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Binoche encounters an attractive younger man online but refuses to meet him face-to-face in a twisty erotic drama
Physical-distancing erotic melodrama is the genre we didn’t know we needed. But now we’ve got it, in the form of this very enjoyable picture starring Juliette Binoche from French director Safy Nebbou, who has adapted the novel by actor-turned-writer Camille Laurens. The resulting story of obsession is intriguingly like something by Ian McEwan, with a vinegary dash of 90s Hollywood thriller. The opening shot of Binoche looking enigmatically up at us, her face immersed in water, a tiny air bubble lingering at the nostril, is surely an allusion to Glenn Close’s famous moment from Fatal Attraction.
This is a tale of si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait: a world of alternative identities and alternative realities, the substitute images and life stories we fabricate for ourselves on social media and everywhere else. The film was conceived before our great crisis, and before FaceTime and Zoom were so current, though it should be said that the failure of one character to demand or even mention FaceTime is a tiny plot glitch. But everywhere else the movie delivers robust storytelling, with a couple of pleasingly outrageous twists. Continue reading...