Movie Review: 'Mississippi Mermaid'

Movie Review: ‘Mississippi Mermaid'

The upcoming thriller pitting Angelina Jolie's pout against Antonio Banderas' glower is called Original Sin, and Francois Truffaut's tropical noir based on the same novel, Cornell Woolrich's Waltz into Darkness, is its sinful original. Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Louis, a tycoon living in seclusion on an island in the Indian Ocean. He sends away for a mail-order bride and receives Julie (Catherine Deneuve). Naturally, she's got something to hide, and the movie showcases Deneuve's ideal iciness: She's too alluring to be believed, too shifty to trust, too tempting to leave alone. It's no coincidence that Woolrich's story "Rear Window" is the basis for Hitchcock's classic, or that critic-turned-director Truffaut was Hitch's most profound interpreter; Mermaid is a lush psychodrama about the zone between passion and obsession. A-