Sitges 2009: NE TE RETOURNE PAS (DON'T LOOK BACK) Review
Jeanne's reality is bending. The successful journalistic author is loosing her hold on reality - her family becoming literally unrecognizable, her belongings changing and moving without being touched and without any recognition of the changes from anyone else, even her own face is shifting in the mirror. Is Jeanne going mad or is something else at play here, something connected to the strange girl only she seems to see and the book she is trying to write about the lost years of her childhood - the years before she turned eight, of which she can remember nothing? This is the world of Marina De Van's Ne Te Retourne Pas.
Sophie Marceau is Jeanne. Monica Bellucci is also Jeanne. But how can this be possible? And who are this new people who keep replacing her mother and husband and child at odd intervals with nobody else noticing? What is happening here? This is the central conceit and device of the film - one that can't really be talked about at length without diving into spoilers - and one that works remarkably well for the first two thirds of the film. Sadly the ending is plagued with both some very poor effects work and an unsatisfyingly soft resolution that render this one significantly less than it could have been.
Well shot and very well performed by it's sterling cast - Marceau and Bellucci are entirely convincing as the same character, which is no easy feat - Ne Te Retourne Pas plays like nothing so much as a genre film intended for people who don't like genre films. It dabbles in the same pool here where directors like David Lynch have been known to dive right in and, as a result, is less than satisfying for people who actually Do like genre films. The concept of perception versus reality and how that affects identity is a potent one - one that has been tackled with varying degrees of success a number of times before - and with writer-director De Van the concept receives a largely surface treatment. Pretty, well done as far as it goes, but ultimately just an appetizer dressed up as a full meal.
