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"Complices" (2009) unfolds in two separate time zones, easy to tell apart instanly because they are photographed with two different brightness levels: in the darker "present" two detectives investigate the murder of a 19-year-old male hustler, while in the "brighter" past we see how the hustler draws his sweet new girlfriend into his sordid world. Despite the salacious subject matter, the film is low-key and elegantly made. It is competent, watchable, if unremarkable, with the ending adding the most interesting note. Nina Meurisse makes a promising feature-length debut in a leading role. **1/2 out of 4.

The first episode is utterly riveting, with a dexterously executed gimmick of a long continuous camera shot tracking, abandoning and rejoining several characters, and a gripping plot. Its shocking ending leads to an ever better second episode, maintaining (as all four do) the camera gimmick and playing like a dystopic nightmare which makes an average school look scarier than anything in a horror movie. The third episode does not advance the plot much, but it is very tense, and features the highest level of acting. Unfortunately, the fourth and last episode goes awry by focusing on the two least interesting and original characters in the series, plus by overdoing the "working-English-class" schtick (and language). What starts as a crime-psychological drama ends as a melodrama. I would rate the four episodes 8, 8, 7 and 5 out of 10.

A small, quiet film about loneliness in the Big City, and personal integrity. Set in a deliberately grey, unglamorous Paris (there is only one shot of the Eiffel Tower, from a distance), and directed in a flatline by the Swiss Claude Goretta, "La Provinciale" aka "The Girl From Lorraine" is not a film that would ever draw a massive audience, but Nathalie Baye is a winsome protagonist, and Goretta deserves credit for portraying a woman who will stick to her principles, and her true self, no matter what. Solid support from Bruno Ganz and Angela Winkler, but a long section in the second half with a perpetual drunk (Patrick Chesnais) drags. **1/2 out of 4.