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Passage à l'acte
1996 Thriller
Review
Francis Girod directed this unusually cerebral thriller, a creepily dark film which explores
the shortcomings and potential dangers of psychoanalysis. There’s a splendidly
introspective performance from Daniel Auteuil, but the film really belongs to his lesser
known co-star, Patrick Timsit, who is appropriately chilling as the central villain of
the piece. Whilst the film manages to hold the spectator’s interest, the complexity
of the narrative is a bit of a turn off, as is the fact that the plot becomes increasingly
implausible as things progress. The film may have worked better as a black comedy,
along the lines of Grirod’s better known work
Le Trio infernal (1974). As a straight
thriller, Passage à l’acte is not a bad
example of its genre, but the direction feels heavy-handed in places and, on reflection,
the story is more than a little contrived.
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Director:
Francis Girod
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Patrick Timsit, Anne Parillaud, Michèle Laroque, Marianne Denicourt Synopsis
To clear his mounting debts, psychiatrist Antoine Rivière has to juggle his career
as a writer with the need to take on as many patients as he can. His latest subject,
Edouard Berg, proves to be more of a mystery than most. When Berg confesses to having
murdered his wife, Antoine is at first dismissive, but then changes his mind when his
ex-wife is threatened by a stranger. Certain that Berg is playing a dangerous game with
him, Antoine starts to pick up the threads that will lead him to the truth…
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