L'APPARTEMENT (69)

Directed by: Gilles Mimouni

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Romane Bohringer, Monica Bellucci, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey

The Pitch: A yuppie executive overhears a phone call and recognises the voice of the woman he loved and lost two years earlier. But then things get complicated...

Theo Sez: Over-virtuosity may seem an odd complaint, but it's the only thing wrong with this elegant puzzle - which, for its first half-hour or so, promises to be among the year's top movies. It still is in a way (certainly it's among the most promising debuts), a magpie's-nest of dazzling fragments and criss-crossing storylines overlaid with rich creamy lighting and a pastiche of Bernard Herrmann's VERTIGO strings - not incidentally, given that the whole film is like a fantasia on themes from that movie (though with passing references to many others). Even beyond casual nods to Hitchcock's classic ("She's a brunette - but I've fallen in love with her as if she were a blonde"), its twin themes of obsession and (especially) duplication are everywhere : the narrative gets repeated (only the POV changing), four characters are repeatedly broken up into alternative pairings, even the two heroines' names (Lisa and Alice) are mirror-images of each other. The constant echoes and reflections, the ever-mounting complications are exhilarating - then, suddenly, a little exhausting. The trouble with this kind of labyrinthine plotting is that everything must be exactly right - if a symmetry is even slightly off it's immediately noticeable ; and, as the film escalates, you can feel its symmetries starting to break down. The central duplication, two strands converging on that snowy scene where Alice can't bring herself to deliver Lisa's message (thereby, in effect, setting off the entire plot) takes the film only to its halfway point - after which the complications keep piling up but without any foundation : stuff like the series of coincidences that have Max constantly missing Lisa by a split second seem hollow and tacked-on, not connected to anything - which wouldn't be a problem ordinarily but in a film like this (which makes a point of connecting everything) seems like a cheat, a superfluous piece to the puzzle. It's almost brilliant, but in the end it's a case of less-than-meets-the- eye : it's like a semiotician uncovering endless layers and symbols in a simple text - all very interesting, till you suddenly realise that the text has disappeared.