Review No.125: Switch

As I'm starting to get more and more of this year's releases come from LoveFilm every week I'm currently making a conscious effort to watch as many of them as possible in order to bring down the number of titles on my list so today I have chosen two Euro-thrillers both of which they have sent me. The first of these is Switch a French film in which Karine Vanasse plays French-Canadian fashion designer Sophie who is without a job and boyfriend so is encouraged by an acquaintance to go an apartment swapping holiday to Paris via the website switch.com. Karine initially enjoys herself in Paris however she takes a turn for the worst when she wakes up vomiting and then is confronted by the police who find a decapitated corpse in her apartment. The police, led by Eric Cantona's stoic Detective Forgeat, believe she is Benedicte who is the original owner of the apartment as all of her ID has been changed so that her picture appears on her passport. Sophie gets more frustrated when she finds that Benedicte has switched their entire lives over which means that the police now believe that she is the one with a history of mental illness and want to commit her until they get to the bottom of this mystery. Sophie has other ideas and after using a dentist to make her escape goes on a rampage through Paris holding up cars and stealing money, so just what any sane person who was trying to prove their innocence would do. As time wears on and more evidence starts to come forward Forgeat starts to believe that Sophie may actually be who she claims to be however with people being finished off in both Paris and Montreal it's a race against time to uncover the truth but if there's one man up for the job is Eric Cantona.

Yes so the former premier league star has become a credible actor, even though his best performance was as himself in Looking for Eric, and in Switch I thought was the only element of the film that had a basis in reality. Essentially the plot of Switch is totally ludicrous and in many ways is a second rate attempt to make a thriller in the vein of director Fred Cavaye's Point Black or Anything For Her that being said I can't admit that for the most part I wasn't gripped. Director Frederic Schoendoerffer made sure that he gave us enough reason to care about Sophie prior to him dumping her in this far-fetched scenario where nobody believed her story and she goes around threatening people with a gun. Karine Vanasse has some good chemistry with Cantona, in the few scenes that they are on screen together, her increasingly manic air giving a good contrast to his constantly dour expression. Though the thriller elements are gripping the main problem with Switch is that it has no basis in reality whatsoever and the final discovery is one of the silliest revelations that I've ever seen in a film. Switch is a film that keeps you guessing till the end with some decent performances however it spoils most of it with a sticky twist that is just a step too far.

Verdict: With good performances from its too leads plus a script that keeps the action ticking along nicely Switch is spoilt by an increasingly far-fetched nature that is stretched to breaking point with the final twist so for that reason I can only give it 6.5/10