"Lovers" -- Movie Review

 

On the final weekend of Film At Lincoln Center’s French Film Festival, I streamed the thriller “Lovers” (AKA “Amants”). 

Synopsis

When a married woman runs into her ex-lover while on vacation, will she assist him in his plot to murder her husband so they can be together again?

Story

In Paris, Lisa and Simon (Stacy Martin and Simon) are inseparable lovers – almost.  Working as a drug dealer, Simon sometimes runs off at odd hours and for extended periods of time in order to make his latest sale among his upper-crust clientele.  As lonely as Lisa gets during these times, she is sure of one thing:  at some point, Simon will return to her.  One of Simon’s customers is a young man of wealthy parents; he summons Simon to his home to make a purchase.  Simon obliges, but things go wrong when his client dies of an overdose.  He warns Lisa that the police may be after them both – so he takes off, leaving Lisa to fend for herself. 

Time passes.  Although Lisa’s heart is still broken, she tries her best to put Simon out of her mind and move on with the rest of her life.  Eventually, she meets Leo (Benoît Magimel), a considerably older man, who shows interest in her.  He is quite different from Simon, not only in terms of age, but in life in general – he works in the insurance business and is an extremely successful executive.  Providing Lisa with some semblance of a normal life not to mention financial security, she marries him.  With travel being a significant part of his job, Leo brings Lisa on some of his longer trips – one of which is to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean.  Bad idea.

On this beautiful tropical tourist spot, Lisa has a chance run-in with Simon, who she hasn’t seen or heard from for three years.  He is now working here giving tours.  While Leo is busy working, she and Simon rekindle their love affair.  Ultimately, despite her strong attraction to Simon, she realizes her life is now with Leo, so she returns with him to their home in Geneva.  When the tourist season ends, Simon takes a leave of absence from his job and finds Lisa in Geneva.  Once again, they embark on their affair, but Simon doesn’t want to share her with Leo, so he plans to get him out of the way.  Will Lisa go along with this or will she warn her husband that he’s in danger?

Review

Although ostensibly a romantic drama, “Lovers” doesn’t really turn into a thriller until the third act, when the couple is in in their Geneva home.  Certainly, it suggests a mystery genre early on by the use of darkness and pale colors; at times, it truly seems like it is aspiring to be film noir, as many of the scenes appear to be almost completely drained of color.  So in some respects, viewers might find this reminiscent of such previous similarly-themed efforts such as “The Postman Always Rings Twice” or “Body Heat” (which may arguably have been better at the genre). 

Despite the fact that the film has some kind of a resolution in terms of the men competing for the same woman, the overall movie does not have the same feeling of a resolution.  This is because we are left asking many questions about Lisa.  In the post-screening interview (below), the interviewer seemed to have the same issue as she subtly suggested the director make a sequel so we know what happened to Lisa’s character after this harrowing event.  While not a great motion picture, it’s definitely a good one, but the final couple of scenes will leave you hanging, not fully providing sufficient closure.       

Following the screening, there was an interview with director Nicole Garcia and the star of “Lovers”, Stacy Martin.  Martin said that the central question for Lisa in this movie was how far are you willing to go for love?  Her character’s life was always defined by men in some form or fashion – whether it was her father or her romantic interests.  Garcia said of the character of Lisa that she is not a femme fatale – she doesn’t rule over others.  Instead, she’s dominated by other men.  Also, the film, as with many others, was shot out of sequence; the story structure is Paris – Mauritius – Geneva.  In reality, it was shot with the Geneva scenes first, followed by Paris with the Mauritius scenes last.