La Tourneuse de pages (2006)
Directed by Denis Dercourt

Film Review

There's an unmistakable Hitchcockian feel to this sophisticated French thriller, the slick photography and editing creating a palpable aura of confinement that intensifies as the drama builds to its gripping climax. Beneath the controlled semblance of bourgeois normality there lurk some very dark and deadly passions - French film aficionados can hardly fail to notice the similarities with some of the thrillers of director Claude Chabrol.

For fourth-time director Denis Dercourt La Tourneuse de pages is a significant departure from his previous films, realist slice-of-life dramas that include Les Cachetonneurs (1998) and Lise et André (2000). Dercourt's latest film takes us into somewhat darker territory, and from its opening shots of bloody animal carcasses in a butcher's shop, you could easily be wrong-footed into thinking that what he has in store for us is the most gruesome of psycho-thrillers. For the first half at least, the film certainly lives up to this impression, the glacial mise-en-scène helping to subdue the deadly passions lying just beneath the surface. What cruel fate lies in store for Catherine Frot as Déborah François weaves her web of deceit, clearly with sly murderous intent?

To fully appreciate this film it is best to walk out of the cinema fifteen minutes before the credits roll and make up your own ending. The resolution that Dercourt and his co-writer Jacques Sotty come up with is unbelievably poor and doesn't even come close to delivering the expected pay off. (Imagine if the grand guignol ending of Chabrol's La Cérémonie was removed and replaced with a scene in which all the protagonists sat around the dining room table and politely exchanged public school insults - this is pretty well what Dercourt does to his film.) The ending to La Tourneuse de pages isn't just lightweight, it's offensively banal, and coming after such an impressive build-up you end up feeling like the victim of some amazing con trick. Thankfully, Dercourt would redeem himself with his next film, the enjoyably off-kilter Demain dès l'aube (2009).

Film Synopsis

As a child, Mélanie, a shopkeeper's daughter in a small provincial town, shows great promise as a piano player.  But when she fails in the competition to enter the conservatory, disillusionment quickly sets in and she gives up the piano.  Ten years later, Mélanie is a trainee in a prestigious law firm.  Her boss, Jean Fouchécourt, takes a liking to her and hires her as a nanny for his infant son.  Mélanie is surprised to learn that Fouchécourt's wife, Ariane, is a renowned pianist, the very woman who caused her to fail her conservatory exam, many years ago.  Making a show of her love of music, Mélanie befriends Ariane and becomes her page turner, keeping to herself her real motive: revenge...