At the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, celebrated French filmmaker Patrice Leconte made an astonishing announcement during his press conference: he noted that he had just made what might well be his final tale about love and intimate affairs. With his 20th feature film, Intimate Strangers (Confidences Trop Intimes), Leconte reveals his ultimate take on the mysteries of male-female relationships and deals his own spirited coup de grace to the love story. For Intimate Strangers is certainly not a typical romance, but a labyrinthine trip into the very nature of longing and desire.

With nods to both Hitchcockian suspense and Golden Hollywood melodrama, yet rife with his own trademark wit on the subject of how opposites compel and complete one another, Leconte creates a tale that turns the familiar stuff of modern relationships - lust, fear, obsession, secrets, misunderstanding, transformation - into a playful thriller.

Says Leconte, who has long been known for probing the most intriguing and off-limits corners of human behavior: "I do have the impression I have arrived at the end of something with Intimate Strangers. Of course, I will continue to direct films but I do not see how I could go much further in the vein. It seems to me that I have excavated the glances, the desires, the hearts of men and women and come as close as I can to the true life of the senses."

Intimate Strangers is built on the kind of premise to which Leconte has long been attracted: one in which two characters from completely opposite walks of life are thrown unexpectedly together, while the audience gets to watch them squirm.

This tale begins as a story of mistaken identity, with all the spiraling anxiety, dread and mystery that goes along with that. It takes place almost entirely in a typical Paris apartment building where various professionals see clients in their home offices. When the shy, vulnerable yet ineffably seductive Anna, played by Sandrine Bonnaire (a Cesar award winner and star of Leconte's earlier acclaimed thriller Monsieur Hire), accidentally enters the office of a financial advisor instead of a psychiatrist, she ends up confessing her deepest sexual and emotional secrets to a man more accustomed to analyzing tax returns than psyches. That man is William Faber, played by Cesar Award winner and seven-time Cesar nominee Fabrice Luchini, a guarded, retiring loner who has had little luck of his own in relationships.

Anna quickly reveals to William that she has been married for four years, that her husband is unemployed (though she works in an upscale luggage boutique), and that she and her spouse have not had sex for six months. She admits that she fears she is going crazy. Never quite giving William a chance to respond, and her spirits lifted by her confession, Anna spontaneously proposes a date for a second appointment. She then leaves without giving either her full name or her phone number.

Anna's mistake seems genuine - after all, William's inner office even has the requisite couch. And William also seems authentically caught off guard - indeed, his tax clients often make startling confessions (albeit financial), so he might not have realized right away that Anna came to his office by mistake. Their chance encounter makes a certain amount of sense to both of them.

On her second visit, William tries to clear up the misunderstanding, but to no avail. Anna will not let him get so much as a word in as she unveils more intimate details of her private life - and when he works up the courage to say, "I'm not a doctor," she misinterprets it as a psychologist's form of self-deprecation.

Yet what starts as a simple twist of fate, soon turns a corner as Anna uncovers William's true identity . . . yet willfully decides to keep making appointments with him. She wants and needs to keep talking, and he longs to keep looking at her, being with her, knowing her. Now that Anna knows who William really is, the rules of the game have changed. Soon their relationship grows deeper - and more interactive -- as they each confess their innermost fears, memories and desires in these make-believe "therapy" sessions.

Both Anna and William are intriguing riddles to one another. He is a man so loathe to take risks he still lives in the apartment where he was born; yet he cannot resist the voyeurism of pretending he is a psychiatrist, even when he realizes he's in way over his head. She is a woman who claims to have accidentally crippled her cruel husband yet succumbs to that same husband's disturbing whims and requests. When she lights a fire in William's wastebasket, even he has to ask: was it an accident or is there something out of control about Anna?

For all their questions and suspicions, when William and Anna are together, sharing their most private selves, desire is always just under the surface, threatening to burst forth.

As the story unfolds, it becomes a suspenseful inquiry into an even greater mystery than who Anna and William really are - the never-ending mystery of how people in relationships decide, as the actual psychiatrist Dr. Monnier points out, "what to declare and what to hide."

