OVERVIEW
In a Catalan fishing village on the Costa Brava, Jeanne (Marion Cotillard) has built a careful new life with Daniel (Leonardo Sbaraglia), while still carrying trauma from her past life. One afternoon, her six-year-old godson Mateo disappears while in her care, and suspicion falls on her. Before the investigation can close in, she crosses the border into rural France and returns to the place she was born into: a religious cult run by Marc (Denis Ménochet).
BACKGROUND
Under Thierry Frémaux, Cannes has increasingly used its non-competition strands to launch commercial French productions, giving Pathé, Gaumont, and StudioCanal projects a prestige festival platform ahead of their domestic theatrical runs. Karma fits right in. Canet wrote the lead for Marion Cotillard after years of wanting to build a film around her, admitting that he had long felt frustrated at never having directed a character “commensurate with her talent.” It is their ninth collaboration and the last they made together as a couple, since they announced their separation a month after the shoot wrapped.
THE REVIEW
Canet keeps the story moving the way the best of these thrillers do, with one revelation not pausing for breath before opening into the next. It offers a fraction of the pleasure found in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, where new revelations make you rethink everything you thought you knew. None of the twists are wildly daring on their own, but the script handles them well, planting cues that feel obvious in retrospect yet imperceptible in the moment.
He is incredibly effective at setting the mood, helped by Yodelice’s score, which uses the organ to recall Herrmann, especially the Maestro’s last work, the quasi-religious Obsession. Shot by Benoît Debie, the film bleeds the warmth of its opening sepia into increasingly oppressive grayish tones.
The mystery is what keeps you hooked, yet underneath, the characters are what ultimately make it compelling. Marion Cotillard apparently declined many roles that Canet wrote for her before settling on this one, and it is quite clear why Jeanne appealed to her. An actress who has played mentally unstable women before, especially in her Christopher Nolan collaborations, she finds new angles in making us question her sanity. She and the script keep it realistic throughout. Her instability leads her to say too much and walk into trouble, a welcome change from the trait you see in films like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window, where the lead character suddenly finds an unexplained intelligence that betrays everything that came before.
The romance Canet builds between Jeanne and Sbaraglia’s Daniel comes across as instantly convincing despite their limited screen time together. The film only stumbles with its antagonist, whose cruelty is so undiluted that it becomes hard to believe anyone could ever have stood by their side. Any reservations dissolve in the climax, which concludes the film on a thrilling, emotional note while always keeping it delightfully entertaining.
FINAL THOUGHTS
If this turns out to be Cotillard and Canet’s last collaboration, at least they close the partnership on a high note. A potboiler in all the right ways, Karma is the kind of movie that has you anxiously awaiting what comes next. It packs enough twists and turns to fill a compelling prestige mini-series, with the benefit of not making you wait ten episodes to see how it ends. An addictive read in movie form.