As loner Anna, a surgeon, she is put through the physical and emotional mill by Jann (Pio Marmaï), a younger man who abducts her from outside her apartment building and imprisons her in a dingy cell-like basement room. Initially, we don’t know why, except that he says he wants to destroy her life as she has ruined his.
The setting is claustrophic, as is the casting – it’s basically a two-hander. And as the relationship between the two develops, it becomes increasingly violent. The action is non-linear, starting with an unknown woman – Anna – escaping from her prison and running frantically through the empty early-morning streets of Paris, so the narrative unravels in flashbacks as she resumes her life. This takes away any suspense as to whether she survives her experience, presumably to focus on its aftermath – Stockholm Syndrome.
Free again physically but not mentally, Anna traces and pursues Yann until he reciprocates. The two now seem destructively bound together sexually by their former hostage/hostage-taker relationship.
Intense, worth seeing for the superb acting from both the leads, this taut and short film deals with the nature victimhood, violence and sexuality. The early scenes are gripping, a great showcase for the actors, but eventually the film says nothing particularly psychologically profound and ends suddenly without a meaningful resolution. Director and screenwriter Lola Doillon has shot a film that might have worked better and with greater depth as a stage play.
