Once again, it’s up to the Europeans to do the late Ruth Rendell justice, and Ozon’s loose adaptation of her short story of the same name fits right in along Almodóvar’s Live Flesh and Chabrol’s La Cérémonie. It’s arguably bolder than either in its smooth blurring of bourgeois boundaries between gay/straight, masculine/feminine and possibly sane/insane.
It’s almost impossible to describe the outlandish story without giving away an early revelation. Reeling from the death of her lifelong friend Laura, meek suburban wife Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) drops in to see Laura’s husband David (Romain Duris), only to find him in, well, compromising circumstances. At first disgusted, Claire finds herself supporting, then positively encouraging David’s big secret, and in the process their relationship drifts into dangerously uncharted territory, all coloured by the ghostly memory of Laura. (Otto Preminger would have approved.)
The tone wavers between psychological thriller and absurdist melodrama, and perhaps suffers for not settling on either, but it’s grounded by two terrific leads. Duris’s svelte good looks, in particular, have never quite been used to such disarming effect.
