Or as fluent in the language of cinema? The impenetrability of the plot reminded me of one of the other great French plot twister, Michael Haneke's Caché, from way back in 2005, where at thew Melbourne premiere, a critic stood up and asked, "Does anyone know what that was all about?" Good luck with that, girlfriend. So, yes, there is a market for this stuff but Ozon is the wrong promoter. Sequences involving Paul might appear real, were it not that in them Chloe continues to believe that she is pregnant. Doctor and patient kiss, and before long Chloe and her beloved feline companion Milo are moving into Paul's apartment. Premiering in competition at Cannes, the French auteur's L'amant double certainly won't win any prizes for taste, coherence or originality. Like a mirror, there's many ways of appreciating this film. I watched it all, but still didn't really grasp the full meaning of the story. In many ways, this is what cinema is all about. Apple TV & Privacy L'amant double may be one of the filmmaker's sillier works (and for the director of 8 Women and Potiche, that's saying something). Privacy | But its tale of doubles, deception and desire allows Ozon to fool around with some of his favorite themes — the turbulent inner lives of complex women, the distance between appearance and reality, the essential unknowability of even our most intimate loved ones, the necessity of imagination in enduring everyday life. Renier is able to show off his acting chops as the two doctors are radically opposite: Paul is as kind and conventional as Louis is cruel and perverse. If you can manage to avoid reading too much detail by way of a synopsis and most definitely avoid any spoilers then that will probably benefit your enjoyment of the film. Right from the opening shot you get a pretty strong steer on what this movie is about and it will certainly appeal to the average male - and some females. Sometimes there are two or three mirror scenes in a time span of just a few minutes. Chloé, a fragile young woman, falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul. Support. Try again. The French Blu-ray is, of course, FullHD 1080/24p with far superior image quality. 'L'amant double' is truly a movie audience should not afford missing, after seeing it then you could properly get your own conclusions, but i guarantee you'll have 1 hour and 50 minutes of a mental, thrilling and an audiovisual experience you would not forget. Meanwhile, the director's supreme control is fully evident in the cool elegance of his compositions (DP Manu Dacosse does terrific work) and the tonal confidence that's sustained from start to finish. Finally that Milo is present at the end, though we have heard nothing further of his return, shows that he was never, in fact, missing. His editing masterfully blends routine and anxiety throughout, but it is when he falls into the dreamlike and the depraved that his diagnosis becomes amusingly twisted and formally exciting. The story – a disorienting deep dive into the subconscious and the sexual fantasies of a fragile young woman – wears its fetishes as boldly as any Hitchcockian corsetry. Sad to say it was a real let down - flaccid as they say in the world of sexy movies. Like the American director did with films such as Body Double and, even more evidently so, Dressed to Kill, Ozon explores psychoanalysis with a schlocky, literal approach and through the use of arresting, graphic visuals. Why didn't Paul tell Chloe about his twin brother? It's neither a thriller or a drama. When she goes to her first psychiatric appointment she climbs a vertiginous eye-like spiralling staircase. Spoiler Alert. The problem, it seems, is psychological. Luckily (or dysfunctionally, depending on how you look at it), the feelings are mutual. Double Lover starts in the best way, as all pieces are introduced. Laetitia Dosch delivers a star turn in this charming Parisian drama from writer/director Léonor Serraille. Dead ringer stories have to go beyond the idea of two people being the same to be truly worth telling. Mind games: Marine Vacth as Chloé and Jérémie Renier as Paul/Louis in L’Amant Double. Opening with an in-your-face gynaecological shot sets the tone for L’Amant Double – both clinical and erotic.. Marine Vacth (Young & Beautiful) is Chloë, a troubled young woman with a newly gamine hairstyle, who starts seeing unthreatening psychotherapist Paul (Jérémie Rénier) for her psychomatic stomach pains. With his slicked-up hair, smart suits and superior semi-sneer, Louis is a Lacanian nutjob whose methods include insulting Chloe, abruptly ending their sessions after a few minutes and, most unconventionally, "applied techniques," which amount to seducing his new patient into sexual submission. She starts feeling better and they move in together. EMAIL ME, After a foray into relatively restrained period filmmaking in the recent, World War I-set Frantz, Francois Ozon is back to his old tricks — and really, who's complaining? The story opens with Chloe (Marine Vacth of Ozon's Young & Beautiful), a quintessential Parisian beauty of 25, whom we see glowering into the camera as she gets her hair cut; the resulting pixie 'do recalls Mia Farrow's