Contre toi

I starts so well. The female doctor is kidnapped by the husband to a patient who has died due to the doctor's care. He doesn't really want revenge. He wants balance.

That kind of story is not untold before. The two of them gets acquainted, because of what's called the Stockholm syndrome. The balance tips over and the moral is that it isn't really such a thing as balance. And if there is, there's anyway a prize for it, which is hardly reachable.

But when you leave the theater, you feel that the not untold story anyway is told one too many times.

This is a movie about Stockholm Syndrome, where a middle-aged woman is kidnapped by a man holding a grudge and a relationship develops between the two. The English release title of In Your Hands is actually the director's preferred title, Doillon wanted the French equivalent Entre Tes Mains, but it was already taken so she went for Contre Toi, which has a dual meaning of being against you as in being your adversary, but also against you as in leaning against your body.

For me it was a sick love story with no value, Átame! without the humour, however one of the women in the audience was close to tears when asking a question about the movie, which suggests to me that there is a lot of resonance for lonely professional women of a certain age, which kidnapped Anna (Kristin Scott Thomas) definitely is. The acting from Scott Thomas is superb, but I think the film pulled a punch by having kidnapper Yann played by an extremely handsome actor (Pio Marmai). Kristin Scott Thomas apparently had an "in" to the role as one of her friends had once been kidnapped for several days.

For me the big nail in the coffin of the movie, is that it just isn't cinematic, there's hardly any added value over what you could get from the theatre, a total lack of ambition in terms of mise-en-scene.