L'Appartement

Gilles Mimouni has directed one film in his life. This one. It was release in the UK 10 years ago. It won the BAFTA award for foreign language film. He's not done anything since. That's a pretty depressing state of affairs when Brett Ratner has helmed 8 films in that time, 3 of which had the words Rush and Hour in the title. If Gilles Mimouni does every get round to making another film I'll be ordering my tickets in advance since his one and only effort is absolutely terrific.

L'Appartement's Vincent Cassel

L'Appartement sees Vincent Cassel play Max, a business man engaged to his partner's sister and on the verge of marriage. However as with many engaged men in films, Max is having doubts and the very first shot in the film sees him unable to choose an appropriate ring for his fiance. Soon after he bids farewell to her at the airport as he's supposed to board a flight to Tokyo, only for him to turn around once she's left, and hole up in his friend's place to begin a quest to find a long lost love, Lisa, who he believes he caught a glimpse of the day before.

Through a series of flashbacks we learn that Lisa, played by an unbelievably attractive Monica Bellucci, was the love of his life before disappearing suddenly without explanation. As Max struggles against fate in his quest to find her he tracks her down to what he believes is her apartment only to find out it's another Lisa who lives there. And from their things get very complicated for everyone involved and I'll not go into any more details as it's a delight to watch the intricacies of the plot build one by one.

Gratuitous Monica Bellucci Picture

L'appartement won a Cesar award for best first feature. It won the BAFTA for foreign language film. It's worth of both of those and certainly worth your while checking it out. It was remade in 2004 as Wicker Park starring Josh Hartett but if you've seen that don't let it put you off; this will certainly be bumping a film off my 1997 list. Wonderful.

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