Noirvember continues with Christopher Nolan’s debut film, the lean and deliciously brutal Following.

Following was made for only $6000, the movie world equivalent of the spare change in your car’s cup holder. It looks and feels like the low-budget journeyman work it is: Nolan would scale up dramatically for Memento, but this is where he proves he deserves that scale.

At only 70 minutes, Following is tightly wound. Like many of Nolan’s films, it plays with its timeline to wonderful effect and keeps its secrets from the audience for as long as it can. That characteristic structure may even work especially well with this stripped-down runtime, lending Following the structure of a particularly bleak and bitter joke where nearly every detail turns out to be a sharp tooth in the bear-trap of its punchline.

Jeremy Theobald stars as a nameless young man who, unemployed and adrift, has gotten into the habit of following people. (This voyeurism, he tells himself, is research for a novel we all know will never be written.) One day, however, his quarry–the darkly magnetic Cobb (Alex Haw)–catches on. Cobb, who is the only named character in the film and carries himself like he knows it, easily pulls the Young Man into his orbit and his own schemes. Cobb, we quickly learn, is a “gentleman” burglar who also takes pleasure in a kind of voyeurism. But if The Young Man’s obsessive observation of other people’s reality comes from his own weakness and passivity–those who can’t do, watch–Cobb’s comes from his own satisfaction. The violation of a secret, secure place is the whole point. Yes, he takes things, but what he really relishes isn’t acquisition but disturbance. He wants his presence (belatedly) noticed; he wants to change how the people he’s robbed feel inside their own homes, maybe even inside their own skins. And he changes The Young Man too, drawing him into his business and slowly molding him into someone more dapper and composed. Someone who, it turns out, can even strike up a relationship with The Blonde (Lucy Russell), one of the duo’s past targets. The Blonde has some criminal entanglement herself, with a violent gangster ex-boyfriend who is now blackmailing her. Would The Young Man be willing to help her out?

It’s easy to see early on that The Young Man is destined to be some kind of patsy. Even when he cuts his hair and puts on a sharper suit, he has a face stamped with earnest intensity, and in noir, that can only mean one thing. But Following still has some surprises in store, and Nolan handles them exceptionally well. This may not all be plausible, but it’s riveting, and its climax hits like a slow lightning strike. Fantastic early work on Nolan’s part, and it’s easy to see why people would soon start lining up around the block to throw money at him.

Following is streaming on the Criterion Channel.