Double Lover

Not nearly as smart as it thinks it is

His tone is both apologetic and defensive. Molly continues to stare at him, amazed. She sees again in her mind's eye that other Jonathan as as he'd materialised on the street - sees again the way he merely glanced at her, unseeing, uninterested, as he passed her by. As if they didn't know each other and were not lovers and of course they didn't know each other, were not lovers...Molly recalls speaking his name as if it were a magic talisman that might make things right: Jonathan. But the man's name was James.

• Joyce Carol Oates; Lives o__f the Twins (1987)

From prolific French auteur François Ozon (Sous le sable; 8 femmes; Frantz), L'amant double [Double Lover] is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). "Freely adapted" from Joyce Carol Oates's 1987 novel Lives of the Twins (published under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith), and written by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, the film tells the story of Chloé (Marine Vacth), a woman with a fragile mental state, who falls passionately in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul (Jérémie Renier). Within a few months, she has moved in, however, as time goes by, she slowly starts to learn of a significant part of his identity which he has been concealing.

Imagine, if you will, Vertigo (1958) remade by someone like Gaspar Noé or Lars von Trier, and you'd be some way towards getting a handle on Ozon's latest; completely barmy (you know you're in strange territory when the second shot of a movie is, quite literally, an internal shot of a vagina). As one would expect from Ozon, the aesthetics are solid - the film is built upon an inventive visual style employing juxtaposition, pseudo-split screen, and copious amounts of shots with one person in the frame proper, and the person to whom they're talking only visible in reflection. The sound effects a...