gridoon2024 Review of Don't Look Back

Don't Look Back (2009)

A strange, fascinating, and thought-provoking thriller

[7/10 · 5 June 2011]

"Don't Look Back" is decidedly not for all tastes: impatient non-thinkers who want everything handed to them on a silver platter need not apply. Writer-director Marina de Van certainly does not make it easy on the audience: she never shows the heroine's hallucinations from an "objective" point-of-view, so that we can easily tell what's real and what's not. Instead, she films them in a matter-of-fact way - we see what she sees, we hear what she hears. My personal "reading" of the film (and there can certainly be more than one), and also a reminder for when things get too strange, is that nothing supernatural occurs in the film; it's all psychological. Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci (both of them still highly desirable at 40+, I might add) appear to be playing the same character (and they do it excellently), but only one of them is "really real"; her perception of people (including herself) and things around her occasionally changes based on what she feels, what she learns, what she remembers. "Don't Look Back" is also a great example of creative (and non-redundant) use of computer effects, helping with some remarkable face transformations. The film is not perfect: it's quite slow and a few things are never explained. But it invites you to think and theorize - and such films are becoming more and more rare these days. *** out of 4.