The luminous Juliette Binoche once again graces our screens in Saffy Nebou’s film adaptation of a novel by Camille Laurens.
Claire is a 50 year-old woman, divorced and sharing custody of her two teenage sons. Struggling with accepting herself as an “older woman”, she creates a social media profile as a 24 year-old, Clara, and contacts Alex (Francois Civil), a young photographer. The contact quickly grows into an online romance.
Full of psychological twists, Nebou’s screenplay works the action around Claire’s sessions with her psychiatrist, Catherine, played with understated depth by the wonderful Nicole Garcia. Each meeting with Catherine, as she teases out Claire’s motivations, presents another thin layer of understanding to the audience.
We are drawn into Claire’s deception, but also into her pain.
Beautifully shot by Gilles Porte, the brutally breathtaking cityscapes express the interior-exterior dichotomy in Claire’s psyche. No scene is extraneous: every beat hits where it should. Tension is maintained through the slow unraveling of Claire.
Nebou’s work, with Binoche at its heart, is completely French, and utterly universal.
Who You Think I Am opens this Thursday, August 1st.
Twisty, sexy and psychologically satisfying 4 stars
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