Julien and Lisa are so happily married that they can barely contain their passions as they step through the door after a night out.
Which means you just know it is going to go horribly wrong.
Within hours, the police heavies crash in and Lisa is carted off on a murder charge. Her boss is dead, and with the kind of bad luck you get only in movies, every single clue points to Li
sa – so much so that even her in-laws start to doubt.
Fortunately for Lisa, Julien is made of sterner stuff, rock steady in his belief in her innocence and ever more determined to act when her appeals start to fail.
Julien's only hope is to spring her from jail.
It's a bit bizarre that he plans it all out quite so meticulously on a wall in their flat, but slowly the plan takes shape.
However, when it emerges that Lisa is going to be transferred to
another prison, he's forced to put it into action rather soon than he'd like.
The drawback for the film is that at this point there are clearly only two possible outcomes. Either he gets her out (which you'll sit back and condemn as predictable) or he doesn't (which will make the whole thing slightly pointless).
But within these constraints director Fred Cavaye manages to ratchet up the tension quite nicely, with Vincent Lindon turning in a grimly-determined performance as Julien and Diane Kruger managing to look like someone whose time and sanity are rapidly running out.
Phil Hewitt's rating: ***
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