If you ever wanted to see Audrey Tautou play a serial killer, you’ll just have to wait. In the mean time, opening in UK cinemas on 7 June, you can catch her in THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX, the final film from French director Claude Miller, as the titular provincial housewife with first suicidal, then destructive and finally homicidal tendencies.

Tautou was charm itself in her breakthrough film, LE FABLEUX DESTIN DE AMÉLIE POULAIN, known as AMÉLIE in most territories because we don’t like long titles. She made her English language debut in Stephen Frears illegal immigration thriller, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS and launched an ill-fated bid for Hollywood stardom in Ron Howard’s film adaptation of THE DA VINCI CODE from which she and co-star Tom Hanks never really recovered. (The absurd expositional dialogue! That mullet!)

Since then she has not really made much impact. For me, a low point was Pierre Salvadori’s PRICELESS in which she co-starred with Gad Elmaleh as a con-woman on the French Riviera. How I did not laugh. She reteamed with Salvadori for INNOCENT LIES, a film in which her character tried to convince her mother (Nathalie Baye) that she had a secret lover. How I wished I had seen that one. In 2012 (2011 in French cinemas), she popped up in DELICACY, about a woman who loses her husband and, several years later, dates a plain dullard who is no comparison. This was rather better, but alas did not make much impact at the box office.

This year, Tautou can be seen in two movies – distribution deals pending - THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX and later MOOD INDIGO, ‘le nouveau film de réalisateur Michel Gondry, avec Romain Duris’ – surely a dream team if ever there was one (Tautou and Duris are even seen in a cloud). MOOD INDIGO opens in Paris on 20 April and I cannot learn French fast enough. Given I am on A1 level – I can just about ask for a cup of coffee, but why is it always served with a chocolate – the film will be released on French television before I understand it in the ‘version originale’.

THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX begins in 1922 at a coastal town of L’Esperance. Two teenage girls, Anne and Thérèse are running around without cardigans, drink water straight from the tap, and upset Thérèse’s poor elderly aunt (Isabelle Sadoyan). One asks the other if she would like to read to her. ‘No, that would be boring.’ This is a movie that quotes at one point from a book by André Gide. Anne is convinced that Thérèse will marry her brother, Bernard. It is her bourgeois destiny. Sure enough, five years later, Bernard (Gilles Lellouche) and Thérèse are engaged to be married.

Now, there is a slight credibility problem in that Thérèse appears to have aged fifteen years in five, whilst Anne (Anaïs Demoustier) looks broadly in her late teens. C’est incroyable! This is the price that director Claude Miller had to pay for having to cast an internationally recognised actress in the leading role. Of course, he could have got Isabelle Huppert, who could play this sort of part in her sleep, and I wished he had – just for a dare. Nevertheless, you get over the implausibility. (Well, I did.)

Thérèse and Bernard have an austere wedding. No church music, only the sound of heavy footfalls as father gives Thérèse away. (No satin either, only muslin for the dress!) Their marriage represents the merging of two pine forests: Bernard’s 2,100 to Thérèse’s 3,900. Thérèse’s father is a provincial politician with ‘unacceptable’ views; he does not appear to be suspicious of Jewish-sounding people, unlike Bernard’s family.  Thérèse is also said to have ‘ideas’. These tend not to be rich intellectual ones, rather destructive ones, described in my first paragraph.

There is a telling scene without dialogue at the wedding reception. Everyone seems to be having a good time except Bernard and Thérèse. There is dancing. She looks for him and sees him at a table. He gets very irritated because he is alone and stands up. She has to wave to him and smile appealingly to catch his attention. But it is as if he doesn’t see her and has to be reminded what she looks like.

They honeymoon in Baden-Baden, dining on a rich cuisine of cabbage and sausage. Thérèse and Bernard receive letters. Bernard’s is marked ‘personal’; she bridles. It is from his mother, whom she suspects disapproves of her. Thérèse receives letters from Anne, who apparently does not like writing. They address two sides of the same problem. Anne is rapturously in love with Jean Avezedo (Stanley Weber) the Jewish-sounding Portuguese chap with a loud singing voice who sails in a red yacht off the sun-dappled coast of L’Esperance. They have, how you say, consummated their attraction with the intimate acquaintance of their respective genitalia. (This is my submission for the ‘Bad Sex Award’; all the best writers have been nominated.) But Anne’s mother forbids the union. She is supposed to marry someone else. There are pine cones at stake! Anne is forbidden from seeing him, which given she has already ‘seen’ him is a bit rich. Only Thérèse can dissuade her from her mad passion.

But what does Thérèse know of passion? Bernard’s idea of seductive technique is to mount her. Thérèse may be pregnant. She denies it. She has a far-away look without the desire to reach for the horizon. (Surely there must be a Bad Metaphor Award; someone should start one up.)

They decide to cut short their vacation. On the train, Bernard thinks of trying some Rhine wine. Thérèse, who is not eating, says nothing. He is not impressed. ‘As my father would say, ‘not bad, but I prefer wine’.’ (He is telling us that his opinions are inherited; he lacks originality.)  We see Thérèse leave her sleeping husband, walk to the carriage door at the end of the car, open it, where she can hear the thunder of the engine, wheels on rail, and step out into a jet of steam. But fortunately, it is only a dream. Thérèse awakens with a start.

Back at Chez Desqueyroux, Anne is refusing food. Thérèse shows solidarity with her by also remaining quiet, though when her father attempts to convivial, exclaims, ‘I prefer it when we argue.’ Anne storms out. Thérèse follows her.  It rains. The two women repair to a greenhouse, where Thérèse hatches her plan. Anne will go into exile whilst Thérèse visits Jean Azevedo. After all, he has not written. What is going on?

So Anne accepts her exile. Thérèse takes her time and accumulates quite a belly – yes, she is with child – before she finally visits Jean Azevedo. Then she receives quite a shock, and not just because Jean quotes the aforementioned André Gide.

At this point, I hope I have wetted your appetite for a film that has surprising turns involving love, forgery, a baby, burning pines, heart problems (of the medical sort), drops, prescriptions, and litigation. At the core of the film is the defence of one’s name, one’s reputation, almost to the extent of everything else. At one point, looking at his situation, Bernard explains, ‘every family has its old boy.’ I shall not reveal the plot twists, though it is based on a novel, so perhaps you know them. I shall simply say I was gripped. Not entirely emotionally engaged; after all by her own admission, Thérèse knows what she does not want rather than what she wants.

The heroine is a very self-aware woman. Her crime is casual, opportunistic, but partly, palpably motivated. This isn’t a film where you root for an outcome, except for one of the characters to be spared prison. You want to know how matters will be resolved. In the past Claude Miller’s films, which include THE ACCOMPANIST, THE CLASS TRIP and THE SECRET, have left me cold. This is far more engaging, given it pursues a familiar theme in unpredictable ways.  It gets the Larry Oliver seal of approval, though not I imagine that of the Baden-Baden Tourist Board.