L’Amant Double

L’Amant Double opens with a much talked about scene: a close-up of something fleshy and pink. As the camera zooms out, we realise we’re staring down a speculum and into a vagina during a gynaecological exam. It’s a provocative opening, and unfortunately the most compelling part of François Ozon’s otherwise lacking film.

A troubled young woman, Chloé (Marine Vacth) – whose vagina was the opening shot – is advised to seek a psychologist. Her doctor, Paul (Jérémie Renier), is dashing and compassionate, and before long they fall for each other. After spotting Paul’s doppelganger in the street, another psychologist called Louis, she discovers that they are in fact twin brothers and begins leading a sexual double-life with both men.

L’Amant Double attempts to be an erotic thriller in the vein of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers but the end result is an uneven film that’s neither as sexy nor as smart as it thinks it is – one part a nastier Fifty Shades of Grey and one part an introduction to Freud. [Katie Goh]