Director: Sébastien Marnier
Starring: Laure Calamy, Jacques Weber, Dominique Blanc and Suzanne Clement
Distributor: Potential Films
Runtime: 123 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2023
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Strong violence

In this subtitled French-Canadian thriller, a cannery worker steps forward to say that that she is the biological daughter of a wealthy businessman, and his family does not accept her claim.

Nathalie Cordier (Calamy), a working class woman, is penniless and her lesbian girlfriend, Stéphane (Clement) is in jail. Just out of prison herself, Nathalie is desperate. She has been evicted from her rented room by her landlady, and it looks as if her girlfriend won’t receive a visit from her. Natalie decides to make contact with a capitalist billionaire, Serge Dumontet (Weber), whom she thinks could be her biological father.

Nathalie has never met Serge, and she becomes part of his world of deception. Serge lives in a luxurious mansion in the south of France, where nothing is as it seems, and if he dies, there is an enormous inheritance that someone in the family will receive. It is obscure, however, who exactly is the chosen one if he passes away. Everyone is angling for Serge’s inheritance, and everyone is suspicious of everyone else. But Serge has to die first. Stéphane finds she is part of a ruthless family empire, and she shares her past with everyone in the family under intense scrutiny.

As a new heir, Natalie’s appearance increases family tensions, and she is not popular. Jealousy erupts and she is instructed to leave. The plot thickens, when the film challenges the viewer to decide whether Serge is the probable victim of a plot, or maybe he, or someone else, knows how best to use a rediscovered daughter’s identity to advantage. The plot’s complexity and the tension it creates reminds one of the work of directors such as Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock.

Serge is a tyrant, and Dominique Blanc plays his scheming wife, Louise, who is constantly on the lookout to catch whichever favourable winds might blow her way. This is a crime thriller that arranges for the viewer to experience multiple jolts and sudden surprises (with music to match). The film voyeuristically solicits intrigue whenever Marnier sees fit to do so.

The film has multiple conflicting themes, and engages ingeniously in contrasting narratives. It is a decadent murder thriller that just manages to pull the viewer back from scenes of extreme subversiveness that might have put it into the horror genre. It works best as a dark satirical parable of modern life and contemporary amorality. Plot surprise and character-dysfunctionality are key features of the movie, especially when both are associated with human greed and deceit.