L’amant double [Double Lover] ** (2017, Marine Vacth, Jérémie Renier, Jacqueline Bisset) – Movie Review

François Ozon’s L’amant double [Double Lover] ** (2017) is a stylish, bold, provocative and intriguing Dead Ringer-style erotic sex thriller, with two brave actors (Marine Vacth, Jérémie Renier) working desperately hard. But it is a long way from being my favourite Ozon film.

Despite all the outrageous things going on, it often seems boring and feels contrived, and it is not at all sexy, if that was what was intended. Vacth plays Chloé and Renier plays two characters simultaneously on screen, identical twins Paul and Louis.

The vulnerable 25-year-old Parisian woman Chloé falls in love with her charming psychoanalyst Paul and moves in with him, but…

The first half hour is the best – quite impressive, with Ozon on fine, imaginatively inspired form, and indeed the film’s whole first half is fine. But thereafter the movie goes downhill, becoming trashy and silly, defying the good efforts of the cast (including Jacqueline Bisset as Chloé’s mother Mme Schenker Myriam Boyer, Dominique Reymond and Fanny Sage). Still, Ozon keeps it all very sleek and polished.

The scenario is by François Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, freely adapted from the novel Lives of the Twins by Joyce Carol Oates.

L’amant double [Double Lover] is directed by François Ozon, runs 107 minutes, is made by Mandarin Films, FOZ, and Mars Films, is written by François Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, adapted from the novel Lives of the Twins by Joyce Carol Oates, is hot Manu Dacosse, is produced by Eric Altmayer and Nicolas Altmayer, and is scored by Philippe Rombi.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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