La chambre obscure

The title, suggesting both the darkened bedroom where consummation takes place and the artist's device for capturing reality, has been used before. Nabokov's black novel of 1932, filmed by Tony Richardson in 1969 as « Laughter in the Dark », played out a deadly triangle in which a seduced girl and her former lover trap and ruin a respectable man.

This film gives us a more feminist twist in which two girls, one about to be seduced and the other wanting to be, swap places to trap a respectable man. The story is however far older, being known in ancient India and appearing in both Boccaccio's « Decameron » and Shakespeare's « All's Well That Ends Well ».

As in Shakespeare, there is a sub-plot of a second male character who acts as confidant and contrast to the male lead. While Shakespeare's Parolles is a bombastic coward, illustrating the bad company into which the hero has fallen, Questerbet's Thomas is a saintly artist showing the qualities the hero lacks.

Story alone cannot sustain the 107 minutes this film lasts. It has consciously simple sets and props, evoking theatre rather than cinema but also perhaps more true to its medieval period, and music that fits well enough. What's left is words and actions : do they bring the tale to life in the twenty-first century ? Do they carry you away into the world of the film maker's imagination ? Are your thoughts and feelings gripped by the characters' dilemmas ?

In my case, the answers are not very positive. A pity, when the two lead actresses - Caroline Ducey and Sylvie Testud - have done much better work in other pictures.