Confidences trop intimes

A woman with marriage problems mistakes a financial adviser for a psychiatrist. She tells him all the secrets of her life, whereas the man has not the strength to tell he's not the person she needs to talk to...

"Confidences trop intimes" is a brilliant film directed by Patrice Leconte, with two big French actors -Fabrice Luchini and Sandrine Bonnaire. The film is an intimate comedy, action is made by good dialogs. There's no boredom at all.

It's an interesting movie which shows a strange relationship growing -maybe the woman understands, later, that she has not found the right person. But she's lonely and needs to talk, at the same time the financial adviser is another lonely person who needs someone who catches him out of a boring life. They have nothing in common, but they are made for each other.

The film has a strong screenplay and is supported by the two leading actors -the scenes are almost always between them. The two characters are very deep, the intensity of their words and of their expression doesn't make you feel that the picture misses something. Because everything it's here. The film is able to picture a situation of everyday life, without developing a foreseen love story... Will the two live a real love relationship? We don't know exactly, there's the same ambiguousness which often dominate the relation between a man and a woman...

A very good movie.

Patrice Leconte has long been one of my favourite directors...his predominate theme is simple...the intimate connection between two lonely strangers; evident in his previous classics....GIRL ON THE BRIDGE (1999) & MAN ON THE TRAIN (2002)...With INTIMATE STRANGERS, his characters meet by mistake...Anna (Bonnaire) is a beautiful, mysterious woman who has suddenly walked through the door of William's (Luchini) office in need of his professional counsel...however, she has mistaken his office for her psychiatrist's & has mistaken William to be a shrink...

INTIMATE STRANGERS is an elegant film...it has the feel & pace of an old noir film of the past where an equally beautiful & mysterious woman walks suddenly into the office of a private eye on some dark, stormy night...Leconte deals with the mind of a woman...revealing her deepest thoughts & desires...teasing us with every appointment between the two strangers...Bonnaire is intense & uninhabited as the distraught Anna & Luchini is the perfect compliment to keep the mode & atmosphere light when it needs to be...

Overall: Gorgeous looking film; camera work is almost excellent, shots over the shoulder seem almost voyeuristic...as if we are eavesdropping or tailing the characters....definitely one of the best Leconte films & one of the best of '04...

I actually went to my local "art house" movie theater to see "Napoleon Dynamite." I walked out of that movie after the first 10 minutes and walked into the movie playing in the room next to it, which happened to be "Intimate Strangers." I had no idea what this movie was about - in fact, had never heard of it but anything had to be better than "Napoleon Dynamite." What a pleasant surprise. Even though I missed the very beginning of the film, I figured out that Anna had a reversal problem and was visiting the wrong professional.

This movie explores a relationship of the mind, only hinting at the sexual. How refreshing!

This movie was entrancing. I fell in love with all of the characters. Who could not fall in love with Anna? How many times has a stranger walked into your life and you've found yourself captivated? Once - maybe twice? Perhaps I can ask that question since I met my husband due to circumstances that allowed our paths to cross (and any change in the smallest decision would have meant we would never have met) and within three days, we were planning a wedding. That was 20 years ago.

So no wonder I love this movie!

No special effects, no computer animation, no supernatural forces, no gloss, no predictability.

Real life! There is nothing in the story that could not have happened somewhere some time. Told with beauty, humour, understatement, feelings, sensitivity. Leaving you time to think instead of throwing one visual effect after another at you. There is time for detail. Time for silence. Time for emotions. But you are never bored.

The story is simple, yet you are grabbed by it and led into its mystery.

The atmosphere marvellously represents real life in France at the time the film was made. No shining up. No simplification. This is real France. Sandrine Bonnaire and Fabrice Luchini are very convincing in their roles. The behaviour of the secretary is incredibly real.

This is French cinema near its best.

"Intimate Strangers" brings to the screen an off-beat, original relationships comedy (with real drama too). Fabrice Luchini is Parisian tax lawyer William Faber who lives and works in the apartment he grew up in. His dad was a tax attorney and here the audit didn't fall far from the tree. He's not unhappy, his practice is flourishing, but inspired he's not either.

Almost falling into his office/pad is Anna Delambre, the sharp and beguiling actress, Sandrine Bonnaire. Anna has an ADD history with spatial disorientation deficit so she messes up a simple direction to the therapist's office where she's scheduled for an initial appointment. Instead of the shrink's domain she enters Faber's den and, unaware of her mistake, begins telling a tale of marital discord to the initially unaware counsel who thinks he has a new law client.

It doesn't take long for Faber to realize there's a mistake but he's become intrigued by her and so he schedules a second "therapy" consultation. Faber is sorting through (perhaps without full insight) his feelings about the recent breakup with his live-in girlfriend, Jeanne, Anne Bouchet. Anne is hooked up with a stereotyped muscle man (meaning a harmless jerk) but the two still spend time together including "off the cuff" sex. Bouchet is sympathetically real and touching, in a quiet way, as a smart woman who may not be as sure of what she wants as she claims.

William and Anne continue meeting regularly at his office even after the latter discovers her mistake. Initial anger melts away and a platonic but increasingly intertwined relationship develops to the consternation and barely concealed exasperation of Faber's matronly secretary, Madame Mulon, Mulon, beautifully acted by Helene Surgere, was Faber's dad's secretary and she came with the office. Technophiles will get a kick out of watching her work with a twentieth century electric document production device.

The dark side is Anna's lying to her supposedly impotent hubby about her simmering affair which the guy assumes, with the aid of a private investigator, is Faber. Anna is trying to get her no longer enraptured-with-her spouse back without first considering if that's really the best thing for her.

Slightly plain at the beginning of "Intimate Strangers," Anna morphs into a striking lady as she becomes more confident about handling her life's issues.

Veteran director and acclaimed French auteur Patrice Leconte has made the most of a film that largely centers on intense conversations in small places. The ultimate resolution is no less believable for its predictability.

A good evening at an art cinema.

8/10.