This is the most ludicrous, contrived and bone-stupid movie I’ve seen in a long time.
French director Rebecca Zlotowski’s eye-rolling mess is a textbook, teachable example of the so-called “idiot plot,” which lurches (and that’s the right word) from one scene to the next, only because each and every character behaves like a complete idiot at all times.
 |
| Determined to learn more about the books her suspected murderer has been reading, Dr. Lilian Steiner (Jodie Foster) distracts a librarian in order to steal the card with the person's check-out record. |
Zlotowski’s misfire supposedly is a “black comedy mystery thriller,” but that’s wishful thinking. The script — by Zlotowski, Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé — is incomprehensible.
I cannot imagine what prompted Jodie Foster to sign onto this turkey.
She stars as Dr. Lilian Steiner, a Jewish-American psychiatrist who sees patients in her well-appointed Parisian home. We meet two:
• Pierre Hallan (Noam Morgensztern), whose years of sessions have been an effort to quit smoking. He angrily terminates their ongoing arrangement, claiming that a hypnotist “cured” him in 20 minutes, and threatens to sue, to recover the money he wasted on his unsuccessful therapy.
• Paula Cohen-Solal (Virginie Efira), who has missed her three most recent sessions. To Lilian’s dismay, she learns — from Paula’s daughter, Valérie (Luàna Bajrami) — that Paula recently committed suicide. Most of the scenes we subsequently spend with Paula are flashbacks of her numerous therapy sessions.
At Valérie’s invitation, Lilian attends the subsequent shemira, but Paula’s enraged husband Simon (Mathieu Amalric) — who apparently blames her — demands that she leave.
Lilian is stricken with persistent and uncontrollable tears. She first sees her ophthalmologist ex-husband, Gabriel (Daniel Auteuil), who is unable to help. Against her better judgment, she visits the hypnotist — Sophie Guillemin, as Jessica Grangé — which is when this film goes completely off the rails (for the first of many times).
Lilian instantly succumbs to an outlandish trance, involving white, linen-swept stairs and doors, one of the latter opening into a vision of her as a male orchestra cellist performing in Nazi-occupied Paris; Paula, a fellow musician, is “his” pregnant mistress. The conductor is Simon, who brandishes a pistol.
