This characteristically elegant tale of intrigue from prolific French filmmaker Patrice Leconte (The Hairdresser’s Husband, Ridicule, The Girl On The Bridge) sees a nervy, mysterious woman (Bonnaire) stroll into the office of a lonely, uptight tax advisor William (Luchini) to impart all manner of kinky intimate details. Not your average day at the ledger then, and indeed, our low-key, bookkeeping protagonist is so embarrassed (and engrossed) that he doesn’t have the gumption to tell her that the psychiatrist’s office she seeks is down the hall. Of course, this is the kind of minor deception that quickly creates ripples, if not tidal waves, and in no time she’s showing up for weekly visits to chat about her husband’s erectile dysfunction, sexual peccadilloes of varying quality and feminine pleasure, while William’s pulling wild and crazy stunts like not wearing a tie (goodness, there’s mud in the eye for the bourgeoisie).
Immediately, you think this woman needs a psychiatrist less than she needs a job manning sex chat-lines, but is she what she seems? Long before things start to get curiouser and curiouser, and long before her menacing husband shows up, much of what she says screams ‘elaborate fantasist’. Besides, there’s something inherently dodgy about a French woman who works in a luxury bag store carrying her cigarettes in a tatty canvas bag.
The deceptively parsimonious presentation – something of an authorial trademark - with natural light, dreary wallpaper and claustrophobic setting belies the complex, Hitchcockian narrative that revisits many of Leconte’s primary preoccupations. Voyeurism, dogging and love’s saving power all feature in descending order of importance. Though more prurient viewers should be advised that there’s no actual sexually explicit action (tough luck, raincoats), the film certainly smoulders along nicely.
Less dour and unsettling than the director’s similarly themed debut Monsieur Hire, Intimate Strangers benefits greatly from the compelling complementary chemistry between the two leads. Bonnaire is suitably seductive as the unpredictable femme with ever-blonding hair and plunging necklines, while Luchini exudes a wonderful Gallic, Houllier-esque pathos.
But will they make it? Well, as a great man once said ‘Love is love. It shows up in strange displacements.’ Especially, it would seem, when you’re pulling a Stan Collymore.