Intimate Strangers

Patrice Leconte returns to his favorite theme of odd romantic obsession (from Monsieur Hire to Girl on the Bridge and beyond), picks it up and revolves it in his hands for an hour and a half, then sets it down again without any overt statement. Luckily he has two extremely cunning and resourceful actors to embroider a web of humor and suspense around the peculiar and unresolved non-plot, in Sandrine Bonnaire (always mysterious and opaquely attractive, from Vagabond to Joan the Maid and various Chabrol films) and Fabrice Luchini (always different and memorable, from Perceval to Colonel Chabert.) She is a distressed wife on the way to an appointment with a psychiatrist, but goes to the wrong office. He is a tax lawyer who is not quick to set her straight when she starts to detail the sexual conflicts of her marriage. By the time the truth comes out, transference and counter-transference are rampant, so they continue their mutually therapeutic meetings. Her husband adds a little creepiness, and there are teasing hints of Hitchcockian enmeshment, but the end comes mildly and quietly, with a sweet ordinariness. (2004, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-71, RT-86.)