MOVIE REVIEW
“SIBYL”
Not rated. In English and French with subtitles. At the Coolidge Corner Virtual Theater.
Grade: A-
In “Sibyl,” a psychological thriller from France, a psychotherapist writing a novel poaches the real life stories of a young patient, an actress having an affair with her famous co-star Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), an egotist also in a relationship with the woman director of the film the actors are making.
Oh, what tangled webs we weave. In addition to recalling the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona,” “Sibyl” will take the actors and the therapist to the island of Stromboli, the site and title of Roberto Rossellini’s notorious 1950 film with Ingrid Bergman.
Although steeped in film history, “Sibyl” also seems entirely new. Cesar-nominated Justine Triet, the film’s writer-director is a graduate of the Paris National School of Fine Arts. She is from Normandy.
Co-writing with actor Arthur Harari, who plays a doctor in the film, Triet has created a thieving, unscrupulous heroine, the therapist and recovering alcoholic Sibyl (a suitably fascinating Virginie Efira). Georges Simenon would have been happy to have created Sibyl, and perhaps he did. She tapes the distraught young actress Margot (Adele Exarchopolous, “Blue Is the Warmest Color”) without her knowledge to repurpose her stories about her tumultuous love life and what she is going to do about her unwanted pregnancy. Igor wants her to have the child. Sibyl has both a lover, who is the father of her elder daughter Selma (Jeane Ara-Bellanger), and an increasingly annoyed husband (Paul Hamy). While her name recalls the oracles of ancient Greece, Sibyl is more like a vampire, sucking the life out of Margot and putting it down on paper (i.e., laptop) in an effort to become a published novelist, and her creepy publisher loves it.
Sibyl shamelessly encourages Margot to get into sexual detail. One of Sibyl’s patients is a boy who could be her son. They play Monopoly together. He tells her that he likes to lock himself up in his grandmother’s laundry room. Margot begs Sibyl to come to Stromboli, where the film’s director Mika (a scene-stealing Sandra Huller, “Toni Erdmann”) knows about Igor and Margot and tries desperately to keep it all together to get the film completed.
In a twist worthy of the aforementioned director Bergman, Sibyl ends up directing a love-making scene aboard a yacht when Mika — I would say walks off the set, but the fact is she swims away. It is so “Day for Night.” Laure Calamy of “Call My Agent!” makes a lot out of the small role of Sibyl’s neurotic and amusing sister Edith. Seldom have smoking craters so perfectly evoked erupting human passions. Sibyl will roam Monica Vitti-like over the rocks.
Triet is an astute observer of a male famous actor’s power over some women. Ulliel’s Igor is half Alain Delon, half Klaus Kinski. Belgium-born Efira (“Elle”), who plays the title role in Triet’s “In Bed with Victoria,” is riveting. Like life, “Sybil” is a dark and sometimes funny hall of mirrors.
(“Sibyl” contains nudity, sexually suggestive scenes and profanity.)
The Link LonkSeptember 11, 2020 at 04:50PM
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French thriller ‘Sybil’ a sinister, sometimes funny feast - Boston Herald
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Funny
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