‘Eva’ Review: Not Even Isabelle Huppert Playing an Irritated Prostitute Can Save this Limp Melodrama — Berlinale 2018

There was a minor kerfuffle during the Berlinale press conference for Benoît Jacquot’s “Eva” when a journalist asked star Isabelle Huppert how she achieved such a degree of eroticism in the film without getting nude.

“You have a very bizarre idea of eroticism,” came the actress’ withering second-degree burn of a reply.And, to Huppert’s credit, it was a ridiculous question.

Ridiculous because French cinema has spent more than a century illustrating that T&A has precious little to do with screen sensuality, ridiculous because Huppert could make a Haneke movie feel erotic, and ridiculous because Jacquot’s overblown melodrama is a film about people who disguise themselves by how they dress.A limp, sudsy adaptation of James Hadley Chase’s 1945 novel “Eve” (a potboiler that Joseph Losey once spun into a Jeanne Moreau vehicle of the same name), “Eva” begins with an engaging sequence that instantly sets the

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