If You Don't, I Will

For the most part, writer-director Sophie Fillières’ If You Don’t, I Will strikes an engaging tone of melancholic humor through its portrait of a French marriage slowly falling to pieces.

A quiet, intermittently poignant portrait of two people who've lost each other and aren't sure they want to find their way back.

Much of the film's appeal lies in watching the two lead actors enact subtle, honest moments of observed behavior.

While you may be left craving more emotional fireworks than you get, Fillières's intelligent film is accomplished in its portrayal of a marriage in crisis, the union's last gasps rife with poignant exchanges.

It’s a magnificently acrid showcase for two idiosyncratic actors who seem uncannily in tune with each other, even as their characters are out of sync.

Shot in pedestrian fashion, it is set in an intriguing and entirely foreign milieu, but the film ends up just too inscrutable and oblique for us to really engage with it, or its often incomprehensibly motivated characters.

The actors play off one another beautifully, but the film bottoms out just as it's getting warmed up.