Directed by François Ozon | France | French w/English subtitles | 2015 | Fiction | 109 mins
Film Source: Cohen Media
While Ozon’s work has gone in countless directions since the enfant terrible days of Sea the Sea and Sitcom, the filmmaker has always retained his provocateur’s spirit. Here, adapting mystery writer Ruth Rendell’s short story, the director constructs a wryly bemused thriller about the vagaries of gender, identity, and fidelity. Anaïs Demoustier is wonderfully beguiling as a young woman grief-stricken by the illness and death of her childhood friend. When she checks in on her friend’s widowed husband and infant child, she discovers the husband has been dealing with the loss in a rather unconventional manner. In a César-nominated performance, Romain Duris (Mood Indigo; The Beat That My Skipped) is bewitchingly poignant as the bereaved lover. The two begin spending time together and as many secrets are created as revealed while a complex web of shifting perspectives, performative transformations, and mounting tensions develops.