Samenvattingen(1)
Vrouwenverslinder Mark werkt als literatuurprofessor bij de Universiteit van Lausanne. Hij verdeelt zijn tijd tussen collegezalen vol gewillige studentes, de rustieke berghut waar hij met zijn dominante, excentrieke zuster woont en zijn vele amoureuze avonturen. Als op een dag een aantrekkelijke studente spoorloos verdwijnt, beginnen zijn problemen. De stiefmoeder van het meisje komt naar de campus om de verdwijning te onderzoeken. Het net sluit zich steeds nauwer om de professor. (Filmfreak Distributie)
(meer)Recensie (3)
I can't count on the fingers of one hand how many times my eyebrows flew up at the scenes, where the stylization gets out of hand for the screenwriters and the director. The somewhat fluctuating tone and unintentional slipping into slightly bizarre exploitation feels like Norwegian Headhunters, but a heavy emphasis on literary language (and classical metaphors) rather feels like pre-war cinematography. But it's the sterile and icy calm visual and a captivatingly flat accompaniment by Caravaggio that anchors it solidly. Amalric is mostly successful with his derailed protagonist, but the other characters are more on the edge of figures, but with regard to the relatively mechanical storytelling principle (McGuffin, noir femme fatale), it doesn't matter much. I could find a hundred things to make fun of, but the truth is that it grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. I even liked the salon rhetoric, because it fits the stylized images of snow-capped mountains, chasms and a glass academic dissection room. A romantic thriller for lightly deranged bookworms.
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An exemplarily inept translation of the book in the vein of "in the book the character thinks to the reader, so in the movie he will take a long look into the distance". The inability to move the plot along in half an hour doesn't suddenly make the film lyrical. Mountains or no, literature or no.
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Mathieu Amalric and his other great acting performances, unfortunately not crowned by the fact that the film is also great in terms of its plot. The plot good, but it's not outright outstanding. What is presented in the first half of the film is not backed up by a strong second half, as if the writers ran out of steam.
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