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Film Data
Who You Think I Am  2019
Celle Que Vous Croyez
Director:  Safy Nebbou
Producer:
  Michel Saint-Jean
Art Director:
  Cyril Gomez-Mathieu
Editor:
  Stéphane Pereira
Music:
  Ibrahim Maalouf
Screenplay:
  Safy Nebbou and Julie Peyr, adapted by Safy Nebbou from the novel by Camille Laurens
Director of Photography:
  Gilles Porte
slideshow
Cast:
people1 Juliette Binoche
spacer1 Nicole Garcia
spacer1 François Civil
spacer1 Marie-Ange Casta
spacer1 Guillaume Gouix
spacer1 Charles Berling
spacer1 Jules Houplain
spacer1 Jules Gauzelin
spacer1 Claude Perron
spacer1 Francis Leplay
spacer1 Pierre Giraud
spacer1 François Genty
people1 Juliette Binoche spacer1 Nicole Garcia spacer1 François Civil
spacer1 Marie-Ange Casta spacer1 Guillaume Gouix spacer1 Charles Berling
spacer1 Jules Houplain spacer1 Jules Gauzelin spacer1 Claude Perron
spacer1 Francis Leplay spacer1 Pierre Giraud spacer1 François Genty
people1 Juliette Binoche spacer1 Nicole Garcia
spacer1 François Civil spacer1 Marie-Ange Casta
spacer1 Guillaume Gouix spacer1 Charles Berling
spacer1 Jules Houplain spacer1 Jules Gauzelin
spacer1 Claude Perron spacer1 Francis Leplay
spacer1 Pierre Giraud spacer1 François Genty

Synopsis:

Directed and co-written by Safy Nebbou (Mark Of An Angel / Dumas), adapted from the novel Celle Que Vous Croyez / The One You Think by Camille Laurens, Who You Think I Am has the redoubtable Juliette Binoche (The English Patient / Clouds Of Sils Maria) in the lead, playing the central character, Claire Millaud, a fifty-year-old divorced university lecturer and mother of two, discovering the difficulties of being a single woman of a certain age, to use a horrible term, and still wanting to have relationships, a position heightened when she is dumped by her current boyfriend, Ludovic (Guillaume Gouix - 22 Bullets / Rabid Dogs). Claire is in regular therapy sessions with her therapist, Dr. Bormans (Nicole Garcia - Mon Oncle L’Amerique / Death In A French Garden), which is probably just as well, as Claire’s next move, creating a false identity online and basically cyber-hunting Ludovic’s young assistant, Alex (François Civil - Frank / The Wolf’s Call), escalates things to an uncomfortable degree, as Claire becomes more and more committed to keeping up the deception, even though she realises it is ultimately going to be fruitless, Nebbou’s film, his fifth feature, starts to slip from the comedy / drama category to the story of what seems to be an increasingly obsessed and vindictive woman, which was possibly not the original intention, as Claire starts to neglect her children and manipulate everything around her to maintain this deception, even roping in an unsuspecting and innocent relative, the film even bringing in a suicide, and a late revelation, made to the therapist, makes things all the more uncomfortable. While the film sticks to Claire’s story and her point of view, the original novel apparently involves more of the characters and their take on events, which would take dilute her singleminded focus on the young man she is shamelessly deceiving.

Nebbou certainly has a strong trio of dependable French talent in Binoche, Garcia and Charles Berling (Ridicule / Elle), as Claire’s ex-husband, and the story begins as one of a women determined not to be knocked back by a number of disappointments in her personal life, but soon becomes something rather different, Sight & Sound saying ‘… the story becomes a cliché about the revenge of a bitter woman who can’t move on. References to Les Liaisons Dangereuses become a none too subtle warning that manipulative women end badly’, although admits ‘The saving grace is that she is incarnated by Juliette Binoche, who needs no younger avatar to be seductive’.

In the opinion of CineVue, ‘French director Safy Nebbou marshals a game Juliette Binoche through a twisty-turny plot that is equal parts psychological melodrama, romance, and genre thriller. But while Binoche is reliably magnetic and the fitfully pretty visuals match a ripped-from-the-headlines script, Who You Think I Am’s pot never quite comes to the boil’, while Cineuropa believed ‘Written by Safy Nebbou and Julie Peyr, the screenplay holds a few more surprises along the way (which are more or less believable), resulting in a web of lies that begin to spill over into the imaginary, and allowing the film to develop into a sort of thriller set in cold Parisian buildings adorned with floor-to-ceiling windows. […] With Who You Think I Am, the director paints the portrait of a society based on modern communication, where dreaming with your eyes open is just one misstep away from tragedy’.

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