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Anna M (2007)

Director: Michel Spinosa

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From Time Out London

Operating in the strange but intriguing territory between the psychotic tendencies of Haneke’s ‘The Piano Teacher’ and the point-at-the-crazy-lady scares of ‘Fatal Attraction’, ‘Anne M’ is a decent Parisian thriller that rides on the tails of a calling-card turn from Isabelle Carré as a lovelorn stalker-cum-social-menace who falls in love with her doctor. Themes of obsession, self-abasement, moral reticence and maternal anguish
are all touched on in this slow-burning, attractively photographed, sinister little film. It falls at some hurdles, mainly due to the fact that police and psychiatric staff are never willing to accept Anna as anything more than a pest, allowing for some contrivance. Gilbert Melki is suitably anonymous as the unwitting object of Anna’s affections , but it’s Carré’s on-the-dime transitions from mouse to maniac that supply the film with its intensity.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 1943: November 14-20 2007

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User reviews of this film

Technoguy said...

Posted on Mar 17 2008 23:40 A casebook study with thriller overtones.Headings like
'Hope','Rejection','Hatred' present stages in the development of the mental illness ,erotomania.Carre effectively plays the transition from shy to reckless very well.Melki,the doctor object of her attention plays anonymous and the detached professional.We feel for his situation without caring for him.Anna lives with her depressed mother and is reclusive and becomes suicidal.She pursues the said doctor misunderstanding his efforts to be honest and tell her he loves his wife.She thinks he's arranging to be near to her when he attempts to brush her off kindly.The tension mounts when she becomes a child minder over his apartment.She is quite cruel,abruptly shaking the children and muffling their cries.She becomes pregnant by a man she casually picks up.I feel despite the strong central performance the film fails to engage due to its overclinical approach and it's failure to flesh out surrounding characters.

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