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Title: Provocative French thriller
Review: Bernard Rapp's tight and unusual thriller is constructed in flashback, a la "Looking for Mr. Goodbar." A terrible crime has been committed and the events that led to it are slowly dissected. The plot unfolds as a disturbing and peculiarly Gallic version of the Pygmalion story, with Bernard Giraudeau and Jean-Pierre Lorit giving masterful performances as a rich businessman and ne'er-do-well waiter entwined in an increasingly perverse and strange relationship, though it is never clear whether the employer's attraction for his handsome employee is motivated by sexual desire or some darker attraction. It is to this film's credit that it achieves its unsettling effect on the viewer without resorting to graphic sex or violence, and no slander to say that memories of Hitchcock are evoked during its course, particularly "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train." Highly recommended.
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