L'appartement

Forget the recent dire American remake which sadly tarnished the reputation of the French original by virtue of the director's involvement in both. This is a deftly- drawn romantic 90s noir with many twists and turns. It works best as a Gallic ode to Hitchcock's Rear Window, because the notion of voyeurism is the constant theme that fires the intricate screenplay. The story is stunningly realized, like a Picasso painting, offering multi-perspectives on the same event and demanding the viewer's participation throughout. The settings, music and haunting score are wonderful as well as the excellent contributions from the cast. Watch it more than once.

This is an astonishing film: a romantic thriller with a convoluted but perfectly constructed and devastatingly symmetrical plot, brilliantly buttressed by the use of recurring visual motifs. Everything in it is beautifully filmed: the women, the apartments; but more amazing is the devastating juxtapositioning of images, almost every scene has echoes of another. This is a story told in light, in colour, in many almost-parallels. Every time I watch it, it fills me with delight.

The acting is great too. Romane Bohringer is stunning as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown: everything about her changes with her mood. Vincent Cassel plays a very different role to his part in La Haine; but no less excellently: shifty and sympathetic at the same time. And Monica Bellucci - ah!, Monica Bellucci, well, put simply, she plays (is?) the world's most perfect woman. There's one small scene about three quarters of the way through where she does nothing more than smile; yet in that instant, says more than hours of Hollywood junk.

One cannot do justice to this film without at least mentioning the superb, sequential climax: sad, shocking, ironic and subtle in turn. But if one moment captures the brilliance of this work, it's the scene at the start of this fabulous denouement, the prospect of which has been teasingly laid before us throughout the entire story. Yet when the moment comes, it is handled so delicately, so briefly, so deftly, that on reflection it makes you gasp. Only a director of staggering confidence would dare to underplay this vital point. But the confidence is justified. Cinema doesn't come much better than this.

I knew nothing about this movie after being recommended to watch it by a friend, but I decided to take a chance on it as I have come to really like Vincent Cassel ('La Haine', 'The Crimson Rivers', 'The Brotherhood Of The Wolf'), even if I don't always enjoy the movies he's in (e.g. 'Dobermann'), and the added attraction of the beautiful Monica Bellucci, Cassel's frequent co-star and former wife, didn't hurt any either. The packaging proclaimed 'The Apartment' to be "the French Single White Female", and while there is SOME comparisons between the two movies I think it gives the viewer quite misleading expectations, and is probably best ignored. 'The Apartment' is more of a mystery than a thriller, and doesn't rely on shock tactics. Fans of Alfred Hitchcock, especially 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo', which it deliberately references, will really appreciate this movie. It isn't as blatant a homage as say, Brian De Palma's 'Sisters', 'Obsession' and 'Dressed To Kill', but the influence is obvious. Cassel plays a man on the eve of his marriage, who unexpectedly finds himself pursuing an old flame (Bellucci) that he has unfinished business with. His search for her eventually leads him to what he believes is her house, but he is then surprised to find it is a case of mistaken identity, and a completely different girl (Romane Bohringer) enters his life. Things however are not what they appear to be, but to reveal anymore of the fascinating twists and turns in the plot, most of which are revealed in flashback, would be extremely unfair! Suffice to say this is a multi-layered, consistently interesting mystery romance which I found to be entertaining and unpredictable. Bellucci looks wonderful, but acting wise Bohringer is the real find here, while Cassel continues to impress. He has genuine talent and charisma and seems destined to become a major international star one day. I believe an American remake of this movie is due anytime now, but I seriously doubt that it will be half as good as this, so try and see it if you can. Highly recommended.

Stylish, erotic and complex, Gilles Mimouni's only film to date appears at first sight to be quintessentially French, but has links to American identity-themed, noirish thrillers, such as Preminger's Laura and Hitchcock's Vertigo. (I'm also not so sure as other postings that all the locations and interiors are actually Parisian; the credits indicate that a lot of the movie was made in Spain.)

Max (Vincent Cassel) is a successful, young executive, engaged to be married, who catches a fleeting glimpse of an ex-lover, Lisa (Monica Bellucci), and immediately drops plans to travel to Tokyo, in order to find her. But, instead, he finds another woman (Romane Bohringer), bearing a resemblance to Lisa, with whom he starts an affair, while still hoping to find Lisa.

The story is told in an extremely fragmented manner, jumping backwards and forwards in time, with hair-style, clothing and sometimes weather providing clues to the sequence of events. By the end of the film almost every i has been dotted, and t crossed, so that theoretically it should be possible to re-edit the movie so that it is linear. But as well as being a duller movie, this would lose what I see as one of its main themes - that memories, fuelled by imagination, can be more powerful than mundane reality. Another theme seems to be that not everybody gets what they deserve, and life can be cruel. Generally, I see the film as being bleaker and more amoral than do some IMDb postings.

The acting, camerawork, sets, music and, of course, the editing are all first rate. This is a perfect film to rent, so that baffling bits (or all) of it can be replayed.

A very confusing film with nods to Hitchcock, some very good photography and little else. The plot involves the Hitchcock staples of obsession and paranoia but lacks the ultimate touch of the master - suspense. I was told that this film was a 'must see' and how great it was and how wonderful the structure was and how engaging it all was. Well, do not waste the time because this film is a pretentious, overlong piece of French 'style' - lots of visual cleverness and moody pouting (called great acting when it is in a French film) but little substance. At the end you could not care less what happens to these self-obsessed characters and I must have had a bad day because I could not follow a lot of this. The film uses a fragmented narrative by presenting the sequences in flashback and in no particular order. We are shown scenes several times and with new perspectives each time so we can try to make sense of the story, if one can call it that. I had to resort to looking at the characters' hair in order to figure out when things were happening. There was also a great deal of symbolism - red rose, white rose, red walls, white shirts, long hair, short hair, red shoes and on and on and on until I yelled enough! The symbols, of course, go nowhere and are presented in sledgehammer fashion so that we can marvel at how clever it all is even though it makes no sense. This is "Single White Female" meets French pretension made by a director who has studied too many Hitchcock films but failed the exam.