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Kristin Scott Thomas gives an exceptional performance in this provocative thriller. Mike MccCahill lets this French film about a ménage-à-trois gone wrong massage his passions.

Catherine Corsini’s erotic thriller-turned-romantic tragedy opens with a bang: Kristin Scott Thomas’s insomniac Suzanne firing a shot into her blithely snoozing bedmate.

Flashback to six months earlier, when Suzanne was establishing both a physiotherapy career and a very different rapport with the male body. Suzanne’s dismissive businessman husband (Yvan Attal) has invited a burly builder (Sergi López) into their home to oversee an extension. When the latter breaks his foot, the fledgling physio ends up overseeing his rehabilitation, and eventually massaging more than just his metatarsal.

Corsini’s chief concern in the ménage-à-trois that arises is a timely one – the unhealthy links society forges between love and money, allowing Scott Thomas to give another exceptional turn, playing the opposite arc to Tilda Swinton in I Am Love: cheeks that once were rosy turn gaunt and haunted as Suzanne confesses her infidelity to a spouse who grows ever more possessive.

Directed with exceptional economy, it’s a less comforting proposition than I’ve Loved You So Long, and makes for punchy, provocative viewing.

 

Mike MccCahill on 13th October 2010