Under the Sand

Francois Ozon’s melancholy drama is not without striking and dreamlike images, but it’s what we don’t see—what goes on inside the head of a middle-aged female university professor—that makes this methodical, meditative story about grief and denial so seductive. Marie (Charlotte Rampling) and Jean (Bruno Cremer) Drillon settle rather uneventfully into a vacation house. During a trip to the beach, Jean goes off for a swim. He never returns. Marie enlists the aid of the local officials, but searches by lifeguards and a helicopter are futile. There are no witnesses let alone a body, so Marie must return home in a state of emotional limbo. Jean returns, too, and Ozon makes us wonder if he is an apparition or a figment of Marie’s overtaxed imagination.