La sostituta

A fiction spun out of any earlier fiction, this is not a work to judge by logic, being a current French film set in the First World War, an era no living person can now remember, and based on an unsettling English novel from 1873 that played with the fluid boundaries between the criminal and the comfortable classes, the sane citizens and the lunatics, the I and the Other, all shot through with existential dread of finding oneself forced into or trapped within the shadow category.

Layers of creativity separate the story from present-day reality, so don't look for authenticity or bald credibility but watch it for mood. For the continual ambivalences of plot and character, for conversations that illuminate or obfuscate, for the immaculate visuals that so often are in confined or ill-lit spaces, for the score which subtly accompanies the conflicting desires of the individuals. Accept the closing paradox, where genuine love is only realised by escaping responsibilities. More than a touch melodramatic and Victorian perhaps, but that is an honourable genre which many of us enjoy.