Intimate Strangers

Patrice Leconte (Man On a Train; Widow of St. Pierre; Girl on the Bridge; Hairdresser’s Husband) is the quintessential modern French filmmaker: All of his stuff is good; none of it is great. Why the French can’t rise to the levels set by Jean Renoir is beyond me … perhaps it’s just Gallic good manners: They don’t want to show up all the crappy English and American filmmakers. In any event, Intimate Strangers is not Leconte’s best film. It’s maybe his worst, actually. It’s still mildly entertaining, but the simple story, about a woman who mistakes a tax attorney for a psychiatrist and winds up telling him about her twisted love life, is a little too Three’s Company, even if it does resolve quickly. There are a few laughs, and the camera work is intimate and strange and almost worth watching in itself. The script, though, lets the camera down, and as it lingers on hands or handbags or the cracks in doors, it seems like it’s expressing its boredom with the story. There’s a nice turn by Fabrice Luchini in the lead, but it’s not enough to save this film from its trop intime ennui.