Intimate Strangers

A mysterious woman rushes into her first appointment with a psychiatrist and unburdens her troubles to what she assumes to be the "doctor" who is too intrigued and embarrassed to confess that he is a tax lawyer and that the psychiatrist's office is down the hall. Conversations and public glimpses of into the private lives of both the 'doctor' and the 'patient' unfold.

Patrice Leconte seems able to do these kinds of  paradigmatic art-house films competently with his eyes shut and both hands tied behind his back. It feels like Leconte wanted to inject a little Hitchcock into the project but missed the vein. But perhaps he should have tried something more along the less restrained lines of his Girl on the Bridge, or even, god forbid, something completely different.

Intimate Strangers revisits Leconte's favoured themes of voyeurism and hidden inner lives. There's also the element of the games and rituals that are played out between strangers. It's sexy and intimate in a brainy, restrained kind of way. The performances by Fabrice Luchini and Sandrine Bonnaire are effective but as, is often the case in French films, I found myself appreciating the distancing effect of the subtitles. There is something about them seems to soften scripts that might be over-done or underbaked.

Intimate Strangers is well-done, occasionally wry, and interesting to a point. But the destination, like this review, may leave you thinking "Is that it?"

 

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