A photographer inherits a long-term project documenting how his town has changed over a century. Overworked and depressed, he attends a raucous New Year’s Eve party and recognizes a woman he photographed months earlier. The woman, an aspiring actor named Eve, had quit a catering job after being yelled at, and her defiant mood draws him in. They have sex in a squalid basement, then he wakes to find his consciousness in Eve’s body. He becomes terrified and fascinated by female anatomy while the story unfolds through uncanny, disquieting moments and a murky supernatural atmosphere. The premise suggests themes of identity and unknowability, but the ending is flawed.
"Niels Schneider plays David Zimmerman, a photographer in his late 30s documenting the way in which his home town has changed over the past century a project inherited from his photographer dad. (He has an old photo of them both seated on the pavement, apparently mimicking Chaplin and the Kid.) David is overworked, dishevelled and depressed, but is just about persuaded to go along to a raucous New Year's Eve party where he is stunned to glimpse a woman staring at him, played by Lea Seydoux, whom he realises he photographed a few months' previously."
"She is apparently called Eve, a would-be actor who had a temp catering job at an anniversary party where David was taking pictures. She angrily quit after being yelled at for dropping a tray of glasses and, entranced by her moody defiance, David neglected his official duties to snap her as she stalked off. They have sex in an impossibly squalid basement, and David wakes up the next day to find he is now in Eve's body."
"Maybe it is a parable for the crisis of gender identity or just identity, and everyone's occasional experience of the profound, unreconcilable unknowability of our own bodies. There is also something of the mood of Blow-Up, or Basil Dearden's Brit pulp chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself, or indeed David Robert Mitchell's modern classic It Follows. But this one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise."
"It is a doomy, murky and intriguing supernatural noir mystery, hardly visible within the dark toxic cloud of its own strangeness, populated by people bearing stricken expressions of misery and fear. There are some genuinely uncanny and disquieting moments. Niels Schneider in The Unknown. Photograph: Bathysphere/ Pathe He is terrified and fascinated by female anatomy (though a more comical film might have scenes with David/Eve getting to grips wi"
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