Revenge is Suite

Reviewed - The Page Turner (La Tourneuse de Pages): DENIS Dercourt, a classical musician with a sideline in cinema, here delivers a tight, tense little thriller from the cuckoo-in-the-nest school.

The film is layered with tension and features secure, buttoned-up performances from both principals. The Page Turner is, however, more than a little trite and features a denouement too unlikely even for a film in this heightened genre. Though nods to Hitchcock and Chabrol are everywhere about, the piece ends up feeling more like a superior episode of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected (though not all that unexpected, to be honest).

We begin with young Mélanie Prouvost, an aspiring pianist from a humble background, making her way to an audition for a prestigious conservatory. Distracted when Ariane (Catherine Frot), one of the judges and a musician of some renown, looks away to sign an autograph, the severe little girl makes a mess of her performance, gets rejected from the music school and, ultimately, gives up playing altogether. Some 20 years later Mélanie (now played by Deborah François from the Dardenne brothers' L'Enfant) secures a job as Ariane's personal assistant and - at first subtly - sets about destroying the famous pianist's life. Initially of great help to her boss while turning the pages of her sheet music, Mélanie fails to appear for an important performance and wrecks the older woman's confidence. She encourages Ariane's son to risk injury playing the piano at dangerous speed. And so forth.

The problem is that Mélanie's plan works a little too well. Could you really be sure to induce tendonitis by forcing someone to hammer out Bach at Ramones speed? Would any sane person really behave towards a troublesome factotum as Ariane does towards Mélanie? That we find ourselves asking these questions is a telling measure of the film's limited success.