Anything For Her

WHEN we first meet happy loving couple Julien (Vincent Lindon) and Lisa (Diane Kruger) in Anything For Her (France/15A/96mins), they are in a passionate embrace in the elevator up to their apartment, where their young son and a babysitter awaits.

The next time Julien and Lisa get to ride an elevator together, they are running from the police, the former having spent the years plotting an escape plan for the latter after she’s wrongly imprisoned for the brutal murder of her boss.

It’s how a humble and hurt schoolteacher becomes heroic enough to save the woman he loves — yet another appeal rejection sparking a suicide attempt by Lisa — that drives Fred Cavaye’s fine film. It’s a slick production (Michael Mann’s former collaborator Klaus Badelt provides the score; Tell No

One’s art director Philippe Chiffre and Anna M DP Alain Duplantier take care of the look), but it would be nothing without the smart script, and a captivating central performance from Lindon.

Here’s an actor who manages to conjure up the complexity and cavalier attitude of Humphrey Bogart whilst looking like Marty Feldman’s strangely handsome younger brother.

A film that could have been called In The Name Of The Really Hot Mother, the beauty of Anything For Her is how fluidly it portrays a life having the rug pulled from underneath it.

One minute you’re taking your daily happy family snap at the breakfast table; the next, you’re nursing a bullet wound in a petrol station toilet.