This promising French thriller by director Dominik Moll (Intimacy) doesn’t quite deliver, but it has enough sense of foreboding evil that justifies us watching it, especially for the creepy and compelling performance by the always fantastic Charlotte Rampling (Swimming Pool). This mind-twisting thriller, somewhat inspired by David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock, is classy and assured, but some of its plot convolutions, and an unsatisfying ending, bog it down. That said, its first hour is pure gold.
Alain (Laurent Lucas, In My Skin) is a home automation engineer who seems to have the perfect life: He has just moved into a new city with beautiful wife Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jane Eyre), has a well-paying job and the respect of his boss, Richard (Andre Dussollier, A Very Long Engagement). In fact, Richard is so taken with Alain that he decides to invite himself and wife Alice (Rampling) to dinner at his employee’s house. But soon, the dinner turns into an awkward nightmare after Alice accuses Richard of cheating on her, and creates a ruckus. Following that, Alain finds a dead lemming (a rodent only found in the Arctic region) inside his kitchen pipe, before his life rapidly unravels further. Caught up with work at the office the next day, Alice advances to seduce Alain but to no avail. Alice later decides to kill herself in his home, and the film slowly ventures into the supernatural when her spirit takes over Benedicte’s body—or does it?
The film is definitely much more intriguing during its first half, when Moll’s assured direction keeps suggesting that something horrible will happen soon. But when something bad finally happens after the first hour, viewers are left to unravel the convoluted and somewhat implausible plot, like dream sequences by way of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (but less superior) and half-cooked ghost theories. What keeps the overly long movie interesting though, are the overall brilliant performances. Laurent Lucas is utterly believable as the man whose perfect life is slowly being stripped away, while Charlotte Gainsbourg is sweet yet confident. But it is Charlotte Rampling in one of her best performances yet—all icy demeanor and unexpected outbursts—that completely blows us away. Lemming is less than meets the eye, and is never quite as sharp as it should be. Still, don’t flush this one away just yet, as it can get irresistibly wicked when you least expect it.