A twist of LEMMING

Charlotte Rampling funny is virtually indistinguishable from Charlotte Rampling serious, which may explain why there was so little laughter during her wickedly amusing scenes in LEMMING, which Strand Releasing opens tomorrow in New York (and later in other parts of the U.S.). Come to think of it, she may have smiled, or at least had her lips and a few teeth positioned for smiling, in ORCA, at one of Richard Harris' sea dog witticisms. But that was 30 years ago, and it made little impression on me; if it happened, the filmmakers probably had to pry it loose from her. What you remember about Rampling, and the reason she is such a darling among European directors, is her eerily taut, self-possessed beauty, which has only deepened with the passage of time. It's very useful for a certain type of anxiety-stirring production, like the recent French hit SWIMMING POOL (where, letting her mask slip just a bit, she gave something approaching a sentimental performance) and her confidence in her craft over the last 40 years has become formidable. There's no one like her in her particular niche.

She casts a long, dark shadow over LEMMING, quite literally haunting the picture. The latest from French writer-director Dominik Moll (of 2000's WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY, and again co-writing with Gilles Marchand), this is three movies in one: A consideration of nature and technology, a ghost story clambering up from the depths of disturbed psyches, and, most rewardingly, a WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?-ish portrait of two marriages, one young and reasonably, if nervously, healthy, and the other a vessel emptied of love and refilled with near-homicidal bitterness. Guess which one Rampling is in?

She plays Alice, the wife of high-tech magnate Richard Pollock, portrayed, with his usual unflappable assurance, by Andre Dussollier. Pleased with the work of engineer Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) on a "mini flying webcam" (which will, of course, be deployed to unhealthy ends in the course of the story), Pollock, a resident of "Beaumont Park," invites himself over to Alain's house in "Bel Air," the new suburb where the engineer and his wife, Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), live. Right off, there's something odd about all this--the American-ish names of the characters and the places, which look like a Euro-Xerox of Silicon Valley, are intriguing, and Moll puts some of the same music Stanley Kubrick used for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, on the soundtrack. I'm not saying it really comes to anything, but it adds another layer of dislocation and impermanence to the story. [As does the casting of Lucas, who resembles a blended version of Daniel Day Lewis and the young Rip Torn and Martin Landau, and Gainsbourg, a simulacrum of her parents, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin--and they both recall the two older performers, in look or mannerism. They don't seem to be their own people, but versions of others.]

Alice, who shows up at the dinner in dark sunglasses (the first laugh-out-loud touch in the film, if you're not intimidated by Rampling's stony gaze) immediately lays into Richard, eventually throwing a glass of red wine in his face. [This image has a more horrifying correlative later in the story, which is full of doubling.] Before their awkward departure, following their uncomfortably late arrival (Richard had been carousing with one of his "whores," typical behavior he no longer apologizes for) Alice irks Benedicte with her insinuating comments about her own placid marriage to Alain. Not one to stop there, Alice turns up at Alain's office and attempts to seduce him, revealing scary secrets about her frayed union in the process. Benedicte, who is as fascinated by Alice as she is leery of her, has her own, deeply unsettling encounter with her, which ends with a jolt...and the younger woman under Alice's seeming spell, which Richard must go to drastic lengths to break as Benedicte, suddenly bored with domesticity, finds cold comfort with Alain.

And I haven't even mentioned the lemming, a non-native animal that mysteriously turns up lodged in Alain and Benedicte's drainpipe, and insinuates itself into their life, and their nightmares, as surely as Alice and Richard. Without spoiling the second-half developments, I'll say only that one puzzle is conclusively solved, but that the other, emotional and metaphysical ones are only somewhat resolved by the close, where everything, and nothing, is restored.

Like HARRY, LEMMING is a consistently absorbing mystery of sorts, reminiscent of last year's CACHE, without the politics. [I think it has as many enigmas as THE DA VINCI CODE.] It contains an at times unnerving sound mix, engineered by Francois Maurel, to go along with its churning undercurrent of lives deranged. And, again like HARRY, it is too long at 129 minutes, but the best of it sticks to you, as uncomfortably as the lemming in the drainpipe...or Rampling's inhuman disdain, which is dead-seriously funny. Laugh if you dare.