Who You Think I Am

I was expecting another movie about social media but not. More about getting old and relationships in the technology era. Great Juliette like always. And you will never gues what will happen at the end.

This story is really about Claire and her wanting to relive her youth. About how as a woman as she ages she feels invisible. This is a fantasy erotica; it's all about what she wants to feel but cannot. Very compelling and beautifully shot.

This film pushes at the limits of what film can do in the sense that most interesting things in it are not what are shown but what the writer can express about the inner life of the character and other non-narrative aspects.

Cinema must show through the lens; it is a complete image. Text is borderless, frameless, it can be objective, or as abstract as is necessary. This is why every film version of "Madame Bovary" is a disappointment because Flaubert never tells the reader what Emma looks like but every actress is an incarnation of Emma.

In terms of this film, when the story progresses in its first half, it work rather well; perhaps a bit slow for some minds, but the characterization and the dilemma are intriguing and contemporary. The camera is fluid and Binoche appeals in her restrained and deceptive role.

The reflection on technology, social media, and how it has changed the way humans see themselves and their relationships is typical, and while the psychological exploration of its effect is engaging, it may border on the slightly too subtle.

Where the film loses some momentum is in the second half which ties the elements together. As a novel the story and the inner narrative would be better presented. That is not a fault of the screenplay, rather it is the possibilities of the medium.

The performances make this worth watching and the depiction of contemporary relationships is another part of the discussion on how society is changing.

I am always keen to watch a Juliette Binoche film. She is a proper film star who possesses a glowing screen presence. A lesser actress (can we still say that?) would have struggled with the lead role in this film because it is virtually (sic) a one-woman-show. Juliette succeeds with ease. This is a quiet little intimate film about a woman (Clare) in her 50's playing out a mid-life-crisis fantasy over the internet. Her long-term husband left her for a younger version, so she reacted by taking a young lover of her own who soon becomes bored with this much older woman. So, she suddenly decides to create a virtual younger version of herself and chooses the flatmate of the former younger lover to hit on. He has never met her but knows of her, and is conned into believing she is only 24. The cat-and-mouse game is played out just long enough to maintain our interest and we are given interspersed commentary by her as she explains it to her therapist. The scenario plays out in dramatic fashion, but then we become aware that she may not be telling the therapist the full story, and other possible endings emerge. This has the effect of distancing the viewer at a crucial stage, which baffled me at first, but, after the film ended, I believe I understood what the writer was getting at. I am a man in his 50's surfing the web for love, diversion and perhaps even re-definition. My contemporaries and I did not have the internet when we were becoming adults, so for us it is a magic landscape. Previously we were defined by our setting, family, friends, and cultural norms. Now we can be shape-shifting dramatic characters who don't have to make do with the tales others write: Instead we can create and star in our own life. A movie star from a script of our own choosing and editing. Binoche does not visibly glow in this role as much as she often does. Instead she ages defiantly. Her character doesn't actually go on an emotional journey, more a foolish escapade from which she ultimately concludes that having control of one's identity brings with it great responsibility. I liked this movie. Clare is supposed to be an intelligent lecturer, but finds herself behaving like a giddy teenager playing silly but potentially deadly games with the emotions of others. This could have been quite unbelievable, but the simple production and Binoche's skill allow us to take the idea on board. There are many high crane shots in the film which reminded me of sequences in my own dreams in which I seem to hover above the action. Seeing as the very first shot of this film is of someone nudging Clare out of a nap, then this impression that I had was possibly no accident.

I may have had a higher rating for this movie had I not had to rely on Englush subtitles. Juliet Binoche, still mesmerising in her middle fifties, catfishes a young friend of her toyboy lover who has just dumped her. Catfishing is a ploy used by devious people to create a fake Internet profile in order to try to attract a potential lover, although they usually try to avoid the victim. Juliet plays Claire who uses her niece Clara as the decoy. Clara has stolen Claire's ex husband and is fair game for the deception. The victim is Alex, and Claire, reluctant to actually meet him, joins him on public transport and persuades him to do a photo shoot for her book, thus luring him into her web without revealing who she really is, thus the title. This is where I became confused as Ludo, the lover who had just dumped her, had recently told Claire that Alex had committed suicide. Anyway, she has her lusty way with Alex and eventually he rumbles her when he finds her phone used for the deception. More confusion follows, without revealing spoilers, and we enter mental illness territory so work it out for yourself if you decide to watch. If you have an interesting script and need a good actress to do it, you can't go wrong with Juliet Binoche but a clearer narrative would have helped.