Double Lover

Double Love (L'Amant Double)r: Twins, of course there are varying types. While this film owes a debt to Cronenberg's Blood Brothers, and the theme of a patient falling in love with her analyst isn't exactly original, Francois Ozon puts his own stamp on this tale. Chloe (Marine Vacth) an ex-model now working as an art gallery attendant seeks help from therapist Paul (Jéremie Renier) regarding her psychosomatic stomach pains. They swiftly become lovers but Paul keeps secrets, he has a twin who is also a shrink. Things start to get complicated after that in this psychological thriller which morphs into horror on occasions. A few interesting plot twists add to the intrigue in this film of smoke and mirrors. Writer/Director Francois Ozon delivers an enigmatic (if somewhat derivative) Erotic Noir Thriller. 7/10.

Ozon is one of the most interesting French directors nowadays but also one having a bumpy career. Either he makes a brilliant film or something definitely mediocre.

This film happens to belong to the last category as well as his 2 previous ones, since here he repeats the style and plot of David Cronenberg's DEAD RINGERS.

I notice that he remains in a creative impasse. Here in Mexico the picture has been promoted by word-of-mouth regarding the sex scenes, but for me they are conventional and far from daring.

Push harder, Mr Ozon, because you need to offer better ideas as you previously did.

Double Lover starts in the best way, as all pieces are introduced. Then, the cast, brings another flavor as its blends and secures what is being experienced, but towards the third act, G!!!, All tumbles down in such an incredible mess, that just leaves you wonder you just wasted two hours of your time.

Right from the opening shot you get a pretty strong steer on what this movie is about and it will certainly appeal to the average male - and some females. It is largely pretentious soft porn but the actors do their best and it's French so appeals to me anyway.

Not a lot of plot once you're landed with the initial twist but it's passable. No more than that.

From prolific French auteur François Ozon, L'amant double is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams (1999)), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). "Freely adapted" from Joyce Carol Oates's 1987 novel Lives of the Twins (published under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith), and written by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, the film tells the story of Chloé (Marine Vacth), a woman with a fragile mental state, who falls passionately in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul (Jérémie Renier). Within a few months, she has moved in, however, as time goes by, she slowly starts to learn of a significant part of his identity which he has been concealing.

Imagine, if you will, Vertigo (1958) remade by someone like Gaspar Noé or Lars von Trier, and you'd be some way towards getting a handle on Ozon's latest; completely barmy (you know you're in strange territory when the second shot of a movie is, quite literally, an internal shot of a vagina). As one would expect from Ozon, the aesthetics are solid - the film is built upon an inventive visual style employing juxtaposition, pseudo-split screen, and copious amounts of shots with one person in the frame proper, and the person to whom they're talking only visible in reflection. The sound effects are also excellent and really jolt you out of your seat on a couple of occasions. Similarly, the acting is strong, with Vacth and Renier unrecognisable in their respective roles.

However, the melodramatic and self-congratulatory plot is an absolute mess. Many of Ozon's standard tropes are here; a dissection of the academic middle class/intelligentsia, an examination of the schism between appearance and reality, an attempt to elucidate the mind of a complex woman, a psychoanalytical bedrock, the mutability of identity etc. But it's all diffused through an utterly farcical narrative, which fails to get even the basics right. For example, sex is a central theme, but by the time we get to the fourth or fifth sex scene, it has completely lost its potency (compare, for example, the infinitely superior Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), where sexuality is just as central, but which features only two sex scenes). The same goes for the increasingly ridiculous plot twists, once you get to three or four and you're still in the first half of the movie, you just stop caring. Ozon has always been hit and miss, for every Sitcom (1998) and Swimming Pool (2003), there's an Angel (2007) and a Ricky (2009), and L'amant double is, in the end, a rather pointless film that seems to think it's saying something exceptionally profound about desire and identity. It isn't.