Two Pianos

Featuring François Civil (Mon Inconnue), Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Rosalie), and Oscar nominee Charlotte Rampling, the latest from prolific French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin — last at the Festival in 2008 with A Christmas Tale — is an alluring mystery in which music, memory, and identity merge and threaten to overwhelm the tender psyche of a virtuosic pianist.

Following an extended, self-imposed exile in Asia, Mathias Vogler (Civil) travels to his hometown of Lyon, where his childhood mentor Elena (Rampling) convinces him to collaborate on a series of concerts at the city’s historic auditorium. This long-delayed return and its accompanying reunion should be a cause for celebration, but Mathias’ life is about to take an uncanny turn: in a park, he encounters a boy who seems to be his doppelgänger. This strange child leads Mathias to Claude (Tereszkiewicz), a woman he once passionately loved — and whose reappearance threatens to destabilize Mathias’ already-fragile mental state.

Written by Desplechin and Kamen Velkovsky, Two Pianos is a tale rich with intrigue, in which past and present blur and doubles spring forth and accumulate. Working with Oscar-nominated cinematographer Paul Guilhaume (TIFF ’24’s Emilia Pérez), Desplechin makes beguiling use of the ancient streets of Vieux Lyon, cultivating an air of eeriness and mischief, drawing upon myriad stories of doubles from cinema and literature while pushing into new frontier.