Un homme idéal

If you like suspense genre, watch this movie. Beginning was a bit slow to start but after little moment it went to be on the edge of your seat movie. Hitchcock would be proud.

This film is an inventive and exciting thriller, which is solid and well made. The plot is about how wrong things can go when lies and ambitions coincide, and the price one must pay is very high. Here are no big effects, but rather a well-constructed story, which both frightens and fascinates. It is credible and the protagonist is both nasty and a person we get sympathy for. The film manages to show us booth sides of the main characters struggles to be somebody important. It also has several surprising elements, and a rich cast of characters. The lead role is a person we may also know a bit about. We want success, but not at any price. Where do we draw the line? Our man is willing to go very far, at horrible consequences. I will not reveal any of the content here, but would like to get that film has a surprise ending. A final I think works very well, and that also makes this film stand out from many others in its genre. There is some Hitchcock throughout the film, and it is of course intended as a compliment. It will certainly be an American version .... but this is good enough anyway.

Set in the art, and to be accurate literature, world, we first follow a failed writer that happened to lay hands on a masterpiece. Jumping at the chance, he managed to make his life a perfect dream. There the movie really begins, with the pressure of a second book when he has been labelled a genius. Soon joined by pressures from his agent, bank, love rival and finally blackmail. How will he resist all this? What is he ready to do or to give up?

Despite some inconsistencies in the plot--I can't figure out why Mathieu's in debt, he doesn't have expensive tastes--this is a pretty gripping murder thriller. Plagiary has been used before (remember Morvern Callar when the girl steals her dead boyfriend's book) but rarely with such entertaining results. To go from labourer to acclaimed novelist must be the dream of many; here it really happens. Pierre Niney has made some fine films in the last few years--Yves Saint Laurent, Frantz--here he shows how desperate this man can get when he's cornered. Ana Girardot plays his fiancee; she's somewhat spoiled but that doesn't prevent her from starting to suspect Mathieu's intentions. Marc Barbe plays a really slimy blackmailer, dripping with malice and faux-friendliness. Great cast, fine entertainment.

This is a movie that will bring back to your mind the most popular novels by Patricia Highsmith, both in terms of plot and characterization. The hero is a young aspiring writer who stumbles upon a forsaken manuscript by a deceased author that he steals in order to make his dream come true. After the commercial and critical success of his first book, the protagonist Mathieu Vasseur, feels brave enough to approach the young upper-class literature professor, Alice, and they soon become a happy couple. When Mathieu moves into Alice's house, where she lives along with her parents, he will have to face major challenges as he realizes that there is also someone else who knows the truth about his scam and he blackmails him for vast amounts of money.

Mathieu is the typical anti-hero, reminiscent to characters such as Tom Ripley, immoral, unprincipled, and ready to remove permanently any potential threats to his new posh lifestyle. The plot moves forward in a brisk pace and the suspense that permeates the movie as a whole keeps the viewer glued to his seat. "Un Homme Ideal" is a movie really similar, as far as the story is concerned, to an American production, titled ''The Words" (2012) starring Bradley Cooper and Dennis Quaid. If you choose to give it a chance, it is sure that you won't regret it.