With L’Amant Double (The Double Lover), François Ozon brings us an erotic thriller that is both old fashioned and modern; a familiar story told with brio and more than a hint of intentional silliness. It begins in a deceptively calm, measured way (after a remarkably bold opening shot) before descending down an increasingly hysterical rabbit hole of abstraction.
In the opening movement, we are introduced to Chloe (Marine Vacht, who starred in Ozon’s Young and Beautiful), a former model who is suffering from stomach pains which, she finds out, may well be psychosomatic. So she books herself in to see a psychiatrist, Paul (Ozon regular Jérémie Renier), with whom she develops a bond that quickly exceeds the boundaries of doctor-patient. Although the build up is measured, Ozon orchestrates these early scenes with prolific use of mirrors and camera angles designed to suggest that the characters may not be quite what they first appear. It’s not subtle, but conveys the required mood, and there is actually a tenderness, even an eroticism, in these early scenes that the latter movements of the film, though they are more graphic, can’t always recapture.
Chloe and Paul move in together, but things take an usual turn when Chloe stumbles upon Paul’s identical twin brother Louis, whose existence she wasn’t aware of, and who Paul rejects completely. Louis also happens to be a psychiatrist – just one with rather more forthright methods than those of his sibling – and Chloe finds herself analysed, indeed seduced, by both brothers. Cue a descent into an increasingly unhinged blend of fantasy and reality, the lines between which are often blurred.
Ozon is clearly having a lot of fun here, and L’Amant Double is not intended to be taken completely seriously; on that level, there is plenty to enjoy in its cine-literate depiction of a mind on the edge. The film’s pleasures are mostly one dimensional, and you could argue its depiction of a damaged, beautiful woman who becomes the simultaneous lover of two men is, at least on the surface, a little adolescent, but I felt the film was always on Chloe’s side, even if its examination of her issues and desires rarely threatened much insight.
If our emotional attachment to the characters wanes as the film progresses, Ozon ensures our attention is rarely less than grabbed, moving from moments of tensio n and abstraction to are-they-aren’t-they fantasy sequences; the camera even takes a trip inside Chloe’s body at a moment of climax. It may not be deep, but you won’t be bored.