Discrète, La

Like fellow countrymen Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut, newcomer Vincent has a razor keen eye for the tiny, seemingly trivial details that most people never even bother to pick up on. La Discrète, a tale of one man's bizarre seduction of a young, randomly picked woman (and how the best laid plans often... well, you know), is filled to bursting with these tell-tale signs, looks, and gestures, and, if you didn't know better, you'd say it was Truffaut back from the grave for one last bittersweet take on the human condition. High praise, indeed. Antoine, a parliamentary speechwriter and modestly misogynistic rake of the highest order, suddenly finds himself minus his girlfriend. Unused to being the dumpee in such a situation, he casually mentions to his perpetual bachelor friend Jean how much he craves “vengeance.” Jean responds with an ingenious offer Antoine just can't refuse: why not pick a girl completely at random, seduce her in such a manner that it appears as though he is the one who is being seduced, consummate the affair, abandon the woman, and then write a popular book about the whole debacle and bathe in the royalties. “Because you were abandoned by a woman, you decide to take vengeance on all women,” he says. Antoine's victim turns out to be a mousy, shy secretary who at first finds this speechmaking maverick a bit of a lout, and then succumbs to his plan but, of course, things do not always go as planned. Vincent's wry, melancholy look at the inbound treachery of the human heart isn't nearly as dark a film as I may have made it sound. His direction is so self-assured it's hard to believe this is his first feature film. Luchini and Henry are excellent as the two lovers -- both have a way with body language that transcends mere words and elevates their screen time together to something approaching reality -- and their mix of shy ambivalence and predatory courting is a heady brew. The only problem here is the film's ending, which seems too abrupt and spiritually dissolute to have been anything but the victim of major rewrites and last-minute panic. Regardless, La Discrète remains a wonderful, honest film. Even in real life, there's rarely a decent ending.