With a Friend Like Harry
How's the old cliché go-with friends like that, who needs enemies? That's exactly the premise of the French film With a Friend Like Harry (Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien) . A chance encounter (or is it) with an old forgettable classmate in a restroom leads to an unforgettable and unwelcome intrusion into a family vacation in the country.
Harry (Sergi López) seems nice enough, but that piercing and uncomfortable stare that he gives Michel (Laurent Lucas) during the initial encounter seems a bit odd. Then the subsequent meeting in the parking lot with Michel and his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigner) and changing his plans from driving his girlfriend Plum (Sophie Guillemin) to the Matterhorn to following them into the French countryside two hours out of the way indicates extreme quirkiness. This is sealed when the two couples sit down for drinks and conversation. What would you think if someone had taken the trouble to memorize a silly poem you had written 20 years ago in high school?
Sinister play is now suspected. Harry just isn't normal. How many men do you know who eat raw egg yokes after an orgasm and sit silently in the dark, or offer to solve any financial or other problem instantly? Harry has wealth from a mysterious source; after all, he's driving a Mercedes and buys his hosts a brand new 4-runner. If you think this sounds like a great deal, read about the Trojan War, or better yet . . . re-watch some Alfred Hitchcock films.
For director Dominik Moll is a deft student of the Master of Suspense. In many ways, the film feels like a French translation of Hitchcock material. The elements are all there-the isolated house in the country with one light brings back Psycho memories as does the violin score that borrows nearly the same chords that Bernard Herrmann uses in his classic score. To amplify the Psycho connection crazy Harry uses the same voyeuristic type of peephole as Norman Bates, and Moll uses similar lighting and camera angle to capture this shot.
The whole situation of the family vacation being drastically changed by a chance encounter is so reminiscent of a dozen Hitchcock films, with The Man Who Knew Too Much being the closest. Additionally, the unspoken homoerotic attraction that Harry's eyes communicate and his offer to solve Michel's problems suggests another variation of Strangers on a Train. Just like Hitch's finest films, the lines between good and evil become blurred-without giving away too much of the plot, just note that each main character is developed with a mixture of the two.
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