A young couple make a terrible childcare choice in this strained, unsatisfying drama based on Leïla Slimani’s bestselling novel
If a young couple hire an apparently perfect nanny to look after their two young children, allowing them to return to the carefree world of socialising and professional fulfilment that they once enjoyed … well, in theory, that nanny could just turn out to be a thoroughly nice person. But in the movies she must gradually reveal herself to be a sinister weirdo. This strained and unsatisfying bad-nanny drama is from French film-maker Lucie Borleteau, who directed Fidelio: Alice’s Journey, a weird sex-aboard-a-container-ship drama
It is based on the Goncourt-winning bestseller from Leïla Slimani, in turn based on a real-life murder case. Myriam (Leïla Bekhti) and Paul (Antoine Reinartz) are a lawyer and record producer in
Paris whose relationship is creaking under the strain of two young kids. So they hire a nanny (after the traditional “audition” montage) and this is the prim, brisk, efficient Louise, played by the estimable French character actor Karin Viard. Inevitably, lonely and envious Louise conceives an unwholesome obsession with her employers’ happy home – that casual well-being that she has made possible.