Dir:
Denis Dercourt, 2006, France, 85 mins, subtitles
Cast: Catherine Frot, Déborah François,
Pascal Greggory, Clotilde Mollet, Xavier De Guillebon,
Christine Citti, Jacques Bonnaffé
Review by Martyn Bamber
Melanie (Julie Richalet)
is a gifted child pianist who is going to take an entrance
exam to attend a conservatoire. However, on the day when
Melanie’s piano
playing skills are tested, one of the women on the jury,
famous pianist Ariane Fouchécourt (Frot), chooses
to sign an autograph instead of focusing on Melanie’s
performance. Seeing Ariane do this, Melanie is distracted,
plays poorly and realises that she has messed up her exam.
That day, Melanie seems to change from a happy child to a
brooding girl, and she stops playing the piano.
Ten years later, the grown up Melanie
(François)
takes a job at a law firm where Mr Fouchécourt (Greggory)
works, and she proves to be a courteous and conscientious
employee. When Melanie hears that Mr Fouchécourt’s
young son, Tristan (Antoine Martynciow) needs looking after
at home, she volunteers for the job and is hired by Mr Fouchécourt.
Melanie is then told that Ariane (who doesn’t realise
that Melanie is the same girl that she distracted at the
exam ten years earlier) has been unsettled ever since she
had a car accident, and that she could also benefit from
Melanie’s presence. Melanie is soon helping Ariane
around the house, eventually becoming Ariane’s music
page turner at the piano. But as Ariane grows increasingly
reliant on Melanie, the page turner secretly hatches a plan
to exact her revenge.
As well as being a story of vengeance
(with Melanie using her position of trust to subtly destabilise
Ariane’s
comfortable life), The Page Turner is also a love story of
sorts. Melanie may hold a grudge against Ariane, but she
is also fascinated with the older woman and exploits the
lesbianism that Ariane hides from her family. There’s
also a suggestion that Melanie envies Ariane’s wealth
and status. Melanie comes from a working class background,
with her mother and father (Citti, Bonnaffé) working
as butchers, and so Melanie may feel that Ariane has cheated
her out of an opportunity to improve her standing.
Initially, Ariane seems like a frosty,
egotistical woman when she is seen at the exam, but when
Melanie meets her again years later, we discover that Ariane
suffers from stage fright, and is an insecure, somewhat
unsatisfied woman. As Ariane, Catherine Frot makes us sympathise
with a woman who could have just been portrayed as an ogre.
And François,
in only her second feature film (her debut being L’Enfant
(2005), directed by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne) portrays
Melanie as a cold-hearted, blank faced avenger, which is
similar to Isabelle Huppert’s disturbed music tutor
in The Piano Teacher (2001), another film that focused on
a pianist and one of her students.
Denis Dercourt’s film is reminiscent of the films
of Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol. There are references
(intentional or not) to a number of Hitchcock films, all
delivered in an understated style of – and with story
and thematic similarities to – Chabrol’s thrillers.
There’s the young, good-looking blonde woman (familiar
from numerous Hitchcock films), a new office employee who
seems like a hard worker, but who is in fact plotting to
gain her employers trust for nefarious purposes (Marnie,
1964), and even a ‘trying on clothes’ shopping
scene (Vertigo, 1958), which also includes a voyeuristic
peek through the changing room curtains that echoes a moment
in Brian De Palma’s Hitchcockian thriller Body Double,
1984).
Mirroring the low-key performances,
Dercourt opts for a restrained camera style that reinforces
the relationship between certain characters. For instance,
Melanie and Ariane are often seen in the same frame, even
if they’re not
talking to each other: sometimes it’s Melanie in close
up and Ariane (out of focus, but still identifiable) in the
background, or vice versa. Avoiding melodrama and histrionics,
Dercourt instead opts for an understated tone, and builds
a creeping sense of menace as Melanie puts her disturbing
plan into action.
Although there have been a number
of thrillers where a wronged person takes revenge on an
apparently secure family (and exploits certain weaknesses
in the family to undermine their sense of security), Dercourt
seems less interested in plot twists and more concerned
with how a seemingly minor event can drastically change
the course of a person’s life.
The film ultimately seems to show how two women who seem
talented and content have not got everything out of life
that they wanted, and consequently lead disappointed and
unfulfilled lives. With a brief running time of 85 minutes,
The Page Turner is a lean thriller that doesn’t waste
a moment, and is itself a gripping page turner.
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