A very confusing film with nods to Hitchcock, some very good photography and little else. The plot involves the Hitchcock staples of obsession and paranoia but lacks the ultimate touch of the master - suspense. I was told that this film was a 'must see' and how great it was and how wonderful the structure was and how engaging it all was. Well, do not waste the time because this film is a pretentious, overlong piece of French 'style' - lots of visual cleverness and moody pouting (called great acting when it is in a French film) but little substance. At the end you could not care less what happens to these self-obsessed characters and I must have had a bad day because I could not follow a lot of this. The film uses a fragmented narrative by presenting the sequences in flashback and in no particular order. We are shown scenes several times and with new perspectives each time so we can try to make sense of the story, if one can call it that. I had to resort to looking at the characters' hair in order to figure out when things were happening. There was also a great deal of symbolism - red rose, white rose, red walls, white shirts, long hair, short hair, red shoes and on and on and on until I yelled enough! The symbols, of course, go nowhere and are presented in sledgehammer fashion so that we can marvel at how clever it all is even though it makes no sense. This is "Single White Female" meets French pretension made by a director who has studied too many Hitchcock films but failed the exam.
Review of The Apartment