The Land of Female Secrets: The Screenplay

From the minute Patrice Leconte read Jerome Tonnerre's screenplay-in-progress for Intimate Strangers, he knew this was just his kind of slippery, obsessive territory. Tonnerre had previously written the globally popular love story Un Couer en Hiver (Heart in Winter) and the recent comic epic Bon Voyage, among others, but this script was different from anything that had come before. The plot unfolded almost entirely in one room - William Faber's retentively neat-and-clean tax office - yet seemed to cross the borders of several cinematic genres, and also transgress the boundaries of typical relationships, with revelatory results.

Leconte calls the story "a sentimental thriller," and was drawn to its arousing mix of sexual innuendo and psychological insight. He was especially impressed by Tonnerre's ability to create a story that is thematically rich and heady without ever taking itself too seriously.

"I define it as a sentimental thriller because it contains mystery, uncertainty, fear, doubt and suspense like any thriller - yet all of these are built around emotions more than actions," explains Leconte. "I never dared to call it a love story at first because it is more perverted, more atypical than what you would expect from that. But I enjoy defying expectations."

He continues: "I like that the plot begins with a simple case of mistaken identity, something we have seen before, but it evolves uniquely into something that falls somewhere between a psychological mystery and a tale of great desire. The story spoke to me. I was drawn to the unusual encounter between two main characters who reveal themselves slowly, bit by bit, in a way that is both astonishing and intimate."

Like William Faber, Leconte was mesmerized by the character of Anna, who seemed to embody that first blush of intrigue everyone feels when they first meet an attractive stranger. Anna, who arrives on the scene as if she had been plucked from a film noir, is a woman who always seems to be followed by a swirling wake of irresistible questions. Yet unlike the noir character trapped in an impossible situation, Anna finds a way out of her predicament, and changes profoundly right in front of our eyes.

"Anna is written in such a way that we really want to find out who is hiding behind this beautiful but anxious young woman. Is she unhappy? Is she delusional? Dangerous? Is she in distress? Or is she simply manipulating William? Anything is possible," observes Leconte. "So it is a wonderful story for a director because, in bringing it to life, you must always leave plenty of room for doubt. And doubt is always full of possibility."

The linchpin of the story - the tax accountant William who does the unthinkable in posing as a shrink -- is also a character type who has long fascinated Leconte: the dissatisfied middle class soul who dreams of changing his life late in its path, of breaking out of decades of complacency and ennui to something riskier and more sublime.

William's story of transformation moved Leconte deeply. "When Anna enters his room, William's world is turned upside-down," observes the director. "He begins to question everything. He walks into foreign territory, where he is no longer the master: the land of female secrets."

Like Two Musicians in an Emotional Duet: The Cast

Patrice Leconte's films have often forged unexpected duets between actors from different walks of life - including, most recently, the pairing of veteran French leading man Jean Rochefort with French rock star Johnny Hallyday in Man on the Train. With Intimate Strangers, Leconte brings together another at-odds couple: pairing the flammable sexuality and complexity of French leading lady Sandrine Bonnaire with the comic muddlings and simmering middle-class repression expressed by the more mainstream comedic actor Fabrice Luchini.

For Leconte, their friction-filled chemistry was key to creating what he hoped would be a sly, sensual mood full of uncertainty and the possibility for transformation. As usual, Leconte - whose reputation is as "an actor's director" -- also took both his lead actors far beyond their usual range and stereotypes.

Leconte had, in fact, longed to work with Sandrine Bonnaire ever since their success with his earlier thriller, Monsieur Hire, in which she played a woman who is watched by a shy peeping tom, and thought of her immediately for Anna. Her fiery, passionate personality seemed a perfect fit - and Leconte asked her to add to that touches of mystery, perversity and offbeat humor.

"I liked that Anna is in a very different range for Sandrine, more ambiguous, and more raw than her usual characters," says Leconte. "The role is an opportunity for audiences to discover another side of her. The way she says such raunchy things with such incredible confidence, and with that sort of angelic calm, is very striking. She becomes disturbing at times, while alluring at others."

Leconte did not know Fabrice Luchini, but took a chance on the actor who is renowned for his quick wit and much jazzier and verbose mainstream performances. He had the perfect qualities to portray a bourgeois man hiding behind a mask of professionalism and intellectual authority who keeps his constant underlying anxieties at bay.

