Lulu (2005)

infatuation curdle into jealousy. Convinced that Lulu is sleeping her way through his circle, Leon summons everyone to a formal dinner, intending to expose their betrayals and clear the field for himself. Instead, the gathering becomes a stiff, simmering theatre of suspicion, lust and wounded male pride. Directors Maartje Seyferth and Victor Nieuwenhuijs treat Frank Wedekind’s notorious femme-fatale figure as the centre of a chilly erotic fever dream, favouring long pauses, loaded glances and carefully arranged bodies over conventional storytelling. That can make the film hypnotic, but it also makes it frustrating: the men are supposedly helpless before Lulu, yet the film does not always show enough of the seduction to make their obsession fully convincing. Still, its awkwardness has a peculiar pull. Leon’s breakdown is less a great romance than a portrait of an entitled man discovering that beauty cannot be possessed, controlled or edited to suit him.

Although made in the Netherlands in the mid-2000s, Lulu lives in a deliberately hazy, almost timeless European world. The forest road, roaming musicians and Lulu’s Central European air give it an old-world flavour, while Leon’s elegant country mansion turns the story into a claustrophobic chamber piece. Most of the action unfolds inside that house, whose handsome rooms and enormous dining table become a gilded cage for the characters. Do not expect bustling Dutch streets, postcard scenery or slick modern pacing; the vibe is stage-bound, sparse and faintly unreal, with stretches of silence, French conversation and violin music doing more work than the dialogue. It is less a steamy thriller than an austere art-film séance about lust, paranoia and men making fools of themselves over a woman they barely understand.

Vlatka Simac plays Lulu with a slender, dark-haired, feline beauty and a cool, unreadable manner that makes her seem both vulnerable and faintly dangerous. She looks striking nude, and the camera plainly admires her petite figure and small breasts, but this is not wall-to-wall bedroom gymnastics. The erotic charge comes mainly from her casual nakedness, teasing presence and the havoc she creates simply by being available yet impossible to own. Simac has the right physical allure for the part, even if the thin script leaves her more as an erotic apparition than a fully fleshed-out woman—which, depending on your appetite for arty Euro-mystery, may be either the point or the problem.

Leon Mortier, a wealthy publisher, whilst driving through the forest one day, stops when he sees Lulu walking down the long narrow road. She gets into the car. Leon is amused and intrigued by her. When he pulls off, suddenly out of nowhere a man appears in front of the car and Leon accidentally hits him. He decides to take them both home to recover. Leon falls madly in love with Lulu. Both Lulu and the man stay on with him in the house. Lulu’s behavior is unpredictable. Leon becomes suspicious and paranoid about her. As he begins to suspect that his friends are being unfaithful with Lulu, he decides to throw a dinner party with some of his closest friends. During the dinner he wants to confront them with their infidelity and expel them all from his life with Lulu. But when he discovers his son in the arms of Lulu, he decides also to get rid of her, a plan which backfires in a most unexpected way.