A.k.a. Confidences Trop Intimes
D: Patrice Leconte. S: Jerome Tonnerre, Patrice Leconte. P: Alain Sarde. Cast: Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Bonnaire, Gilbert Melki, Michel Duchaussoy. UK dist (DVD): Pathé.
Another slice of romantic melancholia from director Patrice Leconte, Intimate Strangers is a partial return to the obsessive themes of Monsieur Hire (1989), not least in its casting of Hire’s Sandrine Bonnaire as the object of desire for another middle-aged introvert (Fabrice Luchini). But despite careful work all round – including fine performances from the two leads and an intoxicating atmosphere of sexual tension – Intimate Strangers never quite fulfils its promise, and comes as something of a disappointment after the sublime character study of Leconte’s L’Homme du Train (2003).
Intimate Strangers centres on OCD tax lawyer William Faber (Luchini), whose quiet office is visited one day by the troubled Anna Delambre (Bonnaire). Mistaking him for the therapist (Michel Duchaussoy) who practices next door, she launches into an account of the more intimate details of her failing marriage. Faber finds himself reluctant to point out her error in confiding in him, and before he’s had time to fully think through the implications, he’s agreed to meet her for another “session” the following week. Although the misunderstanding is resolved relatively quickly, the pair find themselves locked into a curious mutual dependency, with Faber wordlessly accepting his new role of voyeur/confessor to Anna’s increasingly explicit revelations regarding the sexual proclivities of her brutal husband. Truth and fiction become more difficult to separate in Anna’s confessions, and Faber begins to suspect that she may not have stumbled into his office by chance after all…
It’s an intriguing setup, which sadly fizzles out in a lacklustre third act. Sandrine Bonnaire tries hard to make the enigmatic Anna seem real, but is ultimately defeated by the artificiality of the role; her self-conscious chain-smoking fast becomes grating, much like the studied eccentricity of her wardrobe. Her manipulative game-playing is far from endearing, and it’s hard to imagine Anna having any kind of existence outside of Faber’s office (or, indeed, the script). Leconte has a track record of underwriting his female characters; his strongest films (Tandem, Tango, L’Homme du Train) focus almost exclusively on male relationships, with women only addressed parenthetically, if at all. His tendency to portray women as quirky archetypes is, unfortunately, alive and well in Intimate Strangers, rendering the drama arch and unconvincing.
By contrast Luchini is far more credible, giving a delicate and nuanced performance as the passive lawyer; in one marvellously unexpected private moment, his tightly-controlled façade slips to reveal a delirious passion inexpressible in the presence of others. However, the talents of the wonderful Gilbert Melki, so versatile in Lucas Belvaux’s Trilogie (especially its final chapter, Après la Vie), are largely wasted here; cast as Bonnaire’s husband Marc, he’s afforded little opportunity to do anything but appear obscurely menacing in a couple of scenes before disappearing from the film completely.
If the drama fails to convince, Leconte certainly succeeds in suffusing his film with a rich sensuality. He’s aided immeasurably here through the combined talents of DP Eduardo Serra and composer Pascal Esteve, whose swirling arpeggios (suggesting Philip Glass channelling Bernard Herrmann) deftly underscore the film’s wry Hitchcockian references. Indeed, cinematic allusions abound throughout, beyond the more obvious nods to mistaken identities and femmes fatales; with its subtextual struggle between light and darkness, Strangers even flirts with the tropes of the vampire film. Like a 21st-century Carmilla Karnstein, Anna draws vitality and confidence from Faber’s growing obsession with her, effecting a gradual metamorphosis from dowdy neurotic into the radiant creature we see at the close. Interestingly, all the characters seem to be defined by emblematic deficiencies of one sort or another: Faber is unable to drive, his ex is a failed novelist reduced to working in a bookshop, Marc is physically crippled (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not), while Anna’s photophobia suggests a soul locked in a penumbral world of half-truths and fantasies. We’re all damaged in different ways, the film seems to say; the trick is to find someone who can make us whole again. The message may not be enormously profound, but at least it’s one we can all understand.