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Dec 15, 2015 By Julia Bembenek Web Exclusive

It all starts when Dany, a stylish secretary, agrees to do an overnight typing job for her boss. The next morning, she drives him and his family to the airport and is left with their flashy turquoise Thunderbird. On a whim, she splits from Paris and embarks on a joyride down to the Riviera. She’s never seen the sea after all, and with her boss out of town no one will notice she’s gone. It’s innocent and sexy fun—until things start to get strange. The further south she gets, the more frequently people claim to have seen her before. There’s the woman who insists she left her coat in the cafe, the mechanic who apologizes for yesterday’s behavior, and the cop who stops her two nights in a row. Dany’s holiday fully becomes a nightmare when she discovers a corpse in her trunk. Who is her mysterious doppelgänger? Does she even exist?

The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun is a remake of the cult 1970 film of the same name and director Joann Sfaar embraces the groovy aesthetic of the original wholeheartedly. Slick cars, micro-mini skirts, and impeccably dressed retro-modern locations prevail. In the role of Dany, Freya Mavor is employed mostly as visual pleasure, her charmingly freckled freshness and fashion plate physique working overtime. The dissolution of Dany’s psyche as the events unfold is barely given equal treatment as the icy-hot chemistry she has with her surroundings, whether it be a sexy car or louche con artist.

There’s promising evolution in this iteration, as Sfaar injects shades of Polanskian psychological frenzy and giallo-esque melodrama to the proceedings. Combined with the luxurious visual approach, the results are enticingly opaque for much of the film, artfully constructing an existential mystery that begs the audience to speculate on possible explanations. Disappointingly, the pay-off is underwhelming and half-baked. The suspense completely deflates in the face of the challenge of the goofy conclusion, relying on style to impress and distract rather than supportively float the overall experience. Perhaps the campy throwaway tone of the original (plus the inclusion of the inimitably overblown Oliver Reed as the villanous mastermind of the whole shebang) was the saving grace of The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun’s unbelievable denouement. The Lady of 2015 is a stylish, occasionally inventive, and fun remake—and ultimately, wholly unnecessary.

Author rating: 6/10