Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but where do you draw the line? The Page Turner begins with ten year old Mélanie Prouvost having her career as a pianist brought to an abrupt close when one of the judges, Ariane Fouchécourt, thoughtlessly interrupts her during an exam. Most people would put it down to experience, but not Mélanie; instead, she waits ten years for the opportunity to infiltrate Ariane’s life, to wreak subtle havoc and settle old scores.
From this beginning, writer / director Dercourt spins out a sly, elegant and beautifully paced thriller. He favours subtlety over cheap thrills, and for the most part the drama is purely psychological, conveyed less by what’s shown or said than by what we can read between the lines. It’s an approach that could so easily have made for a film both over-intellectualized and painfully slow, but Dercourt keeps things determinedly on track and allows the tension to build until it becomes almost unbearable. And when things finally do happen, the impact is all the greater for it.
To be fair, a lot of the credit has to go to nineteen year old Déborah François, who manages to be both totally understated and plausibly psychotic in the lead role – it’s impossible to know what’s going on in Mélanie’s mind, but François conveys with nothing more than intonation and small gestures that it’s something very, very scary. From the start, it’s obvious that she’s either planning something horrible, or at least capable of it and improvising as she goes along; and much of the joy of The Page Turner is in discovering what, when and how.
It’s a slightly guilty pleasure, because while it’s tempting to root for Mélanie, objectively her need for revenge is far from justifiable. Ariane, as played by Catherine Frot, is spoilt, self-absorbed and hardly sympathetic. But Frot imbues her with humanity and a sense of terrible loneliness and insecurity, and when Mélanie plays shamelessly on these vulnerabilities it further muddies your sympathies. Both lead actresses are superb in their own right, but the tension when they’re on screen together is frequently hypnotic.
The Page Turner runs to eighty-five minutes, and feels exactly as long as it should be. Dercourt has pared scenes down to their bare bones and stripped out any extraneous detail, leaving the emphasis firmly on his actresses and story. The photography, which favours a palette of icy blues and greens, is an aid to understanding the characters rather than a diversion. Even the superb classical score is there for purposes of plot, and is played mostly in scene.
By staying so focused upon a simple core idea, The Page Turner manages to succeed to a greater or lesser degree on pretty much every level – and it’s that which really distinguishes it from the many similar films out there, as well from the bulk of French cinema. Dercourt has managed to find a fascinating and unusual take on his age-old subject, and then done it the justice that it deserves.