What you quickly notice about this thirty-minute movie is that it has all the trappings of sophisticated big-budget international thriller. It's set in a real 18th-century French château. The characters are elegant in formalwear and have arrived for an evening of mysteriously sophisticated games. The plot is just complex enough to keep us intrigued though also a bit confused. The leads (Kellan Lutz and Torrey DeVitto, familiar from US television) are drop-dead gorgeous. Swedish actor Ola Rapace and German actor Götz Otto are on hand as potential villains. Both are veterans of the James Bond movies, and that's clearly no coincidence, as this flick has a definite 007 vibe. During a tense chess match, we can easily imagine Rapace as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. This isn't a straightforward thriller, though. As the story progresses, funny things happen with time and memory. In addition to the chess match, there is alternatively some kind of elaborate murder mystery evening going on, and we get intimations that there is another obscure level entirely to the action. Sure enough, by the end there is a twist worthy of a classic Twilight Zone episode. The film is quite well made - especially when you take into account that it's only the third movie by this filmmaker (Keyvan Sheikhalishahi, based in Paris) and that it was made when he was 21.
Review of Divertimento