"The producers Alain Sarde and Christine Gozlan suggested Fabrice and I thought it was a wonderful idea," recalls Leconte. "This role is also new for him, it's deeper and more exposed than anything he has done. He reveals a fuller humanity, an inner fragility and some quite unexpected feelings. As far as I'm concerned, we have never seen neither Sandrine or Fabrice quite like this before."

Most of all, Bonnaire and Luchini made for a very volatile coupling on screen - with an undercurrent of push-and-pull, fascination and repulsion, that made for an atmosphere thick with both sexual and psychological tension. Leconte explains: "When casting them," Leconte explained, "I always had in mind a marriage of opposites: two characters from entirely different backgrounds who are clearly not made for one another, yet they have come together. Anna should never have met William - and I think that Sandrine may never have met Fabrice if not for this film, which is what makes them so interesting in the same room. They came to the film with a tremendous respect for one another, but they each clearly marched to their own drummer. In the film, there are moments when they are drumming in time together, but then that breaks, and the dissonance come out of their characters. For a director, this was the greatest treat."

The duo gave Leconte exactly what he was looking for, even though he admits it is essentially indescribable. "For me, the most beautiful thing to film, the most touching part to watch, is the prelude to their relationship," says Leconte. "It was a matter of being very attentive, of truly respecting, of teasingly delaying that 'moment when they fell . . .' When we shot these scenes, it seemed a type of desire floated above their heads, a type of emotion of which the characters increasingly become aware, little by little. We can guess when they are beginning to love one another. When you get that kind of inner revelation from actors, it is very overwhelming."

When Patrice Leconte gave Sandrine Bonnaire the script for Intimate Strangers, he refused to say one word about it until she had read it. Bonnaire was intrigued by Leconte's coyness, and then entranced by the story. "I must say I fell in love with it," the actress comments. "Jerome Tonnerre, the screenwriter, is very refined, yet funny at the same time. He knows how to be very moving, but doesn't fear also being quite scathing. I especially appreciated the finesse of his dialogue. To me despite the story's mystery it is, at its heart, about a very universal situation, and I think many women can identify with Anna's conflicting emotions. Ultimately, I felt this was a juicy role that would be great fun to play."

Fun, but challenging -- for the trick to playing Anna was to let her arouse just enough sympathy yet just enough suspicion to keep the audience constantly off-kilter and confused by her motivations. Bonnaire has played unsettling characters before - perhaps most notably in Claude Chabrol's La Ceremonie as the maid who tears apart a wealthy French family - but never anyone quite as shaded as Anna.

"There is a lot to wonder about Anna. Who is she? Is she perverse or just lost? Is she in trouble or creating trouble? Patrice and I approached the answer from two angles," explains Bonnaire. "First of all there was a playful aspect to it - the clever manipulation of a woman who is keeping secrets. But we also saw her as a woman truly overwhelmed by desire. Her husband no longer wants her sexually and she suddenly finds herself with a man she is able to seduce. At first, she takes advantage of this. But later on she loses control and is overcome by her feelings. That's when some of her distance disappears, a distance that helped to create Anna's mystery in the first place. She begins to change, in every way."

Bonnaire was especially attracted to playing a woman who evolves so completely during the course of the film's story. "The more Anna gets involved with William, the more she opens up and blossoms. This alters everything about her - the way she holds herself, her dress, her behavior, they all begin to fall away. She wears brighter colors, takes off her protective gloves, and casts away the cloak of her raincoat. In the end, Anna discovers herself."

Anna has many sides to her personality, but the bottom line for Bonnaire is that she had to be someone you want to like, in spite of your uncertainties about what she is trying to do with William. "Patrice wanted her to be very sympathetic in spite of her ambiguity," says the actress. "She had to be fragile, almost like a child, which is why William wants to rescue her. But it was also important that the audience fear Anna, and never quite know what her reactions will be. And, then of course, she also had to have a part of her that is sparkling and seductive at the same time."

Anna's detailed sexual revelations were also a challenge for Bonnaire. "I'm not used to using such explicit language and was afraid I'd blush," she admits. "But really, I think Anna is quite a modest person. Most of the time when she is crude, I realized, she is actually quoting her husband."

