Visions: the limits of the race to impress (review)

The director of Black Box tries his hand at a Hitchcockian thriller with Diane Kruger. At the risk of favoring form over substance…

A woman comes out of the water. She is alone on the sand before seeing two shadows at the top of the path. The shadows disappear and the woman walks towards a strange abandoned house. From the opening of Visions, Yann Gozlan’s art shines: the beauty of the frames, the extreme softness of his camera movements (almost hypnotic) record the hallucinated walk of his heroine. Gozlan is a filmer. From An ideal manthe filmmaker likes to plunge into the codes of the thriller (psychological with An ideal manparanoid with Black Box) to offer a modern reinterpretation.

Estelle (Diane Kruger), a long-haul captain with unparalleled professionalism, leads a perfectly regulated existence alongside Guillaume (Kassovitz, a little absent), her protective husband. The repeated flights and “jet lag” begin to disrupt the young woman’s biological rhythm, and particularly her sleep. One day, by chance, in a corridor at Nice airport, she crosses paths again with Ana, a photographer with whom she had a passionate affair twenty years earlier. Estelle is far from imagining that this reunion will lead her into a nightmarish spiral and tip her life into the irrational… Under the influence of Hitchcock, Lynch and Nolan, Gozlan films the dizziness of this woman who no longer acts the difference between dream and reality. Haggard or feverish, Diane Kruger embodies this dual heroine and does well: if she doesn’t completely excel, it’s because the film doesn’t quite give her the means, neglecting too much the emotional and playing the virtuosity card to impress his spectator. Damage.

Of Yann Gozlan. With Diane Kruger, Mathieu Kassovitz, Marta Nieto…. Duration 2h03. Released September 6, 2023