François Ozon’s last film was the World War One drama Frantz. It was a sombre, restrained work (shot in black and white, or shades of graveyard grey) that I admired a great deal. I like his new film L’Amant Double too, but whereas Frantz maintained a decorous poise, this latest is unruly and lurid, an exhilarating splurge of bad taste after a bout of scrupulously maintained good behaviour.
Returning to his roots in cut-glass camp and twisty psychodrama, Ozon begins with a moment of provocation: an anatomically explicit close-up (which, in a stunning transition, dissolves into a weeping eye). Both body parts belong to Chloé, a 25-year-old former model complaining to her doctor of chronic stomach pains. Having examined Chloé, her doctor declares her physically fit, and recommends a therapist to treat her ailment.
So, Chloé (Marine Vacth) meets Paul (Jérémie Renier), a young shrink with a serious-minded expression under neatly parted blond hair. Apropos of her tummy ache, he informs her that “the stomach is a second brain”, a pronouncement that has a certain folksy wisdom to it but did make me doubt his medical qualifications.
Nonetheless Chloé’s depressive state lifts, so Paul must be doing something right. Well, indeed: turns out the two have, over the course of a number of sessions, fallen for one another. Claiming to be cured, Chloé dispenses with Paul’s therapeutic services, and engages him as her lover, moving into his flat with her cat Milo. But Milo – in a performance of feline subtlety – remains unconvinced about Paul.
L’Amant Double is outwardly a model of arthouse refinement, but it lurches from one improbable set-up to another like a potboiler written to a midnight deadline
Perhaps Chloé does too, or at least her suspicions are triggered when she sees Paul with another woman on her way to work. Paul denies it, and after some rudimentary detective work, Chloé realises she has mistaken Paul’s identical twin brother Louis (also played by Renier) for her doting and uxorious boyfriend.