She also sees Anna as working just as much magic on William as he unexpectedly works on her. "Even though William isn't a real psychiatrist, Anna experiences a kind of therapy anyway. But the opposite is true as well," she points out. "William also begins healing when he meets Anna. I think her directness becomes a way of helping him move forward. In the beginning, it's very calculated. Its just manipulation, a form of seduction. She knows he's smitten with her and uses that to her advantage. But later, when she begins to hide from her feelings, it brings William out more. He can't be passive anymore, and he also begins to change. They both change, which is why I love the film. To me, it becomes a story of renewal and discovery."

Bringing to life that supercharged first moment when people become enchanted with another person - in spite, or because of, their mysteries - was a large part of Bonnaire's mission. Yet it takes two to tango, and Bonnaire says it all started to come together when she got to know Fabrice Luchini - bit by bit, much as Anna comes to know William.

"I didn't know what to expect from him at first, but it was wonderful," she says of her co-star. "Fabrice is someone who knows how to listen, who is very contained and acts from a very interior place. I found him very moving, and we developed a real understanding between us. I think we went beyond the pre-conceived notions we had of each other to discover the real essence of who we are. Which was pretty interesting - because this is also the story of the film! There was an authentic mirror-play between us that was extremely revealing. At times, I felt we were playing off each other like two musicians in a duet."

Fabrice Luchini felt similarly. "This film is all about face-to-face encounters," he notes, "so there can be no evasion. Sandrine and I had to lean on one another. I had very genuine exchanges with Sandrine, and she bowled me over. She is a great actress with powerful intuition that is right on the money. Her sense of grace is rare. She illuminates her partner. From a purely professional point of view, I would say that our work was stronger than either of our individual identities. The story is magnificent because it is about the meeting of two souls - and hopefully you forget all about Bonnaire and Luchini!"

Luchini was drawn to Leconte's knack for creating fireworks out of the most hidden and private human emotions. "This movie is as exciting as an action thriller, even though not that much happens, and as erotic as if the actors were nude all the time, although no one ever takes off their clothes. It maintains an air of constant mystery without ever being opaque. There are no sexual scenes, but there is always a sense of sexual desire," he observes. "It is unique in that it deals with the male-female rapport from a very intimate, immediate angle. I think that in being austere, minimalist and reductive in his directing, Patrice has achieved something quite remarkable. He seizes a feeling, a mood, an alchemy that is hard to capture."

The role of William also held out to Luchini something new. "William is nothing at all like the type of character I usually play," he comments. "I am usually restricted to roles that involve verbal parrying, quirky humor and offbeat retorts. This was a different because William is so reserved and passive. It is a role that required something new: a lot of listening, both active and reactive listening."

Yet Luchini refuses to get too analytical about his character. "The job of an actor is not to think," he says. "Once one begins analyzing, acting goes out the window! I simply see that Patrice drew together actors based on a very fine vision that he had - and, in doing this, he gave Sandrine and I roles that were lovely presents."

Joining Bonnaire and Luchini is a cast of secondary characters who ratchet up the stakes between the two, including Anne Brochet as Jeanne, William's incredulous ex-girlfriend; Laurent Gamelon as Luc, Jeanne's bodybuilding new boyfriend; Michel Duchaussoy as Dr. Monnier, the psychiatrist who finds himself losing a patient to a tax attorney; Helene Surgere as William's disapproving old secretary who also worked for his father; and Gilbert Melki as Anna's frightening husband, who shows up unexpectedly in William's office one day.

Says Leconte of his casting choices: "I had already worked with Michel Duchaussoy in The Widow of St. Pierre and was happy to work with him again. He had a grand time in the role of the psychiatrist. Anne Brochet, who plays Jeanne, was really incredible. Her character is not easy to pull off, because if there's one person who gets nothing out of this whole adventure, it's her. Helene Surgere plays the good, faithful secretary who goes from father to son, and she brings just the right maternal note to the character. Finally, Gilbert Melki as Anna's husband was very important because he is always being talked about but he only shows up twice. There was no room for the actor to make any false moves. Gilbert was exemplary: His expression could be dark, profound, terrible in one moment and in the next instant reveal a total fragility."

