Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		2.5

Möbius Blu-ray Movie Review

Pretzel illogic.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 9, 2014

Much like its titular entity, Möbius twists and turns like an errant pretzel, but it also ends up not going anywhere. This multinational production has a starry and attractive cast, an okay premise, and one or two nicely suspenseful moments, but overall it is a confusing and ultimately uninvolving film. The main culprit here is that very confusion. Most viewers, if they’re anything like I am, are going to be wondering about major plot points at several key times through the film. Aside from such passing mysteries, there’s a bigger, underlying issue the film faces, which is that unless you’re a wizard in global finance, you’re probably not going to understand the basic setup of the film, which involves a derivatives trader named Alice (Cécile de France, Mesrine: Killer Instinct) who gets swept up in competing intelligence sagas involving Russia’s FSB (evidently the successor to the KGB) and the United States’ CIA. A Russian operative codenamed Moise (Jean Dujardin, The Artist) who is out to get the goods on a Russian finance magnate named Rostovsky (Tim Roth, Pulp Fiction) is hoping to use Alice as his way into Rostovsky’s inner sanctum, but Moise instead gets invited into Alice’s inner sanctum himself (if you catch my drift). Playing out in the background are a coterie of American spies who are evidently secretly manipulating the FSB, and thus Moise, to their own ends, which also involve Alice and Rostovsky. As confusing as the foregoing précis may sound, I assure you it’s light years ahead of the actual presentation in the film, where things just kind of happen willy-nilly and the audience is left to play catch up. Why, for example, is the FSB (and by default, the CIA) even interested in Rostovsky? Your guess is as good as mine, and frankly I don’t even have one. What is the FSB’s goal, and how is Moise involved? Again, no clue. If patient audience members are willing to put aside such fundamental matters as comprehension, there’s a decent enough through line of secret lovers attempting to rendezvous despite hordes of prying eyes keeping tabs on them, as well as some really gorgeous scenery courtesy of the Monaco setting, but Möbius is one twisty, winding path that ends up being largely without destination.

It’s perhaps indicative of just how mucked up much of Möbius is that one of its tangentially perplexing plot points actually takes a back seat. We’re given Tim Roth and Jean Dujardin as Russians, with Roth speaking in a British accent of Dujardin speaking French for virtually the entire length of the film. The screenplay glosses over these inconsistencies by having Roth’s character mention (rather late in the film) that he has lived most of his life in Britain as an émigré, as well as an equally brief aside which mentions that Dujardin’s spy training included learning French, but it shows the lengths Möbius has to go to sustain its already fragile conceits.

The bottom line is that Moise and Alice of course become lovers, with Moise thinking he’s working with the FSB to get to Rostovsky and Alice thinking she’s working for someone (it’s never made entirely clear) to provide information about Rostovsky which will clear her name and allow her to return to the United States. (Alice was evidently solely responsible for the Lehmann Brothers fiasco according to the film, and so has been banished to Monaco—not much of a banishment, if you ask me, and certainly not by the standards of the film itself, which shows the locale to be utterly amazing. The fact that de France is supposed to be half American is also never adequately explained or addressed, but I digress.)

The best parts of Möbius are the more straightforward surreptitious elements where Moise and/or Alice are involved in their affair while trying to navigate the many sets of prying eyes surrounding them. There’s one terrific sequence where Rostovsky’s bodyguard bursts in on the pair and Moise fears his cover is about to be blown. Another scene has Moise secretly phoning Alice while in a car with his FSB cohorts. These kinds of moments actually work very well, but they’re buried in a plot that is so arcane and opaque that much of their putative tension is wasted.

Möbius probably could have worked had it been written by someone like Ernest Lehman and directed by someone like Stanley Donen, a la their inimitable Charade. Like that iconic 1963 film, Möbius offers incredibly charismatic, beautiful people in a variety of luxe European settings with a dash of intrigue and more than a hint of romance (Möbius is of course far more provocative in this regard, as befits its vintage). But there’s no real fun in this film. Even the ending is bizarre and weirdly ambivalent, as if the filmmakers had traversed their own infinite strip and wound up pretty much back where they started from.

Möbius Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Möbius is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer. While just occasionally a bit on the soft side, overall this is a really nice looking high definition presentation which benefits immensely from the truly spectacular scenery on display. Director Eric Rochant and cinematographer Pierre Novion take full advantage of the locales with some fantastic aerial establishing shots that feature impressive depth of field. Midrange and close-ups offer excellent fine detail (see screenshot 4, where seemingly every individual whisker on Dujardin's chin is easily discernable), and the entire presentation features accurate looking color. Contrast is dialed down a bit in some interior scenes, perhaps purposely to increase tension. The presentation is free of any overt artifacts and there are no issues with digital tweaking of the image (beyond some color grading that was done at the DI stage).

Möbius Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Möbius' lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is officially listed as being in English, but the film is actually multilingual, with French and Russian being spoken in about equal measure. All of the dialogue comes through quite cleanly and clearly, and a couple of nice nightclub scenes offer great surround activity, nicely capturing the bustle and cacophony of Monaco's nightlife. Ambient environmental noises also dot the surrounds as the film ventures out of doors. Fidelity is excellent and dynamic range is surprisingly wide for this largely dialogue driven film.

Möbius Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of Möbius contains the following featurettes:

  A Great Couple of Cinema (1080p; 4:18) focuses on Jean Dujardin and Cécile de France.

  
  

  An International Cast (1080p; 3:59) does similar duty for some of the rest of the cast, including Tim Roth.

  
  

  The Möbius Ribbon (1080p; 1:53) has various cast members briefly discussing Möbius strips.

• Interviews with Writer/Director Éric Rochant and Actors Tim Roth, Jean Dujardin and Cécile de France includes separate interviews with (of course) Rochant (1080p; 18:54), Roth (1080p; 5:51), Dujardin (1080p; 12:42) and De France (1080p; 3:51).


• Möbius Trailer (1080p; 2:01)

Möbius Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I love a good thriller, and even more, I love a good thriller with a convoluted plot that requires me to stay on my toes. But after having watched Möbius all the way through once, and then even revisiting several key scenes twice more, I can't state with any certainty what the film is really about. Sure, there's lots of daring do involving two lovers who think they're doing one thing when they're actually doing another (not to mention each other—but I digress yet again), but the central issues of why everyone is after Rostovsky and who is working for whom are never adequately explained and without those elements resolved, everything else is just kind of an admittedly pretty house of cards built upon thin air. The film is certainly scenic, and the cast is unbelievably attractive, but from a pure plotting perspective, Möbius is a twisty mess. Those with an interest in the title will nonetheless not be disappointed by the technical presentation, which is excellent.