In the heart of the French countryside, a young boy disappears without a trace. Six years later, he-or someone claiming to be him-reappears in a Paris police station, and is reunited with his family. Agnieszka Holland's film is, we are told, "inspired by true events," but "inspired" is pitching it a little strong. As with her last work, "Europa Europa," Holland has cooked up a great plot, then thrown it away. After a taut first half-hour the suspense slackens off; Holland loses her sense of timing, veering between the hasty and the sluggish. Whenever a good idea comes up, it gets overplayed: a startling flashback of the young Olivier on a garden swing, say, goes on twice too long. (Zbigniew Preisner's score is similarly puffed up, out of all proportion to the scale of events.) The movie flickers with creepy suggestions-a dash of incest, a smattering of occult powers-but they never cohere. It's up to Brigitte Roüan, playing the boy's mother, to hold it all together as best she can. It's an angry, immoderate performance-there's an echo of Susan Sarandon in both her looks and her manner-and one that lends drive to a carelessly told tale. The ending is plain silly; Roüan, for one, deserves better. In French -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
