As a lover of literature and French style, I was naturally ecstatic to catch a screening of this in a post-lockdown setting. The film kept my intrique through its whole runtime. The mystery, detective drama of it all was done beautifully, and seeped in melancholy, to which I presumed would keep itself during the end reveal.

After I walked out of the empty theatre, I felt disappointed because of the opportunity that was missed. The final reveal of who Henri Pick really was... was just some guy, who had, up to that point, a total of 20 minutes of screentime at best. An even bigger blow was that he revealed that he went to a tombstone and stole the name of a real man named Henri Pick, and meticulously set up a scheme for his girlfriend to find: a randomly placed red manuscript in the library of rejected manuscripts. Presumably, his cause was to achieve fame after getting snubbed for success from his last novel. What a prick.

Eesh. The let-down slumped me in my seat. What they could've done was this perhaps: have the whole investigation lead up to the melancholic and affirming reveal that Henri Pick, and everything about his book, was in fact real. This would be such an emotional posterity for the detective/critic, as during the closing, say half an hour, the investigation starts to gradually reveal itself into hints of truth and the detective begins to lose track and hope. During the closing minutes the audience could already sense what could be revealed, and the detective could affirm this with a statement of "It was real", etc, and induces a somber and reflective moment, as the film ends.

But, alas, here's what we got. 6/10