"I always feel lucky to work with such fine actors who do such extraordinary work for me," he sums up. "I frame my films myself and I believe this encourages the actors to really give even more of themselves. An almost sensual rapport is established. When I set up a shot, I really have the sense that I too am a character in the film, a kind of witness to the scene. Shouting "cut," I lean over just a few inches to find myself face to face with the people who are bringing my story to life. This is priceless."

They in Turn Illuminate Us: The Look of Intimate Strangers

Patrice Leconte chose to shoot Intimate Strangers entirely in sequence and almost entirely on a soundstage so as to build the film's psychological tension, moment-by-moment, revelation-by-revelation, as authentically as possible between his two main actors. For Sandrine Bonnaire and Fabrice Luchini this new way of working was its own surprise.

"It very much helped me to construct the character of Anna," says Bonnaire. "I always had my bearings and this was very important for such a disorienting role. I also think the strong intrigue of the story emerges from the great continuity Patrice provided us. There is a logical organic development that takes place and the audience can feel that unfolding as they watch."

Meanwhile, Leconte worked closely with his long-time collaborator and two-time Oscar™ nominee Eduardo Serra (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Wings of the Dove) to develop a very distinctive visual style that echoes the film's obsessive, circular themes and ambiance of vertigo and confusion. Using short takes, punctuated by quick fades-to-black, a sense of a discontinuous reality is created, one broken up by moments of such sheer emotion that time itself skips a beat.

Because the film's action takes place more in gestures and glances than in more sweeping action, the two men put the film's unshakeable frisson into the camerawork. Serra's charged camera moves constantly, lenses changing as quickly as Anna's moods, moving over carefully composed frames, teeming with details. From the beginning, Leconte knew he wanted this exact kind of controlled, masterly camera style, echoing Hitchcock and film noir as much as more romantic and melodramatic genres.

"The first time Patrice spoke to me about the film he was, as usual, very precise," recalls Serra. "He has a perfect technical understanding of cinema, which is very helpful because for a cinematographer the first task is to translate what the director is saying. Patrice always knows what he wants. But I also know I can share my own ideas with him without any fear of being misunderstood."

"For this film, the look and feel of the setting was essential," Serra continues, "It defined the characters, their state of mind and their slow evolution. So one thing Patrice and I discussed at length was the time of day for each scene. For example, the first encounter between Fabrice and Sandrine takes place at the end of the day, at dusk, but as time goes on they are seen more and more in daylight, until the end of the film. On the other hand, Michel Duchaussoy's psychiatrist is first seen in daylight but gravitates later into the night. Light and dark became axes around which there was much variation throughout."

Indeed, Serra, who is renowned for his artistry with light, designed complex lighting schemes inside the studio for each and every scene. "I tried to construct a movement of light that supported and underlined the movement of emotions throughout the film," he explains.

When it came to shot composition, Leconte had very precise directions, yet also trusted Serra to make his own creative impact. "Patrice is very rare in that he frames all his films himself," notes Serra. "But he also leaves things open for the unexpected, the sudden flash of imagination, the accidental."

Serra believes it is Leconte's extreme sensitivity to the camera on a technical level combined with his emotional intimacy with the actors that allowed the film's unique character to emerge. "Patrice masters the camera without abandoning the actors," he explains. "He is constantly very close to them, which is quite unusual. After all these years, I'm still amazed to see the close relationships he develops with his actors. It was indispensable for this film, because we had to capture the emotional rhythms of William and Anna visually. It was essential to accompany their every motion, their smallest gestures, and to cast a proper light on them so that in turn, they can illuminate us."

Illuminating two starkly different lives was also the task put before production designer Ivan Maussion, who has worked with Leconte since the very beginning of the director's celebrated career, making ten films together. "I think our relationship is rather rare in the movie world," says Maussion. "We are like an old working couple. We've gotten to the point where we no longer need to talk to understand each other. We read a script, we close our eyes and we see the same film!"

