Hideaway (2010): B+

An unconvincing ending doesn’t derail the otherwise nuanced complexity of Hideaway, François Ozon’s latest investigation of female alienation, sexuality and maternity. Ozon’s film begins with junkie Mousse (Isabelle Carré) passed out in her drug-den apartment as her boyfriend Louis (Melvil Poupaud) buys some smack, shoots up, and drifts off to the hereafter. While mourning her lost love, Mousse discovers she’s pregnant with his child, and – out of curiosity, faithfulness to Louis, and defiance to Louis’ mother, who coldly suggests abortion – decides to keep the kid, clean up and retreat to a beachside house. There, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Louis’ gay brother Paul (Louis-Ronan Choisy), which proceeds at such an unhurried pace, and with such a wealth of casually dropped details about their backstories, that the somewhat contrived nature of their encounter and ensuing bond is largely mitigated. Throughout, Ozon refuses to sentimentalize Mousse’s impending pregnancy – she seems alternately loving and aloof, warm and hard, thanks in large part to a magnetic performance by Carré that, in terms of outlook and temperament, seems to shift on a dime. A standout encounter between Mousse and a beach-walking stranger exemplifies the simultaneously hopeful and terrifying nature of forthcoming motherhood. It’s a mood Hideaway can’t quite carry through to its finale, which attempts to stay true to Mousse’s confusion (over herself, and her unborn baby) in a way that’s both predictable and implausible. Yet before that late misstep, Ozon’s latest casts a moderately enthralling spell, characterized as it is by the writer/director’s eroticized fixation on faces and bodies, and dedicated as it is (and its sterling lead turns are) to psychological and emotional uncertainty.