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At the beginning of the story, Anna (Isabelle Carré) tries to kill
herself by throwing herself in front of a car, but apart from a few broken
bones, she comes out of it relaqtively unscathed - and promptly falls in
love with Zanevsky (Gilbert Melki), the doctor who has treated her, and before
long, she starts to believe he's loving her back, especially when he goes
for a(n innocent) drink with her. From here on, Anna starts to follow
Zanevsky around, to find out more about him and arrange
"chance" meetings. Anna finds herself devastated though when
she finds out that Zanevsky is actually married to Marie (Anne Consigny)
and has no intention of leaving or even cheating on her. And as he is a
married man, Anne becomes more and more of a nuisance for Zanevsky, so
much so that he asks her to leave him in peace, but in her fantasy, he
loves her madly, so much so that she thinks he has invited her to a cheap
motel to have sex, and when he fails to show up, she just picks up another
man to have sex with in his stead. Later, she uses the other man's car to
crash Zanevsky's out of revenge - and she manages to make everyone including the
police believe it was his fault and not hers ... Eventually, Anna
becomes the nanny of Zanevsky's upstairs neighbour's (Eric Savin) children
(Raphaelle Doyle, Fenella Woodgate) - which is when she really loses it,
as she has taken the job not only to spy on Zanevsky, but also to enter
and thrash his house once he and his wife are out. After this incident,
it's Anna's own mother (Geneviève Mnich) who has her admitted to an
asylum - where it's found out that she has gotten pregnant from her
one-night stand at the cheap motel. It seems the pregnancy and the
treatment at the asylum calm Anmna down, and thus after a few months she is released
upon vowing to move to the country and leave Zanevsky in peace. However,
quite the contrary is the case - once she's out, Anna picks up right where
she has left off ... only Zanevsky is out of the picture, he and his wife
have moved to somewhere unknown, and Anna is left alone with her delusions
- which makes her rent a room at above-mentioned cheap motel, where she
locks herself in until she is made to leave by force ... Years later:
The birth of her daughter have made a different person out of Anna,
apparently, but when she sees loving couples, she still thinks of herself
and Zanevsky ... Ok, the plot of this film might not be exactly
new, but it's extremely well-written, and the build-up of Anna's madness
is well portrayed and even comprehensible - thanks in no small parts to lead actress Isabelle
Carré of course. But while Anna's descent into madness is fascinating to
watch, the film as a whole is not quite perfect: As well as Michel Spinosa
has written his movie, as a director he lacks true inspiration and lets
his film move firmly within predictable paths, and as good as the
build-up of the whole story is, the ending simply fails to deliver. But
all that said, the film is still well worth a watch, even if it's not
quite the masterpiece it could have been.
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