It is sometimes difficult to walk the fine line between comedy and banality, as well as hiding all the wire and papier mâché that form the construct known as thriller. "Confidences trop intimes" cunningly avoids the traps of both genres by simply shaking the constructs off, layer by layer.
The movie belongs to a genre, "comédie dramatique" ("dromedy"?) which usually in US movies is reserved for romance "chick flicks". Yet these intimate strangers bring quite a bit more to the screen. It's a pleasant relief to see them saying so much with so little, avoiding those deep memorable lines that are so out of place in the mouth of the common people movies of these kind are supposed to represent.
It's by juxtaposition that Leconte achieves the best effect, by not saying too much and underplaying it, always. In one memorable scene the lonely célibataire glances at the stages of life through his window. Through the glass of the opposite building he sees passion, argument and old age as the seemingly inevitable stages of life. His life seems codified, chosen by others and kept and controlled, in the good and in the bad: add the secret ingredient, an excellent Sandrine Bonnaire, and stir.
The film amusingly deconstructs the myth of psychoanalysis, and thanks to the great empathy of the Luchini character, succeeds in expressing the inexpressible, the desire, the longing sometimes solitary and hopeless. 9/10!
