‘With a Friend Like Harry …’ employs classic methods

Max Jacobson

Friday, June 15, 2001 | 9:01 a.m.

The suspense film owes a huge debt to Alfred Hitchcock, aka the Master of Suspense, but it is French cinema that seems to be really captivated by the genre. The French Hitchcock, up to now, has been Claude Chabrol, for landmark (albeit rarely seen in this country) films such as "The Woman Next Door" and "The Butcher." But young director Dominik Moll appears to be hot on his trail.

Moll's new film, "With a Friend Like Harry ...," was a huge hit at last year's Cannes Film Festival, where actor Sergi Lopez, in the title role, won the Best Actor award. Lopez, who looks as relaxed in a denim shirt as Robert Mitchum did during his heyday in the '40s, is both engagingly charismatic and drop-dead creepy. And it's not clear whether the fact that he speaks French with a Spanish accent -- and peppers his dialogue with Spanish phases -- has any significance or not. But he's fun to listen to and you can't take your eyes from him.

The premise is especially scary because it is one anyone who has ever been to a high school reunion, or meets up accidentally with an old friend, can relate to. Ask yourself: Was there someone in your past you barely remember, to whom you were greatly significant? Most couldn't answer that question easily.

The plot turns on a chance meeting. While driving his cute-but-overheated and impatient three daughters and his sensible wife to a far-flung but well-deserved vacation home, Michel (Laurent Lucas) has a chance meeting with Harry (Sergi Lopez) in a roadside washroom. At first he is unnerved by the way Harry is staring him down. But then he is amazed to learn that this man was at school with him 20 years ago, a boy who once bit him on the skull during a rowdy football match.

Though barely aware of who Harry was at school, the fact that Michel is a pleaser, and a proper fellow bound by social convention, results in him inviting Harry and his voluptuous fiance Plum (Sophie Guillemin) to join them at their home. Soon they are breaking bread like old friends, when Harry astounds Michel and Claire, by reciting word for word a morbid poem that Michel once published in a school magazine.

Michel's wife, Claire (Mathilde Seigner), isn't too happy about this odd development. Her women's intuition leads her to take an instant dislike to Harry, even though he is warm, generous, handsome and charming, and her instincts alert her that something shady, possibly even dangerous, is about to unfold. When subtle details about Harry's past are hinted at, and Michel's parents (Lillian Rovere and Dominique Rozan) enter the story, a bizarre, heart-thumping series of events begin to take place.

This is a dark little story, one in which Moll never lets us out of his grasp for an instance. From the very first scene a shrill tension hangs over the film, which is partially caused by a series of angled camera shots and disturbingly surrealistic images of flying monkeys and close-up shots of eggs inside their shells.

But what's really impressive is how the film scares the socks off you using only the suggestion of violence, rather than relying on the primitive Hollywood device of having cascades of blood and severed limbs flashing across the screen.

Moll achieves his most suspenseful moments using similarly subtle techniques, using the natural beauty of France's Massif Central (a green spine of mountains that runs through the country's center) as a shimmering backdrop. This film stays with you and, like it or not, is a film that performs exactly as the director intended.

If you wake up sweating, with visions of flying monkeys dancing in your head, don't say you weren't warned.