Lemming

What is it with Dominik Moll and his endings? He's one of those men that can get a good idea off the ground, but needs a 'completer' to finish it off − in this case his usual collaborator Gilles Marchand, who in our view also made such a bodge of the fifth act of Harry, He's Here to Help, a film which had also been remarkably tense and atmospheric prior to its resolution.

Moll apparently wanted to take his characters off to Scandinavia for a finale involving a mass migration of lemmings. Instead Marchand suggested what turns out to be a rather half-hearted ghost story, of the Asian alma en pena variety. Perhaps after all, a bit more ambiguity around the character of Bénédicte might actually have helped. We both thought this might have been a clear case of the missed twist. V says she probably would have wrapped up with one implying that Madame Getty had been faking it all along. (Gallic ambiguity is a dangerous game however; it didn't quite work for either Harry or for François Ozon's Swimming Pool.)

Laurent Lucas again asumes the lead role of Moll's everyman in a situation which can ultimately only be resolved by resorting to violence and subterfuge. Charlotte Rampling plays the embittered older spouse, looking already more like a visiting stiff in the scenes where she is ostensibly alive. This character epitomises a certain kind of stuck up middle-aged woman − we have one living in a flat below us, a doctor − that inherently despises young people, especially the younger, more sensual sort of woman.

As ever with French thrillers, the locations are nearly all fully-fledged characters in the story. Some of the scoring is a bit too boisterous however, and there are some very dicky special effects: the heli-webcam, the lemming-infested kitchen and a gas explosion that looks like a nuclear holocaust. The flying webcam got the biggest laugh out of me − lothario CEO Monsieur Pollock finds out that Alain has been using the company's prototype with voyeristic intent and remarks that he didn't think he could be so childish. What else could you use that thing for?!

The best that can be said about the last half hour is that it is Lynchian. The voice-over at the end which blithely assumes that our principal interest is the outcome of the lemming mystery is pretty un-called for.