This is a fascinating movie. The name of the game is "guess its genre". I should keep this report to a minimum so as not to spoil your fun.
The story starts innocently enough, with a young "model couple" Alain and Benedict, obviously still in honeymoon mode, entertaining Alain's boss Richard and his wife Alice at home. For a moment, it looks like a middle class sitcom when Alice, up to her eyebrows with gnawing jealousy, continues making a scene ending up in the couple making a hurried exit with Richard making profuse apologies. "Now the model couple can eat", observes good-natured Benedict after the older couple had left.
Things take an ominous turn as the older couple keeps coming back into the idyllic existence of the lovebirds. Along the way, there are sleight of hand from director Moll (whom many consider to be France's present day Hitchcock) which may be red herring, and again may not. Alain is an engineer and is designing for Richard's company a robotic camera which in appearance is a cross between an apple and a helicopter, a little hint of science fiction potentials. The mysterious appearance of a lemming (hence the title), a Scandianian rat, in the plumbing seem to have metaphysical implications, or perhaps psychological, whichever you fancy. Murder mystery and supernatural thriller are not out of the realm of possibilities as the story develops.
I won't go any further, but would just say that the story is so skillfully told and beautifully filmed that your attention is never allowed to wander. Much credit goes also to the elaborate use of sound effect, maybe even slightly overused. The twist, which comes at around the last half-hour of this 129 minute movie, is not among the most brilliant I have seen, but sufficient to hold the movie together. The strength of the movie is in how all the elements are put together and delivered in a fascinating mood.
The acting is more than competent. For those in the audience (including this one) who are not generally familiar with French actors, there is at least Anglo-French Charlotte Rampling, who go as far back as "Gorgie Girl" (1966) and was seen more recently in "Swimming pool" (2003).
Lemming was in competition earlier this year in Cannes, but didn't win.
The story starts innocently enough, with a young "model couple" Alain and Benedict, obviously still in honeymoon mode, entertaining Alain's boss Richard and his wife Alice at home. For a moment, it looks like a middle class sitcom when Alice, up to her eyebrows with gnawing jealousy, continues making a scene ending up in the couple making a hurried exit with Richard making profuse apologies. "Now the model couple can eat", observes good-natured Benedict after the older couple had left.
Things take an ominous turn as the older couple keeps coming back into the idyllic existence of the lovebirds. Along the way, there are sleight of hand from director Moll (whom many consider to be France's present day Hitchcock) which may be red herring, and again may not. Alain is an engineer and is designing for Richard's company a robotic camera which in appearance is a cross between an apple and a helicopter, a little hint of science fiction potentials. The mysterious appearance of a lemming (hence the title), a Scandianian rat, in the plumbing seem to have metaphysical implications, or perhaps psychological, whichever you fancy. Murder mystery and supernatural thriller are not out of the realm of possibilities as the story develops.
I won't go any further, but would just say that the story is so skillfully told and beautifully filmed that your attention is never allowed to wander. Much credit goes also to the elaborate use of sound effect, maybe even slightly overused. The twist, which comes at around the last half-hour of this 129 minute movie, is not among the most brilliant I have seen, but sufficient to hold the movie together. The strength of the movie is in how all the elements are put together and delivered in a fascinating mood.
The acting is more than competent. For those in the audience (including this one) who are not generally familiar with French actors, there is at least Anglo-French Charlotte Rampling, who go as far back as "Gorgie Girl" (1966) and was seen more recently in "Swimming pool" (2003).
Lemming was in competition earlier this year in Cannes, but didn't win.