Confidences trop intimes

"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.

It is sometimes difficult to walk the fine line between comedy and banality, as well as hiding all the wire and papier mâché that form the construct known as thriller. "Confidences trop intimes" cunningly avoids the traps of both genres by simply shaking the constructs off, layer by layer.

The movie belongs to a genre, "comédie dramatique" ("dromedy"?) which usually in US movies is reserved for romance "chick flicks". Yet these intimate strangers bring quite a bit more to the screen. It's a pleasant relief to see them saying so much with so little, avoiding those deep memorable lines that are so out of place in the mouth of the common people movies of these kind are supposed to represent.

It's by juxtaposition that Leconte achieves the best effect, by not saying too much and underplaying it, always. In one memorable scene the lonely célibataire glances at the stages of life through his window. Through the glass of the opposite building he sees passion, argument and old age as the seemingly inevitable stages of life. His life seems codified, chosen by others and kept and controlled, in the good and in the bad: add the secret ingredient, an excellent Sandrine Bonnaire, and stir.

The film amusingly deconstructs the myth of psychoanalysis, and thanks to the great empathy of the Luchini character, succeeds in expressing the inexpressible, the desire, the longing sometimes solitary and hopeless. 9/10!

This is a very clever film with a lot to say about life, death, sex, human relationships, human fragility and loneliness - but it does it all with a wonderfully light hearted touch. Luchini dancing just has to be one of the best scenes - eat your heart out Hugh Grant!! Bonnaire is quite wonderful as Anne, literally blossoming before our eyes, her hair lightening, her skin glowing, her dress changing, becoming lighter and brighter. It seems her accidental psychiatrist does help her. Of course, we never know the full truth - can we believe everything she says - and the device of the windows, so key to the film's turning point, is Hitchcockian in the extreme - vision as deception. The most wonderful insight of this film, though, is that paying taxes and dealing with deep disturbing psychological issues have similar concerns - what do you declare and what do you try desperately to hide? And of course, both actions are undertaken in the name of individuals integrating themselves into society. Another excellent film from Leconte. Just because it is so polished and masterful story telling doesn't mean that it doesn't address other issues that a director such as Rohmer would tackle.

In "Intimate Strangers", a beautiful woman wanders into the office of a meek and unassuming tax consultant mistaking it for a psychiatrist's office. When the tax man realizes the error, the woman has already engaged him and wishes to continue their sessions. This relatively uneventful and mostly conversational drama is all about the symbiotic relationship which follows from the chance encounter and how it changes the lives of the pair of protagonists. The film features finely nuanced performances and penetrating insights into the relationship and little more. Don't expect any extremes of emotion, sex, nudity, or other titillaters as it's all about the interpersonal relationship; no more, no less. Excellent for what it is, "Intimate Strangers" will appeal most to mature audiences into French people flicks. (B)

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.