Sibyl – first look review

Gen­er­al­ly the stan­dard at Cannes 2019 has been excep­tion­al­ly high, as evi­denced by the effu­sive reviews we’ve been dis­patch­ing dai­ly from the Croisette. But as a wise man once said, they can’t all be win­ners. Case in point: Jus­tine Trier’s trite psy­chodra­ma Sibyl is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dud entry in this year’s Offi­cial Selection.

Vir­ginie Efi­ra (who last worked with Tri­et on the 2016 rom-com In Bed with Vic­to­ria) plays the tit­u­lar role of a nov­el­ist-turned-psy­chother­a­pist, who decides to return to her pas­sion for writ­ing. She reluc­tant­ly takes on a new patient after much plead­ing; Mar­got (Adèle Exar­chopou­los), a young actor, is in quite a pick­le after hav­ing an affair with her co-star, Igor (Gas­pard Ulliel), who is engaged to the direc­tor of the big movie she’s about to star in. As Sibyl becomes increas­ing­ly involved in Margot’s life, she reflects on her own past, includ­ing a tur­bu­lent rela­tion­ship with an ex-part­ner and her strug­gle with alcoholism.

Sibyl is an objec­tive­ly ter­ri­ble ther­a­pist. She breaks con­fi­den­tial­i­ty rules, she becomes too involved in her patient’s life, and even­tu­al­ly begins to use the con­tent of their ses­sions as inspi­ra­tion for her new nov­el. There’s not a sin­gle sym­pa­thet­ic char­ac­ter among the bunch – they’re all self-involved, navel-gaz­ing ​‘artists’ who don’t give a damn about how their actions impact on those around them. Teamed with a sur­pris­ing­ly amount of sex scenes that bor­der on soft­core pornog­ra­phy, it’s dif­fi­cult to say exact­ly what Tri­et is try­ing to say with this story.

Curi­ous­ly, the film con­tains a scene remark­ably sim­i­lar to one in Céline Sciamma’s Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, right down the same musi­cal cue. While undoubt­ed­ly a coin­ci­dence, in Triet’s film it feels ham­my and unearned. A num­ber of ridicu­lous things hap­pen which require a mas­sive sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, name­ly an Amer­i­can Psy­cho-esque mono­logue that Sibyl deliv­ers towards the end of the film about her increas­ing detach­ment from reality.

Yet at the same time the film feels hope­less­ly pre­dictable. It is a for­mu­la­ic sto­ry about a woman who has zero redeem­ing fea­tures, and lacks the charm to car­ry that repug­nance off.