The Double Hour

Director Giuseppe Capotondi’s absorbing and suspenseful debut is a romantic thriller full of plot twists, with big reveal after big reveal and many shifting sympathies. In Turin, after witnessing a hotel guest suicide, a Slovenian immigrant chambermaid (Kseniya Rappoport) has a promising first date with a handsome security guard (Filippo Timi). Not surprisingly, perhaps, their blooming relationship is haunted by somebody’s complex past. On the other hand, how things play out is quite surprising, and satisfyingly so. Is it a ghost story, a detective story, an immigration story, a love story? For all the mystery, Capotondi’s characters are subtly and strongly developed, and their inherently watchable faces very keenly photographed. It’s a rare treat: the foreign art-house film you can really munch popcorn to.