A Belgian crime drama that is a bit too shaggy

In The Other Laurens, there is no one with the first name Lauren, but there are twin brothers: François and Gabriel Laurens (Olivier Rabourdin), one of whom is dead. Claude Schmitz's twisty neo-noir — the original French title, L'Autre Laurens, is pleasing to the ear in a way the English translation is not — is a thriller of identity, both in the ways it is wrong and the ways it is created. For the repressed private eye at its center, that means separating his sense of self from that of his not-so-beloved deceased twin — a harder task than figuring out what became of the deceased.

François was killed in a car crash, making his death a clear-cut case. But the first question in any crime drama is whether the accidental death that sets the plot in motion was actually an accident, and the answer is usually the same. “It's like watching him again,” says François's not-exactly-distraught widow (Kate Moran) when she first meets her twin brother Gabriel, “but out of focus.” The same could be said of the film itself, sometimes in ways that make it hazily fascinating and sometimes in ways that make it just hazy. At times, “The Other Laurens” almost seems to channel the way “The Big Lebowski” and “Inherent Vice” play with noir conventions to generate laughs, the key difference being that this isn't a comedy.

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This mishmash of sounds can sometimes be compelling in itself. While in most films of this kind the tension comes from the plot itself, the real mystery here lies in what exactly the film itself is trying to do. The mood shifts from one scene to the next, sometimes noticeably, and when The Other Laurens gets its mood and aesthetic working the way it should, it can have just the right kind of offbeatness. The more serious it gets, however, the less effective it becomes—especially in a dramatic monologue that out of nowhere reveals a connection between what was surely the worst day of Gabriel's life and, of all things, 9/11.

Much of the narrative complication comes not from Gabriel actually doing detective work, but from shady characters seeing him from afar and mistaking him for François, who didn't exactly go to the grave with a clean slate. He's a reluctant participant in most of the things that happen to him, including going along with the case of mistaken identity to find out the truth. And while that kind of reticence is a fairly common trait in ultimately compelling protagonists, Gabriel never really completes that story arc. Whatever development he goes through, it feels too little, too late, especially for the estranged niece who now has no one to turn to (Louise Leroy).

But DP Florian Berutti's photography is truly something special, giving The Other Laurens a distinctly '70s vibe. Bathed in rich colors and the inviting glow of neon lights at night, these striking images heighten reality into a kind of dream state. That's especially true when a car is onscreen: Red reflections from headlights bounce through the frame like bullets, suggesting an otherworldly presence that the film itself can barely contain.

If everything else in the film – or even anything otherwise – had it been on the same level, this could have been a prime example of the genre rather than just an eyebrow-raising curiosity. Perhaps the other Laurens would have been more interesting for two hours.

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