Simply A Masterpiece

Don't Believe the Hype

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I found this film by accident and watched it.Its pretty good in a adult "French "film sort of way and not really a fetish film in the sense we usually use.My take is a very adult continental view of wacky humans trying to get through the day and those who "help"those who need it,really need as much help from THEM as well. The psycologist didn't kill her,her husband did ( or did he ??) but he is as messed up as she was and the film takes on a sort of "Rashomon"quality,which was reviewed on this bog, with the murder being the center and far more graphic than the scenes in Rashomon were. Mind you thats a simplistic view by me to try to explain it as I have never seen so intriguing a film before and again it illustrates just how "provincial"we can be in the states. Extreme adult content which limits the audience and it does drag a bit explaining things.

Michel Durand (Jean-Hugues Anglade) is the psychoanalyst of Olga Kubler (Hélène de Fougerolles), a kleptomaniac and masochistic beautiful woman married with the brutal Max Kubler (Yves Rénier). Michel has a great attraction for Olga, desiring her as a woman. One afternoon, Michel falls asleep during her session and when he wakes up, he finds Olga strangled on his divan. Then he is informed by Max that Olga stole seven million francs from him. Max believes Michel knows where the money is and demands the devolution until the next day. The story has many plot points along approximately 2 hours. This movie is a very weird French dark comedy. The plot is unusual, very strange and irregular, alternating boring and interesting parts and even the genres of black comedy and thriller. The premise is good, but in some parts it does not work well in spite of a great cast. The beauty of the nudity of Valentina Sauca is amazing. Her beautiful body is perfect and looks like a statue. However, this film is only a reasonable entertainment recommended for a very specific audience. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): `Um Enigma No Divã' (`An Enigma on the Divan')

The premise is good, but the movie isn't. It's excessively talky and fatally overlong. For Christ's sake, man, this thing goes on for what seems like four centuries and never really gets anywhere. The segment about the dead body that has to be removed takes up most of the movie, and it's tiresome (many movies have done this sort of thing better), though it does give Beineix the opportunity to stage some nice Hitchcockian scenes (like one involving a blind man in an elevator). Overall, if you're looking for a good contemporary French thriller, stick with "With A Friend Like Harry". (**)

Jean-Jacques Beineix's new film MORTAL TRANSFER is about the misadventures of Freudian psychoanalyst Michel Durand (Jean-Hugues Anglade), who discovers his beautiful female client strangled on his analyst's couch. Instead of going to the police, he just tries to get rid of the body, leading to a nightmarish and at times phantasmagoric odyssey through a nighttime Paris populated by assorted oddballs. The script is by Beineix and Jean-Pierre Gattegno, from Gattegno's novel of the same name. Anglade provides a great mix of vulnerability and determination as the occasionally hapless shrink. "He's wonderful, he's not afraid of anything," commented Beineix at the film's world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.Beineix visited Moscow in 2001 to present the film at French Film Week. In an interview with Russian entertainment website Weekend.ru, Beineix provided the key to understanding his film: "What do we do in the process of psychoanalytic therapy? We try to get rid of the body of our childhood. What do killers do in detective movies? They try to get rid of the body. I just combined these two stories. My film is from the point of view of the psychoanalyst and the patient at the same time. Gattegno and I both underwent psychotherapy. We were amused by the possibility of transferring to acting, to comedy, those feelings we'd had on the analyst's couch. Not one session of psychoanalysis ends without the unconscious examination of the patient's attitude toward death." Due to its increased complexity, the film is just slightly more challenging to appreciate than Beineix's other work, such as DIVA and BETTY BLUE. Nevertheless, it is just as exquisitely crafted, and is markedly more humorous, albeit in twisted ways. Beineix has a flair for the unexpected - this is a heady mix of genres: a stylish black comedy and a tense thriller at the same time, told with warm colors, broad strokes and an element of the perverse.