From the outset, with this film interweaving plot and characters in two time periods, 32 years apart,The Key promised much but eventually delivered little.It is not an easy film to follow as new characters (usually unsavoury) appear out of nowhere. I will not even attempt to summarise the plot as this has been done elsewhere but I must agree it is a convoluted one, this not necessarily being a weakness. What irritated me throughout was the weak characterisation throughout, most annoyingly that of Eric. Honestly, from early on I did not care what fate awaited him. Why did he not want to take possession of his father's ashes? Why didn't he attempt to find out more about him? After being on the receiving end of skulduggery at the hands of the hooker Cecile and associated thugs, after being bundled into the boot of a car and confronted by unknown hoods, after being given the heave-ho by his wife, Eric never confided in anybody. Apart from half-hearted attempts to enquire of those who were treating him badly just exactly what was going on, Eric did nothing. Half-way through the movie, his character so exasperated me that like almost all characters in the movie, there was no empathy. So much so did Eric's character annoy me that his early demise would have been a blessing! Even though Eric's wife Audrey does tend to whine somewhat in the early scenes, I at least could sympathise with her. Overall, an unsatisfying two hours of cinema.

I won't add much to the other comments. It's a very intriguing film, confusing too, and the audience may have some difficulties to follow. But, as usual in Nicloux's features, it's not senseless and especially very dark. Very weird. Many things remain unexplained. The character of Thierry Lhermitte is the same in another Guillaume Nicloux's movie: CETTE FEMME LA. He also played a character like this - a private eye - in a movie from 1984: UN ETE D'ENFER.This story is very like another film, also starring Guillaume Canet and Jean Rochefort: NE LE DIS A PERSONNE. In this last film, Rochefort had a character very similar. A supporting one, but interesting too. A complex topic concerning the dark past, a disgusting tale that explodes to the face of many people, some decades later.

Jumping constantly between 2 time periods (1975 and 2007) and at least 3 different groups of characters, "The Key" is mainly an exercise in narrative complexity that does not satisfy very much emotionally. Admittedly there are some very suspenseful and well-done moments (the throat stabbing and the subsequent escape attempt), but in trying to interconnect all the different time periods and story lines, the screenwriters are forced to use a few too many coincidences, most notably at the end, when somehow almost every character ends up at the same hospital at the same time (also, I'm still not sure if the hero gets in so much trouble because he is mistaken for a thief by drug runners, or because of his father's criminal past, or both). The cast is good as usual for a French movie, but the lovely Marie Gillain unfortunately gets stuck with the poorly written character of the obnoxiously nagging wife. All in all, "Le Clef" is an interesting but forgettable experiment. **1/2 out of 4.

Having written, directed and even taken a small role in one of the best thrillers in recent years, Ne le dis a personne, Guillaume Canet settles for the lead in yet another fine French thriller with more twists than the tornado that carried Dorothy off to Oz. It's difficult to describe the plot in too much detail so suffice it to say that Canet plays a guy who never knew his father then one day out of the blue he gets a phone call from a guy who not only claims to have known the father but is also in possession of the late man's ashes which he offers to Canet. In a parallel story line cop Josie Balasko is working a case thirty years earlier in 1975 and if that doesn't whet your appetite - you may remember Balasko has already played a great cop in Cette femme-la - nothing will. There are also some other tasty actors around such as a bearded Thierry Thermitte looking bizarrely like Spike Milligan, Jean Rochefort and Marie Gillain as Cantet's wife. Gillain has another film in the salles this week in which she is blonde as against her brunette here though she doesn't need peroxide to switch from drama to romantic comedy given that she's a fine actress which is more than can be said for Vanessa Paradis who is also on hand looking like forty miles of bad road. This is a fine thriller which needs to be seen more than once.