Luc, while visiting Toronto to accept an award, succumbs to the charms of Lindsay (Melanie Merkosky), a predatory, about-to-be-divorced beauty who bluntly propositions him within minutes of their meeting. The film’s temperature rises to slightly above freezing in its second half when Stéphanie’s angst leads to full-scale panic attacks that result in her hospitalization.
It disturbs the serenity of the couple’s modern aerie outside Quebec City and prompts her to wonder nervously, “Are we real?”
EYE FOR AN EYE MOVIE CAST CRACK
The first sign of a crack in the facade of this cold, perfect world is the discomfort of Luc’s beautiful wife, Stéphanie (Mélanie Thierry), while watching a television documentary showing the fall of Muammar el-Qaddafi. At least we don’t hear the “p” word (that would be “peasants”) applied to those less fortunate, which is almost everybody with less refined taste. The name Ikea is spoken with such contempt that it sounds like a curse. How unfortunate it is, one laments, that ancient sites like Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat are being overrun with tourists. These people who appraise everything in sight with the icy scrutiny of art-world sharks, might as well be humanoids for all the warmth they exude. If the movie were a satire, which it should be, the vanity and snobbery of Luc and his circle of friends, many of them in their 30s, wouldn’t be so suffocating. Written and directed by the Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand (“ The Barbarian Invasions,” which won a 2004 Academy Award for best foreign picture), “An Eye for Beauty” is the cinematic equivalent of a photo spread in Vogue or Architectural Digest that taunts you with images of rich, well-to-do beautiful people leading the tastefully glamorous life.
Because that smug, straight-faced remark by Luc (Éric Bruneau), a handsome, successful architect to a group of supercilious friends in “ An Eye for Beauty” is not entirely facetious, you may never forgive him for it.
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