Friday 13 October 2017

Amant Double - BFI London Film Festival


I've been an admirer of director François Ozon's work for sometime so whenever I see that he has a new film out or (even better) at the festival, I immediately go to the cinema. Amant Double, like Ozon's previous films explores sexuality, trust, mystery, melodrama and something new, cannibal twins, which isn't what it sounds like.

Chloé has been having stomach pains, for a reallly long time and she doesn't know why. She thinks its connected with her extranged mother or to do with her issues sleeping. She tells this all to her psychoanalyst, Paul, whom she falls in love with. Eventually starts to feel normal again and she stops being his patient. When the two move in together, strange things start to occur. First Chloé finds Paul's passport with another name, then she sees a man that looks exactly like Paul on the street. He insists he has no brother but Chloé investigates further, meeting Louis, also a psychoanalyst and Paul's twin brother. As she has an affair with Louis, trying to keep the secret from Paul, she delves deeper into the twins' history, pushing her over the edge.


Falling into the erotic thriller zone, the fascination with twins is the main focus point of the film. In love with one and sexually obsessed with the other, Chloé can't stop seeing both. At first its just a curiosity about her boyfriend and trying to find out what secrets he's hiding, but with the affair, it turns into a morbid fantasy where she is excited by being with both twins. There is also rather a large hint at the possibility that Chloé herself is harbouring a secret sister, which may be the reason for her stomach pains. The term cannibal twin is brought up, describing how twins are made and the dominant twin literally devouring the other within the womb. A disturbing image and an even more uncomfortable feeling.

The film ramps up its melodramatic moments and loses the smooth edges of a thriller as the story progresses and as Chloé decends further into her own madness. The musuem where she works part time clevery mirrors her distorted mindset with its sometimes grotesque 'art' exhibitions and somewhat illustrates better what stage the film is at than the characters do. It follows a similar pattern to Ozon's dramatic genre with a thriller like twist but Amant Double loses pace as the story continues.