easily one of the year’s most remarkable. (mk)