In the U.S. – it became Music Box Film’s “the picture with subtitles that could”. I caught a screening of it in it’s 12th week in Manhattan, and it tallied a cool 6 million in box office receipts – a rarity indeed. Apparently this kind of buzz has caught the attention of Miramax who along with Kathleen Kennedy and int. Sales unit Focus Features are getting in on the action with EuropaCorp on an English language remake that despite having no cast or crew attached is poised to go into production as early as next Spring. The project will need a 30-40 male demo for the film’s lead – one that portray anguish, melancholy and anger.
Based on American crime novelist Harlan Coben’s best-selling novel, the original saw pediatrician Alexandre Beck (Francois Cluzet) still grieve for his wife Margot Beck (Marie-Josée Croze), brutally murdered eight years earlier. Only the friendship he has formed with his younger sister Anne’s (Marina Hands) lover Hélene Perkins (Kristin Scott Thomas) saves him from total disconnect from the rest of the world. When two bodies are unearthed near the secluded lakeside murder site, the police reopen Margot’s case with Alexandre himself incriminated. The Pandora’s box of suspicion gets fully opened when he receives an anonymous e-mail with a video that suggests that Margot is still alive and a message to “Tell no one. We’re being watched.”