Switch - A murderous exchange

Movie
German title	Switch - A murderous exchange
Original title	Switch
Country of production	France
original language	French
Publishing year	2011
length	104 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Frédéric Schœndœrffer
script	Jean-Christophe Grangé
production	Jean-Christophe Grangé ; Frédéric Schoendoerffer ; Éric Névé
music	Bruno Coulais
camera	Vincent Gallot
cut	Elsa Fernández ; Dominique Mazzoleni
occupation
	Karine Vanasse : Sophie Malaterre; Karina Testa : Bénédicte Serteaux; Niseema Theillaud : Alice Serteaux; Sophie Faucher : Marianne Malaterre; Maxim Roy : Claire Marras; Eric Cantona : Damien Forgeat; Mehdi Nebbou : Stephane Defer; Karim Saleh : Kourosh;

Switch - A murderous exchange (Original title: Switch ) is a French action - thriller from 2011. Directed by Frédéric Schoendoerffer , who is also with the French crime writer Jean-Christophe Grangé wrote the screenplay. The film is about a paranoid computer science student who wants to attach the self-committed murder of an unemployed Canadian who looks like her.

action

Sophie Malaterre, Canadian graphic artist and currently unemployed, takes advantage of the offer to change her life spontaneously. An internet portal brings people together who want to exchange their apartment. This is how Sophie arrives in Paris . She never met her swap partner, Bénédicte Serteaux, because she received the key to the apartment in advance by post.

On the day of arrival, Sophie enjoys a stroll through town, but the next morning a nightmare begins for her. A special task force of the police storms their swap apartment and takes them to the station. In a locked room that Sophie never entered, the policemen find a dismembered, headless corpse, the partner Thomas of her exchange partner Bénédicte Serteaux. Sophie tries unsuccessfully to convince the investigators that she is not Bénédicte Serteaux. All evidence that would prove their true identity seems to be destroyed overnight. Instead, the investigators find a passport with Sophie's picture in the apartment, which is made out in the name of Bénédicte Serteaux.

Sophie is about to be admitted to psychiatry. She desperately tries to convince the investigating commissioner Forgeat of her innocence. After she can persuade him to prove her identity through a dental examination, she manages to escape at the dentist. She calls her mother in Montreal and asks her to check her house and get documents proving Sophie's identity. But when Marianne Malaterre searches the house and sees the severed head of a man laid out in the bedroom, she flees in a panic and is killed by Bénédicte. Then this burns the house down.

Around the same time in Paris: Bénédictes mother Alice Serteaux also certifies that the investigators recognize her daughter in the mug shot, like Bénédictes neighbors before - so here too no relief for Sophie Malaterre. Bénédicte Serteaux, child of wealthy parents, seems to have organized everything perfectly. She underwent facial surgery to look more like Sophie, and even hired two young decoys in Paris and Montreal. She just didn't expect her opponent to defend herself against her arrest.

The DNA analysis of the headless corpse brings an amazing result. Thomas and Sophie are half siblings. Thomas' mother claims to have become a mother through an anonymous sperm donation. Sophie's father - the Malaterre family lived in Paris until Sophie was twelve years old - was obviously the donor. And not only Thomas was created through artificial insemination. Bénédictes mother also used the services of the same Parisian laboratory. Bénédicte Serteaux grew up without a father. She hated her loveless mother, she admitted bitterly in the showdown of her half-sister Sophie. As a laboratory assistant, she obtained information about her biological father and her half-siblings.

Bénédicte succeeds in overpowering Sophie and tied up in a car. But Sophie is able to establish a cellular connection to Inspector Forgeat, who in the course of the investigation increasingly believes in Sophie's innocence. The cell phone tracking leads him and his colleague to a factory hall where Bénédicte Sophie broke both legs. Bénédicte is shot, Sophie is saved.

background

The shoot in 2010 took a total of 35 days and cost the production company 6.32 million euros. JP's Box-Office puts global revenue at $ 941,689.

In terms of the narrative style and the atmosphere of the film, the two filmmakers oriented themselves on Hitchcock's masterpieces, but Grangé also wanted elements of a Giallo to be integrated. For him, as a primary book author, writing scripts is always a challenge, as the plot has to be written more concisely than in a literary work. Working with Schoendoerffer, whose role was limited to providing ideas, helped him a lot.

Schoendoerffer wanted to cast the leading role with an actress unknown in France, because this way the viewer can identify better with the fate of the heroine. Karine Vanasse was challenged with enormous athletic achievements in the chases. She had more stunts to complete than any other actor. In addition, the French-Canadian had to learn to speak without a Canadian accent before filming began.

Schoendoerffer drew inspiration for the chases from the films Hazardous Surf and Narc . One of the chases leads through the idyllic Parisian suburb of Le Plessis-Robinson . He did not consider the originally selected residential area of Chatou to be appropriate.

Mehdi Nebbou was chosen for purely visual reasons, because he has the same body size as his film partner Eric Cantona.

criticism

“The story is entertaining and understands how to keep the tension high for most of the time. Action and thrill are well balanced. Even the resolution of the whole thing comes across as reasonably believable, even if the motive turns out to be a rather petty campaign of revenge instead of the big conspiracy. Only afterwards do some logic holes open up, which then cloud the overall impression a little. "

- Stefan Klug, moz.de