Ismael's Ghosts

Ismael's Ghosts (Les Fantômes d'Ismaël, 2017) is an Arnaud Desplechin drama you can watch online on iFILM. Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric) is a French filmmaker coasting through life with his partner Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg) — until the woman he thought was dead for twenty years shows up at the door. His first wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) is back, and she offers no explanation.

Cotillard plays Carlotta as something between a human being and a haunting — deliberately so. Her reappearance tears open a wound Ismaël barely knew was still there, derailing his new project and threatening everything he built in her absence. Desplechin opened the 2017 Cannes Film Festival with this film; it works less as a thriller and more as a study of how the past rewrites the present whether you invite it back or not. Stream Ismael's Ghosts online on iFILM.