Sibyl

A fairly monumental misfire, Sibyl follows Virginie Efira’s title character as she reluctantly agrees to treat Adèle Exarchopoulos’ Margot before abandoning her psychiatric practice altogether. Filmmaker Justine Triet delivers a deliberate melodrama that’s essentially devoid of an entry point for the viewer, as the writer/director employs a puzzle-like, timeshifting narrative that effectively (and completely) prevents one from embracing the material or characters – with the underdeveloped, cipher-ish protagonist the most obvious casualty of Triet’s too-clever-for-its-own-good screenplay (ie it remains impossible to figure out just what’s driving Sibyl to do the things she does). And although Triet has elicited solid performances from her various actors – Efira’s tour-de-force efforts are essentially wasted – Sibyl progresses into an increasingly interminable midsection that’s weighed down by sequences of an aggressively meandering nature (eg a Stromboli-set location shoot just goes on forever). The end result is an uncommonly tedious endeavor that doesn’t seem to have any real point, which is a shame, certainly, given the obvious talent in front of and behind the camera.

*1/2 out of ****