It makes sense that a single novel — in this case, James Hadley Chase’s 1945 potboiler “Eve” — would be adapted by both Joseph Losey and, over half a century later, Benoît Jacquot.
Both directors are perverse aesthetes with an affinity for lurid art, as well as prolific, on-the-fly experimenters.
For both, the resulting adaptation is a slinky curio that fits snugly into each’s oeuvre without matching the best of it.
Alluringly led by Gaspard Ulliel as an acclaimed playwright whose career is built on artistic theft, and Isabelle Huppert as the prostitute leading him semi-willingly into ruin, “Eva” begins as hot buttered nonsense of the least resistible variety before, echoing the writer’s block that propels its daft narrative, it runs drily out of ideas.
International distributors will be drawn by the talent alone, particularly a post-“Elle” Huppert once more working nasty genre terrain with queenly poise, but the protagonist’s obsessive fixation won’t be shared
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