IF YOUR special one was wrongly arrested for murder, would you do anything to secure his or her release?
Ignore the fact that your beloved might suddenly take on the drippy form of Diane Kruger – no less boring in French than in English – and focus on the key elements of the scenario. Well, brave cove that you are, you probably wouldarrange false passports, murder a dangerous hoodlum, plot a new life in Central America and then, with these drab formalities sorted, snatch the prisoner in broad daylight.
The real question, surely, is whether you could do all those things. (Do not answer if you are Steven Seagal.) This mainstream French thriller just about gets away with its landslide of improbability. Vincent Landon, charismatic veteran of French cinema, has the look of a man with hidden gifts, and Anything for Her moves so rapidly that you scarcely have time to register its preposterousness.
Events begin with the bourgeois couple returning home from an evening on the town. Shortly afterwards, the police burst through the door and arrest Kruger for the murder of her boss. She was spotted near the scene. Her raincoat is stained with blood, and her fingerprints are on the murder weapon.
It seems that we are heading into mystery territory, but, rather suddenly and rather clumsily, the director reveals the true circumstances – the divinely innocent Diane was in the wrong place and kept touching the wrong things – and the film settles down into a prison break drama.
There is something of the looming, spiralling nightmare of Sam Raimi's A Simple Planabout Anything for Her. But, whereas that film saw its lead characters become ever more hapless, Fred Cavaye's debut allows Landon to gradually evolve into a tormented superhero.
Still, he does manage to make a few very basic errors. If you’re going to write your entire escape plan on a wall, I wouldn’t advise throwing the wallpaper in the bin before heading off for the prison. Don’t they have matches in France?
Directed by Fred Cavaye. Starring Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger, Lancelot Roch 15A cert, Cineworld/IFI/Light House/Movies@Dundrum, Dublin, 96 min
