Place Vendôme Movie Review

This French thriller gives us Catherine Deneuve at the top of her game, but unfortunately it gives her little to do. Newly widowed and permanently insane and alcoholic, she finds herself in the possession of seven enormous diamonds -- certainly stolen -- and has to muddle her way through an attempt to sell them. Soon enough she's in this together with her dead husband's much younger mistress (Emmanuelle Seigner), and while no one wants to pony up cash, everyone would be glad to take the diamonds off their hands.

Too bad then that with such a setup the morose, slow pace of Place Vendome drags the movie out of thriller and into staid drama. It feels padded, and the mystery of how the two girls will get out of their predicament never really gets rolling until the very end. We don't particularly care about either, though director Nicole Garcia's use mood lighting and spot-on music make this at least passable on a rainy day.