Rosemary, just the first in Ozon's giddy parade of cinephilic winks and nods. The film, which is based on a novel by Joyce Carol Oates, nods to Hitchcock in everything from the score to the use of a Vertigo-style spiral staircase, which tips us off-balance. Sorry!). | L'AMANT DOUBLE is the most baffling film since - what? When I’m with him, I think about you,” Chloé tells Louis (who unapologetically revels in his own opinion that he must give more pleasure to Chloé that Paul ever could), summing up the nature of her fractured identity. Chloe makes an appointment, and quickly learns that Louis is quite the opposite of Paul — as foreshadowed by the fake plant in his waiting room (unlike Paul's real one) and the chilly modern décor of his office, all sharp edges and sleek surfaces. (They are played by the same actress. This establishes her central tensions: her sexuality and her vision of herself. Paul does indeed turn out to be a sort of double lover: after Chloé discovers that he adopted his mother’s name when he started his practice, she sees a man who looks exactly like him outside another psychoanalysis office. L' amant double. There's quite some open eroticism in the French style but always matched to the story. After a number of sessions, Chloe and Paul fall in love and she moves in with Paul. It is beyond me how such a release can be made, it ruins the film. s there a director currently working who is as effortlessly versatile as. The same actor plays Chloe's gynaecologist and the therapist Dr Wexler she claims to visit. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 August 2018. Thus the unreality of the psychoanalysts' party, which looks real apart from the subsequent apparition of Louis, is proved by the way Chloe 'casts' her gynaecologist as Wexler. L'Amant double (titled Double Lover in the US) is a 2017 French-Belgian erotic thriller drama film directed by François Ozon.It stars Marine Vacth as a young woman named Chloé who discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity. While Ozon has made a provocative movie about female sexual empowerment. MULHOLLAND DRIVE? All Rights Reserved. Sometimes just grim for the hell of it. Curzon Artificial Eye gave it a release in 1080/50i PAL with all the shortcomings of that format. On the DVD (ASIN: B07BSXX4QM) you get: “L'amant Double” (1 hour 43 minutes) Scene Selection Set Up: 2.0 Stereo, 5.1 Dolby Digital Optional English … Louis' office is a glossier double of Paul's, unrealistically opening into the bedroom for his advanced therapy. I wouldn't bother. Ozon films these musings with a deconstructing camera. Gave 5 scores only for the beautiful and cosy apartment, where the couple lived in the movie. A dour monochrome melodrama is the latest from genre-hopping French workhorse, François Ozon. Who does 'What the Hell' better than the French? As the movie opens, Chloe is discussing unexplained stomach aches with her doctor, who decided to refer Chloe to a psychologist, Paul Meyer. L'AMANT DOUBLE (2017). They fall in love and she moves in with him. The return of the cat Milo ('Look who I found downstairs') looks real, but is then explicitly revealed as a (doubtless wish fulfilment) dream. By turns gently emotional and aggressively nerve-jangling, Philippe Rombi's score swerves and shifts almost as much as the storyline. But in addition to their cheekiness, the erotic scenes in L'amant double carry a genuine charge of weirdness and wildness — never more so than when Chloe fantasizes that she's having a threesome with the brothers, first as herself and then as a pair of Siamese twins (which, I suppose, would be a foursome). Marine Vacth ('Jeune et Jolie') plays Chloé, a young woman who falls in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul (Dardennes favourite, Jérémie Renier). As lovers of French cinema we received recommendations to see this movie. Good movie in the general tradition of Shutter Island and Black Swan. | This one wasn't so hard to fathom and it had the delightful little romantic ending (slight spoiler here! Acting by the two main actors is excellent. Very cheap scenario, wannabe interesting and philosophical, but in vain. Ozon, as the ambitious and eccentric director that he is, takes this psychoanalytic dimension to another level when Chloé’s bipolar existence becomes too much for her. Marine Vacth, Jérémie Renier, Jacqueline Bisset. Vrij Nederland mag tweemaal twee kaarten verloten onder onze Facebookvolgers voor de film 'L'Amant Double'. L’Amant Double is no doubt indebted to De Palma beyond its title. | Read reviews, check member ratings, watch trailer of L'Amant Double (aka Double Lover) movie. The 100 Best Films of the 2000s: The list at a glance. After having seen last week the 2016 "Frantz" I continued yesterday my (François) Ozon cure with "The Double Lover" (or "L'amant double" in original) the latest film of the French director, a film that was present also in the 2017 competition at the Cannes festival. What keeps L’Amant Double exciting is Ozon’s careful crafting of the narrative around Chloé and her game of double duty with Paul and Louis, his twin brother. Tellingly, while there is a neat symmetry to Chloé’s therapy