If you’ve ever caught yourself having just too good a time with “Freaky Friday” or “Your Name” or really any entry in the oddly well-populated body-swap genre, here’s a chance to do a little penance. “The Unknown” is Arthur Harari‘s third directorial feature, after “Dark Inclusion” and “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle,” and his return to Cannes competition after co-writing Justine Triet’s blistering Palme d’Or-winner “Anatomy of a Fall.” But absent “Anatomy’s” mordant wit, and lacking even the sturdiness of “Onoda,” “The Unknown” makes ponderously heavy going of its switcheroo storyline, which is led by Léa Seydoux sulkily facing down the challenge — to be fair, quite a big one — of embodying a character who feels aggrieved that they look like Léa Seydoux.
Her counterpart through the murky psychological looking-glass is French-Canadian actor Niels Schneider, here reuniting with Harari after his César-winning role in “Dark Inclusion.” Schneider plays David, a reticent young man with the soulful-hobo air of a Beat poet, who makes a living as an events photographer but whose private passion is a secretive lifelong project, inherited from his father, documenting the changing Parisian suburbs.
