*½/****
written and directed by David Farr
by Walter Chaw Another entry in the baby-in-peril subgenre of white-collar paranoia thrillers (see most recently Hungry Hearts), hyphenate David Farr's closed-room Polanski shrine The Ones Below is well-intentioned fluff that meanders around exhausted until it finally finds a place to sit. It's a literal upstairs/downstairs affair as upstairs couple Kate (Clémence Poésy) and Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore), expecting their firstborn, meet-cute their downstairs neighbours: bombshell Teresa (Laura Birn), also pregnant, and her older husband Jon (David Morrissey). A dinner party, an Inside accident, and suddenly Kate is either insane or insane like a fox for suspecting that Teresa and Jon may have nefarious designs on Kate and Justin's adorable bundle of conflict/plot device. It's a Pacific Heights conceit amplified with baby, and Farr misses no broad cinematographic trick, from slow push-ins on a baby monitor to the camera twirling in simulated panic. There's a story here in the frumpy Kate's growing suspicion about Justin's interest in red hot Teresa; another in establishing Teresa as carnal and Kate as intellectual; and another that examines Kate's actions through the lens of post-partum depression. But the film missteps by treating its plot as high melodrama rather than at an icy, architectural remove. Oh, what Polanski would have done with this material. The claustrophobia would be gradual and suffocating. The set would be exploited for the fishbowl of the downstairs and the crow's nest of the upper floor. The gaslighting would be the product of the direction and not revealed through an extended epilogue. The Ones Below is more bad De Palma than bad Polanski, in other words, and while the technical craft of it is fine, its influences (including The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, of all things) are worn too proudly on its sleeve. Programme: City to City
