Sophie Marceau wears an unidentified watch

In a pale modern apartment, Sophie Marceau sits alone in a white armchair, a black sleeveless dress against the bright upholstery, a cigarette raised in her right hand. This is Chiara, the woman at the center of Anthony Zimmer, Jerome Salle's 2005 French thriller, and the pose tells you everything: she is waiting, watching, perfectly composed. The film turns on mistaken identity. Chiara is the companion of a fugitive criminal who has altered his face beyond recognition, and she picks an ordinary stranger off a train to draw his pursuers away from the real man. Hollywood remade it five years later as The Tourist, with Depp and Jolie in the roles.

On her raised wrist sits a round chronograph on a dark leather strap, a crown and pushers at three, worn with the same deliberate calm as everything else about her. The dial never turns far enough to read. There is a fitting irony in that. Anthony Zimmer is a film about a man so thoroughly disguised that even the woman closest to him cannot say for certain who he is, and the watch on her wrist has ended up in the same condition, recognizable in outline and impossible to pin down by name.