Non ti voltare

Director Marina de Van has been quite inconsistent in both her writing and directing over the years. While flawed, I really enjoyed Dans Ma Peau (In my Skin) and my interest in her was certainly piqued. 8 femmes (8 Women) was fun despite being formulaic but the real draw was the ensemble cast of lovely and talented French women.

When I read about Ne Te Retourne Pas I was very, very excited. It sounded like a return to the darkness of Dans Ma Peau and featured two of my favorite actresses.

I've found most French efforts to emulate Hollywood to be immensely disappointing and this film is walking a fine line between something surreal/arty and something painfully derivative. The atmosphere is pretty creepy, the visual effects/makeup are used in a very interesting fashion and the performances from Marceau and Bellucci are good but this film doesn't really follow through with the promises it makes in the first 20 minutes.

A mediocre film overall and it's really sad to see talent like Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci go to waste.

Jeanne (Sophie Marceau) is an author with her latest failing attempt. However things start to change around her. She notices changes in her family, her home, and eventually even herself. She wonders if she's losing her sanity as the new Jeanne gets played by Monica Bellucci.

It's an interesting concept taking a page out of David Lynch's playbook such as 'Lost Highway'. It has potential, and possesses some intriguing qualities at first. Sophie Marceau's manic mental disintegration holds some fascination.

However the facial morphing and the weird after effects distracts from the acting. It is a constant confusion of whether or who in the family has changed. In many way, it falls prey to the same problem that David Lynch had. It feels very gimmicky.

Wow!!! This was actually pretty entertaining. I love the way they change the language to French to Italian. Love Monica Belluci she is just to beautiful to see in person as well in film. The suspense and story were very interesting and that what kept me into it. The story develops so beautifully done and it just keeps you until the end of the seat, these foreign films don't mind going over the top in showing us what we the viewers want to see, and men they do deliver what we want to see, packed with a great story, great acting and just a beautiful done twist at the end, I give " Don't Look Back" a 7 out of 10 Stars.

I must admit I envy the viewers that raved about this film in their reviews. My intelligence is not that vast. In reality, my intelligence is quite-quite limited, so I can only say that if during the first 15 minutes or so of watching this movie I was enthralled with it, little by little, because of its incredibly twisted story line, I was starting to have so many doubts and questions about the goings on on the screen, that eventually I lost interest in this very confusing dark movie.

Many-many things don't make any sense, for example, Bellucci, all of a sudden develops a very noticeable limping --no explanation for it-- in order to lose it completely for the next scene and thereafter.

What?

What happened?

Was she surgically intervened from an old crippling paralysis while the lights were set for the next scene or was just a shoe too small given to her by an unscrupulous wardrobe mistress?

The change of actresses was done digitally in a very fascinating way, like in "The Legend of the Wolf", but much more subdued.

The intervention of digital effects in straight movies will be, from now on, a fascinating tool to tell stories and also because unexpected in this kind of movies.

Well, the whole thing attempted to be a superb movie, but it fell down on its face with a fatal crush.

Many angles are possible to represent personality disorders. Delivering an exciting movie with this subject is a challenge which I believe writer/director Marina de Van succeeded with beautifully. The tension and attention span gradually increase as does the spectator disorientation with subtly changing details to full decors. The physical changes are superbly rendered and here again the spectator starts to loose his/her reference points. In other words, we are inside Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci and move with her/them to try and understand. Both actresses perform splendidly and beyond feeling for their life's search, one leaves the movie with a strong bond for both personalities. In summary, I liked the movie for the storyline, the subtle crescendo along the time line, the actresses performance and the total attention span to try and understand (if I had been part of their life, I would have tried to help, but probably to no avail). I am a little sad for the low rating (6 at the time of this review).