Major Spoilers.
Lemming is a typically gallic take on the mystery thriller and in this instance the 'mystery' is more 'wotappen' than 'whodunnit.' Laurent Lucas plays Alain Getty, a ever-so-slightly smug designer who finds his model marriage shredded by the wife of his boss, an acidic and malicious woman (Charlotte Rampling), who, after committing suicide (or does she?) possesses Alain's wife (or does she?) in order to persuade him to kill her errant husband (or does he? Or she? Or the other he?)
It could all be a dream. Alain dreams of a kitchen overrun with lemmings and, in his dream falls over and hurts his arm. He then wakes up in hospital, his broken arm in a cast, and is told he was in a car crash. But Alain distinctly remembers arriving home the night before, prompted to return from his business journey by his wife's uncharacteristic harshness over the phone. Director Dominik Moll plays with our perceptions and expectations, and relies upon an audience that is growing increasingly sophisticated to perhaps wrong-foot themselves by over-analysing what is happening on the screen.
The pace is slow, dream-like. The camera lingers on silent faces, watching them think, making the audience think (too much perhaps) with the characters. Alain finds a lemming he believes dead in the pipes beneath the kitchen sink. A specialist tells Alain's wife, the morning after his bosses wife has committed suicide in their spare room, that the idea of lemming's suicide is an absurd myth, that they are really just trying to get to the other side of whatever is before them whether it is a river, a lake or an ocean. Mme. Pollock (the heavy-lidded Rampling) then perhaps hasn't simply committed suicide, but has crossed to the other side in order to achieve her objective.
The film is in no hurry to tell its story. There is no frantic editing, no cheap shocks and no climax in the Hollywood sense of the word. The final shot has Alain watering his garden as his wife (the rangy, lugubrious Charlotte Gainsbourg) delivers the news that his boss has committed suicide, and the symbolism is obvious. A voice-over informs us that shortly after, the wife falls pregnant, and, remembering a brief conversation between the two women over the initial catastrophic dinner, we are left to wonder not only who the father is, but the mother also.
Lemming is a typically gallic take on the mystery thriller and in this instance the 'mystery' is more 'wotappen' than 'whodunnit.' Laurent Lucas plays Alain Getty, a ever-so-slightly smug designer who finds his model marriage shredded by the wife of his boss, an acidic and malicious woman (Charlotte Rampling), who, after committing suicide (or does she?) possesses Alain's wife (or does she?) in order to persuade him to kill her errant husband (or does he? Or she? Or the other he?)
It could all be a dream. Alain dreams of a kitchen overrun with lemmings and, in his dream falls over and hurts his arm. He then wakes up in hospital, his broken arm in a cast, and is told he was in a car crash. But Alain distinctly remembers arriving home the night before, prompted to return from his business journey by his wife's uncharacteristic harshness over the phone. Director Dominik Moll plays with our perceptions and expectations, and relies upon an audience that is growing increasingly sophisticated to perhaps wrong-foot themselves by over-analysing what is happening on the screen.
The pace is slow, dream-like. The camera lingers on silent faces, watching them think, making the audience think (too much perhaps) with the characters. Alain finds a lemming he believes dead in the pipes beneath the kitchen sink. A specialist tells Alain's wife, the morning after his bosses wife has committed suicide in their spare room, that the idea of lemming's suicide is an absurd myth, that they are really just trying to get to the other side of whatever is before them whether it is a river, a lake or an ocean. Mme. Pollock (the heavy-lidded Rampling) then perhaps hasn't simply committed suicide, but has crossed to the other side in order to achieve her objective.
The film is in no hurry to tell its story. There is no frantic editing, no cheap shocks and no climax in the Hollywood sense of the word. The final shot has Alain watering his garden as his wife (the rangy, lugubrious Charlotte Gainsbourg) delivers the news that his boss has committed suicide, and the symbolism is obvious. A voice-over informs us that shortly after, the wife falls pregnant, and, remembering a brief conversation between the two women over the initial catastrophic dinner, we are left to wonder not only who the father is, but the mother also.