La Tourneuse de pages (2006) - film review

As a child, Mélanie, a shopkeeper’s daughter in a small provincial town, shows great promise as a piano player.  But when she fails in the competition to enter the conservatory, disillusionment quickly sets in and she gives up the piano.  Ten years later, Mélanie is a trainee in a prestigious law firm.  Her boss, Jean Fouchécourt, takes a liking to her and hires her as a nanny for his infant son.  Mélanie is surprised to learn that Fouchécourt’s wife, Ariane, is a renowned pianist, the very woman who caused her to fail her conservatory exam, many years ago.  Making a show of her love of music, Mélanie befriends Ariane and becomes her page turner, keeping to herself her real motive: revenge...

There’s a distinct Hitchcockian feel to this sophisticated French thriller, most notably in the way images, rather than dialogue, are employed to evoke a sense of brooding menace and gradually mounting tension.  Some imaginative photography and editing lend a palpable sense of confinement, a suggestion that beneath the surface of bourgeous normality lurk some very dark and deadly passions.   French film aficionados can hardly fail to notice the similarities with some of the thrillers of director Claude Chabrol.

All this, together with the chilling opening shots of bloody animal carcasses in a butcher’s shop, leads us to think that La Tourneuse de pages will be a classic gruesome psycho thriller with a truly terrifying climax.  For the first half at least, the film lives up to our expectations and rewards with its slick mise-en-scène and arresting performances from Catherine Frot and Déborah François, the latter particularly effective as the ice cold charmer with murderous intent in her heart.

How disappointing that the second half of the film doesn’t come even close to delivering the anticipated pay-off.  The denouement is so trite and poorly executed that it feels like a bad joke.  There is one moment of visceral horror, but this comes and goes like a firework going off randomly in the background.  This and the lightweight ending highlight the film’s one and only failing – a weak script that is marred by a contrivance-riddled plot and poorly developed secondary characters.   It is a tribute to Denis Dercourt’s skill as a director that he manages to overcome the failings in the writing and delivers a film which for all its failing, is still compelling and at times deeply unsettling – at least until one minute from the end.

© James Travers 2009

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