We’re often prepared to go along all sorts of nonsense we see at the cinema. We know there are no poltergeists, no possessed young girls vomiting pea soup, no wicked witches of the West. But as long as the characters and the plot roughly conform to the logic of the film, we’ll go along with it.
And then there’s stuff like this. There was a moment halfway through when i just thought “do you seriously expect me to believe this shit?” which turned something that had been mildly diverting into a bonfire of ridiculousness.
But first the plot, such as it is. Greta is French (well actually she’s Hungarian pretending to be French for reasons that are never clear. There’s a lot of that sort of thing). She’s also lonely and misses her daughter, who’s death may have been the result of Greta’s neglect. Fairly early on she admits to having a well of loneliness which had me waiting for the surprize reveal that she’s a closet lesbian, but this never comes.
After shenannigans that we already know as we’ve seen the trailer, Greta starts to stalk Frances. Frances massively overreacts to the sad acts of a lonely women, but what if Greta isn’t just a lonely woman. What if she’s a psychopath?
The psychopath is a useful figure for poorly written films as there doesn’t have to be any logic at all for their actions. Which is just as well as there is little sense to make out of this film. The bit that lost me was where Greta breaks into Frances’s house, drugs and overpowers her despite being the size of Isabelle Huppert. Just before i sighed in disbelief this turned out to be just a dream. So that’s ok then, except that Frances had been dreaming about having a dream and I just gave up.
The film is not without its merits. Huppert has a great time hamming it up, and there’s enough you can go with before it starts to get just too silly. It could have possibly worked as a satire or farce, but ultimately it takes itself too seriously to get away with that.
Directed by Neil Jordan too. Whatever happened to him? I liked Neil Jordan
CinePhil 