Review: In the Shadow of Iris
Performance is the name of the game in the twisty erotic thriller, In the Shadow of Iris, released in France at the tail end of 2016 as Iris and now available on Netflix. Loosely based on Hideo Nakata's 2000 film Chaos, the film was originally intended to be filmed in English but was scrapped, presumably due to the tale's sexual kinks. All's well that ends well since director and star Jalil Lespert has crafted an expert blend of noir and policier.
Lespert portrays the immaculately dressed and bearded Antoine, a banker whose wife Iris (Charlotte Le Bon) disappears without a trace after a romantic lunch at an expensive eatery. It's not too long before it's revealed that Iris masterminded her vanishing with the aid of scruffy mechanic Max (Romain Duris), who's behind on his mortgage payments and increasingly nagged by his ex-wife for being a terrible father to their young son. "What if something goes wrong?" he worries to Iris. "It's impossible," she replies. Naturally, things do not go according to plan and, even more unsurprisingly, no one is who they seem to be.
To detail any more of the plot would be to deprive viewers of the narrative's deliciously serpentine reveals. It's a story that has fueled many a noir, but there's an admirable density in In the Shadow of Iris, one that derives from the characters' slippery motivations and guises. Is Max a pure patsy in over his head? His anxiety at the train platform where Antoine is waiting with the ransom would strongly confirm this. And yet, the genuine menace in his voice when he tells Iris "Believe me, you don't want me to hit you" shows that this may be a man who is not afraid to get blood on his hands.
Iris herself toes the line between deadly vixen and (knowingly) exploited victim. Le Bon is nothing less than compelling and, if there's one major criticism to be lobbied at the film apart from the predictability that surfaces in its third act, it is that she is sorely missed whenever she's offscreen. Lespert the actor is debonair with just the right touch of ambiguity. Based on Duris and Le Bon's well-layered performances, Lespert the director has a tremendously sure hand with his actors. This confidence extends to the story, which is assuredly and tautly told. Lespert balances the gloss and the grime, the sensual and the lurid, and the desperate craving that drives the characters to give themselves over to their darker impulses.
In the Shadow of Iris
Directed by: Jalil Lespert
Written by: Jalil Lespert, Jérémie Guez; based on a screenplay by Andrew Bovell, inspired by the film Chaos by Hideo Nakata
Starring: Romain Duris, Charlotte Le Bon, Jalil Lespert, Camille Cottin, Adel Bencherif
