A Sight for Sore Eyes (2003) User Reviews

Cold, Remote but Entertaining

[pninson · 6/10 · 27 February 2009]

This French adaptation of the Ruth Rendell novel "A Sight for Sore Eyes" is perhaps a bit pretentious and tries too hard to be "arty." While it follows the plot of the novel fairly closely, the director is more concerned with the look and feel of the film, unusual camera angles, moody, atmospheric photography, and suspenseful music.

The real contrast between the book and the movie is that in the book, you get a clear explanation of who the characters are and how they got that way. The movie dispenses with this almost completely, so you only see the characters as they are, with one or two very brief hints about their backgrounds. If you don't know the plot from the book, you may have a hard time sorting out who's who, especially in the first 20 minutes or so.

However, if you don't mind a movie in which there are mostly unappealing characters, and there's a glacial coolness to the way the story is told, showing very little sympathy for most of the characters, this is a reasonably entertaining thriller. As a fan of the book, I of course prefer Rendell's story, with its vivid depiction of strange characters, and I wouldn't rate this as an especially good adaptation. On its own merits, it works well enough.

According to the DVD, the French critics raved about this one; there are several quotes comparing the director to Hitchcock and praising the film in very fulsome language. However, the movie hasn't been released in the US, so you'll need a region-free player if you want to see it.

A chilling slow-paced thriller

[GrandeMarguerite · 8/10 · 1 August 2006]

I start with what bothers me most: it is maybe a bit too long and a bit too slow at times. Having said this, I think that director Gilles Bourdos did a very good adaptation of Ruth Rendell's crime novel, "A sight for sore eyes". Now, this is not a typical crime story/thriller, and I can understand that the plot could be confusing during the first 30 minutes to some people. But if you don't give up, you'll be rewarded. The plot, set in Southern France, is as follows: the central character, Elise (played by charming Julie Ordon), witnessed as a child her mother being shot dead by a man in her house. Her father has married afterwards Anne (Brigitte Catillon), a psychotherapist whose excessive zeal was transferred to Elise, a disturbed child in her eyes, who needs to be protected from the outside world. Enters Bruno Keller (played by chilling Grégoire Colin), a young student in modern art who grew up in an emotionally cold household, raised by an uncle who doesn't care much about him. The truth is that Bruno is a murderer who got rid of this uncle... and is to commit murder again before much more time has passed. Bruno and Elise find eventually each other, Bruno being gradually obsessed with Elise's beauty, Elise seeing Bruno as a sort of knight in shining armor, someone to rescue her from the clutches of her over-protective stepmother. Such a combination of traumatized and/or obsessive characters can only lead to disaster... Bourdos has favored a cold approach of the characters. We are never guided into one character's world, we only see things happening and their consequences. The result is a very chilling, unemotional movie, though artistically filmed. The acting is good, especially Brigitte Catillon who delivers an incredible performance as the suffocating alcoholic stepmother (you just want her to die). The cinematography is above average, and composer Alexandre Desplat has written a fine score. All this contributes to make a very unusual thriller, where psychology and atmosphere matter most. The best thing about it is that you never know how the story will eventually end (unless you've read the original novel).