Unfortunately, the very familiarity of the theme tends to work against the film – much of the business of the killer slotting into Gerard Depardieu’s life seems overly familiar. Annoying too is the obviousness of many of the plot set-ups – Depardieu for entirely contrived reasons never tells anybody about the fact that he is taking psycho-killer Didier Bourdon alone to his house for experiments, while quite unbelievably the process can only be reversed by a switch that nobody except the killer can flip.

Once the film gets past its set-up, La Machine nevertheless becomes an engrossing thriller. Director Francois Dupreyon keeps the plot moving along nicely. One scene that stands out is where Gerard Depardieu’s mistress Natalia Woerner tries to tell wife Nathalie Baye that Depardieu is not Depardieu in a supermarket, which gets sidetracked off into Baye’s anger about Worner being Depardieu’s mistress, only to have Depardieu return, the wife tell him just what Woerner told her and he fixate on Woerner with a murderous gleam. Some of the juxtapositions the film makes are interesting – Zyto hates sex but opens up to Marie, which serves to become a reconciliation in her dead relationship with Lacroix; how Marianne finally gets Lacroix to herself – but only when he is no longer in his own body. Hollywood reportedly purchased the rights to the story for an English-language remake, which may be interesting or equally may just amplify the cliches and contrived improbabilities. The film does have a nice eerie score.