The Woman with Leopard Shoes (La Femme aux Chaussures Leopard) - FrightFest Glasgow

The instructions are clear from the lady with leopard shoes: Break into a home and retrieve an object. A man (Paul Bruchon) make his away across fields to the house he breaks in and finds what he needs, gets ready to leave.

But there’s been a mistake there’s a party on the same day, at which his employer is present. He’s trapped in a room and contact is solely through text as they try to figure a way out for him and the item. Now it is a matter of escape.

And that is all you really need to know about the plot for this beautiful intricate film. There’s barely any dialogue (and what there is, isn’t wasted) concentrating instead on tight direction and sound to relay the tension that writer and director Alexis Bruchon racks up.

Other names are introduced that further thicken the plot and the situation for the thief. With no dialogue Bruchon is totally reliant on his physical skills as an actor. His body and face, actions and expressions, interacting with his employer, working out what is going on and what to do.

We see few faces other that of the thief’s and a n other, hearing only voices and footsteps and seeing feet and legs. This takes us right into his situation, drawn into the danger and party to his decisions all the time there is the ongoing intrigue of the story.

As it twists and turns and by virtue of it being black and white there’s a temptation to tag this a film noir. And while there are aspects of that, for example when the classic McGuffin is introduced, this doesn’t have the lingering dank atmosphere that’s usually associated with that genre. The look is much slicker because of the modern techniques and as such has a much more contemporary feel at least technically, if not the characters and plot. At eighty minutes Alexis Bruchon nimbly weaves and develops the story to a satisfactory conclusion with not a second of the running time wasted.