Dr. Monnier, a psychiatrist played by Michel Duchaussoy, remarks midway through Patrice Leconte's well-done Confidences trop intimes (Intimate Strangers) that he has a lot in common with tax lawyers. Each has clients that have to decide "what to declare, and what to hide."

William Faber (Fabrice Luchini), his interlocutor and tax specialist himself, takes an arc through the film of ever-so gradual self-revelation. The payoff for his bottled-up character, fastidious about shoe trees and vinyl LPs, whose idea of world travel is a business trip from Paris to Belgium, comes in the final scene, when his usually guarded expression dissolves into a radiant beam.

What sets the story in motion is the mistake made by Alma Delambre (Sandrine Bonnaire), who walks into Faber's office thinking him to be Monnier and begins spilling her own secrets to him.

This is a chamber piece for Bonnaire and Luchini, make no mistake, but there are engaging subplots, among them the cure of a beefy claustrophobic, as well as the love affair playing out on the television soap opera watched steadfastly by Faber and Monnier's concierge.

Leconte shoots a lot of the movie handheld, and his skittery camera work sometimes provides the reaction that Faber is doing his best to repress.

The satisfying conclusion, alogn with its coda, suggests that of Lost in Translation in that it impresses upon us that the dearest intimacies are not necessarily physical, that a simple touch sometimes is the most revealing. We leave Alma and William in a state of warmth, each with something revealed, and something yet hidden.

posted: 12:57:25 PM