Meaning simply "film truth," cinéma vérité called for such unadorned camera technique that it turned realism into an almost monastic practice, shaking off any signs of contrivance or artifice as if they were sins. But even among fellow travelers such as D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back) and the Maysles brothers (Gimme Shelter), vérité pioneer Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, High School) has always been the most rigorous in his Spartan, fly-on-the-wall examinations of American institutions. So it should come as no surprise that The Last Letter, Wiseman's first fictional effort after four decades of documentary filmmaking, takes place entirely on a dark and empty stage, illuminated by single-source lighting that cuts a narrow swath through his black-and-white images. Though its chiaroscuro shadow-play evokes the nightmarish world of German Expressionism, the film's bravura one-woman Holocaust monologue seems calibrated to match the intensity of Carl Dreyer's 1928 classic The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, which explored the contours of its heroine's face like a landscape unto itself. Adapting his own theatrical production, Wiseman finds a worthy face in Catherine Samie, the doyenne of the Comédie-Française, a veteran French actress who commands every minute gesture and expression like a dancer hitting her marks. Yet her chilly precision, in concert with Wiseman's extreme formalism, squeezes the life out of a scenario that should breathe with dramatic swings of emotion, as an aging Jewish mother dictates words that she knows will read from beyond the grave. Lifted from Soviet author Vasily Grossman's novel Life And Fate, the 60-minute monologue represents the last letter from a Russian-Jewish doctor in a Ukrainian ghetto to her son, who's safe in unoccupied territory. Certain of her fate, Samie reflects on the events that led her to an internment camp, including the shocking betrayal of her once-friendly neighbors, which prompted a sudden shift from a Russian to a Jewish identity. More poignantly, she describes the naïve rituals of the ghetto, where people continued to send their children to school, stockpile materials for the future, and even celebrate a wedding, seemingly blind to horrible certainties. As the letter inches toward an eloquent, cathartic closing salvo, the effect should be overwhelming, but Wiseman's minimalist trappings present an odd distraction, particularly when he focuses on the towering silhouettes Samie casts against the wall. Given Wiseman's attachment to artlessness, it's surprising that he adds any flourishes to The Last Letter; they're all to its detriment, because they call attention to themselves instead of seizing the moment more directly. And Wiseman, if anyone, should know the power of an unblinking camera.