Double Lover

Name: Double Lover
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Romance
Released: February 14, 2018
Duration: 107 min
Rating: 70
Cast: Antoine de La Morinerie, Dominique Reymond, Fanny Sage, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Édouard Bodziak

2018

METASCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews

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USER SCORE

Mixed or average reviews based on 21 Ratings

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6.0	User Score Mixed or average reviews based on 21 Ratings

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Double Lover

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Movie Details & Credits

Cohen Media Group | Release Date: February 14, 2018 | Not Rated

Starring: Antoine de La Morinerie, Dominique Reymond, Fanny Sage, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Édouard Bodziak, Jean-Paul Muel, Jérémie Renier, Keisley Gauthier, Marine Vacth, Myriam Boyer

Summary: Chloé (Marine Vacth), who works as a guard at a museum in Paris, seeks to shore up her resiliency and enters psychoanalysis. In Paul Meyer (Jérémie Renier), the sensitive patient finds a caring psychiatrist who helps her overcome bouts with depression. Following the end of the treatment, both realize that they have fallen in love. A newChloé (Marine Vacth), who works as a guard at a museum in Paris, seeks to shore up her resiliency and enters psychoanalysis. In Paul Meyer (Jérémie Renier), the sensitive patient finds a caring psychiatrist who helps her overcome bouts with depression. Following the end of the treatment, both realize that they have fallen in love. A new chapter begins for Chloé when she and Paul move in together, yet Chloé soon comes to believe that Paul is keeping a secret. She impulsively visits another psychiatrist, Louis Delord. Spiraling emotional and sexual stakes will push all three of them to extremes, forcing Chloé to take action in order to solve a mystery and save herself.… Expand

Director: François Ozon

Genre(s): Drama, Thriller, Romance

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 107 min

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Critic Reviews

Glenn Kenny

Feb 13, 2018

Double Lover, which Mr. Ozon “freely adapted” from the Joyce Carol Oates book “Lives of the Twins,” spins its influences into a frenzy that ultimately reveals the story to be very much its own thing. And a crazy, and eventually strangely moving, thing it is. As elaborate as its visuals are, the movie is also intimate. Read full review

Chris Nashawaty

Feb 14, 2018

The kind of deliriously trashy psychosexual thriller that only the French seem to be able to pull off with a straight face. It’s like "Dead Ringers" meets "Body Double" with a kinky, winking full-frontal Gallic twist. Read full review

Emily Yoshida

Feb 14, 2018

Ozon is doing sexual gymnastics all over his uncanny womb-based plot, and somehow it all coheres pretty seamlessly, even at its most ridiculous. Read full review

The Film Stage Rory O'Connor

May 27, 2017

It’s difficult to know just how serious this is all meant to be. Then again, camp only really works when the level of intention is difficult to decipher. Read full review

Michael Atkinson

Feb 14, 2018

It’s a buffet of psychosexual delicacies, borrowed and otherwise, all staged with hot-blooded, straight-faced vigor. Read full review

Greg Cwik

Feb 12, 2018

Though Double Lover has a slight oneiric quality from the start, it grows increasingly delirious, the plot threads knotting in convoluted patterns and the overall mood more and more ridiculous. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Odie Henderson

Feb 14, 2018

While Double Lover is as squeamish as most Cinemax-style wank material about a certain male organ, it’s more than charitable about its female counterpart. One can’t be faulted for expecting greatness from a film that opens with a close-up of a stretched out vagina morphing into an eye. Read full review

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User Reviews

GinaK

Feb 22, 2018

Double Lover is a beautifully acted and directed tale of twin brothers, who are psychoanalysts, and a female patient. I have seen almost all of Ozon’s films, and I found this film especially intriguing because of its connection to an early Joyce Carol Oates novel “Lives of the Twins” fromDouble Lover is a beautifully acted and directed tale of twin brothers, who are psychoanalysts, and a female patient. I have seen almost all of Ozon’s films, and I found this film especially intriguing because of its connection to an early Joyce Carol Oates novel “Lives of the Twins” from which it was “loosely adapted” according to the film’s credits. As Publishers Weekly said when reviewing the novel, “[Oates] writes this as deftly and disturbingly as any of her novels, but with perhaps a lighter, more whimsical touch.” This quote describes Double Lover and Ozon’s style in this film perfectly.… Expand

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justwibi

Oct 16, 2018

i'm not a big fans of erotica-thriller. but i've always liked Ozon's films..

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Bertaut1

Aug 3, 2018

Not nearly as smart as it thinks it is

From prolific French auteur François Ozon, L'amant double [Double Lover] is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). "FreelyNot nearly as smart as it thinks it is

From prolific French auteur François Ozon, L'amant double [Double Lover] is partly a study of sexual obsession, partly an oneiric mystery (think Neil Jordan's In Dreams), and partly a conventional thriller (more whoisit than whodunnit). "Freely adapted" from Joyce Carol Oates's 1987 novel Lives of the Twins (published under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith), and written by Ozon and Philippe Piazzo, the film tells the story of Chloé (Marine Vacth), a woman with a fragile mental state, who falls passionately in love with her psychoanalyst, Paul (Jérémie Renier). Within a few months, she has moved in, however, as time goes by, she slowly starts to learn of a significant part of his identity which he has been concealing.

Imagine, if you will, Vertigo (1958) remade by someone like Gaspar Noé or Lars von Trier, and you'd be some way towards getting a handle on Ozon's latest; completely barmy (you know you're in strange territory when the second shot of a movie is, quite literally, an internal shot of a vagina). As one would expect from Ozon, the aesthetics are solid - the film is built upon an inventive visual style employing juxtaposition, pseudo-split screen, and copious amounts of shots with one person in the frame proper, and the person to whom they're talking only visible in reflection. The sound effects are also excellent and really jolt you out of your seat on a couple of occasions. Similarly, the acting is strong, with both Vacth and Renier unrecognisable in their respective roles.

However, the melodramatic and self-congratulatory plot is an absolute mess. Many of Ozon's standard tropes are here; a dissection of the academic middle class/intelligentsia, an examination of the schism between appearance and reality, an attempt to elucidate the mind of a complex woman, a psychoanalytical bedrock, the mutability of identity etc. But it's all diffused through an utterly farcical narrative, which fails to get even the basics right. For example, sex is a central theme, but by the time we get to the fourth or fifth sex scene, it has completely lost its potency (compare, for example, the infinitely superior La vie d'Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2 (2013), where sexuality is just as central, but which features only two sex scenes). The same goes for the increasingly ridiculous plot twists, once you get to three or four and you're still in the first half of the movie, you just stop caring. Ozon has always been hit and miss, for every Sitcom (1998) and Swimming Pool (2003), there's an Angel (2007) and a Ricky (2009), and L'amant double is, in the end, a rather pointless film that seems to think it's saying something exceptionally profound about desire and identity. It isn't.… Expand

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KenR

Mar 22, 2020

Yet another shoddy French movie with perverse sex scenes strung together in the hope the audience won’t notice the lack of writing or so-called story. If the easily (or perversely) pleased can find anything to like or respect about this low trash, then they can also be regarded as in theYet another shoddy French movie with perverse sex scenes strung together in the hope the audience won’t notice the lack of writing or so-called story. If the easily (or perversely) pleased can find anything to like or respect about this low trash, then they can also be regarded as in the same class as this French dud. Another for SBS’ growing stockpile of smutty foreign movies to add to their junk heap - that only they could justify putting to air.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

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