Francois Ozon's haunting UNDER THE SAND stars the remarkable British actress Charlotte Rampling, who plays Marie Drillon: a strong, attractive, professional, independent middle-aged woman trying to get her life back on track after the sudden disappearance of her husband. Even for a... [More]

Francois Ozon's haunting UNDER THE SAND stars the remarkable British actress Charlotte Rampling, who plays Marie Drillon: a strong, attractive, professional, independent middle-aged woman trying to get her life back on track after the sudden disappearance of her husband. Even for a superwoman like Marie, the shock of the tragedy is psychologically traumatizing. Marie isn't sure what happened to her husband (Is he dead? Did he run off with someone else?) and she's in denial about him being gone. At Parisian dinner parties with her supportive, careful friends, Marie still talks about her husband in the present tense. At home, she still imagines that he is with her; she pours two cups of tea in the morning and she reminds him to set the alarm clock before going to sleep at night. At the university where she teaches English, she reads to her students from the melancholy book THE WAVES by Virginia Woolf. Through all of this, Ozon's camera caresses Marie and encourages her, always casting her in cold, confident light. Using film language such as the repeated double reflection of Marie's face in the mirror, audiences come to understand Marie's innermost thoughts and feelings. She is a woman confronting herself (her identity, her age, her body, her sexuality, her emotions, her intellect) with brutal honesty. UNDER THE SAND is beautiful, sad, languorous film that includes some unforgettable images of the rolling ocean waves near Marie's beach house in Landes, France. [Less]