sessions with Paul, in Louis’s consulting room, they are never in focus at the same time. Only the french can open a movie with a vagina wide spread and not call it porn. Editor: Laure Gardette L'Amant Double ( 39 ) IMDb 6.2 1h 43min 2018 When they decide to move in together, everything seems perfect, until a series of discoveries lead her to suspect that he may be living a double life. Jacqueline Bisset plays duo mother roles. Casting: Sarah Teper, Leila Fournier, Anais Duran Chloe is a divided psyche, harbouring a profound sense that she consumed the twin in the womb when she was born. Kans maken? Or only half of what you might be getting ... which actually may ring true to those dissapointed in this. It is largely pretentious soft porn but the actors do their best and it's French so appeals to me anyway. It is skillfully acted by both the main characters and by Jaqueline Bisset. From prolific French auteur François Ozon, L'amant double is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999)), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). The film itself has a doubled kind of twin. Release dates 01/06/2018 . What comes out of Hollywod is complete trash. Could you design a postcard inspired by Hilma af Klint? It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness. I do think I'll probably need to see it again to get the full plot worked out -- if that is at all possible! Still, I took a while to work it out but warranted the use of the grey matter. This is were similarities stop. L’Amant Double ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ CAUTION: Here be spoilers. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. @ManiLazic, Jacqueline Bisset TWITTER Ozon’s flair for bizarre emotions should be put to great use in a story of psychological duality. I'll just start with saying this is one of the worst films I have seen in the last two years. She gets better. User Ratings Trying to be too clever and producing a ridiculous nonsense movie. While unpacking, Chloe opens a box of Paul's personal belongings, picks up his passport and notices there's a different last name on it: Delord. to think his last film was the masterpiece that was Frantz and he used to make films like 8 femme and Swimming pool. The way he deals with the consequences, meanwhile, makes for a series of unpredictable and surreal events. 7/10. Production company: Mandarin Films Approx. A whirlwind of heightened senses and amped-up drama, 'L’Amant Double' is filthy, flamboyant and a whole lot of fun. Cue her first appointment with Dr. Paul Meyer (Dardenne brothers regular Jeremie Renier), a blond, boyishly handsome therapist whose sweater-and-spectacles look is as reassuring as his professional manner. Producers: Eric and Nicolas Altmayer Marine Vacth. All rights reserved. Sitemap | And not a moment too soon, as Paul explains, for he has fallen in love with her and is ethically obligated to discontinue their therapy. François Ozon One of those cases of the of the lauded auteur (Ozon) being allowed too much free rein when a more circumspect view may have led to a more coherent and entertaining tale. Perhaps that's how it's meant to be. | Cookie Settings. Ozon wastes no time on the medical particulars: soon enough, sweet-natured Paul admits to having feelings for Chloe and refuses to keep treating her. Personally i consider it a unique psicological thriller with an outstanding photography. For my money Francois Ozon turned out one half-decent film, 8 Women surrounded before and after by a pile of pretentious twaddle targeting the Academic-pseud axis and this is yet another destined to ricochet like a pin-ball around the Festival circuit. Like the American director did with films such as Body Double and, even more evidently so, Dressed to Kill, Ozon explores psychoanalysis with a schlocky, literal approach and through the use of arresting, graphic visuals. Terms of Use | Introducing his film "L'amant double" at the 2017 London Film Festival, director François Ozon informed the British audience that to the French we Brits have a reputation for kinkiness - therefore, he hoped we would enjoy his film. I'm assuming because critics are critics for money and don't want others to use their bi-line. All that said, there is nothing wrong with the acting. A few months later she moves in with him, but soon discovers that her lover is concealing a part of his identity. But his twin brother, fellow shrink and more violent, effective and punishing lover Louis is Chloe's projection. Music: Philippe Rombi Jérémie Renier Travelling or based outside United Kingdom? Director-writer: Francois Ozon (loosely based on the novel Lives of the Twins by Joyce Carol Oates) Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 February 2019. François Ozon returns with 'L’Amant Double', a sleek but gleefully irreverent erotic thriller that sees the prolific French auteur ramping up the sexual tension while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. le pire du cinema francais et du cinéma tout court, No good, terrible, it feels like the writer has a therapist kink, etc. Cookie Warning This is the latest offering from Swimming Pool director Francois Ozon.