With Intimate Strangers, director Patrice Leconte deserves credit for taking a story that consists almost entirely of two people talking to each other in an office, and making it engaging enough to keep our interest for 104 minutes. Intimate Strangers (original French title: Confidences trop intimes) has an odd, slightly experimental feel to it, but thanks to solid craftsmanship, it does succeed in telling an interesting story.

Intimate Strangers starts out with a simple case of mistaken identity: Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) makes a wrong turn in an office building and walks into the office of William (Fabrice Luchini), a tax lawyer, thinking that it's the psychiatrist down the hall. At first, William is simply too astounded by her spontaneous revelations of her troubled sex life and marriage to correct the misunderstanding; later, he finds himself fascinated by his "mystery visitor" and compelled to keep in contact with her.

It's a character study, first and foremost, with both William and Anna gradually finding themselves changed by their ongoing conversations, which bring each of them to understand themselves better. There's always the hint that something decidedly odd is going on, and the potential for the story to take a strange turn. All we know about Anna is what she tells William: is she representing herself truthfully, or is there something strange going on here? Her frank discussion of sexual topics is a bit risqué for the mild-mannered and rather staid William; will he end up becoming obsessed with her?

In the end, Intimate Strangers only suggests the potential for more sensational twists, and instead keeps its focus on the development of the characters, who find that their conversations have led them to new insights and resolves that perhaps neither would have reached on their own. There's also a dash of humor here and there, mainly involving William's secretary and also his own visits to the therapist down the hall; these are handled with a very gentle touch but they do a nice job of rounding out the otherwise dramatic thrust of the story.

While the film does sag a bit in the middle, when we get a stretch with little advancement in either story or character development, on the whole it proceeds quite smoothly and does a surprisingly good job of keeping the viewer engaged throughout.

The DVD

Video

The main problem with Intimate Strangers (which led to its video score being knocked down a notch) is that the English subtitles are burned in. Honestly, there's very little excuse for that, when optional subtitles have (fortunately) become the norm in releases by major studios at least.

Apart from that, the film looks quite solid, offering an anamorphic widescreen transfer in the film's original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The image is clean and attractive, with skin tones looking natural and the overall color palette of the film, which is visually quiet without being subdued, comes across well here.

Audio

The main track is the original French Dolby 5.1 track, which handles the dialogue-intensive film's soundtrack needs quite deftly. The dialogue is always crisp and clean, with the background being free of any noise or hiss. That's important, since there are many moments of silence here, and they always sound natural. The music is handled well, as are the incidental other elements of the track. A French Dolby 2.0 track is also included.

The English subtitles are burned-in.

Extras

The menus for Intimate Strangers get a big thumbs up from me: they're simple, with just static background images from the film, with very clear and easy to find menu options. In other words, you can navigate through them swiftly and get right to watching the movie.

The only special feature is a slew of previews (about ten minutes' worth) of other Paramount movies on DVD, which play before the main menu screen comes up. Each is skippable but there's no way to skip right to the menu.

Final thoughts

Intimate Strangers is an interesting film to watch, mainly because it's polished and well constructed, with just enough of an intriguing premise to keep me watching. This is an excellent candidate for a positive "rent it" recommendation: I don't think it's necessarily worth running out to buy it, but it does merit picking up as a rental.