Intimate Strangers (Confidences trop intimes) poster & wallpaper
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Fabrice Luchini, Sandrine Bonnaire, Michel Duchaussoy, Anne Brochet, Gilbert Melki

A Frenchwoman tells her marital troubles to a man she mistakes for a psychiatrist, and soon they form an unusual relationship.

Flixster Users

68% liked it

1,802 ratings

Critics

87% liked it

98 critics

R, 1 hr. 44 min.

Directed by: Patrice Leconte

Release Date: January 1, 2003

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DVD Release Date: December 28, 2004

Stats: 87 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (87)

  • Parannoyed
    May 29, 2009
    Parannoyed
    Really NOT what I was originally expecting. This felt like 1h43mins of a tedious soap opera. Yes, it was highly melodramatic, and failed at being anywhere near artistic.

    Definitely a forgettable film.
  • ChGeor9
    July 19, 2009
    ChGeor9
    I found it was interesting and kept me watching, better than I first thought.
  • avatarofix
    May 18, 2009
    avatarofix
    Interesting plot. Don't remember it very well...
  • Budgeburgess
    April 14, 2009
    Budgeburgess
    Director Patrice Leconte seems fascinated by the attraction of opposites, or at least by unlikely couplings. In "Intimate Strangers" ("Confidences Trop Intimes"), he takes the simple pretext of the wrong door opening to throw together two enigmas and explore their resolution of t...( read more)he confusion.

    Leconte describes the story as commencing like a Hitchcock movie. The credits roll as elegant, urgent feet stride along the pavement, the film cutting back and forth to an irregular pattern which we will discover to be the wallpaper of a hallway. The music builds the tension, pulsing to the urgent rhythm of the footsteps ... and recalling "Psycho".

    Cut to the wallpapered hallway of an elegant building, its solid doorways suggesting grandeur and elegance. An enigmatic choice, we learn, for the action suddenly moves to an entirely different location. This is the first of several red herrings you will be sold, and which you will buy.

    Leconte describes his film as really being a love story - something which the audience will recognise before the characters do. But Leconte does not let go of the tension: erotically charged throughout, there are moments when violence threatens, when you suspect things are about to explode; the Hitchcock thriller motif runs through the film like the wallpapered hallway runs through the building, allowing you access to those doors which will open ... denying you access to those which remain closed.

    Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) hurries to her first appointment with a therapist: it's not something she's been looking forward to, she can only cope by propelling herself straight into his office and getting on with explaining what is troubling her. The door is opened by Faber (Fabrice Luchini), a tax lawyer ... who sits in horror as she tells her tale, unable to stem the flow ... unable to explain that the therapist lives and works just down the hall.

    It's a simple comedy of errors. It's an amusing social quandary - how do you explain the mistake after you have listened to too intimate a set of confidences? So begins a comedy, a love story, a thriller.

    This is a beautifully scripted story, its direction and editing carried out with sophistication and style, with outstanding performances from Sandrine Bonnaire and Fabrice Luchini. Both characters have pasts which they slowly unpeel and reveal as their relationship builds through curiosity to confidence, both parties accepting the professional amorality of their conversations as their intimacy remains distanced and emotionally voyeuristic.

    It's a film which juxtaposes the need to communicate, to offer human warmth and understanding, with a sometimes caustic caricature of psychoanalysis as the lawyer seeks help from the grasping, manipulative therapist down the hall. It's a film about love and fear of rejection, about settling for the known because of fear of the unknown.

    A superb movie which you will find utterly absorbing and which is ultimately optimistic and uplifting.
  • nkkigrrl28
    August 2, 2007
    nkkigrrl28
    Left me with an unsatisfied feeling. Was hoping for more closure at the end...
  • tommyhilsinger
    March 1, 2007
    tommyhilsinger
    This intreaguing movie examines the way in which people interact with authority figures in their life, and how they react to the different ways such figures use thier power. Not a "chic flick", and far from an action flick, watch the DVD of this French movie cuddled into your div...( read more)an with a demi tass of late by your side to set the right atmosphere. A good movie for your more philosophical moments. Enjoy!
  • saminglis81
    December 30, 2006
    saminglis81
    A woman (Bonnaire) walks into what she thinks is her new psychiatrist's office and begins talking, quickly opening up about her unhappy marriage and how depressed she is and then leaves without having allowed her shrink to get much of a word in. All of which leaves the tax lawyer...( read more) (Luchini) whose office this actually is in something of a dilemma.
    He does tell her, on their third appointment, what he actually does and, to his surprise, she suggests that they carry on the arrangement.

    Intimate Strangers (though it does sound a bit like a Z Grade 'erotic' thriller) is a very suitable title for this film which takes place almost exclusively in one room and might as well only have two characters. This theatricality presents a challenge for a director and Leconte rises to it, finding a huge variety of angles in William's office so that the look of the film never becomes boring. Perhaps Leconte's best touch is in the last shot, which seems to encapsulate how William and Anna's relationship has developed throughout the film in one moment.
    The central performances are stong. Fabrice Luchini brings William to life in a way we'll all recognise, everyone knows someone like him, or is someone like him. Someone once said that acting is reacting and that's certainly true for much of Luchini's part, particularly in the scenes where it is just him and Bonnaire, he's often silent but is always giving a performance.
    Sandrine Bonnaire is also excellent, creating a compelling character in Anna. She's skilled at making us just a little unsure whether what Anna is saying is the truth or not, even about little things and those choices keep us guessing as to what is going to happen in the end. She's got a wordy part, with plenty of monologues, and plays it beautifully.
    The supporting cast are largely fine (though what the point of Anne Brochet's character is rather defeats me) but most of their characters feel underdeveloped, always a problem when a film so closely focuses on two people.
    Intimate Strangers would, perhaps, be at its best as theatre but as a film it's highly watchable if just for the two great performances that anchor it.
  • DemonicNightmare
    September 28, 2006
    DemonicNightmare
    This looks really crap.
  • stokely
    August 27, 2006
    stokely
    what happens in this movie is very illegal haha

View All Intimate Strangers (Confidences trop intimes) Reviews

Critic Reviews

August 13, 2004
Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times

Intimate Strangers is full of texture, from the murky, mottled surface of the hallway walls to the multitudes of swirling violins in Pascal Estève's score. full review

August 13, 2004
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

We find we cannot take anything for face value in this story. full review

August 12, 2004
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

As a modest conflation of mystery, melodrama and witty romance, Leconte's tale of intimacy and aloneness has its definite charms. full review

August 6, 2004
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

It's a movie by people who know there are few things more thrilling, or that seem more perilous, than meeting the romantic 'other' and having those first, careful conversations. full review

August 6, 2004
Ty Burr, Boston Globe

About the pleasures and dangers of human connection, and yet the movie itself barely musters the energy to connect. full review

View more Intimate Strangers (Confidences trop intimes) reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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