Review: Greta

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

Equally campy and creepy, Neil Jordan's "Greta" is a familiar stalker thriller made all the more unsettling by Isabelle Huppert's commitment to a character clearly gone off the deep end. Huppert, one of France's greatest actresses, appears to be having a good time laying it on thick as the titular character, a woman whose loneliness has led her to an obsession with luring young women into becoming her friend.

At first, Greta appears harmless. Frances, a Bostonian who has been transplanted to New York City and exists in a state of wide-eyed naivete, meets her after discovering her purse on a subway and then dropping by her home to return it. Frances, who lives with her friend Erica (Maika Monroe) in an apartment that her father bought her as a graduation present (...that he clearly couldn't afford unless he's the CEO of Starbucks), is at first taken by Greta, whose husband is deceased and daughter apparently lives far away.

But during dinner at Greta's house one night, Frances discovers a closet full of purses, all of which contain an ID card that would lead its finder back to Greta's apartment. Naturally creeped out by this discovery, Frances attempts to distance herself from her new friend, only to have Greta show up - during one of the film's eeriest moments - at the restaurant where Frances is a waitress and spend the entire day standing outside glaring at her, and then turn into a full-blown stalker, appearing in her apartment building and following Erica from a bar, all the while sending Frances photos of her roommate to her iPhone.

Ultimately, Greta is a caricature of every lonely person who ends up being a sociopathic stalker in every movie ever made, but Huppert, at first, brings a certain charm to the character and, much later, a whole lot of menace. The picture is alternately ludicrous and scary and this offbeat balance often makes Jordan's film a nerve-wracking affair.

Jordan has long been a master of the thriller, from his masterpiece "The Crying Game" and reasonably enjoyable of Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" to more lurid affairs, such as the Jodie Foster vehicle "The Brave One" and the silly, but enjoyable, "In Dreams."

Needless to say, "Greta" is not among his best films, but it's a fun and occasionally grim Hollywood thriller. Aside from its impressive visual style, the film is mostly carried on the backs of its two leads - especially Huppert, who brings the level of intensity we've come to expect of her in fleshing out this damaged individual, all the while with a knowing smile at the absurdity of the material.