Angust (Tomasz Kot) is a successful architect turned lifestyle guru who likes to give talks to rapt audiences about how to improve their lot in life, as they listen breathlessly, hanging on every word and offering a huge round of applause when he concludes with his zinger: "Perfection is not achieved when you can add nothing more, perfection is achieved when you can take no more away". Having just completed one of his personal appearances in Paris and feeling very pleased with himself, he bids farewell to his colleague (Dominique Pinon) and prepares for the flight home by catching up with some work in the limo there. However, as the rain pours outside and the traffic slows to a crawl, there is a knock on the car window...
A Perfect Enemy was based on a book (by Amelie Nothomb) with a premise that you imagine was easier to pull off on the page, not that the director here, Kike Maillo, didn't have a darn good try. The trouble was, perhaps, that nothing here seemed quite real, occasionally intentionally but it was trying to tell a story that was tricksy while still being based in reality, and once you were aware of that early on, you would find yourself attempting to second guess it as often as possible. Who knows, you may be able to work out what was actually going on, though there could be the danger that if you did, you could dismiss your deductions as too outlandish, and believe the filmmakers would not take their characters to that destination.
Maybe the real issue here was the further it progressed, the dafter it seemed. It begins with what in romantic comedy terms would be a meet cute as a young woman calling herself by the unlikely moniker Texel Textor (she explains she is Dutch, hence the name) promptly invites herself into the limo and asks for a lift to the airport, where she is about to miss her flight. Then she announces, as they have been travelling for a few minutes, that she left her suitcase behind on the kerb, so could they go back and fetch it? Angust doesn't want to seem like a grump, so agrees - meaning he misses his flight, Texel misses hers, and they have to hang around in the airport he designed until they can get replacements. But the girl insists on sitting with Angust and telling him her life story.
It does sound a bit Planes Trains and Automobiles, but this was actually a thriller with a twisted fantasy element, not a horror exactly, as it was not really scary or gory (though there was some blood), but moving in that direction. It heaved with its literary conceit and while both Kot and Athena Strates, who played Texel, were speaking mostly in English, it also left the impression of a Europudding, one of those cross-borders productions that never quite settled its identity. If you were able to overlook the remove between the viewer and the picture, you may well get along with A Perfect Enemy, as such questions as "Why is this man putting up with this woman telling him awful stories?" and "Why doesn't he tell her where to go?" begin to be explained. Despite the language, both stars acquitted themselves well, and sustained the mystery until all was revealed, though even so there were aspects that did not add up - it did not quite go for the best-avoided "It was all a dream!" twist, but it made about as much sense unless you applied nightmare logic. For all that, you would be diverted enough, though the nagging feeling a book was the best place for this never left it. Music by Alex Baranowski.
[A Perfect Enemy will be available on Amazon/Google & iTunes from 5th July 2021.]
