DRAMA; 1hr 44min (French with subtitles)
STARRING: Léa Drucker, Olivier Rabourdin, Samuel Kircher
Entrapment: from left, Drucker, Kircher and Rabourdin
Film-maker Catherine Breillat (Romance) edges smoothly into her impactful reworking of the 2019 Danish May–December drama Queen of Hearts, about a married lawyer’s affair with her teenage stepson. Thirty-four-year-old Parisian Anne (Drucker) has proficiency down pat in her law practice and her home. She and her businessman husband Pierre (Rabourdin) share the accommodating understanding of a couple who have eased into each other. But when pretty, resentful Théo (Kircher) arrives, the tranquil atmosphere of the household that Anne and Pierre share with their two adopted little twin girls grows heavy with tension.
Théo is a hostile nightmare with behavioural issues and zero interest in interment with his tedious rellies. Bit by bit, though, a spark begins to flicker between the flirty, feline boy and his cosmopolitan stepmother, a woman for whom the release of control, no matter how fleeting is a transformative relief.
At 76, Breillat is still sensually attuned, her intimate gaze as lacerating as a scalpel. The heat generated by Anne and Théo is a blast that cannot end well. It seems at first that Anne, undone by the urgency of desire, stands to lose everything she holds dear — but the balance of power between the lovers is nowhere near black-and-white. Théo may boast with the clueless arrogance of a 17-year-old — “Feelings are not my thing” — but when the chips are down it is Anne, with her chilly blonde beauty and reflexive poise, who will be calling the crucifying shots. The selfishness of her actions and the coldness with which she deals with them are Narcissism 101, pervasive in their consequences, repellently compellingband delivered by Drucker with ice-pick aplomb. If Théo is a loaded gun, Anne is the enabler with her finger on the trigger.
