One of the plus factors about this excellent thriller is that unless you happen to live there you wouldn't know you were in Paris; a few years ago there was an equally fine thriller, A La Petite Semaine which was shot largely in Porte de Clignacourt, North Paris whilst this one was shot mainly a few miles West in La Defense (whose Metro station was used to great effect in Buffet Froid. There have been several notable French films in this genre lately, indeed the most recent, Ne le dis a personne (Tell No One) has only just finished making the rounds, and now here is yet another perhaps just a notch or two below 'personne' but still very, very good. The two have elements in common, an ordinary man suddenly involved in a nightmare and coming under suspicion of murder, there's even a chase sequence similar to but briefer and less tense than the one with Vincent Cluzet which is not the same as saying that Yvan Attal is not every bit as fine an actor as Cluzet and he more than holds his own against Clovis Cornillac (who also had a large role in A La Petite Semaine) who has by far the 'showier' role as a psychotic obsessed with vengeance for a childhood prank that went wrong. Why they had to go to Finland for Attal's wife I'll never know - his own long-time real life partner Charlotte Gainsbourg could have played it equally well - but Minna Haapkyla is certainly adequate. All in all this is a stylish thriller and more than worth watching out for.
Review of The Snake
