Wow . . . this reminds me somehow of Hitchcock’s stated desire in the 60s to do a film that would respond to the aesthetics of the French New Wave and Antonioni.

That may be too high a praise for other viewers— but I was impressed by the film’s gauzy sensuality from the start; and since “Riviera” only very gradually reveals its psychological hand, I was quite sucked in. At moments I felt echoes of everything from Swimming Pool to Lost Highway to Frantic; by the very end it’s as if we’ve been dropped into a mash-up of Russ Meyer and Hitchcock’s Frenzy. A film of teases and punches, in more ways than one.