Trap for Cinderella

Driven by an obsessive desire to adapt Sébastien Japrisot’s 1962 novel, writer-director Iain Softley (‘The Wings of the Dove’) settled for a modest budget which constrains his elegant style. His complex psychological thriller embraces the loose-wristed feel of the French New Wave, but the updated club scenes filmed in Hoxton clash with those set in a southern France that looks like it could still be the 1960s. A rekindled childhood friendship between hedonistic heiress Micky (Tuppence Middleton) and shy, besotted Do (Alexandra Roach) degenerates into jealousy and recrimination, culminating in a row that leaves Do dead and Mickey scarred and amnesiac. Micky struggles to reconstruct her identity – but key pieces of the jigsaw are missing, and the only clues are being drip-fed to her by her dead aunt’s personal assistant (Kerry Fox), and a blackmailing bartender (Stanley Weber). Softley negotiates layers of deceit with skill, but an uncharacteristic visual and narrative tightness leaves one wondering what might have been.