L’Amant Double | Little White Lies

L’Amant Dou­ble

31 May 2018 / Released: 01 Jun 2018

Two people embracing in a dimly lit room.
Two people embracing in a dimly lit room.
4

Anticipation.

Ozon’s flair for bizarre emotions should be put to great use in a story of psychological duality.

4

Enjoyment.

Sex, lies and psychoanalysis has never been more entertaining.

4

In Retrospect.

A strong contender for best film in the ‘twins are scary’ genre.

This twisty psy­cho-thriller from François Ozon sees a per­plexed young woman dat­ing iden­ti­cal shrinks.

The title of François Ozon’s lat­est may seem sil­ly in its obvi­ous­ness, but he isn’t the first direc­tor to give away a key plot point of dou­ble vision before the open­ing cred­its roll. Bri­an De Palma’s Body Dou­ble, in which a man finds him­self spy­ing on the gris­ly mur­der of a woman, uses the protagonist’s ardu­ous dis­cov­ery of the tit­u­lar dual­i­ty as the source of all its sus­pense. The way he deals with the con­se­quences, mean­while, makes for a series of unpre­dictable and sur­re­al events.

L’Amant Dou­ble is no doubt indebt­ed to De Pal­ma beyond its title. Like the Amer­i­can direc­tor did with films such as Body Dou­ble and, even more evi­dent­ly so, Dressed to Kill, Ozon explores psy­cho­analy­sis with a schlocky, lit­er­al approach and through the use of arrest­ing, graph­ic visu­als. He makes Freud’s well-known (or at least pop­u­lar) ideas about trans­fer­ence per­verse­ly fas­ci­nat­ing and cinematic.

Chloé, played with utmost French grace by Marine Vacth (the star of Ozon’s 2013 film Jeune et Jolie), has for­ev­er been tor­tured by strange stom­ach aches that no doc­tor has been able to explain. The prob­lem, it seems, is psy­cho­log­i­cal. She starts see­ing Doc­tor Paul Mey­er (the excel­lent Jérémie Renier). Typ­i­cal­ly, the psy­cho­an­a­lyst doesn’t say much dur­ing their ses­sions, allow­ing the lone­ly 25-year-old to talk about her fears and, nat­u­ral­ly, her mother.

Ozon films these mus­ings with a decon­struct­ing cam­era. Chloé is reflect­ed in mir­rors, seen from all angles, her face dou­bled as she talks of con­tra­dic­to­ry emo­tions that add up to a bro­ken per­son. Her pain is pal­pa­ble, if not explained. Ozon wastes no time on the med­ical par­tic­u­lars: soon enough, sweet-natured Paul admits to hav­ing feel­ings for Chloe and refus­es to keep treat­ing her. She starts feel­ing bet­ter and they move in together.

Paul does indeed turn out to be a sort of dou­ble lover: after Chloé dis­cov­ers that he adopt­ed his mother’s name when he start­ed his prac­tice, she sees a man who looks exact­ly like him out­side anoth­er psy­cho­analy­sis office. On this doctor’s plaque, the last name is the same as Paul’s father’s.

Dead ringer sto­ries have to go beyond the idea of two peo­ple being the same to be tru­ly worth telling. What keeps L’Amant Dou­ble excit­ing is Ozon’s care­ful craft­ing of the nar­ra­tive around Chloé and her game of dou­ble duty with Paul and Louis, his twin broth­er. With her lies she builds a house of cards that threat­ens to fall at any moment, espe­cial­ly with Louis’ ruth­less nature mak­ing her that much more anx­ious. Renier is able to show off his act­ing chops as the two doc­tors are rad­i­cal­ly oppo­site: Paul is as kind and con­ven­tion­al as Louis is cru­el and perverse.

When I’m with you, I think about him. When I’m with him, I think about you,” Chloé tells Louis (who unapolo­get­i­cal­ly rev­els in his own opin­ion that he must give more plea­sure to Chloé that Paul ever could), sum­ming up the nature of her frac­tured iden­ti­ty. Ozon, as the ambi­tious and eccen­tric direc­tor that he is, takes this psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic dimen­sion to anoth­er lev­el when Chloé’s bipo­lar exis­tence becomes too much for her. His edit­ing mas­ter­ful­ly blends rou­tine and anx­i­ety through­out, but it is when he falls into the dream­like and the depraved that his diag­no­sis becomes amus­ing­ly twist­ed and for­mal­ly exciting.

Ever deter­mined to unset­tle and enter­tain, Ozon also grounds his film in real­i­ty with a res­o­lu­tion that ties (most of) the threads togeth­er. Chloé’s ordeal can be explained, but the psy­cho­log­i­cal dilem­mas of which it com­pris­es are more inter­est­ing that the hard sci­ence. Her pro­found sad­ness is what remains most strik­ing, and Ozon’s unusu­al yet ten­der approach to a female char­ac­ter in cri­sis is admirable. A genre film tak­ing a woman to the extremes of san­i­ty while always hon­our­ing her emo­tions, L’Amant Dou­ble is a bold and often dis­turb­ing spec­ta­cle. In many ways, this is what cin­e­ma is all about.

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