One Two Another

Five friends grieve the murder of their friend Pierre in the very French way of having sex, a lot. Of the sex-pentagon, it is Lucie, Pierre's best-friend, sister and occasional lover who struggles the hardest to make sense of her loss, and the story is told mainly through flash-backs induced by her psychiatric sessions. The plot's non-linearity is at times confusing and the film plays on this - a highlight is a scene in which a crying Lucie (crying, the audience assume, because of her grief) is then comforted by that brother, who isn't yet dead. This slow-paced, thoughtful and endearing film deserves credit for its ambitious fragmenting of the story as, unlike Inarritu's films (Babel etc), the unconventional plot formation has purpose and adds meaning; it mirrors Lucie's fragmented mind and even more so, reflects how she, as are we the audience, is struggling to make sense of what is happening. [Kieran Westbrook]