Corps à corps

This is one of those semi-intelligent movies based on a shaky premise.It begins in a strip club where the MC announces that the star stripper is leaving. Somewhat improbably and against the advice of her best friend she is leaving to marry a nerd who is as much at home in that environment as a butterfly in a cess pit. Leaving the club for the last time she runs her car off the road and wakes up in hospital with nerdy at her bedside and still more than prepared to marry her despite a series of horrible scars and the loss of her hearing. He moves her into his imposing house set within its own grounds and for the first time in her life she is happy. Careful and cynical observers will smell a rat when she invites her friend to stay, gives hubby the invite to post and he tears it up. Next clue: a few years later; their son has a penchant for sitting down to pee. A teacher contacts the mother who makes an appointment with a local hospital. One of the doctors claims to have studied with her husband - who is a landscape architect according to his CV. From then there is only one way to go and all we need to know is, does it deliver. Answer: Yes. Once you force yourself to ignore the stupidity - i.e. with her suspicions well and truly aroused and after enlisting the help of her best friend from the strip club, why would our heroine LEAVE the best friend in town and return alone to Chateau Weird? But these are minor beefs. All in all a very creditable thriller in the tradition of Les Diaboliques.

CORPS A CORPS aka BODY SNATCH (3 outta 5 stars) Decent enough French thriller which will undoubtedly be remade in America one day starring Charlize Theron or Ashley Judd or someone of that stature. This French version stars Emmanuelle Seigner (Mrs. Roman Polanksi) as a stripper who is actively courted by a strange little man who keeps coming to her club. Finally having had enough of the sleazy life of a dancer she decides to marry him and begin a new life. Unfortunately she is then involved in a terrible car crash and wakes up from a coma six months later covered in scars. Her faithful suitor has stayed by her side all this time. They get married and have a son. Five years later some suspicions begin to arise about the circumstances of the crash and the secret past of her husband. I don't want to give anything away because the husband's secrets are pretty bizarre (and even a little hard to swallow). The acting and the script are well-done enough to let you forgive some of the lapses in logic that tend to occur in these sorts of movies. The last half hour in particular seems to follow the predictable thriller pattern but the acting will keep your attention focused on what's going to happen next.

I went to see the movie because a friend told me that I would like it...

Well, it's an interesting concept : Laura (Emmanuelle Seignier), a stripper meets Marco (Philippe Torreton), a seemingly Prince Charming who is willing to marry her and take her away from her miserable life, giving her hopes for a decent future. But as she leaves the nightclub on her last night of work, she has a car accident and wakes up in a hospital room, deaf and severely injured. Prince Charming has not let her down though, as he comes for regular visits, then sticks to the original plan. He takes her to his mansion where he teaches her signs language and help her get back on her feet. They get married, and have a baby.

Six years later, an incident at school involving their son, Jeannot (Clement Brilland) triggers Laura's curiosity about the real identity of her now husband and the origin of her scars. She starts an investigation on her own in order to uncover the terrible truth...

I can't tell more here, but it's kind of haunting and as if coming from a disturbed mind, one is entitled to wonder. It reminded me somehow of Dead Ringers directed by David Cronenberg, with Jeremy Irons. (6/10)

it's hard to tell you more about this film without spoiling it. I enjoyed it because I wasn't expecting what I was seeing, but an ordinary sex-drama so.... It's a pscyho-sexual thriller, in which nothing is what it seems. It features Emmanuelle Seigner, no stranger to the genre (and to nudity) in which her husband, Polanski, had directed her. And a creepy performance (did I say creepy/yes CREEPY) from Toreton (Bernard Tavernier's actor). It looks like a Pascal Bruckner meets Roman Polanski (better than Bitter Moon), like a Chabrol gone astray or Clouzot thriller (I have seen someone mentioning Les Diaboliques), but closer to Georges Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage (Eyes without a face, the godfather of Dr. Phibes and more). A gem ! I am just afraid they will blow this into a Hollywood remake like they did with Nighwatch and The Vanishing.

As my good friend Writer's Reign wrote,it is a return to the murder mysteries of the forties/fifties ,when the writers were Pierre Very,Stanislas Andre Steeman and Boileau-Narcejac.After all,in "vertigo" which was based on Boileau-Narcejac's "D'Entre Les Morts" ,James Stewart tried to recreate a woman with another one,the very concept of "Corps A corps" :same meat,different gravy,actually "les Yeux Sans Visage" gravy (another Boileau-Narcejac's screenplay based on a Jean Redon's book).

Philippe Torreton is a talented actor but without a true director he shows a tendency to overplay and the ending of the movie is pure Grand Guignol.The story lacks finesse,there's no real suspense and neither the mother nor the boy are capable of any emotion.One may remember how Clouzot or Franju held their audience spellbound.