Anna Oz

A young Parisienne called Anna receives an order to present herself at the local police station. She is meant to be a witness to a murder which she is believed to have seen. The problem is that she does not remember a thing. She is taken care of that night. This is where her strange dream begins: she finds herself, together with her brother, in an old Venetian palace with a mysterious ''art dealer'' appearing here and there. He reminds her of her own father. Anna Oz bears certain similarities to Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique. Warsaw has been exchanged for Venice and the story takes place amongst criminals instead of Kieslowski's artists and intellectuals. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the young Frenchwoman whose life is intertwined with a Venetian woman through many psychological dimensions. Rochant has the ability to throw himself from one genre to another in his films, to always be looking for something new. In his critically acclaimed debut film A World without Pity he depicted an unbelievable relationship between a drug dealer and a student. That film can be placed in the romantic-comedy genre. Anna Oz is more of an oedipal drama with a serious tone. Well aware of the risks of appearing banal, Rochant skillfully balances his story between dream and reality. This mixture is carefully masked by Rochant's attention to detail. Anna Oz is a psychological thriller as if straight out of Hitchcock and Bunuel. Another of Rochant's favourite directors, Roman Polanski, is also evident as a source of inspiration. Rochant has written the script together with Polanski's collaborator Gerard Brach, who has worked on scripts like Cul-de-Sac and Repulsion. Charlotte Gainsbourg has lived up to everyone's expectations after winning a Cesar for Most promising actress in Claude Miller's film L'effrontee. She is as feminine as only Frenchwomen on film can be.