Movie Review: "Double Lover" Is Twice the Freaky Fun of "Fifty Shades"

French filmmaker François Ozon wrestles the Fifty Shades franchise into submission with Double Lover.

Double Lover wasn’t exactly the toast of last year’s Cannes Film Festival, but it did set the most tongues wagging.

Now, almost a year later, it arrives in Australia for the French Film Festival (touring the country nationally from 27 February), boasting an outsized reputation as the kinkiest film in ages.

It debuts right behind the final Fifty Shades flick, showing how exactly freaky-deaky thrillers are done. (Remember, in France, Fifty Shades of Grey was given a ‘12’ rating, indicating just what the French think of America’s kinda explicit movie series: Fine, you know, for kids.)

Double Lover plays as if designed by Saturday Night Live’s Stefon, ‘cos this thing has everything: Endless mirror rooms; fetal body horror; naked therapy sessions; a foursome performed by only two actors.

Stylistically-flexible director François Ozon—loosely adapting Joyce Carol Oates’ book Lives of the Twins—uses his ‘Brian De Palma lens’ to tell this twisted tale, which follows a nervy ex-model named Chloé (a solemn but game Marine Vacth) as she seeks a psychological cure to her undiagnosable stomach pains.

She’s first led to therapist Paul (Jérémie Renier), who quietly listens for weeks before confessing to having fallen in love with her. Though Paul won’t win any awards for professionalism, Chloé at least admits the feeling is mutual. Plus, she’s feeling better anyway, so they may as well move in together. Before you can raise an eyebrow at their questionable courtship, Ozon throws a curveball that makes their initial monogamy seem as quaint as your grandparents’.

That curveball comes in the form of Louis, Paul’s estranged twin brother. (Renier plays both brothers, pulling impressive double duty, differentiated by hair swept in opposite directions.) Turns out Louis is a therapist too, except this ain’t Frasier. The stomach pains return, so Chloé starts seeing Louis and discovers he prefers "applied techniques" when treating his patients. (I repeat: This is not Frasier.) The domineering Louis then reveals a hidden bedroom in his office. You know where this is heading.

Yes, there’s a lot of raunch in Double Lover, and yes, much of it is problematic (no one said the erotic French picture about a woman with a transference/twincest fetish would be emotionally healthy). It also—infamously—opens with an extreme, gynaecological close-up of Chloé in stirrups. Yet Ozon is more anatomical than pornographic, equally concerned with naked insides as naked outsides. (Some viewers may require accompanying diagrams.)

By the time its bloody and giddily grotesque finale arrives (complete with outrageous twist), Ozon has proven this descent into sex-madness is a gaudy genre exercise in the mould of Alfred Hitchcock and Paul Verhoeven, rather than a very serious and stone-faced look at mental illness.

Even though it’s occasionally slow-moving, and often quite disturbing, Double Lover is something Fifty Shades never was: Weird and fun and absolutely not for children; in America, France or anywhere.

3.5/5

Double Lover plays the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival 2018, beginning in Sydney on 27 February and touring nationally until 8 April. Find session times in your state here. Rated R18+.

Photo: Limelight Distribution