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If you and your quite good-looking soul got locked in a hotel room together, would you be able to resist making out? That imponderable is one of the many posed in the delirium of Eric Atlan's Mortem, a mist-choked psychosexual girl-on-girl gothic spree, one of those hothouse/arthouse French doozies whose urgent ennui is never anywhere as interesting as the radiant faces of its actresses. The beauties here are Daria Panchenko and Diana Rudychenko, who play (at first) trench-coated motorcycle travelers spending a foggy night in a horror-film inn. But, wait: Didn't we only see one woman on the motorcycle in the languid road-trip opening? And doesn't the proprietress—herself and her assistant both lavishly gowned—only seem to see one of the women? The initial scen...

Title: Mortem Director Eric Atlan Starring: Diana Rudychenko, Daria Panchenko, Stany Coppet When a film’s press notes or marketing efforts trumpet it as a ”metaphysical thriller,” one knows they’re likely in for a bunch of art-school/Psych 101 posturing (read: horseshit) or something nervy, intellectual and oddly appealing, and director Eric Atlan’s arresting French import ‘Mortem’ is maybe five percent the former but overwhelmingly the latter. An in-competition title at the 14th annual Dances With Films festival, where it just enjoyed its U.S. premiere, this engaging and strikingly photographed bauble centers on a woman, Jena (Daria Panchenko), who is in an accident and finds herself stuck in a strange motel room, where she becomes...