Before the Winter Chill (2013, Daniel Auteuil, Kristin Scott Thomas) – Movie Review

Daniel Auteuil stars as an older, workaholic French neurosurgeon called Paul, who starts behaving so strangely that his lovely stay-at-home wife Lucie (Kristin Scott Thomas) jumps to the conclusion that he is having an affair.

Actually Paul has innocently met the unstable Lou (Leïla Bekhti), a young bartender he had treated when she was a young child and shows an obsessive interest in him, popping up everywhere he goes. Initially rejecting her, Paul becomes a bit obsessed too.

Lucie has another couple of problems – her sister Mathilde (Laure Killing) is going round the bend and Gerard (Richard Berry) Paul’s business partner in his private practice, is getting way too close. It isn’t long before all the characters in film are having little breakdowns.

Inhabiting their roles perfectly and completely, Auteil and Scott Thomas submerge themselves into it and are great. And Bekhti, Berry and Killing give idea support performances.

Philippe Claudel (maker of I’ve Loved You So Long) writes winningly and directs intensely, propelling it along emotionally, involving you and make you care about these damaged individuals in their late-middle age crisis. It’s not really thriller, though it is complex, dark and mysterious. If it has a smouldering noirish thriller feel to it, that’s only to the good. It keeps you on your toes and involved. This is a lovely film.

Claudel provides a lot of detail that makes these lives spring to vivid life. It’s all in the detail. The story’s strange but not far fetched at all, completely credible with the characters acting entirely credibly. The lives of Paul and Lucie are immensely beguiling, with their to-die-for home and garden, which is somehow transformed into a symbol of their malaise. The perfect home as a prison. Life as a prison? That’s truly scary!

It’s so brilliant how Kristin Scott Thomas works in French. Her language skills should be the envy of all English people. She seems an even better actress in French than in English. At any rate, she’s heading for national treasure status.

The original French title is Avant l’enver.

(C) Derek Winnert 2014

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more film reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/