Resembling a lovely young school teacher who "doesn't look like the teachers we had," Jacqueline Ellis is a different kind of British b-movie starlet...
And very import here as a wishbone not just between two men but three including an older man who raised her; a young passive boyfriend; and a new guy in town... or actually, in the house... as thirty-something Frenchman John Carson doesn't only have a plot to kill the old fella for war crimes, he tells him outright so the title ACCIDENTAL DEATH fits what MIGHT befall him...
Meanwhile the most fun's had between the Frenchmen (with an on/off British accent) and our gal Ellis, also from France, originally, and they have a kind of lusty windswept romance indoors, where most of the story takes place...
A polite, sophisticated DESPERATE HOURS without that much suspense, intrigue or urgency but is more a time-filler Neo Noir with a few twists and turns...
Including a lethal bicycle and an even more lethal swimming pool where Jacqueline Ellis almost winds up... the only character the audience, and the fellas, want protected...
After all, she's got the most to lose as her heart means more than the old man's life, or the Frenchman's shifty plans to end it.