Blu-ray Movie Reviews

A professional writer finds his life turned upside down when he attracts the amorous attention of his late client's sister in this dark romantic comedy about a quirky young man who can't tell "write" from wrong.

This is the second time I’ve reviewed this film on Blu-ray. I already own a great region free import of this film that I reviewed last year. This is a great mystery thriller that kept us on the edge of our seat from beginning to end. The film is chocked full of great performances and the storyline has so many twists and turns that you’ll be guessing all the way through it. I’m counting the days until we hear of a US remake in the works.

The HD presentation looks largely the same as the import I reviewed, which is excellent. The great thing this time around though is the lack of frame drop outs that I noticed with the import disc. Fine detail is exquisite throughout and the image has a great sense of dimension and depth. Colors are bold with great hues and a fantastic sense of balance within the frame. Contrast levels are also solid with great blacks and plenty of rich shadow detail.

Unfortunately the high resolution 5.1 options of the French import are gone with this release and the only high resolution option here is an uncompressed PCM stereo mix. I’m not sure why there is a lack of high resolution 5.1 here as the French release featured not only an uncompressed 5.1 PCM mix but a DTS-HD Master Audio mix as well. There is an English dub included here in Dolby Digital 5.1 or you can listen to the French dub in Dolby Digital 5.1. I watched with the French 5.1 mix and other than a subtle difference in spatial design there wasn’t a large difference between this release and my import version. There is still plenty of body here and the surround activity lends a lot to the atmosphere of the film. I still would prefer to see full support of the newer audio codecs though.

Extras include some deleted scenes and outtakes. You also get a promo style making of feature that gives you a bit of insight into the production and some interviews.

This is a great French thriller and I’m glad to see its release here stateside on Blu-ray. It is a tossup as to whether or not I would recommend this one over the French region free import. I’m overjoyed to see a clean video encode with no frame dropping but I was a bit bummed to see a lack of lossless audio options. Guess you’ll have to make that decision for yourself!