Married for 25 years, Marie (Rampling) and Jean (Cremer) seem the epitome of relaxed intimates as they begin a holiday. Jean's sudden disappearance while swimming forces us to question the domestic idyll and prompts Marie's delusional, grief-stricken denial of her husband's death, even conjuring up his presence back in their Paris apartment. Director François Ozon's trademark enquiries into power (here exercised by the dead over the living), bourgeois domesticity, and the intertwining of fantasy and reality are filtered through Rampling's perfectly judged, highly enigmatic performance. It's a controlled, intelligent, quietly gripping film which yields no easy answers to its core mysteries.

Kieron Corless