GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
Reptileenbu
Did you people see the same film I saw?
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
holgatefamily
From the first few minutes, I kept turning to my wife and saying, "This whole thing is totally ludicrous. Even for the French." A woman goes to a tax expert, thinking he's her psychiatrist? Twice? And he sits there with this Gene Wilder-like look of paralyzed bafflement the whole time? C'mon. And as they continue to meet, he continues to sit there goggle-eyed and her story gets sillier and sillier. I mean, really. The tons of Hitchcock references are less homage, I think, than a wink-wink, nudge-nudge. At times the humor really breaks out and this rather tedious movie becomes more fun, but they either can't figure out how to sustain it, or the director thought it was funnier than it was, or he just can't make up his mind what he's trying to do. The biggest wink occurs late in the movie when the tax analyst is sitting at home watching what appears to be a Bogart film noir. Well, that's not Bogart's voice, and the dialogue is taken directly from a Woody Allen New Yorker piece, a send-up of Bogart films called "Mr. Big." The Allen piece is very funny -- and I think that's what they wanted this to be.
Henry Fields
A guy with a rather mediocre life opens the door of his office and finds there a woman who mistakes him for a shrink. He has no time to react so he let the woman tell him about her troubles. Anyway they'll find in each other kind of a exhaust valve for their lives.The story in Lceonte's movie gives raise to several reflections: sometimes is easier to tell your deepest secrets to an unknown. There are not misunderstandings, there are not prejudices, there are not emotional walls to overcome. "Confidences" also states that the power of a psychoanalyst is quite debatable.As for the cast, the actors are just nice. Sandrine Bonnaire looks as mysterious as always.*My rate: 7.5/10
Framescourer
There is no coincidence that this film's original score (Pascal Estève) sounds like Bernard Hermann's for Hitchcock's Vertigo. The film is one of mistaken or concealed identities, delusion and obfuscation. It also investigates the equivocal nature of the art/science of professional psychiatry. Above all it's an unnatural story about love.Fabrice Luchini plays his tax consultant mistaken for a shrink as a retentive, inscrutable but humane geek. The effect of Sandrine Bonnaire's neurotic but strident and alluring 'client' engaging him in (initially erroneous) therapeutic conversation is difficult to judge. The only clues offered are in the elliptical relationships he has with other people, such as his former lover (an excellent, cool Anne Brochet) or the real therapist (Michel Duchaussoy, a French Brian Cox).Director Leconte is well-versed in concealing or creating twists and turns in his plots; L'Homme du Train is a good example. The wonder of this quiet but emotionally taught essay in love and understanding is whether the story reveals itself in the experience of watching rather than in its outcome. Evocative, touching but disorientating: and watch a good way through the credits if you don't know quite what I mean by that. 6/10
MagicStarfire
**WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS** 4 stars out of 10.That is, this review would contain spoilers if the film had any plot, and if anything had ever happened in the film.This French film intriguingly teases us, but it never really comes to anything.It begins with an interesting premise, a somewhat attractive woman has an appointment with a psychiatrist, but she mistakenly goes to the office door of a tax attorney who is in the same building.Once there, she begins to tell him of her marital woes, and at first he doesn't realize the mistake she has made, since he frequently hears personal tales from his clients that are similar to hers.Eventually the truth comes out, but she continues to come and see him, and they continue to talk, again and again and again and again.Then finally, when we are at least halfway into the film, her husband, Marc, shows up at the attorney's office. This confrontation doesn't come to anything and neither does the one or two others that occur between the tax attorney and the husband.Apparently, a deeply troubled person can confide to a tax attorney and get just as much help as they would if they went to a qualified psychologist, at least if we are to judge from this film.Finally we learn that the somewhat prim and proper tax attorney is in love with Anna, but again it comes to nothing. He never tells her he is in love with her, and no intimacy or anything even remotely romantic or sexual ever occurs between the two of them.They break off their "therapy-type" sessions for awhile, but by the end of the film they have resumed them.
