The Spellbound (2019)

An uncanny triangle emerges in this update of Henry James’s short story “The Way It Came,” directed by Pascal Bonitzer (Right Here Right Now, Rendez-Vous 2017). Book critic Coline (Sara Giraudeau) is assigned a profile of a reclusive, brooding painter (Let the Sunshine In’s Nicolas Duvauchelle), who claims to have seen his mother’s spirit just before her death. Curiously, Coline’s close friend (Anabel Lopez), also an artist, says she witnessed an apparition of her father on the brink of his sudden passing, as well. An ethereal brew of lust, grief, and jealousy propels this transfixing story of invisible frequencies and mortal hungers.