Toward the end of Arnaud Desplechin ’s “ Ismael’s Ghosts ,” an actress character declares that a film director is “all over the film,” and that certainly seems to be the case for Desplechin himself. The personal nature of “Ismael’s Ghosts” is tangible in every frame: Ismael, the film’s protagonist played by Mathieu Amalric , shares Desplechin’s obsessions with death, women, and obsession itself. And like Desplechin, Ismael is a filmmaker. “Ismael’s Ghosts” opens with a brief snippet of Ismaël’s latest film, a political thriller starring Louis Garrel as a mysterious French diplomat. While this sort of thing is outside Desplechin’s arty-French wheelhouse, he crafts a believably pulse-pounding film-within-a-film, establishing Ismaël as a director with actual talent. It’s essential that the audience believes in Ismaël’s filmmaking skill, given that he becomes increasingly insufferable as the film progresses. In Desplechin’s film (as well as in real life), actu...