Greta review – Isabelle Huppert gives crockery-smashing psycho turn
The French actor plays a scary widow befriended by Chloë Grace Moretz’s waitress in Neil Jordan’s enjoyably preposterous psychological thriller
Isabelle Huppert was enjoyably outrageous in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle in 2016, and on the face of it, this is similar material: she stars in a psychological suspense thriller with hints of Fatal Attraction and Single White Female, written by Ray Wright and directed by Neil Jordan. The element of ridiculousness – arguably not just allowable but vital for this sort of film – is supplied by the always watchable Huppert, though she arguably goes a tad too far with her fit of crockery-smashing, table-splintering psycho rage in a restaurant.
Chloë Grace Moretz plays Frances, a young woman in New York working as a waitress and sharing an improbably huge apartment with her friend Erica (Maika Monroe). Frances is lonely and depressed because her mother has just died. But one day something strange happens: she finds an expensive-looking bag on the subway and out of charity (and curiosity) takes it back to the owner. This is Greta, played by Huppert, an elegant, enigmatically inscrutable woman who professes to be overcome with gratitude. She asks Frances in for tea and soon confides her own loneliness as a widow. They somehow become close friends, but it isn’t long before Greta is becoming scarily clingy and controlling.