Lemming

I've recently been going through a couple of French films that lean heavily on the suspense. The French know their business. They make dozens of these every year. One might label them simply as thrillers. Some recent ones; this one, Haneke's CACHÉ (2005) (half-Austrian, all right), THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (2005) together with Chabrol's - mostly late '60s - work. This dream-like suspense-yarn compares rather unfavourably to the other films mentioned. This is mostly due to the rather ridiculous subtext of the titular Lemming (the framework is built around the mysterious appearance of a dead lemming in the kitchen sink of a young couple). Furthermore, Charlotte Rampling's character behaves in such an abnormal way, it becomes too much to swallow. In a dream sequence, thousand of lemmings appear in the home of Alain Getty, the central character. But his wife, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, has an almost equally important part. Perhaps I misread the whole thing and this was all a highly associative nightmare sprung from the main characters' minds. In that case, not a very pleasant one. It's quite suspenseful up to a point, but after a while the characters begin to behave in such an irrational (and stupid) fashion, it becomes very tedious. I just wanna know what happened to the lemming?

Camera Obscura --- 5/10