In this case, Maussion came away from reading the script, intrigued with the idea of creating the film's main set, where almost all of the intrigue unfolds: William's tax office and attached apartment. "At first, I thought we might find a building that suited our needs, but we couldn't, so we made the decision to create William's office in the studio, which turned out to be the right choice for many reasons," he notes. "Still, I don't think many people will realize that it was shot in a studio. Patrice and I agree that the best sets create a complete reality and that is what we set out to do here."

Maussion began by imagining the furnishings and details that would make William's office both a reflection of his past and a veil under which he hides, with its dark wood and childhood knick-knacks. "William is living in his parents' apartment so he has mostly older, out-of-date furniture from another era. We wanted to create a kind of timeless, almost fabled, universe with a little bit of humor as well. So I chose each book, each shelf, each toy myself. I am perhaps one of the few production designers who have never worked with a set decorator. This is because I cannot delegate so much as an ashtray that will show up in the background!"

Once he began, the design of William's cocoon-like office influenced everything else, including the psychiatrist's office down the hall. "Patrice wanted there to be a symmetry between the psychiatrist's office and William's office - with a kind of positive/negative, light/dark relationship. Things that appear on the right in William's office, appear on the left in Dr. Monnier's office, for example," points out Maussion. "The dimensions of their offices are also exactly the same."

For Maussion, however, the favorite design became William's final office in the climactic scene, which is based on his old one, but utterly transformed. "In one weekend and two all-nighters we altered the old office so that only the most basic structural elements remained," he explains. "Then Sandrine and Fabrice arrived and I remember the light was beautiful and the scene was acted out. I felt an incredible sense of elation at what I was seeing and feeling. There was such a sensibility of freshness."

Adding to Leconte's mood of suspense leading to transformation is an urgent, melodic score by Pascal Estéve, which moves from the sinister to the classical, as the strings strain and the piano races echoing the emotions whirling through each scene. Estéve's music becomes almost a third character in the room, reacting to the interactions between Anna and William like a sonic witness.

Estéve, who garnered much praise for his dream-like score for Leconte's Man on the Train remembers the nonchalant way he began his work on Intimate Strangers. "I picked up the telephone and heard: 'Hello, this is Patrice Leconte. I'm making a film about love and sensuality. Can we meet Monday?'"

Meet they did, and Estéve realized he was about to be wrapped up in another project unlike anything he had ever done - or imagined doing - before. "For a composer, this kind of mysterious story is very inspiring," he states. "When I read the screenplay, I imagined the music being in the shape of a spiral. Everything in the film seems to have a double meaning and this was also translated to the score. We have merged together the score for a thriller with the score for a sentimental drama and created something else!"

Estéve also realized early on that the score would be far more than just background music in this film. "I think music is the blood of this film," he comments. "It's something fluid, interior and warm that circulates through the story, charging it with energy, emotion and feeling."

To inspire fresh creativity, Estéve regularly visited the set to watch the characters' evolution unfold in person. "Watching the actors helped me tremendously," he says. "There was something voluntarily hidden, something ambiguous and evocative in their dynamic together. There was more going on than in just what they said. The light that Fabrice and Sandrine shed on their subjects allowed me to slip into their unconscious by way of the musical alphabet. So I focused my music on this shadowy part of their characters: on the obsession and suggestion of danger. Yet, different themes color different moments in the film, so there is also some lightness."

After spending endless days analyzing the characters as if he too were a virtual psychiatrist, Estéve then evolved the instrumentation for his orchestra. "I wanted a lot of piano because it is so evocative but also has a kind of worrying presence, and an insidiousness that also agrees with the clarinet, which brings colors of contrast and contradiction with it. The English horn has an ability to call up memories, which is part of the story as well," he notes.

Leconte also suggested Estéve draw further inspiration from the work of renowned modern composer Philip Glass, whose rhythmic, primal and percussive compositions often lay bare something mysterious at the heart of repetition. "We wanted to voluntarily create something that is cyclic, that turns back on itself, that has moments of confusion," he says. "In this film, we enter into the confusion of being."

For Estéve, it was exhilarating work. "Working on this film allowed me to expand my range and to approach my work from a fresh angle," he comments. "It was very passionate work, which is why I am drawn to Patrice Leconte. My collaboration with Patrice has always been about playing with varying genres and styles and we have developed a similar sensibility. But each time we work together, it's an entirely new encounter."