Juliette Binoche is wondrous as a woman with a fantasy identity in an exploration of the perils and pleasures of life online
There’s something peculiarly timely about this deliciously twisty, romantic thriller, with its themes of virtual isolation and physical separation. Freely adapted from a novel by Camille Laurens, Who You Think I Am boasts a kaleidoscopic performance by Juliette Binoche as a fiftysomething woman who has been rendered invisible by society (at one point a character literally looks at her without seeing her) but finds a new face for herself online. Pitched somewhere between the icy satire of late-period Claude Chabrol and the guilty thrills of Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One, Safy Nebbou’s mysterious tale of love and obsession will strike a chord with anyone who has worried about the random interactions of the internet while remaining inexorably drawn to the seductive glow of their
iPhone.
Binoche is Claire, a disillusioned divorcee who recounts her story to therapist Dr Catherine Bormans (Nicole Garcia) while we watch in flashback. Having been “unfriended” by younger lover Ludo, Claire creates a fake online persona – an alluring 24-year-old named Clara with whom Ludo’s assistant Alex (a ruffle-haired François Civil) promptly becomes infatuated. What starts as an attempt to spy on her ex soon blossoms into something more: a virtual relationship with Alex conducted with all the crackling energy of a long-distance affair. It’s intense, erotic and overwhelming. But is Alex really the subject of Claire’s affections? Or is it the thrill of becoming Clara that truly fires her passion?