The name "Hitchcock" comes up often in discussions of "With a Friend Like Harry" or "Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien" ("Harry, a friend who would do good," or, more idiomatically, "Helpful Harry") directed by the German-born Dominik Moll. The title echoes Hitchcock's mid-1950s corpse comedy "The Trouble with Harry." Still, the name that popped up in my mind while watching the film is Patricia Highsmith: "Strangers on a Train" (filmed by Hitchcock), because the title character is a man with no motive which would occur to the police who "helps out" another by murdering the other's parent(s), of course; and, even more, because the second Ripley novel (especially as it was filmed by Wim Wenders as "The American Friend" with Dennis Hopper as Ripley) portrays a helpful psychopath embroiling a decent, short-of-money family man in deadly games.

Harry (played by the ursine Spanish actor Sergi Lopez) obviously was smitten by Michel (Laurent Lucas) -- or at least by the talent Michel showed in writings for a school 'zine -- when they were in high school together. It is not clear whether Harry has been stalking Michel or happened to run into him in a roadside washroom. There is something maniacal (already!) in the way Harry looks at Michel washing his hands. The intensity of his gaze and unnaturalness of his smile would be extreme even for a man cruising toilets for sex. It would certainly make me flee in a big hurry, even if I were cruising!

Harry continues to grin even when he learns that Michel doesn't remember him at all. Michel has no interest in renewing an acquaintanceship or trying to excavate memories of one back in high school. There is a "natural" opportunity for Michel to ask his father about Harry and his background. His father remembers repairing the dental damage inflicted on Harry by a(n accidental) collision while playing handball, but Michel doesn't ask for elaboration.

Michel is too polite -- and perhaps preoccupied with his squalling children, three young girls -- to block a visit by Harry and Harry's bosomy girlfriend Plum (Sophie Guillemin) to the old farmhouse that is supposed to be a vacation home, but is a place the fixing up of which demands more attention than Michel has. Michel is stunned that Harry can recite a fairly lurid poem (of the kind that led Baudelaire to champion Poe). "The Large Dagger Sheathed in Dark Night," published in the school magazine twenty years earlier. Michel's somewhat flinty wife Claire (Mathilde Seigner) is too surprised to discover that Michel ever had literary ambitions to focus on how odd it is that this long-ago classmate can recite it from memory. And Plum smiles benignly ("bovinely," perhaps).

The farmhouse is so out of the way, that the visitors have to be invited to spend the night. They stay on, being very helpful. Harry forces an SUV on Claire when the family car breaks down. That seems extreme, but Harry is going to go much further in doing what he thinks will make Michel happier and, Harry hopes, return Michel to his forgotten vocation as a writer. This exaltation of writers is very French and hard for Americans even to imagine. Even Claire is impressed by what Michel writes. (I'm impressed that anyone could write anything in the hideous pink bathroom Michel's parents had installed in the farmhouse as a surprise!)

Harry does not seem to me to posses a Mephistophilean charm. A diabolical smile, yes, and he's very furry, which may be a source of reassurance to some. Michel is tolerant--trying to hard to make everyone else happy in Harry's view. Michel does not seem either impressed or threatened by Harry's flaunting of his sexual activity. And Michel does not know of Harry's homicidal "help" until he has to help move the fourth corpse. (I have to admit that it is the first one that really bothers me. Though the three predecessor ones do not deserve to die, a bit of complicity with Harry is built by fascination in how he gets away with murder--which is very similar to the Ripley books).

Many reviewers have expressed discontent with the ending, but I think that it is perfect. There are no loose ends. Michel does what he has to do, the family is on the road again, but in air-conditioned comfort in marked contrast to the opening hellish car trip. Harry's wish that Michel would resume writing has been fulfilled. Not knowing the extent of Harry's "help," Michel does not blame himself. And neither does the audience (at least I didn't). He and Claire are happier. And, well, too bad about Plum, Michel presumably thinks, while Claire is so relieved that Harry isn't around any more that it outweighs any regret for her girls' loss of Plum. And insofar as the audience, knowing far more about its price, enjoys the calm the family has reached, feeling unsettled by a degree of complicity with Harry's murders is good.

More than a year after seeing this film in its American theatrical result, it continues to haunt me.

Reservations and more on possible influences

I would have liked more backstory. As I already noted, there is a ready occasion for "You remember Harry's family, blah, blah, blah." The roots of Harry's obsessions are too mysterious. (Contrast Robert Walker in "Strangers on a Train" or Dennis Hopper in "The American Friend": they have overt agendas and fairly transparent covert ones.) For me the major plausibility problem is that the women sleep so deeply, but this is set up for both Claire and Plum early on.

David Sinclair Whitaker's musical score apes Bernard Hermann, another reason to think of Hitchcock--and Truffaut. Hitchcock and Truffaut placed more glamorous actors in compromising situations. Another French New Wave admirer of Hitchcock, Claude Chabrol and Luc Bresson seem to me a more direct influence in showing psychopaths in the French countryside and French bourgeois homes, along with Kubrick's following cars from above in "The Shining" and some overhead shooting in Godard's "Weekend."


[Note: This review migrated to culturedose.com and is being reposted on epinions. As noted, I saw the film in a theater.]

Recommended:
Yes

Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age