Sibyl
Directed by Justine Triet
Running time: 1hr40 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE
Virginie Efira stars in Sibyl
I first saw Sibyl at Cannes two years ago — which, given the current COVID timeline, feels closer to ten years ago — and treasured Justine Trier’s elegant psychological comedy at the time as a kind of festival palate cleanser: like a sweet, sharp sorbet between larger, stodgier cinematic courses, it stood out for its confident lightness of touch and tone. Outside a festival context, those refreshing pleasures don’t always linger in the memory, but Triet’s film has, and on a recent revisit it seemed, if anything, more complex and ornately folded than I gave it credit for first time out. But it also just plays as lithe, sexy entertainment, probing matters of the mind without exhausting the brain: it’s strange, frankly, that it hasn’t been available to view in the UK until now.
Recovering alcoholic Sibyl (Virginie Efira) is the kind of psychotherapist you wouldn’t want treating you in a million years: erratic and sometimes over-involved, she is as liable to cancel on a patient as she is to crib their issues for the novel she’s writing on the side. The woes of tormented young actress Margot (Adele Exarchopoulos) provide particularly juicy inspiration just as Sibyl is hitting the wall of writer’s block; when Sibyl in invited to accompany her on her next film shoot in Stromboli, things somehow get messier still. Triet’s own pool of inspiration sources is rather more legit than her heroine’s: Hitchcock and Highsmith are clear touchstones here, as do previous generations of their creative heirs, from De Palma to Ozon and even Almodovar.
But it’s not a film that takes place entirely in reverent quotation marks, as the narrative is equally shaped by Triet’s contemporary perspective on female desire and autonomy. Played with witty, changeable elan by VIrginie Efira — more recently the star of Paul Verhoeven’s outrageous Benedetta — Sybil is a flawed but modern heroine: via deft flashbacks to her more chaotic past, she questions whether domestic and professional stability was really the right life path for her. As a case for therapy, she has her work cut out for herself: Sibyl is a film of sleek, mirrored surfaces, all tilted inward.
SIBYL (2019) Written by Justine Triet, Arthur Harari | Shot by Simon Beaufils | Edited by Laurent Sénéchal