THRILLER; 1hr 45min (French with subtitles)
STARRING: Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric
Thought trap: Foster
Dr Lilian Steiner (Foster) is a Paris-based American psychiatrist with an immaculate command of French that regrettably fails to extend to the rest of her life: when her patient of nine years, Paula (Efira), kills herself with medication that Lilian has prescribed, Paula’s outraged husband (Amalric as Simon) turns on the dismayed doctor, who, in a radical departure from her customary reserve, seems unable to stop herself from leaking tears.
Since her opthalmologist ex-husband, Gabriel (Auteuil), can find nothing physically wrong with her, Lilian takes the impulse bull by the horns and visits a hypnotherapist (Sophie Guillemin). In her wiggy hallucinatory journey, Lilian is a male Jewish cellist in the Nazi-occupied Paris of 1942, Paula is her chicly pregnant lover and a gun-toting Simon is the conductor of the orchestra in which they’re both playing. Not only does this deranged vision dry Lilian’s tears on the spot, it leaves her convinced that Paula’s death was no suicide.
As unsettling as her lurid theory is, it pales in comparison to the rising tide of menace to which Lilian is then subjected, slinkily choreographed by director Rebecca Zlotowski (Other People’s Children). A barrage of anonymous phone calls, blood-red liquid splashed on her car, the theft of Paula’s final session tape from her office — such menacing intent is impossible to ignore. Was inherited money a motive for Paula’s killing? Could her unreadable adult daughter, Valerie (Luana Bajrami), possibly be the culprit? Or is Simon, described by his wife as a man “with a knife in his voice [and] a gun in his eyes,” also a man with a murder to hide? With the amiable Gaby as her accomplice, Lilian rashly decides to investigate.
Since their cockamamie witch-hunt is essentially all Foster, all the time, it’s a major plus point that she is easily the coolest customer in every scene. Even at her scattiest, Lilian is perversely magnetic, which begs the pressing question of whether she might actually be onto something, murder-wise. Then again, as the maligned Simon eventually points out, “Do we really care?” Does it matter a damn who did what to whom and why when the interplay of light and shade in a performance can be enough of a mystery in itself?
