I saw this film under a retitle - _The Deception_ - and I caught it on an old (now defunct) satellite channel, The Caribbean SuperStation, which showed lots of obscure movies. This film is about a novelist who's out looking at real estate and finds a huge, decaying old mansion in the woods. A somewhat-demented girl named Arianne gives him a tour of the place, but halfway through she runs away and hides from him. He decides that the situation has potential for a novel, so he goes back to the house. This time there's a maid, and a different girl named Agathe, who says no one named Arianne lives there. So, she shows him the house, and some things in it have changed. He thinks they're trying to trick him, so he comes back later and Arianne is there again, acting even crazier, showing him pictures on the walls which aren't there. Then she seduces him. The maid tells him that there are two girls, and he figures out they were playing a game to try to get him interested enough to buy the house, using Arianne as a "phantom." Even though he knows it's a trick, he buys the house anyway, thinking he can have both girls with it. But they have plans for him, too... Very odd, artsy, rather creepy film, half in English, half in subtitled French, and contains some nudity. Bizarre and very obscure.
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zwolf22 March 2000
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mark.waltz17 October 2022With the narration in English and the dialogue between characters in French (and no English subtitles at all), this becomes very frustrating to try to get into even though it is not a very long film. The film is quite good looking and from what I could gather, the plotline involving a country estate discovered by novelist Corin Redgrave) and the three women involved in his life (Bulle Ogier, Leslie Caron, Marie Frances Pisier) filled with potential for a great gothic melodrama. But it becomes very frustrating to wait for the English narration to return, trying to decipher everything going on while the characters speak French, and this element makes the film purposely seem pretentious and ostentatious. After a while, most non-French speaking audiences will just give up.
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This is a pretty, stylish, spooky, sexy film from France which is the serious version of Jacques Rivette's "Celine and Julie Go Boating" Without those two whimsical psychic sleuths, the mysterious hauntings proceed unhampered by the silly intrusion of physical comedy. Surprisingly, Marie France Pisier and Bulle Ogier- reprising their roles as slinky shades from that previous film, get through this repetition in just under 90 minutes! Corin Redgrave is excellent in this film (and very handsome!) Production quality is high Euro art film style. Especially recommended to fans of Rivette's film and the lovely Bulle Ogier!